This Week’s Quotation:
“…if all the blessings which human beings now have were taken away and returned one by one, there would be a deeper gratitude for that which we now share… But human beings do throw away their blessings so often… neglecting to appreciate them, therefore neglecting to let them have meaning in life. One of the essentials to the expression of life is meaningfulness, and anything which ceases to have meaning tends to wither and pass away.”
~ Lloyd Arthur Meeker
Graceful Grateful Heart
Attunement Teacher and Practitioner
What if gratitude isn’t something we practice, but rather something we remember?
We move through our days surrounded by an abundance we barely notice. The breath entering our lungs. The ground beneath our feet. The people who show up in our lives. These blessings become invisible precisely because they’re constant—like background music we’ve learned to tune out.
But here’s what strikes me about Uranda’s words: He’s describing a profound truth about how meaning itself operates in human experience. When we stop appreciating something, we don’t just lose gratitude for it—we actually sever its ability to nourish us. The blessing remains, but we’ve cut the connection, like unplugging a lamp and wondering why the room feels dark.
How many relationships have withered not from lack of love, but from lack of attention? How many gifts have we received with excitement, only to watch them gather dust as our appreciation faded?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’re surrounded by miracles we’ve demoted to mundane, every single day. The problem isn’t scarcity—it’s numbed perception, our habitual blindness to the sacred ordinary.
When we fail to appreciate something, we literally drain it of meaning—not because the thing itself changes, but because meaning requires our conscious participation. A relationship unappreciated becomes hollow. Work without meaning becomes drudgery. Life itself, unacknowledged, begins to wither.
What blessing have you been forgetting to see? What would change if you received it again, as if for the first time, with a grateful heart?
The graceful grateful heart knows: Everything we have could be lost. Everything we have is already a gift. And in truly receiving that gift with appreciation, we don’t just experience gratitude—we become the living attunement current through which meaning flows and life itself finds expression.
What Is Attunement?
Attunement is a consciousness practice and an energy medicine practice that leads to personal spiritual regeneration.
Wow I so appreciate this! I think one of the things we fail to recognize is the block to appreciation presented by our ego. So consistently absorbed in defining and labeling and sorting in to good and bad that it fails to connect with anything, instead makes lists and checks them off. something shows without a checklist — what!! throw that out. We need. a checklist!! To shed the ego driven sorting of life into categories becomes freeing in our ability to appreciate even the uncomfortable where we might truly discover growth.
Thanks, Oren, for so beautifully describing the relationship between gratitude and meaning. Constantly giving thanks for the many blessings that are present in my life so powerfully opens the floodgates for Love to pour into my world.
Oren – so grateful for what you have offered today, and always.
Yes. A beautiful offering, Oren. GRATITUDE RULES! Love, Tom