I have facilitated ongoing women’s self-healing and spirituality groups since I started Centering Tools in 1987… I asked the group to consider, as we move towards…the full holiday season, this deeper meaning of gratitude beyond the increasingly popular practice and belief that “thanking” involves “focusing on the (judged) good”, but to instead meditate on how to thank everything without denying all that occurred as a key aspect of completion for healing and necessary development.
The Focus of My Monthly Women’s Group
I have facilitated ongoing women’s self-healing and spirituality groups since I started Centering Tools in 1987. Last evening as part of the usual workshop portion of group, I showed the close-to-final scene from the hugely acclaimed (much deservedly!) 1971 film, Little Big Man, starring a very young Dustin Hoffman.
In this scene he has been brought as the sole survivor of Custer’s Last Stand back to his adopted Cheyenne tribe and his adopted grandfather, the chief and medicine man, who has decided, on realizing that Native Americans’ way of life and being will soon come to an end, that, according to his spiritual practice, “it is a good day to die”. Dustin’s character Jack Crabb accompanies the chief, played by the late academy award-winning Chief Dan George, on a sacred ritual to accomplish this that is not successful.
How Can We Be Thankful For Everything?
This amazing presentation of the scene shows the chief thanking Great Spirit, who he calls “Grandfather”, for all the triumphs, tragedies, successes, failures, gifts and challenges of his life as a sacred act of completion and passing. I asked the group to consider, as we move towards Thanksgiving and the full holiday season, this deeper meaning of gratitude beyond the increasingly popular practice and belief that “thanking” involves “focusing on the (judged) good”, but to instead meditate on how to thank everything without denying all that occurred as a key aspect of completion for healing and necessary development.
I frequently “translate” group sharing in workshops into thematic notes, which I then in turn offer back to group as recommendations to further reflect on and keenly apply to current challenges and heartfelt visions. These can then miraculously support achieving all related goals.
The Steps to Expand the Power of Gratitude to Transform Your Life and Support the Greater Good
Here are my notes:
Thanking as Completion:
1. Ongoing thanking through many experienced opposites as beginnings and endings is All That Is (spiritual power) for present completion, extending infinite space, and grounding.
2. Faith and praise are key aspects of thanking as divine creation and knowing, connecting ongoing to core healing and real magic.
3. Thanking allows extended and multidimensional healing for Self and all “right relations”, as Native Americans say, in divine synchronicity.
4. One then becomes aware of one’s whole self as divine love and power.
5. Now one can view and understand all intimacy, relationships and experiences as abundant, infinite offerings.
Accept the True Spirit of Gratitude as the Prime Force for Healing and Development in the World
In the spirit of Thanksgiving and the celebration of our full history from our Native American root and universal spirit (in the film it is explained that the translation of Cheyenne is Human Being) I invite you to expand and fully consider your whole life as a blessing. See how that consideration and the choices it supports can expand and evolve your power of Giving Thanks – and sharing accordingly with yourself and all to whom you are intimately connected.
In love and light, Marjorie