Gratitude

Zen & Gratitude

Some lessons can only be learned by seeing someone else practicing that action with excellence.

In this lesson plan, we will learn to be grateful for the gift of life. Every child deserves to learn how to properly be grateful the way everyone else who is doing it right is doing it.

Being Grateful

There's nowhere else you should want to be; look around; darkness, coldness, and a giant ball of fire are not viable alternatives. Earth is a heaven, well technically was  but that's later if we continue failing. What we have now is referred to as a crossroads in our evolution towards an enlightened existence. Would it sound like heaven if when you got there, there is one supreme being governing over you without free will, choice, understanding, trust, honesty, equality, the list goes. The answer is obvious.
Every global civilization starts off pretty rough, but most figure out after a few thousand years that there's nowhere to go, you have to make the best of what's been provided locally, and the scales always balance back to even, back and forth, forever, until harmony is achieved. When that happens, the global civilization has reached a status of Utopia. Then things get really cool. Visitors from Heaven come to check out the progress being made; offer words of wisdom; enlighten or offer tools to begin the process of the next advancement.
On some planets, everybody is able to clearly see every single thought of every other person. They do not have vocal chords, they do not remember music, the ears are used strictly for physical balancing and not sound, they don't even use mental telepathy, because what for? If you wanna know what I'll say later, mark your internal calendar to reflect back to my thought patterns after that event occurs, and watch the instant replay of how I perceived, experienced, and processed my existence during the live replay. That's an oxymoron to us: Live Replay. To us something is either live or a replay; we can't do both; that's impossible. Right?
I mean I get it. I want a Ferrari too. That's an option everyone will have in a few generations, provided they are willing to sacrifice having children or dining out and so on. What will no longer exist is a person who was gifted at birth with future successes be denied the opportunities someone less deserving receives simply because of neglect and abuse. For now, let's all pick something both unique and helpful and be the best one at that or study and practice or shut up.

Smiling

If you don't smile all the time, then that's okay, it's not your fault, but that is not the intended experience this reality was created for. There is a purpose and meaning of life. That is not a philosophical mystery to be pondered and debated among the intellectual elitists. In fact, being smart enough to know that you manipulated your life experience to selfishly reduce your responsibilities and efforts at the expense of the suffering of others you share the planet with, then grab a pen and scratch the word Heaven off your bucket list right now, and you can take that as a promise; I checked with G-d, She agrees.
Everyone should smile and be grateful.
To learn more about smiling, study: Teacher :: Mantak Chia.

Teaching

To teach someone to be grateful with unadulterated positive energy (love), you must first be practicing gratefulness regularly. In order for that to occur, you need to have been born with virtuous role models, supportive emotional network, and enough guidance to help you navigate life without falling into despair, isolation, disenchantment, or defiance. Those are not necessarily bad quality always, but for achieving proper gratefulness as an understanding to be used as the foundation for more rewarding spiritual milestones, they prevent it. So, to be grateful, you must have a love for life and the source of life not a fear of either.
To acquiesce, accept, deal with, tolerate, resent, or reject the concept of life on this planet being the reward for you to enjoy with pride and a healthy dose of eager anticipation must never be tarnished, disproved, demoted, or devalued from when you are first introduced to the opportunity to be grateful and consequently accept it, give a try, and repeat it continuously, sort of on the back burner of your concentration; not forgotten, just applied into your framework of how you interpret where you are for the time being.
If you are not grateful, don't fake it, that won't lead to gradual acceptance. If you have lost that thrill of waking up each morning with eager anticipation of what exciting developments the day has in store, then in order to regain a grateful heart, you must regain that joy you once experienced upon waking up as a child each morning until the negativity of this realm played its hand in tainting your perception.