The Truth About Gratitude: Is Your Sense of Gratitude Conditional?

By Nanice Ellis

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Gratitude — A Cure and a Curse?

If you look closely, you will see that there are dual sides to everything in life, including gratitude. Just as fire can burn or heat, gratitude can cure or curse. Understanding the truth about gratitude just might change the way you think, feel or pray.

Many years ago, while walking along the cold, winter streets of Manhattan, I recall looking at the homeless, living in their cardboard box homes. The hardships that I witnessed made me feel grateful for the small problems I had in comparison. I probably learned this strategy as a child; when I refused to eat dinner, my mom would remind me of the starving children in Africa, and she would tell me that I should be grateful for the food I had because others weren’t as lucky. You might say that I was guilted into gratitude.

Looking back now, with greater insight, I can clearly see that I used the misfortune of others as leverage, in order to feel grateful for my life, and, in this way, I was unknowingly responsible for contributing to their circumstances. By judging, and then using that judgment to feel better about my life, I was actually cursing these same people.

Just as we bless someone when we see them through the eyes of love, we curse them when we see them through the eyes of fear – energetically contributing to their hardships: “Oh, you have it so bad, you poor thing. That makes me so grateful for what I have, and you don’t.”

This is Convoluted Gratitude

Convoluted Gratitude is not gratitude at all. It is judgment disguising itself as something positive, and it actually holds the “undesirable” situation in place. When you judge someone else’s misfortune, so you can feel grateful, it is gratitude at their expense. Can you look deep and see what it energetically does to them — and to you?

There is also another kind of Convoluted Gratitude. It is when you imagine a worse time for yourself, and, by comparison, you feel grateful for your current circumstances. “I’m so grateful this isn’t worse.” “I’m grateful to live in this house I don’t really like, because it is better than nothing.” “I’m grateful for this job I can’t stand, because it is better than being unemployed”.

When you imagine a worse version of reality for yourself, so you can feel better about the current one, this is Convoluted Gratitude by default.

Convoluted Gratitude is a fear-based mind game, based on leverage, judgment and comparison. “That is bad so it makes this better.” If the real essence of gratitude is love, and you are experiencing the world, yourself or others through the fear of judgment, you cannot be in gratitude.

CONTINUE READING:

Previous articles by Nanice Ellis:

• Waking Up From Religion
• Overcoming Negative Thinking – The #1 Cause of Chronic Depression
• Is Ayahuasca Mother Nature’s ‘Red Pill’?
• Waking Up In The Dream – The Real Secret to Manifestation
• Heal Your Family – Heal The World
• Raising Awake Children in a Broken School System
• Tired of Being a Negativity Sponge? 12 Ways to Prevent Energy Infiltration and Reclaim Your Energy
• Are Higher Vibrations Making You Sick? Integrating the Energetic Shift
• How to Heal Emotional Trauma
• Raising Vibrations: How To Be The Change You Want To See In The World
• The Hidden Antidote for Depression

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