Spiritual Solutions

The key to Thanksgiving is the greatness that is within us.  When we are grateful, we are full of greatness, and we relate to life at the highest level of our being. We think good thoughts about our circumstances and people. 

On the evening news sometime ago there was story of a farmer in a small town in Indiana. He had been weakened by a serious illness and the subsequent chemotherapy and radiation treatments, so much so that he was not able to operate the equipment he needed to harvest his crop of corn. 

The story told how a group of neighboring farmers came together in their desire to help the farmer in his distress.   Even before they harvested their own crops, to the utter amazement of the farmer who had been unable to do it himself, they used their own machines to harvest their neighbor’s corn for him. 

One of the farmers was asked about his involvement in this project and why he took part in it. With a smile he responded that he didn’t want to be left out, he wanted to be in the loop along with those who wanted to help their neighbor. 

The story reminds me that the Hebrew word for thanksgiving also means “a stretching forth of open hands.” In this consciousness our question of “What do we have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving?” becomes instead “What do we have to be thankful from?” And the “give” in Thanks-giving takes on the more important role. 

This way of thinking about Thanksgiving can open the way for a dynamic experience for you. Practice it this Thanksgiving, and you will experience a release of tremendous power.  

Look away from the challenges and the needs whatever they may be, even from the obvious blessings of life, and make your inner contact with the creative process of Spirit. Then stretch forth your hands in a giving consciousness. Let your mind think God thoughts, good thoughts, and positive thoughts.  Rather than look about and wondering what you have to give thanks for, you will rejoice in what you have to give thanks from, and you will give it freely and lovingly.  So the true Thanksgiving experience which any one of us can have should be a day of forgiveness, a day of praise, and a day of giving ourselves to others. 

 The following audio recording consists of excerpts from a message I gave on Thanksgiving Day in 1998 at First Unity Church in St. Petersburg, Florida. I think you may find something of value in it, so if you would like to listen to it turn up the sound on your computer and just click on the play button. Or download it to your computer if you wish.

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Thanksgiving is not for God, but for us. Praise raises our consciousness to a level where we easily respond to the divine flow. When it is “the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” the need is to get our thoughts on the level of acceptance.

Thanksgiving is a way by which we raise our thoughts to that level of acceptance. Thus, thinking good is thanking God.

To say, “I thank God,” and still thinking negatively is self-deluding. In a very real sense, if a person thanks God and still is filled with negativity, he is something less than “bearing witness to the Truth.”

The Thanksgiving principle is the key to positive thinking. Negative thoughts are normally centered in how bad things are. Turn your thoughts from what you have not and realize what you have in terms of your access to the Universal flow. Give thanks from this awareness.

Suddenly you are in a positive frame of mind. This thought is your realistic Thanksgiving. The Spirit within is a ceaseless urge to express in and through and as you. Thus, when you become “affirmatively receptive” by your good thoughts, it is as if the Spirit claps its hands with joy because you have made yourself an “organ of its activity.”

Thus, we do not have to thank God for things, but rather to “enter in and experience the Thanksgiving feast of the mind” and give thanks from the awareness of it.

True gratitude makes us great, increases our feeling of self-worth, expands our ability to see the good in people and situations, and thus to extract the best from life. When we become “affirmatively receptive” to the divine flow, we begin to see things from God-consciousness, and we actually project a flow of good.

Giving thanks for our many blessings is good, but there is so much more. Thanksgiving can be an active projection of good through seeing transcendentally.

It is a good time to take a Thanksgiving walk, even if in imagination, and project a blessing to people, conditions and things. It is a beautiful time to salute the divinity withi people, all people, and to celebrate the good everywhere. Take your Thanksgiving walk and raise your hands to people in blessing, even if not literally then figuratively in your own consciousness.

You can make every day a Thanksgiving Day of celebration. Resolve to raise your thoughts to the highest possible level about people, conditions, and things, knowing that thinking good is thanking God.

 God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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We talk a lot about actual thanks-giving, about giving thanks, but we don’t talk a lot about praise. We understand about giving thanks and we talk about building an attitude of gratitude, but there’s something about praise too that makes a difference in our lives.

In Psalms 34 it says this, “I will praise the Lord at all times. His praise shall be continually in my mouth.”

The word praise is mentioned over a hundred times in the psalms, and so praise is obviously very important. The Israelites used to praise with song and music and dancing, with instruments. You can picture them with their harps and lyres, probably tambourines and drums, and dancing and singing. They really rejoiced in their times of giving praise to God. They didn’t have a day of Thanksgiving, but certainly they sang praises to God.

Charles Fillmore, in his little book The Revealing Word, said this: “Praise is the quality of mind that eulogizes the good, one of the avenues through which spirituality expresses.”

Again, he said this; “Through an inherent law of mind action, we can increase what we praise. One can praise a weak body into strength, a fearful heart into peace and trust, shattered nerves into peace and power, a failing business into prosperity and success, want and insufficiency into supply and support.”

Why is this so? Well, praise helps us to focus on God’s good and it brings increase. When we praise the plant, the plant grows; when we praise our children, their true self begins to unfold. Anything we praise begins to increase in our lives.

When Myrtle Fillmore discovered she had tuberculosis and she heard the words of Dr. Weeks saying, “You’re a child of God and you do not inherit sickness,” she began to realize and to use that idea of praising, praising all the cells in her body. And she praised them into health. She became healthy again and lived many years after that time.

So the praising is important. Sometimes instead of praising, we put ourselves or others down, or we demean, or even curse. But if we’ll praise the good that we find, what happens? The good begins to increase. And the important thing is not only that the good increases, and when we praise other people they begin to blossom, don’t they? Everybody blossoms through praise.

That’s one thing that happens, but that’s only half the story because we get a blessing too. As we praise, we begin to see more good within ourselves and we begin to open the gateway of good within ourselves. We open the channels to receive more good as we give praise and blessings to others.

It says in the Psalms, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, that I know very well.”

So why do we praise God? Does God need our praise? No, God doesn’t need our praise, but we do. It doesn’t affect God, but it affects us. When we praise God, it affects us. What does it increase? Does it increase God? No, but it increases our spiritual awareness of God’s good when we praise and give thanks to God. It opens the gateways of our soul so that the imprisoned splendor of our own being can escape; and the love that we are can move into our world.

So, this Thanksgiving, remember that praising God and praising others is really key to experiencing more good in your own life.

Praise opens the gateways of our soul and love escapes into our experience. Sometimes praise has a way of making tears form when you realize you are in touch with the Spirit of God, and in this you are truly alive.

God Bless You – and I give thanks for you.

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
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If you would like to publish this article or forward it to a friend, please include this resource box.

“Spiritual Solutions” is produced by The Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for thirty-seven years, and is offered free of charge to anyone who wants to receive it. To be on my newsletter mailing list and have access to other articles, please go to Spiritual Solutions.

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Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us, so I’d like to offer you a way to make this Thanksgiving season even more special, with a new and different way of celebrating our traditional Thanksgiving.

Recently a woman told me of a wonderful demonstration of prayer that she had experienced and how very, very thankful she was feeling. But she admitted that she wasn’t sure how she could truly express her thankfulness to God. She said, “It somehow doesn’t seem enough just to say ‘Thank You’ to God.”

Have you ever had a tremendously wonderful answer to prayer? Perhaps a loved one who was very ill suddenly had what the medical profession calls “an instantaneous remission,” or had an exceptionally fast recovery to complete wholeness and health?

You would feel very, very thankful to that life-giving Spirit which is the Source of all healing and that humankind calls God, wouldn’t you? So how are you going to express your thankfulness?

Would it be enough to go into a church and silently say “Thank You” to God’s invisible Presence?

Would it be enough to go out on some mountainside and shout “Thank you, God” into the air and hear it echo and re-echo back to you?

I certainly think that silently giving thanks to God in prayer is very good. I think going out on a mountainside or wooded place or seashore and shouting “Thank you, God” with a fervent feeling of gratitude is a wonderful thing to do.

But I think perhaps that this is not enough. This is consciously being grateful. This is accepting a blessing, what might indeed be a miracle, from God with gratitude. But it is not what we might call “Thanks-giving,” except the giving of your time and perhaps an overflow of your emotions.

So let me suggest to you how you can really give thanks to God in this Thanksgiving season . . . and all around the year.

Here is what you do . . .

You’re grateful to God for your many blessings . . . good! You say “Thank You” to God in a quiet time of prayer . . . good! Then, because in your heart you know God has done so much for you and through you, you arise from your prayer time and determine to be on the lookout for someone who has a need that they can’t fulfill themselves . . . then you fulfill it!

Then you are truly giving, to express your thanks. And you are giving directly to God, too.

How are you giving directly to God?

Well, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:24), “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Spirit means “breath,” or Life. God is Life in expression through every person as their individual Being.

When you give something of yourself to someone who has a need, you are giving to God expressing as that person!

This is what the Bible is pointing out when it says, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me.”

Thankful prayer is “Thanks-feeling,” and it is good. “Thanks-giving” involves an action of giving.

Often in my years of ministry, people have done things for me that fill my heart with gratitude. And in my retirement from full-time church ministry, I have been overwhelmed by the expressions of love and appreciation that have come from so many, many people.

I thank God, and I try to thank persons with a note or a letter which includes everyone. But this never seems enough. So I figure the only way I can truly express the fullness of my feeling of thankfulness is to work diligently at doing the best job possible of teaching the Truth principles that have helped others, both today and in the future.

In short, you can express gratitude or “give thanks” by giving back more of yourself to the people whose lives touch yours.

There are Many Things You Can Give

There are many things you can give to express your thanks to God.

You can give a little time and understanding to your teenage son or daughter who needs to know that you love him or her.

You can give a happy attitude around the house that will brighten up the atmosphere.

You can give a little extra service to your customers, or do a little better job at work.

You can give a word of appreciation to the fellow who fixed your car instead of a look of suspicion that he overcharged you . . . even if he did! Then you are really giving something, and it costs a little more than just a perfunctory “Thank You, God” in prayer.

Do you get the idea?

Here’s an idea that could be better than a hundred Sunday school lessons for your children: When you sit down to your Thanksgiving table, what if you said, “Kids, we sure are grateful for all our blessings. We are grateful for this food, for our health, for your Mommy, for you, and for all the good things that we enjoy and sometimes take for granted. Tell you what we’ll do, we’ll say our Grace and acknowledge that God has given us these things, and then we will take an equal amount to what the dinner cost and we will send it to ____________ (you add whatever organization your family feels is doing a real good job in helping people).”

Later in life, when they imitate their Dad and Mom, they will find that you always get back, in some way or another, more than you gave when you give out of a feeling of thankfulness. It comes back to you, increased and multiplied!

Make this the most unique and rewarding Thanksgiving of your life. Give thanks to God in prayer, yes, but then start looking for needs that people can’t fulfill by themselves, and fill the need for them . . . and don’t tell a soul that you did it!

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
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If you would like to publish this article or forward it to a friend, please include this resource box.

“Spiritual Solutions” is produced by The Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for thirty-seven years, and is offered free of charge to anyone who wants to receive it. To be on my newsletter mailing list and have access to other articles, please go to Spiritual Solutions.

To subscribe to weekday inspirational quotes, go to Rich Words.
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(Here’s another thought-provoking blog post from Karl at http://www.karlblog.com/ )

How many of us beat ourselves up on a daily basis?

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