21-Day Meditation Experience

Day 12 - Loving with Gratitude

“The more grateful we are, the more connected we become to the universe around us.” ― Stephen Richards 

Today’s meditation is about divine love, the spiritual grace that supports everyone and everything. This love is always there whether we see it or not. Gratitude, when offered to another person, is really an expression of love. Like all forms of love, gratitude removes the feeling of separation and distance between hearts. It is an affirmation of our common existence. 

Gratitude takes us out of our ego self that may be afraid to love because of insecurity, vulnerability, or fear of rejection. When we learn to feel gratitude with a full heart, we are learning to love unconditionally. Living this divine love is living in grace. 

Daily Journal

1. Describe three ways divine love or grace supports your life right now.

2. Write any feelings you may have that suggest a lack of support from divine love. For example, lack of faith, unbelief, skepticism, anxiety, strong negative beliefs, or lack of trust.

3. List active steps towards gratitude you can take to overcome your inner obstacles and resistance to divine love, such as enjoying inspirational poetry or spiritual literature, offering forgiveness to someone, or connecting with a sympathetic believer.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 11 - Nature's Generosity Is Waiting

“The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.” ― Abraham Maslow

In today’s meditation, we learn that Nature is always ready to give to us and support us. We only need to open ourselves to that infinite abundance and connect with it. Gratitude is the way we contact Nature’s generosity and bring its support directly into our lives. 

This expansive, engaged relationship with Nature reestablishes our mind-body system to its healthy, balanced state. Instead of feeling constricting fear and anxiety, our expansive awareness now blossoms and shares its generosity of spirit. Expanded awareness improves the entire functioning of your body as well, from your cells to your genes.

Daily Journal

1. List three things that you would like to have in more abundance. Instead of money or possessions, focus on things that cultivate inner abundance, such as kindness, intimacy, love, affection, appreciation, self-worth, joy, and satisfaction.

2. Moving down your list from Question 1, write one activity for each attribute that will help cultivate that particular kind of inner abundance. For example, you could offer a kind word or compliment to someone you know who needs it, or leave a simple note of appreciation for a loved one.

3. List the names of people that most contribute to your inner abundance. Describe how you can connect with them more often.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 10 - Gratitude Expands Every Relationship

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust 

In today’s meditation, we explore how gratitude can transform all our relationships. It starts when you express gratitude or appreciation to another person. The transformation begins when you have the thought of gratitude and your brain translates that feeling into beneficial biochemical and neurological changes in your body. The feeling of gratitude also expands the heart, which has the effect of erasing old grievances and soothing resentments and petty differences we may have been holding onto. 

Gratitude is wonderful in that it gives these same benefits to the body and heart of the giver as well as the receiver of gratitude. When someone is thanked or appreciated, they generate the same biochemical changes and feel the same expansion and healing of the heart. This back-and-forth flow of grace uplifts and opens every aspect of our relationship with that person.

Daily Journal

1. Bring to mind one relationship in your life that is difficult for you to feel appreciation for and would benefit from more gratitude. Describe the challenge or obstacle that makes it difficult to express gratitude towards that particular person.

2. Now, write about the good qualities of that person and relationship that you admire and enjoy.

3. Now, journal about some things you could do with this person that would bring out these positive qualities and make it easier to feel gratitude for them. For example, if you have a family member with a fiery personality who feels calm by the water, take a beach walk with them or spend the day by a pristine lake together.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 9 - Changing Your Personal Reality

“The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.” ― Henry Ward Beecher 

Today’s meditation gives us the starting place for transforming reality – our own self. Reality is not an impersonal experience or concept. It is personal, and how we see it and relate to it is a product of our unique history, attitudes, and beliefs. We are unique in who we are, unique in how we see the world, and unique in the reality we experience.

The core of our awareness is the source of our beliefs, feelings, and attitudes, and therefore that is the place from which we can change our personal reality. This inner awareness is an ever-present field of possibilities. We always have the possibility or choice for change at any moment. Gratitude is a practice that empowers us in this choice to see the opportunities in our life with fresh eyes.

Daily Journal

1. Write about any memories or negative experiences that make it difficult for you to feel gratitude. This list can be as long or as short as you like.

2. Describe any strong physical sensations, feelings, or attitudes associated with each experience from Question 2. These give you clues to the ways and places you may be stuck in the past.

3. Using the list from Question 1 again, journal about one way in which you can begin to move past each experience. For example, if you feel regret over an ended relationship, write about several positive things that have happened in your life since its endpoint.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 8 - Gratitude Benefits Mind and Body

“There is no prescription for finding moments of gratitude in every day; there is simply the choice.” ― Gillian Deacon 

This week we will extend our understanding and experience of gratitude to the mind-body connection. Gratitude is much more than an attitude or mood – it is a powerful positive input to our mind-body system that leads to increased physical and psychological well-being. 

Grateful thoughts and meditative states don’t just stay in your mind. Messenger molecules instantly transmit their effects to the body’s 100 trillion cells, creating new brain cells and new pathways and brain patterns. The practice of gratitude has even been found to change our gene expression in a positive direction. 

By directing our awareness toward gratitude, our entire mind-body system is automatically oriented toward greater health and balance.

Daily Journal

1. List some ways in which you can increase positive input to your brain. For example, by keeping a gratitude journal, performing more random acts of kindness, or increasing the amount of times you say “I love you.”

2. Write about the three main factors that most contribute to negative input in your brain. Be specific. These could be stress, fatigue, lack of sleep, criticism, rejection, or disappointment.

3. Thinking about your list from Question 2, journal about three ways you can reduce negative input to your brain. For example, by getting more rest, performing regular exercise, or spending time with close friends.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 7 - Obstacles to Grace Melt Away

“To live a life of gratitude is to open our eyes to the countless ways we are supported by the world around us.” ― Gregg Krech

In today’s meditation, we look at how grace can dissolve the resistance and obstacles we find in our life. We’ve all had times when we’ve struggled and encountered obstacles. These outer resistances are signals from our true self that there is some inner resistance, which comes from the limiting belief that we are a separate self. These beliefs are often a sense of entitlement, selfishness, or pessimism, and they block the natural flow of gratitude and grace.

As we practice gratitude, our perspective expands and we see we are not isolated at all. We are supported by the generosity of the universe in endless ways. Seeing this, our negativity, sense of entitlement, and all obstacles dissolve like morning mist with the rising sun.

Daily Journal

1. If you were to choose one thing in your life that you would like to be transformed by grace, what would it be?

2. List three things that add struggle to your daily life, such as stress, overworking, overscheduling, or the demands of family and friends.

3. Taking your list from Question 2, describe how practicing gratitude could help reduce these struggles.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 6 - Gratitude Is in the Present

“Just be, right now, here; and breathe. Begin to trust the magic of yourself.” ― Nikki Rowe

In today’s meditation, we discover how gratitude makes the present moment fully alive, awake, and enriched. We learn how every instant of our life is a unique gift and that when we are awake to this special value of the here and now, we step into a state of grace. 

So much of our cultural conditioning pulls us out of the present moment, striving for an impossible ideal in the future. Somewhere outside this present time, we hope to have what we currently lack, or look like what we think we should look like, and feel the happiness we don’t feel now. But this assumes that the present is inherently lacking, and the present is all we ever know. Practicing gratitude turns this around so that we find our completeness in the present moment.

Daily Journal

1. At this very moment, stop and look around you, being as present as possible. Describe your experience – what you see, smell, hear, and feel.

2. List three things that often take you out of the present moment, such as minor distractions, interruptions by other people, overwork, fatigue, or old memories.

3. Now, taking your list from Question 2, write about at least three ways you can minimize these things that distract you from being in the present moment.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 5 - Gratitude Awakens the True Self

“The road to happiness starts with a deep breath and an awareness of the many blessings tied to that single breath.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich

We might think that to live in grace requires us to pursue a devout lifestyle and retreat from the world. However, we have learned that grace abides in all things, all places, and all times. If we go beyond our changing personalities to connect with our essential self, we contact this ever-present grace and can live this state of grace even in the everyday world.

Our true self is peaceful, but not inert. It is intelligent, powerful, and intimately involved in our every wish and dream. The true self has the creative power and intelligence to direct and manifest your life's journey. When you step into and participate with life from this level, you are always grateful and find grace everywhere.

Daily Journal

1. Write about a few ways you can live and speak your truth more often.

2. Of your many selves – work self, family self, public self, intimate self – which one needs to come forward more often? Once you know which self needs to come forward more, note some ways to make this happen.

3. Describe an experience in which you felt fully aligned with your true self – perhaps when you felt fully in the moment and nothing else mattered. How can you create more experiences like this in your life?

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 4 - Grace Is Replying

“The more you are grateful for what you have, the more you can live fully in the present.” ― Dana Arcuri

In today's meditation, we explore how gratitude engages us in the evolutionary flow of life. When we offer the world our gratitude, grace responds and completes the circle. Our inner and outer worlds merge into one harmonious flow of existence.

As we use our gratitude to join this awakening of joy and beauty around us, we also find that our life becomes easier, more fun, and more meaningful. This nurturing power of grace comes from the source of Being which sustains everyone and everything in the universe. As human beings we can consciously choose to step into this flow of grace to enrich and elevate our lives.

Daily Journal

1. Describe an experience or situation that solved itself or became better on its own after you changed your attitude toward it.

2. Write about any signs of grace that have come to you recently, such as an unexpected kindness or moment of joy, a sense of perfection, or a feeling of belonging.

3. Cutting back on duties and demands to spend more time connecting with those you love is a wonderful way to invigorate your energy. List three ways you can renew your energy by appreciating what’s around you. For example, you could take a quiet walk amid the trees, view an art exhibit, or catch up with a dear friend.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.

Day 3 - Awaken the Energy of Gratitude

“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” ― Karl Barth

In today's meditation, we learn how to recharge our gratitude batteries. If we are tired, upset, or stressed, then our heart is closed and we are not able to feel or express real gratitude. Genuine gratitude comes from a feeling of contentment, safety, and being welcomed in your life – what Buddha called the “gladdened heart.”

This natural energy of gratitude is awakened when we meditate. Our intention in meditation is to invite this warm attitude of appreciation into our awareness and perception. With this recharged heart of thankfulness we find reason to be grateful wherever we look.

Daily Journal

1. Write about the things in your life that most gladden your heart. These could be as simple as breathing pure mountain air on a hike or feeling the warmth of the morning sun on your cheek.

2. Journal about one of your favorite experiences you’ve shared with a loved one. Describe it in detail, reliving the experience. The more you focus on gratitude, the more you attract similar experiences to be grateful for.

3. Describe the most beautiful thing you saw today and how you felt about it.

4. Use this space to reflect further on your experience today.