Roberta Grimes

Gratitude

Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 26, 2025 • 9 Comments
Human Nature, The Source, The Teachings of Jesus, Understanding Reality

When I’m worried, and I can’t sleep,
I count my blessings instead of sheep,
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.
When my bankroll is getting small,
I think of when I had none at all,
And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

I think about a nursery, and I picture curly heads;
And one by one I count them, as they slumber in their beds.
If you’re worried, and you can’t sleep,
Just count your blessings instead of sheep,
And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings!
– Irving Berlin (1888-1989), from “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” (1954)

My dear ones, I am traveling this week, so I have much less time to devote to blogging than is normally the case. I had thought that, therefore, Thomas and I might talk about our long adventure together as a spirit guide and his charge, which is a tale that some of you have asked us to tell. And actually, I think it’s an enjoyable story. It’s also a story that we can tell quickly and easily, and without the need to pull in links. But, no. Thomas finds the notion of telling our story pretty boring, so he thinks it will bore you, too; and besides, he takes very seriously our charge from the Lord Jesus that we should be at all times teaching you and helping you to grow spiritually. Even these detours that we have lately been taking into talking about scientific matters, the design and functioning of the greater reality, and so on, are meant to assist and further your personal spiritual growth. So, Thomas decided that what he wanted us to talk about this week was the crucial spiritual function, and the great personal strength and growth that comes of ever better learning to feel and express GRATITUDE.

Well, okay then. Let’s give that topic a go. We are born into these lifetimes as spiritually raw beings. In our eternal lives, each one of us is already more advanced spiritually than we appear to be when we first arrive here to begin a new lifetime. We come into these lives with stripped-down versions of our minds – we might call what we have at birth “learner minds” – and we also are born with complete amnesia of who we are, and also of what really is going on. As our wonderful sixth-level friend, Mikey Morgan, describes the process, he says that we put most of our minds in a suitcase before we leave our eternal home, and we pick our whole minds back up again when our material bodies die on earth and we then return to our eternal home. Knowing this fact is crucial! Because you are a much more precious being than you, yourself can conceivably imagine. When I remind you of that fact toward the end of each weekly podcast, I am not just stroking you, my dear one; but rather, I am plainly telling you that you are an aspect of the divine. You have come here, to what Craig Hogan calls “earth school”, to grow spiritually ever closer to your eventual reunion with the divine, which would not be possible if you did not already possess an eternal divine spark. You carry it, my dear one! But it is possible for you to cause your own spark to dim, and even nearly to die, if you do not properly tend it. From our births, each of us is instinctively driven to use the challenges of each earth-life to gain more spiritual growth… or else those challenges might beat us down, spiritually weaken us, and even tempt us to do terrible things.  

Of course, here is where knowing and trusting in Jesus is our ultimate gift! There are other spiritual teachers, but none who teaches the great truths so well as Jesus does, and this is why I spend so much effort on teaching what He taught. He came to earth to teach us what is an amazing path that can empower us to raise our personal spiritual vibrations sufficiently that we can make this our last necessary earth-lifetime. His is a simple and powerful Way of prevenient forgiveness and perfect love:

FORGIVENESS

When His disciple, Peter, asked Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (MT 18:21-23).

And Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return” (LK 6:37-38).

 “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23).

 “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (JN 12:47). And it is very clear from everything that Jesus says in the Gospels that what He came to save the world from was spiritual ignorance.

Jesus sums up His teachings on forgiveness by saying, “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you” (MT 7:1-2).

LOVE

 Love is in everything that Jesus talked about! He was always saying things like, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:35-36).

And, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father, who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (MT 5:43-48).

Jesus routinely said grace before meals, but otherwise the Gospels don’t tell us that He ever talked much about our need to feel or to express gratitude. I think that may have been mostly a factor of the rougher and simpler times in which He lived on earth, two thousand years ago. Back then, He seems to have been concentrating on teaching the two more basic spiritual steps of forgiveness and love. Or perhaps, those listening just focused on the showier virtues of love and forgiveness, and they didn’t think that whatever Jesus may have said about feeling and expressing gratitude was sufficiently important for them to remember it for the few decades that passed after Jesus spoke and before His words were first written down. But we have come to understand now that learning to feel and express deep gratitude is actually a foundational virtue; and once well learned, gratitude can make it easier for you to feel and express the more profound spiritual virtues of forgiveness and love that will enable you to truly make this your final necessary earth-lifetime.

So, how can we best learn to feel and express gratitude? I once had a client who was constantly worried about his business. No matter how well things were going right now, and in fact things usually went pretty well, his business always seemed to be shaky to him. He could tell you all the big problems that were bound to come up next year. My legal practice includes not just the standard documents preparation, conveyancing, and general legal advice; but also, miscellaneous advice of all kinds, based on my decades of experience working with hundreds of businesses. And one day, when I was meeting with this business owner and he was feeling especially mopey about just how bad things were bound to be next year, I asked him to find for me one good thing about his business. Only one. And when he couldn’t find even one thing that he was really enthusiastic about, I proposed a few. Well, for example, there had been seven percent year-over-year growth in his gross revenue since the previous year, as I recalled. He had a great core of longstanding loyal employees. He had bought his business real estate twelve years before, and by now it had just about doubled in value, with the likelihood of a lot more growth in value to come in that neighborhood.

Almost against his will, I saw his spirits lift. It was there, in his face. I said, “Charlie, look, here is what I suggest. Why don’t you, every day for the next three months, give thanks for one different thing about Townshend Heating & Plumbing. Just one. Get a notebook, write each new thing that you’re grateful for in the business, and the date. Then say it aloud. If you don’t want to thank God, then thank the Universe. Just please do this for me? I’ve already given you your first three! And I promise you, even just a month from now, the business will be doing even better.” Bless Charlie, he was skeptical, and he wouldn’t do it for more than a single month, but he did that much for me. And this was all more than three decades ago now. As I recall, doing this classic gratitude exercise, even for only a month, made for a permanent difference in Charlie’s spirits. He still wasn’t Mr. Optimism, but his moping was much reduced. Then recently, he sold his much larger business and its even more valuable business site for enough to give him a great retirement.

This gratitude exercise works just as well in your personal life. You can easily develop an Attitude of Gratitude, and use it to plow your spiritual field, as it were, and to build on it a solid foundation for a much richer and sweeter spiritual life that will transform your daily personal attitude about absolutely everything. Simply buy a little spiral notepad, and every morning for one whole year, first write the date, then write down one thing for which you are grateful, and briefly also write why you are grateful for it. Do this every day for a whole year. The reason to do it for a year is because you want to have to stretch yourself to being grateful for snakes and bread mold! Most people can find something positive to be grateful for, at least for the first couple of months; but eventually, you will be down to rainy days, police stops, and mosquitoes. No duplications!

What you will find is that your whole attitude toward everything, and especially toward other people and toward life in general will soften. When you have spent time every day thinking about and writing about why you are grateful for so many things, and eventually even little and peculiar things, and really solidifying your attitude of gratitude, you will find yourself becoming ever more patient with, and less angry at the whole world in general. Developing an attitude of gratitude softens and gentles you, it civilizes you profoundly, and it lifts your heart! And then, on this far better spiritual base, your real spiritual learning and growth can much better begin….  

 I think about a nursery, and I picture curly heads;
And one by one I count them, as they slumber in their beds.
If you’re worried, and you can’t sleep,
Just count your blessings instead of sheep,
And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings!
– Irving Berlin (1888-1989), from “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” (1954)

 

 

(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)