Great Fullness - The Meaning Of Gratitude

Great Fullness (The Meaning of Gratitude) with Dr. Michelle Medrano. Deep spiritual living contains the elements of gratitude and appreciation. As we approach Thanksgiving, we can enter the holiday embodying deep thankfulness and fulfillment. Learn to utilize the power of gratitude in daily life and adopt an attitude of gratitude.

Transcript

We are heading into this holiday season. I know some people are saying it's coming too soon, People are jumping to Christmas too fast and it's too much too soon and I know that my sense of it is that we are so desirous of the the light and the possibility that exists with the holiday season that sometimes it feels like we want to start even earlier this next year and so we're really grateful about where we're headed and for Thanksgiving and I wanted to to launch us off today I guess logically I could have waited till next Sunday but I wanted to launch us off today with a message about gratitude and and gratefulness and a lot of people are asking us already about when are the candlelight services so we do want to let you know that if you're planning to travel for the holidays we are going to have a Wednesday night December 18th a candlelight service at 7 p. M. There they all are and Monday December 23rd and Tuesday December 24th 1 4 and 7 p. M. So that you can plan accordingly it's going to be a spectacular service we've already been planning since May for that service Reverend Josh and and Tom Litch and Jennifer Burnett and all of our teams have been in powerful planning and I'm happy to announce also that our beloved Dr. Rogers going to join us for all of the services this year so we are blessed we feel very blessed by that very very blessed and we have a great Thanksgiving planned and that service is also very spectacular and it's in alignment with what we want to talk about today my message is is titled great fullness and it's great meaning GREAT and then fullness because it's got a kind of a double meaning it's about being grateful but it's an acknowledgement that our deepest sense of gratitude I think comes when we're feeling fulfilled when we feel the fullness of life expressing through us and as us and in us we are more able to access that sense of Thanksgiving and joyfulness and gratitude and it's an acknowledgement that throughout our lives or maybe even right in this moment there are times when that feeling of fullness can feel challenged for us we can feel frustrated and actually feel empty those times when life gets frustrating and and we feel disconnected discontent when we feel a lack of understanding what's going on when we feel strong negative emotion or we look out into the world and we feel this disconnect with life we can tend to feel empty and that emptiness is depressing and that emptiness can feel as though we don't know how to solve it or resolve it and so I want to invite us into a conversation about creating that sense of fullness in our life because what happens is that I think we've been cultured into feeling that way most of us have grown up and have developed habits where we have learned to look out into the world in an attempt to solve that sense of emptiness when it shows up if it shows up and so we have become consumers of energy to try to feel a sense of fulfillment in life but by and large one of the mistakes we make or the misguided choices we make over and over and over again is firstly to believe that our sense of fullness is determined by the material world by what we see by what happens by who's here or who's not or the occurrences in our life then become the determining factor of do I feel fulfilled do I feel happy do I feel connected or not and then we look out into the world and we might have a challenging time or some of us are getting ready for Thanksgiving and holidays and and facing some of the obligations we feel or the relationships that are challenging for us or the family commitments that are not always as pleasurable or not sure what to do or not sure how to deal with that difficult aunt or uncle that we know we're going to see on Thanksgiving or whatever it might be and we decide that it feels empty to to celebrate because we don't have a beloved in our life or we have to deal with that relationship and so we make determinations about our sense of fulfillment based on the conditions of the world and this becomes somewhat habitual for us and therefore then therefore then therefore that was redundant therefore we we then seek to find fulfillment in that world also and we might fall into habits of attempting to feel a greater sense of fullness through other people and our relationships with other people clinging to other people and whether we feel loved or not through through things in the material world acquiring stuff that makes us feel fulfilled through the things we buy or the home we have or how our life looks through substances such as food or drugs or alcohol or certain relationships or suit certain experiences in life that we can say if I could just have that then I could be happy and feel fulfilled and so I want to start out today with this conversation about fulfillments fulfillment from the the assumption that there's there's this habit that we get into but truly I don't know if you've noticed but I've noticed none of that ever really does the trick none of it it can provide a temporary sense of joy and happiness but because of its temporary nature this world of form being the most changing world the most changing aspect of the universe it can only last so long I think that there's an illusion of emptiness going on that is that is prevalent in our souls at time in this world the illusion of emptiness is what our teaching seeks constantly to invite us to consider and rise up out of and that illusion of emptiness can continue to be fed if we're not careful what I mean by the illusion of emptiness is that our teaching teaches us that there's a power and a presence in this universe we believe that whatever God is that it's a presence that is everywhere available to and through and as all of creation and it is right here where we are and we believe that that presence is always here no matter what's going on out there no matter what the world of form no matter what the conditions hold for us right now or on Thanksgiving Day or and any day this world of form is or this world of the divine is always filling us up when I was meditating about this this past week I kept imagining myself as this sacred container that at the core of my being is always being filled and flooded with the divine essence always being sourced by the divine essence and even when I feel the illusion of emptiness I recognize that it's just an illusion because I'm always being filled up from that inside out now I may not always feel it may not always sense it but there are tons of things like that that that go on like right this very minute you and I are sitting on this beautiful planet Earth and it is spinning around at approximately 1, 100 miles per hour according to Alexa she told me that she sourced my talk the source of this talk was Alexa today can you feel it you can't always feel it you can't always feel the spinning of the earth it may take a willingness to go outside and and lay down and look up at the sky at the night sky and watch the stars moving or even watch the weather patterns you can kind of get a sense of it from the movement of the weather but not even you can watch the Sun as the earth spins you can get a sense of it if you get really conscious of it but all the while it's happening just because you can't feel that indwelling energy of life pouring through you doesn't mean it's not there doesn't mean it's not happening and so I kept envisioning that that that filling up going on all the time and I realized that the magicians have a trick that they do it's the it's the cup that that fills itself magically I've seen magicians take a drink and then they set the cup down and then the cup just magically fills up and I realized that's us that's each one of us no matter how much we've fallen into the illusion of emptiness we've told ourselves well because I haven't quite gotten this or this isn't happening or or I feel depleted I feel as though my life is being my life energy has been sucked dry by the the things that are going on out there in the world and and we can look out into the world and feel this deep emptiness and discouragement about things we see like this week sending our love to for the the school shooting another school shooting we can feel very emptied by the world that's going on out there and what's happening and and not feeling very fulfilled not seeing the love because we're looking for it out there when all the while that that inner cup is just filling up and it's from this inner place of rejuvenation that we can find our compassion and our love and our creativity and find all that we're seeking but we've become accustomed to looking out there for our fulfillment and so we're missing it we're not feeling it entirely but all the while it's there I love that example that that we've heard for eons of the difference between the pessimist and the optimist and a cup of water and saying okay it's it's got a half it's half filled is it is the cup half filled or is the cup half empty and that that kind of determines whether you're a pessimist or an optimist I think the reality of it is actually this picture this image that I like there's half air half water technically the glass is always full right yeah technically the glass is always full I like that image for a lot of reasons but I like it because I'm gonna look at you right now and say no matter what is going on in your life no matter how empty you've arrived here today or how full you've arrived here technically you're always full technically that energy is always moving up and in and through and as it's never depleted it never goes away no one can take it from you it can't you can't be robbed of it but what I acknowledge is that we can sometimes lose our ability to feel it but it doesn't mean it's not there so how do we feel it we then have to live a life where we begin to embrace our fullness to consciously embracing the fullness of our life every single day and I believe that the full embrace of that fullness has to do with the heart it has fully to do with the opening of this heart space that is the seat of our emotions and feelings and and that divine presence and therein lies one of the greatest challenges for us in our world and in our culture is that many of us have been trained out of feeling our feelings and emotions we've been taught not to feel our feelings and emotions we've been taught mostly to hide our feelings and emotions to push them down to deny them to only share them in certain conditions or circumstances and so many times we've disconnected from our heart space or we've had bad times and challenging times and painful times and we feel that the only thing that's there in that space is negative and painful and hurtful and by gosh we don't want to feel that we only want to feel the good stuff so it seems as though it's a wise decision to just not feel at all and so we've lost touch with our heart and therefore this automatic floodgate of the divine and so part of embracing gratefulness is to become willing to be in touch with the heart and with the emotions and it's a risky choice but an important one I created this list a while back ten ways that you can know if you're somebody who's been challenged by this who has a challenge with being fully in touch with the heart of opening the doorway of the heart and letting the floodgate flow through you and it's sort of like a David Letterman top ten list although I don't know that it's as humorous because as I read it I have had times in my life when I've been every single one of these things so here's some ways you can know if this might be a challenge for you people push your buttons a lot it's one way to know your buttons get pushed you rarely cry and you're proud of it you have a hard time saying I love you you really laugh you criticize those who are so emotional you're irritable and stressed a lot you have relationships in your life where it's like well I'm not talking to them we don't speak anymore unresolved and if you have feelings or emotions you pray or do spiritual mind treatment not to have those feelings and emotions but they just would go away you have judgments of counselors and people who feel a need to use them can't they just figure it out on their own and lastly you feel shame if you cry in front of people and or apologize profusely for it so I had a time in my life where I did all those things I was very shut down emotionally I was raised as I've told you many times here that I had parents who were teenagers when they had me and so they were fairly unskilled at the parenting thing number one challenged by that and then their backgrounds also played into how they raised me and the parenting trends of the time and my father was very needy of having control in our lives control of the environment of the situation of the condition and so from the time I was a little one my emotions were clearly not welcome in our family didn't matter whether my emotions were happy joyful giddy or sad because I was hurt or didn't feel well or I was just feeling a need to cry if he wasn't okay with how I was feeling he made it very clear that I needed to stop it right now don't you cry I've often thought of that phrase as a kid where I can't tell you how many times he said to me stop crying right now or I'll give you something to really cry about and I remember even as a kid thinking that does not make any sense at all but okay the gist of it is I learned very early that safety for me meant don't feel shut it down safety for me with my father meant stop feeling what you're feeling that it was more important that I be willing to be on his emotional schedule and not mine and I learned very well and I learned how to shut it all down and I pushed it all down for years and I learned how to adjust myself so that he could feel okay with what was going on and it meant that I grew up pretty emotionally stunted and emotionally shut down and there wasn't there was an impact that I felt based on that I I began to have an eating disorder I began to feel very disconnected and depressed because I was depressing what I was truly feeling I had a hard time relating with people and sharing who I was with people and I noticed that as I got older if I tried to share my emotions or I had something come up that was very emotional for me I would freeze literally freeze I wouldn't be able to speak I couldn't say anything I would just stand before people and and excuse myself and get out of the way and go deal with it because I didn't know how to process my emotions and then I came here to Mile High Church and I I began to hear messages that I was welcome as I was here and that our teaching was about expressing ourselves our unique self and I heard that our founder Ernest Holmes talked about creating the life that we wanted it wasn't just about thinking powerful thoughts it was also being in touch with the feeling nature of our of our possibilities and the feelings of the life we wanted to live well how does somebody who's out of touch with their feelings to begin with ever access that place where they can feel the possibilities that they want to feel because I'd shut it all down so much I could think really good powerful high lofty thoughts but I could not feel them because my heart was shut down and so I began to ponder how can I open this up I was going to the teen church here I was coming to church all the time and I also was I was working at Target at 80th and Wadsworth as a cashier and I was going to Pomona High School in Arvada I was fortunate to be invited to be in a special program called the peer counseling program in Pomona where I was being taught how to be a peer counselor for my fellow students and that meant that we would sit in a circle and do personal growth work so I was getting it at the teen church and I was getting it at school and there was one particular end of the the class where the guidance counselors decided to gift all of us students by writing a limerick about each one of us so they went around and they shared the limericks and they got to my limerick and here was my limerick there once was a girl named Michelle her smile rang out like a bell target customers would come in just to see her grin over Pomona her charm we've dispelled beautiful beautiful limerick right I broke down crying just started crying the ugliest naughtiest teariest cry you can imagine and I was just like that I was feeling deeply ashamed and embarrassed because I couldn't control it it was like I was broken open by that silly limerick and my guidance counselors and my fellow peers just sat there and watched me cry just let me cry I could feel their presence and they're caring as I cried they didn't appear to be judging me or making me wrong but I had a good cry and finally one of the counselors said Michelle what are your tears about and I said that's not a real girl that person in that limerick doesn't sound real she sounds fake and phony something out of a fairy tale and I long to be real and authentic and to be me I don't want to be that girl and it was the first time I realized that kind of sounds like Pinocchio doesn't it I want to be a real girl but it felt like that something opened in me at that moment and I said it's time to get real it's time to wake up and what I knew is that meant that I had to become willing to be in touch with my heart I had to wake up and and allow myself to be to risk showing up as my authentic self and that began a journey for me a journey that was full of the ups and downs on the roller coaster of emotionality and feeling but a journey of fulfillment like nothing else because what I began to notice is that as I allowed myself the privilege of feeling my deepest emotions and sharing them in safe places with safe people and being willing to let go of shame of being an emotional being I also began to feel the fountain of the divine that was seeking expression through me it took almost daily work and it still takes almost daily work and that is the place that gratitude holds such an opening for us it's like a key that unlocks the door to our heart and therefore unlocks the door to that emotional beingness that we are and I fully admit that it comes with the greatest connections in the world in the deepest sorrow because to feel it all means that I get to feel the joy of life in the most profound ways and I feel the pain and the suffering of my fellow humans on this journey here in our community and out in the world and all of that but I'll tell you what I will take it over that shut down unable to feel her life and her source I will take I will take the fullness of what being human offers from the heart space over the shut down any day any day and so when it a time like this rolls around holidays Thanksgiving it's our opportunity to open a little more to say to ourselves okay I'm gonna be in the gratefulness of my life I'm gonna claim it I'm gonna own it and it might mean risking the daily practice of connecting with our heart one of my favorite authors dr. Greg bear says every day we feed our bodies and if we forget to do that our physical hunger reminds us of the need for nourishment our souls also communicate their need to be fed we feed our bodies but starve our souls our neglect is not intentional we just don't realize there's an alternative we're doing only what we've seen other people do all their lives so how do we feed our souls we feed ourselves by seeking out the awe and wonder of life and that's part of I think why we we do that today my awe has come many times in the presence of our beautiful children I'm so grateful for them showing up you know little Kayden came to me and said I got up at 6 a. M. To come here today it was like thank you and thank you to the parents and those of you who support them they're just beautiful so it's it's putting ourself in a position where we open our hearts to the beauty of children the beauty of the weather and the beauty of this earth and the beauty of people that we see everywhere we go and the the rich tapestry of glory that is available in this human experience that we seek it out every day and so that is why people go into gratitude practices and and become willing to set alarms you know every hour every two hours every four hours alarm goes up and I just stop and say what am I grateful for right now just to practice awe and wonder looking at my life through the eyes of awe and wonder and gratitude that's why people choose to do gratitude journals ending the day with a willingness to look at what happened today that I can be grateful for that is why people seek not only to to walk through the terrain of gratitude with the things that they love and can point to that were awesome but seek to go deeper and even become willing to look at the challenges of life and say how could I be grateful for this what gratitude can I can I bring forth out of this challenge that I'm facing or this thing that's not going the way that I want or this person that I feel challenged by because they understand people understand that by accessing that place within us we are more fulfilled and we have access to the true power and life that is within us and that we can do this the part of us that says I can't do this because I'm too empty it's an illusion we can lead ourselves through these daily practices into a greater sense of fulfillment I invite you to try something with me right now you can close your eyes if you want or you can have your eyes open but just for a moment think about the condition or situation in your life there may be more than one but just choose one for now that you would most like to see improved but if I could wave a magic wand right now and it was gone or it was better or it was the way you really want it to be just think about that and then think give it a number on a scale of one to ten with one being it's kind of irritating and frustrating that it's not the way I want it or ten being it just is driving me crazy it's so painful and uncomfortable that I can't get this or this isn't the way I want it just give it a number in your mind from one to ten and then join me with a breath into the heart space now become willing to be open to a way that you could be grateful for that situation now before you shut down too much here are some examples I could be grateful that it's not worse than it is I can be grateful that there are people along the journey with me who are supporting me I can be grateful that I'm even willing to look at the possibility of how gratitude could play itself out in this situation I could be grateful for who I'm becoming the strength and the deepening and the growing that's happening in me because of this situation I can be grateful that there's a time when I know it's going to be complete I can be grateful for a lot of things it's not that we're using this to push this event down or this situation down and not feel it it's that we're using this activity of gratitude to just up level our sense of being with it from our fulfilled space versus our empty space so feel the potential of being grateful for even a little bit of something around this challenge and now go back to the scale one to ten feel into it did it improve even one bit did it go from a ten to a nine maybe or eight to a six did it shift at all because what we begin to see is that when we open the door to that gratitude and allow that wellspring of life to find its way through us it's not that the problems magically go away that's not what we're seeking to do with this what we're seeking to do is to bring the best of us what we're seeking to do is to bring the light that we are what we're seeking to do is to bring the fulfillment of who we are and all that we know and the creative energy of our life to bear upon these problems and what I know for sure is that you and I cannot solve the things that are bothering us about our life or the life we share together from our emptiness from our illusion of emptiness we can't go anywhere we're stuck it is only from that willingness to practice a bit of gratitude and awe about our life and the conditions that we're in that we bring the fullness of who we are to bear upon the challenges and problems and puzzles that we are facing to create profound solutions and possibilities and to bring ourselves forward from that place of fulfillment towards the good that we seek to experience in riches for the mind and spirit Sir John Marx Templeton says Thanksgiving opens the door to spiritual growth if there is at any day in our life which is not Thanksgiving Day then we are not fully alive counting our blessings each morning starts a day full of blessings Thanksgiving brings God's bounty from gratitude comes riches from complaints poverty Thanksgiving opens the door to happiness Thanksgiving causes giving Thanksgiving puts our mind in tune with the infinite continual gratitude dissolves our worries I invite us to open our heart to allow gratitude and awe to be the practices that unlock that door and the fullness of who we are begins to have its way through us and that this day every day Thanksgiving Day is met with our great fullness

Reviews

Very well done

Would highly recommend!!

That was a beautiful word! This is one to listen to again and again. Thank you!

I am GREAT FILLED!!