Remember a time when you fell in love. There was a moment, a magical split second, when
you first felt that love. It may have hit you, as you are fond of saying, “like a ton of bricks.”
Suddenly, it came over you. You looked at that person across the room, across the dining
table, across the front seat of the car, and all at once you knew that you loved them.
It was sudden. It was instant. It was not something you had to think about. It just “happened.”
You may have thought about it later. You may even have thought about it beforehand—I
wonder what it would be like to be in love with that person—but in that moment when you first
felt it, first knew it in your heart, it just swept over you. It happened much too fast for you to
have “thought” it there. You simply found yourself there, being in love.
You can be in love before you’ve even thought about it!
Boy, don’t I know that.
It’s the same with gratitude. When you feel gratitude, no one has to tell you, “It’s time to feel
gratitude.” You simply, quite spontaneously, feel grateful. You find yourself being grateful
before you even think about it. Gratefulness is a state of being. There is no word like
“lovefulness” in your language, but there should be.
You’re a poet, you know that?
So I’ve been told.
Okay, so I’m clear that being is faster than thinking, but I still don’t see why “being grateful”
for something brings it to you faster than... wait a minute—even as I’m saying this, I think I’m
getting the answer.
You’ve said before that gratitude is a state of being which announces my clarity that I already
have what it is I think I need. In other words, if I am thanking God for something, rather than
asking God for something, I must know that it is already in place.
Exactly.
That is why the Seventh Step is, “Thank God.”
Exactly
Because when you thank God, you are “being” aware that all good things in life have already
come to you; that everything you need—the right and perfect people, places, and events—to
express and experience and evolve as you have chosen has already been put in place for
you.
Even before you ask, I will have answered. Yes, that’s it.
Then maybe thanking God should be the first thing you do, not the last!
That could be very powerful. And you have just uncovered a great secret. The wonder of the
Seven Steps to God is that they may be turned around. They can be reversed.
If you are thanking God, you are helping God to help you.