What is the #1 form of Gratitude – Its not what you think!

In my earlier post on gratitude, I discussed how to give credit to the Creator through thoughts, words, or journaling. But our thoughts and journaling fall shot of our thanks eventually. Perhaps, we need to stack on another form – without any thought-strings attached.

In this post, we’ll delve into this other form of gratitude by answering:
What is the #1 form of gratitude?
What are the two ways to prepare for it?
What happens if we don’t prepare beforehand?

#1 Form of Gratitude: Question 1- What is that #1 form of gratitude?

The #1 form of gratitude is thoughtlessness, silent prayer, meditation, or connecting to your inner/higher self.

Practicing this form of silent gratitude helps ground our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and energies to zero. Doing so helps us direct our consciousness upward and allows us to enjoy the journey inward.

This silent prayer pleases the Creator, releases the thoughts while directing our attention inward. Doing so brings self-peace, self-love and is the ultimate way to give thanks to the Creator daily.

This selfless energy of silent gratitude needs a lot of preparation. Why? Because you can only be prepared for it when you have no words left and no thoughts left to describe how grateful you are.

When your thoughts, words, deeds, and emotions fail to truly thank him for all the things you have manifested in your life then no amount of journaling satisfies you.

So to give credit to your Creator for everything, you start to become more and more silent. That’s the ultimate form of gratitude.

#1 Form of Gratitude: Question 2- What are the two ways to prepare for it? 

The two ways are: silence the body and mind.

1. Silence the body 

These can be in the form of simple requirements such as a quick bath, food, and body stillness. 

• Quick Bath: A bath becomes a need when you want your consciousness to rise above your throat chakra. If you are not fresh enough, your consciousness will fall. 
• Food: Similarly, you cannot observe silence if your stomach is growling for food intake. Your focus will go down wanting food. Trust me. I tried it! A quick cup of tea with cookies helps prepare us to practice body silence!   
• Body Stillness: Contemplation in silence requires that we first practice sitting still. But the problem is not the body alone. The mind also needs to be still – to experience total silence.

2. Silence our mind

To have a silent prayer, we need to silence our thoughts. The problem is our mainstream way of living. It has many ways to disrupt our silence.

According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative; 95% are repetitive thoughts.

Just by silencing your news, phone, and people in your life, you can have a mindset shift and experience transformation.

• News Silence: We keep programming our subconscious mind with mindless news that leads to negative thoughts. Watching or listening to the news can cause a lot of damage to the mind and make it violent instead of silent.
• Phone Silence: During meditation, it is disturbing when the phone starts ringing or when some apps start sending alerts. I found a “do not disturb” button that silences the alerts and any incoming phone calls. It is best to switch the phone off if you are not using it as an alarm clock.
• People Silence: It is difficult to practice your morning gratitude if you have babies, kids, or even adults making any noise. Babies and kids will cry and screen and rock your silence out the door. Adults’ talk will turn silence into topics of discussion. I think our thoughts have enough momentum – we don’t need anymore.

#1 Form of Gratitude: Question 3: What happens if you don’t prepare beforehand?

Lack of preparation will give birth to an anxious, disturbing, toxic, and unstill body and mind instead of grateful and graceful.

Let’s say you want to observe silent prayer in your room. If you are feeling sleepy, and if you are trying to meditate on an empty stomach, you will not be able to hold your body still.

To top it off, no sooner the phone starts to beep alerts. Those alerts will connect us to various news feeds, which in turn, will divert our thoughts to people in our lives who are directly or indirectly connected.

Thoughts of people bring you to your attachments, relationships, toxic environments, and so on. You are then not observing silence. So silence takes work and preparation beforehand.

In conclusion

The #1 form of gratitude is silent prayer or meditation. A silent prayer requires that our mind and body observe silence – which requires preparation beforehand.

To prepare for body silence, take a quick bath, eat an adequate amount of food, and practice body stillness.

To prepare for mind silence, take the necessary steps to ensure news, phone, and people are silent in your life.

Once your mind and body are silent, you will be able to connect with your inner silence and deliver your gratitude to the divine with ease and grace.

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