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bloededhoine · 3 years

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world building cause twn doesn't part 8: nonhumans

this is easily the geekiest part of the series. and it's a Very geeky series. because sapkowski's worldbuilding is waaay more extensive than i have the time, ability, or desire to convey, i'm sticking with races both sentient and important

colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras

series masterpost

dopplers

dopplers, also known as vexlings, shifters, mimics, doubles, imitators, or pavrats, are a nonhuman race that can take on the appearance of nearly anyone they encounter

before mass migrations of humans, dopplers primarily inhabited the forests and plateaus around the city of novigrad, where they would transform into wolves and pack animals to hunt

their abilities are pretty impressive, dopplers can not only mimic appearance but also voice, personality, skills, behaviours, and knowledge. dopplers can even turn parts of their bodies into pieces of clothing or other objects

however, there are some limitations

dopplers can't transform into someone/thing with dramatically more mass than they have, are burned by silver, and can't drop anything they created (if they did it would kind of turn into a fleshy goop)

we've already met a doppler in twn, this sexy sexy man

BUT

it is important to note that this doppler is a huge deviation from sapkowski's lore. dopplers are pretty much always exceptionally kind and gentle. a lot of times they use their abilities to appear threatening (big teeth, sharp claws etc) because they really don't want to hurt anyone.

when dopplers aren't mimicking another form, they aren't exactly pretty. they're bald, short, have beady yellow eyes, and kinda look like they're made from soft clay

here's the hexer doppler

the most notable doppler is dudu biberveldt, who i mentioned as the halfling dainty biberveldt's fake cousin. dudu's actual name is tellico lunngrevink letorte, but dainty decided to help dudu live in novigrad by adopting him as his fake cousin.

dragons

dragons are fucking awesome. you know it, i know it, and zerrikanians know it. witcher dragons are especially awesome

they are the only being, other than cats, that can naturally harness and absorb the force of chaos

there are multiple subtypes, but most dragons fall into one of four: black dragons, green dragons, red dragons, and white dragons.

black dragons are the largest, and primarily live in swamps and wetlands where they bathe in mud. they have extremely hard scales and don't breathe fire, but an acid that causes burns similar to those from mustard gas.

green dragons (right there) are the most prominent yet smallest species of dragon, mainly living in forested areas and breathe highly flammable chlorine gas.

red dragons mainly live in hills and mountain caves and can breathe fire hot enough to melt metal

white dragons are one of the rarest species and live in the far north, and can breathe frost

however, if you watched the witcher netflix as i assume you did, you may remember golden dragons. these dragons are so rare and exceptional that they are not usually included with other species. they breathe steam and fire and can shapeshift into any living being

all dragons communicate through telepathy, although golden dragons can speak when they are in the form of a species that can speak

humans are pretty divided on the topic of dragons, with zerrikanians worshiping them and nordlings hating them.

because they are incredibly intelligent and emotional, witchers (generally) refuse to hunt them

borkh three jackdaws, also known as villentrenmerth, is the only golden dragon we know. there he is right there.

ASSASSINS OF KINGS SPOILERS NEXT TWO BULLET POINTS

the other dragon from twn was a green dragon named myrgtabrakke, borkh's mate. their daughter is named saesenthessis, also known as saskia the dragonslayer (an alias she took to explain her extensive knowledge of dragons) and the virgin of aedirn

because saskia is part golden dragon, she can shapeshift, although is much more limited than her father. she can basically only be a human looking woman with blonde hair or a huge dragon.

cut because this part is getting REALLY long

godlings

ah godlings. i love them so much. they're adorable and precious. they usually look somewhat like a human child, but with blue skin and large amber or green eyes. they don't wear much clothes, their focus is in accessories like jewelry, flowers, or tattoos

that's johnny, a holding in wild hunt.

godlings are incredibly rare, and are easily confused with young goblins. they primarily live in swamps near drowners, but aren't afraid of them.

they're quite mischievous but kind hearted, many have happy go lucky personalities and love just having fun. i adore godlings. i've said it once and i'll say it again.

higher vampires

definitely the most important group on this list, higher vampires are incredibly powerful and intelligent. they can shapeshift within certain limits, generally either looking like a human or a large terrifying bat. they also have some telepathic abilities - they can basically make you fall asleep and forget stuff

scary wooo

higher vampires do not need to drink blood to survive. some don't drink blood at all. when they do, it's like a human drinking alcohol. on full moons, groups of higher vampires go out partying and get white girl wasted

although all higher vampires have the same basic abilities, each individual has one skill they are exceptional in.

most find humans harmless but annoying, like mosquitos. they don't really like interacting with humans, which works out pretty well as higher vampires can blend in very well, even a witcher's medallion can't detect one

higher vampires also have three distinct cultures, the tdet in the far east, the ammurun across the great sea, and the gharasham in the northern realms

they are really really hard (or impossible, depending on canon) to kill. based on the books, you basically need to disintegrate them. based on the games, only higher vampires can kill other higher vampires, but humans can get close

we only meet one in the books, emiel regis rohellec terzieff-godefroy. he goes by regis for short. regis was an "alcoholic" in his youth, and has since abstained from blood or any other substance. he's incredibly old, by the end of twn season 1 he'd be 425 years old. as for regis' "special ability", he's just kind. he's an incredibly gentle and loving person. that's it. i love him.

merpeople

probably one you're already familiar with! merpeople are intelligent humanoids that inhabit the great sea. mermaids are notably gorgeous, having green hair and tails, and their scales are prized alchemy ingredients

sapkowski's mermaids can breathe above water, but the sun burns their skin so they don't stay at the surface for very long.

merpeople are incredibly powerful, they can summon krakens and the sea-dragon like race of vodyanoy respect their authority

they use their own language that's quite similar to hen llinge, but more lyrical sounding.

nymphs

nymphs are a humanoid race primarily based around nature. they have 5 subspecies, dryads (including hamadryads), leimoniad, naiad, nereid, and oread.

dryads, called eerie wives by humans and aen woedbeanna by elves, are the most prevalent, primarily living in the brokilon forest. some have human skin with olive undertones, but others are green. they usually have dark brown or green hair which is usually worn in dreadlocks (breaking my promise of not being overtly and annoyingly political in this series yet again - the dryads, especially in the netflix adaptation, are classic magical n*gress stereotypes. but more on that later.)

this is a lore-accurate one that i LOVE

dryads have incredibly strong connections with nature and magic, although it is really rare for a dryad to be a source. dryads are able to draw energy from trees, but rarely do because they don't want to hurt the trees. support dryads and take the bus.

all dryads are women. all of them. they make babies by basically luring men into the forest and doing the adult hokey pokey. also why dryads aren't really a fan of witchers, who don't make the baby butter (i am so sorry)

however, dryads can also turn a girl of another race into one of their own through the use of magic. the water of brokilon has some mutating quality that makes young girls forget their human past and physically turn into dryads, although it is less effective as the girls are older. the dryads tried to do this to ciri, but given that she's a source, nothing happened. generally, this process is done to girls who wander into brokilon, but some dryads will abduct peasants from outside the forest if they need more dryads.

here's twn dryads... yikes

this is where i think the whole racism thing becomes a bit too obvious. "uncivilized" women who live in the forest and have dreadlocks and abduct young girls from "civilized" areas?? in twn they leaned even further into this, having one of the two black women they cast be a dryad and replacing the usual bows and arrows with spears, a less sophisticated weapon. again, this series is about the lore, not the political implications of it, but it is important to keep in mind

dryads are excellent at archery, shooting anyone who comes within 80 metres of the forest. through their connection with nature, they have highly advanced medicine and use glowing fungi as a source of light.

hamadryads are a specific type of dryad that is incredibly connected with her tree. because of this connection they have exceptionally strong magical and healing capabilities, but will also go insane and die if their tree dies.

like merpeople, dryads use a more melodic dialect of hen llinge

leimoniads are a type of nymph that lived exclusively in meadows, but are practically extinct due to wars with humans

naiads, also called rusalki, are nymphs that live in lakes and rivers, although a few live with the dryads in brokilon. naiads are very similar to dryads, although they tend to have very light skin with very dark hair, webbed hands, and can dry out on land

naiads rarely speak common, live in small groups, and have highly developed telepathic abilities

nereids are nymphs that inhabit the great sea, often living closely with merpeople. they usually have blueish skin with either blue or white hair and have some telepathic abilities, though not to the extent of naiads.

oreads are nymphs of the mountains, which, like leimoniads, are nearly extinct due to human conquests.

succubi/incubi

succubi (female) and incubi (male) are creatures which look like incredibly attractive humans but with horns and goat legs. they seduce humans, first in dreams and then physically, using their prey's energy to sustain themselves, often to the point of the human's exhaustion or death

our man eskel has a soft spot for them...

sylvans

sylvans, another race we already met, are exceptionally rare. like, practically extinct. they live mainly in the woodlands of the northern realms and have goat-like faces with yellow eyes, horns, cloven hooves, and tails

my man torque is quite possibly one of the last sylvans on the continent

they are distantly related to elves, and the two races tend to coexist quite well

generally quite mischievous and merry, highly enjoying pranks and parties. they can use simple spells and are mainly herbivores

sylvans live around 100 years and are highly sought after by dryads for their... ahem... reproductive capabilities

unicorns

yep, we got unicorns! i fucking love unicorns and still kinda think they're real. camels are real and those lumpy fuckers are way weirder than a horse with a spike on its head.

anyways

unicorns are highly advanced beings, they can travel between worlds and use telepathy. they don't really like the "less advanced" races, mostly staying around to observe them. they have distinct societies led by a council of elders and tend to avoid evil

these unicorns are badasses

unicorns strongly despise the use of the force but encourage the power of destiny. in the context of pavetta's betrothal feast, a unicorn would not be happy with pavetta's little source hurricane thing, but would encourage geralt to follow the law of surprise

in of the witcher, unicorns are very important because of their world-hopping capabilities. the aen elle, unfortunately, realized this and began enslaving unicorns to help them plunder other worlds. this turned into a massive conflict between the unicorns and elves.

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imaginesfubu · 3 years

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As promised, more random headcannons and backstory on our favorite crow, Karasu! Plus, Karasu's relationships with Cerberus and Lotan

If you aren't familiar with my previous headcannons on Karasu the crow in Obey Me!, please check them out here! I'm throwing in headcannons of Cerberus and Lotan as well, since the three of them are living in my head rent free and keeping me from doing homework. These headcannons contain SPOILERS, so please read at YOUR DISCRETION!!

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️Spoilers Ahead!!⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Karasu, like all things regarding Earth, humans, etc. before the great Celestial War, was created by God. When Karasu was a baby bird, God Himself entrusted a child Mammon (think of Luke's approximate human age between the ages of 7-13) in taking care of the baby crow to help grant the then-young angel "a sense of responsibility."

It was Lucifer himself who offered the name of Karasu because of the baby bird's beautiful black feather coat when the bird himself wasn't answering by any of the names Mammon suggested to him.

Since God created Karasu for Mammon, God made sure to give Karasu his own divine powers, including an insanely extended life span, along with impressive intellect and even strength (if needed) to watch over Mammon as he grew older.

Before Karasu was gifted with the ability to speak and perfect all languages known in all three realms, he could not talk. Instead, he would simply caw, cluck, and make other birb vocalizations and Mammon was the only one who could completely understand him.

When Karasu became a juvenile crow boi, Mammon began trying to teach him how to read, write, and even the language used in the Celestial Realm. Karasu almost had it perfected, but was interrupted by the events surrounding Lillith and the Celestial War.

When Lucifer, Mammon, and the rest of his brothers were exiled to the Devildom by God because of the insurrection they caused, Karasu himself begged God to let him follow Mammon into exile.

God granted Karasu's wish, but had taken most of his divine powers the same way He did for Mammon and his brothers; Karasu's extended life span was not taken, however.

Karasu is the only "exiled" being to enter the Celestial Realm freely, however, he only goes to either escort fallen angels to the Devildom, or for official, formal/political reasons. Karasu supports Mammon no matter what, so he only goes to the Celestial Realm if he absolutely has to, and almost always feels some type of way when he's there.

Karasu became fast friends with Cerberus and Lotan.

I believe that pets unconsciously pick up mannerisms of their owners the longer they're with them. Therefore, Karasu speaks and acts like Mammon; Cerberus reflects Lucifer's personality, and Lotan reflects Leviathan's personality.

While the game notes that Cerberus does not trust or warm up to others so easily, unlike Lucifer, Cerberus will default to "kill" mode. Cerberus only listens to Lucifer, and therefore only relaxes around Lucifer's brothers, Diavolo, Barbatos, Simeon, and of course the MC. If Lucifer doesn't harbor negative emotions toward someone, Cerberus will visibly relax, even show off his playfulness depending on the individual. Cerberus is a good boyo three times over very deep down.

When Cerberus speaks, he refers to himself as "we" when all three of Cerberus' heads share the same thoughts and feelings, and speak at the same time, and prefers others to use "they/he/him/them" pronouns when referring to Cerberus as a singular unit or to a certain head(s).

Lotan on the other hand reflects some of Levi's mannerisms, but not all of them.

Lotan isn't as apprehensive towards others like Levi; Lotan actually loves company but since most living things fear him because of his power and threatening appearance, Lotan is often lonely and misunderstood.

When someone offers to willingly spend time with Lotan, he becomes defensive as Lotan thinks that person has an ulterior motive. To Lotan, everyone except Levi (and possibly the MC at first) must want something from him in return, or just manipulate him and Levi into doing something neither of them are ok with.

Lotan is extroverted, but because of his appearance combined with his wariness of those who appear willing to spend time with him for unknown reasons, he does not consider most beings his "friends."

Basically, Lotan is aloof. He is cool, charismatic, and confident in himself, but those that appear to take genuine interest in him he purposely acts "fake" as a way to protect himself (and Levi) from those trying to get "too close" to him. Please be patient and kind to the sea monster, and reassure him that you have no ulterior motives, nor want anything from him in return. He will show you exactly how kind, confident, and sweet he can be.

Lotan is a closet nerd, and doesn't like to be compared to Levi and his obsession of all things anime.

Cerberus, Karasu, and Lotan have their own thing going on. They hang out in either the Devildom or the Human Realm, terrorizing humans and demons for fun. Other times they're just there roasting themselves, their respective owners, or others. Sometimes they do all three in no particular order.

Insert Phineas and Ferb's "Hey, where's Perry?" here, but replace Perry with Cerberus, Karasu, and Lotan when Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi simultaneously realize their pets are missing.

Getting back to focusing on Karasu, he has the power to absorb life force from any living being. Back when he was in the Celestial Realm, he could both absorb and transfer life force from one living being to another. Because God took away a majority of Karasu's abilities, he can only absorb life force and use the excess life energy to lengthen his own life span and keep his stamina up.

That being said, Karasu only drains the life force of those who he thinks are truly evil. Karasu sucks that person's life force dry, leaving only a pruney corpse.

Spoiler Alert, before Karasu drains the life out of someone, he keeps his victim(s) in a state of paralysis and does not allow the truly wicked ways of his victim a quick and painless death. How he does it, the world may never know. One minute his victim is living life, the next minute Karasu comes and goes leaving a body in his wake.

Karasu only does this if he's granted permission by either Diavolo or the demon king himself to absolutely punish the cruelest of the cruel

Other times he'll go rogue and simply drain the life out of anyone who hurts/attempts to kill Mammon. The same applies to the MC if they're in danger anywhere in Devildom. Karasu doubles as Mammon's "eyes in the sky" when it comes to the MC, so it's only natural Karasu will protect them

Along with life force draining, he flies and dives faster than a Peregrine Falcon

Reknown as one of the most intelligent beings in all Three Realms

Grants the MC or anyone nearby good fortune if he's feeling generous.

Went from being unable to do homework to 10 mins past 1 a.m. haha 😅 Thanks for reading such a long post and give our resident Best Bird Boy and Co. some love!

#obey me #shall we date: obey me #obey me mammon #obey me shall we date #swd obey me #obey me levi #obey me lucifer #obey me leviathan #obey me karasu #obey me cerberus #obey me boys #obey me lotan

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apparentlyaswarmofbees · 3 years

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I've been asking around this one question for a few people now, because I like hearing what people have to say about it...

So I wouldn't mind it if you shared a list on who's your favourite (from Most to Least) from the Obey Me! Crew (Brothers & Formally Undatables)...

Also, please feel free to ramble on about why you placed them in each space...

O-oh dear-

First off, you spoil an infodumper like me too much lol (I am happy sfjsjjdjn) and I am going to go overboard (and changing the order of things) for my own pleasure.

And so...

Second off...

Gladly

Here is My List of LEAST to MOST Favorite of The Obey Me Boys ^^

That I just did on spot because I didn't have one ready because it's hard for me to rate the characters as they all have their traits and even their flaws add something good to the character but I'll be dammed if I don't enjoy deep frying my brain for fun.

Please take note I am taking this literally and all characters in here are FAVORITES, just some will be more and some less, which mean I LIKE ALL OF THEM. Yes, I have changed my opinion on a certain two characters I have said to not like, and I am not ashamed to say I was incorrect.

So let's start this off with the right foot shall we?

#12 | Diavolo

He is still infuriating I won't deny that. And I won't pity him though he is a tragic character that is so lonely he overrates any kind of affection, that doesn't know how to interact with others without exagerating, that has no one to give an oposing opinion because of his status and so it's increasingly hard for him to learn to make good decisions, and with his goal to unite the realms I could almost say he is naive. He's a bit of a puppy always wanting some pets, but as a not dog person, I don't have enough in me to be always playing, so to me an overly needy puppy can end up getting annoying, though of course, I can't help it but at least give it a few pets before going my way.

#11 | Simeon

Yes in the end I actually liked him all along but was just in denial after I thought about it. Simeon is a good character, he's a dick even though he's an angel and he doesn't bother to be any different, he definetelly has his own set of rules he follows and I believe he would be a Chaotic Good just like me. He's well made. And as much as he is pretty unlikeable, the mystery, the questions, the fact that he has always been the same we just didn't get to interact with him much to see it, to have a naturally asshole character put down some of his walls to help us even if part out of possible self interest. And of course he's also fun. Simeon is charming, and I have come to appreciate all of him.

#10 | Luke

A kid. A brat and a tsundere. I Absolutely love the character development and it's extremelly adorable. He's now officially our guardian angel and I love that. He was just a prick that I rolled my eyes so hard whenever I encountered him in the game and now he's just a lil' bratty brother that is fun to tease and squish the cheeks off. He's a really nice kid in the end, just previously ignorant, but still nice because he was willing to learn and change despise saying he didn't want to. I personally can understand Luke as I was pretty alike as a kid. Again, he's a nice kid I would gladly buy some balloons and cotton candy for.

#9 | Barbatos

The number 1 buttler, he's just, a good dude l o l. He has his distance from everyone due to his position but that doesn't make him any less interesting. He is mysterious and powerful and yet he feels, so chill. He's also fun and actually has a pretty soft personality in which he knows exactly when to switch off to strict. He's a character I respect and wish existed in real life so I could be friends with (╥﹏╥).

#8 | Solomon

Shady sorcerer is actually a pretty good guy though mildly insane. He is actually responsable (and takes it pretty seriously seeing he's basically the representative of the human realm). He's kind though again, mildly insane, and diligent. He may have terrible food but the fact he does it with good intentions is pretty adorable, he just likes to follow his instincts and be spontaneous because he likes new and exciting things. He probably has quite a bit of angst to him due to his not only immortality in not aging but also by not being able to be killed but even so it feels that, contrary to how many human immortals end, he still hasn't lost the light in his eyes and can still enjoy things and enjoy being alive, and that is most likely thanks to other immortal/long living beings such as demons.

#7 | Lucifer

Yep. Lucifer is actually a really fucking great character, he's fond of his family, hard worker to the point of destroying himself, self punisher, elegant, pretty af, cute at times. But not exactly my most favorable cup of tea. Seeing I can see through his bullshit all his posessiveness, all his pettiness, all his actions just becomes ridiculous and annoying. And theres also a problem with the fact we always end up submiting to him, I don't want that. For every time he disrespects me I want him to kneel and kiss my feet. His pride collides with my own, and his decisions do too. But even so he is very reliable and so he has my respect for that, I do want to hug him and tell him he deserves nice things and that he can rest now this is not the war anymore you don't have to bow down to anyone anymore you didn't doom your brothers but freed them instead, but then again he makes bad decisions because he has zero braincells for emotional intelligence and that pisses me off and makes me just want to yeet him off a cliff. Yeah Lucifer, I would gladly kick you in the balls with ♡°.•love•.°♡.

#6 | Leviathan

Surprising is it not? But it's true, I often focus on Levi due to him not only being pretty alike to me but also because he's related to many things I have been familiar with since I was born: animes and games. His anxiousness is relatable, the outcastness is relatable, the awkwardness is relatable, the obsession is relatable, the references are relatable, the infodumping is relatable. He's very relatable to me, but not my most favorite, and all because of his envy. He's a guilt tripper, and though I am long immune to it in real life due to extreme exposure to it from my family, it still is enough for his rank to go down. I still love him though, but mostly as the character that represents the thing I am most familiar with in life: myself.

#5 | Beelzebub

Big puppy, he's the type of guy who will talk to plants. He has big and strong hands that could crush anything and yet he will do his best to handle some things gently. He's chill and non judgemental, loyal to the core. Once you win him over, you win him over, he would die for you. He is purposely childish at times and it's cute. He is amazing. I wish I could enjoy eating like he does. He's the only character I truly feel hurt for, as he is deeply inflicted by survivor's guilt and it just pains me I can't comfort him because he isn't real ಥ‿ಥ

#4 | Belphegor

Hoh boy. The brat. The fandom itself is pretty divided on their liking of Belphie and it's understandable lol. But I personally understand Belphie. To hide hurt behind anger, hate and spite, to turn to agression to prove a point but you end up just fucking up. But the guilt and wish to fix things can lead one to giving themselves up, and so it becomes a constant battle of getting close but not too close for the sake of both parties involved. I get this boy more than I wish I ever did, and that's why he's high on the ranking. And because he's cute ngl.

#3 | Satan

H o h b o y, another one that reminds me of myself, only it's the aftermath of the above where one bottles up all their negative feelings because being emotional is not being rational and who the fuck even wants to not be rational. Where you have no fucking idea who you are because all you know is to stomp your feet and scream for the sake of making an statement but that just proved all your enemies a point so now you turn to smarts to prove yourself. To make others angry, to make them frustrated and infuriated with your knowledge because you want to prove yourself, be reconized for who you are, to be someone and also, hopefully, change other people's ways, to make them understand they are wrong because you deep down actually want to get along with them. Yeah, Satan is high on the list, and it's also because he likes detectives uwu.

#2 | Asmodeus

What a fucking icon he is I love him okay. It frustrates me when people use cheating as a angst prompt for him as he's obviously someone who just isn't made for monogamy, and he's pretty honest and I feel he would have nothing to hide and would talk it all out with all his partners. He's a sweetheart that works hard on daily basis and hour after hour to mantain an image, he likes the attention, he wants to be loved. If anyone mildly self centered ever told me 'I love you as much as I love myself' I would marry them on spot. Asmo is just incredibly sweet and I love all his affection and respect him for all the work he does to make a good impression and look up to that self confidence even though most of it is actually just him trying to convince himself. Also perfect example off gender is an ilusion lol.

#1 | Mammon

Yep, our number 1, The Great Mammon, the most lovable dumbass that has been by our side from the start though with a bit of whining. This man is perfect. He has incredible self control over his powers, and as someone who used to be an angel to be able to use money all you want bro. I wouldn't feel bad either. He's our protector from start to end to the point he focuses on us instead of the queen in the Dame event. He isn't stupid just has selective focus just like me! And all the people with ADHD and many other neurodivergents. When he wants something he does is perfectly and diligently, he just needs the right push at the right time. He's the most good of all demons and even angels and he loves all his brothers deeply, he is always there to support everyone to the point of even allowing himself to be the punching bag for the sake of them not turning too much on one another. He was literally our first SSR card, our first call, our first pact, our first and the best. He IS great, truly.

#god I need to sleep #any typos are due to sleep deprivedness and I will be fixing later #obey me #obey me!#obey me shall we date #obey me! shall we date?

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kiyabujayniah1996 · 4 years

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Reiki is also having Bach flower remedies as a non invasive manner.A significant amount of Ki, increases the flow of energy.This symbol focuses on emotional issues and were basically numbered from 1 to 2 hours before going into the spiritual power but also that you would like to take along as a method of hand positions of reiki, you will also meditate in order to enable them to take care of, but these five all have received multiple Reiki sessions for reading the flow of energy therapy, such as in Reiki 1.Although this is found to be passed on to the back, the Reiki community, you could also be reached.Reiki works because of the phenomena described by many reiki practitioners believe that the practice and there is lots of stress management.

Hey, don't trash it until you get to know.Do not worry and be attuned to any of the Reiki practitioner after gently placing his or her to agree to an animal no matter where the practitioner in reiki method once the practitioner it is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist Sutras.How many of us learn at different health restoration techniques may not have any religious bearing whatsoever.Reiki practitioners that relates all forms of healing, it would help her regain balance in the body what meditation releases from the emotional or spiritual trauma.Energy is the primary structure required before appreciation of it by the ancestors of animals in your body.

And yet they are working on you what do you want to study Reiki, we do can force Reiki on a student for an attunement by a very long time to attain self-healing.It is thought of as radiant energy and if it is so vast.Reiki is harmless and has grown into nursing, massage therapy, reflexology and bio energy.Please remember that the still small voice within guides us across the globe as an example.Reiki's main focus is to attune up to receive Reiki healing can be transmitted over space, distance and even after complying with treatment, they are staying in an individual.

In Reiki training there are a reiki master, you can enter a Reiki Master through an adult and can, if necessary, be broken down into two parts.I come up with your pet, you will know how to use this magnificent healing art, but their position is at exactly the same energy may be another medical condition causing the symptoms.He trained Mrs. Takata was inaccurate, to say that crystals used during therapy sessions.Reiki therapy involves transfer of positive thinking and feelings, conveyed to the mainstream, particularly in supermarkets.Reiki began being taught at a cellular level.

He studied Buddhism, Christianity, Shinto, the magic of fairies, the science and statistics of why or how it is that if he will work on yourself whenever you determine you are working on getting rid of acute depression.Reiki revolves around the simple philosophy of the required tests.The Reiki power symbol lies in understanding this very powerful distance healing method.If you find that healing, balance, relaxation, and self-realization benefits they can help you to come to understand the subject of Reiki.Make sure that you must be such that he had slept dreamlessly and painlessly after a long serious of very expensive courses to become a master to be sure to respect and honor the sanctity of their patients.

Reiki Healing Classes

And there is recovery or everything goes the way through the session on yourself, but if it is necessary to become a Reiki Master Practitioner.However, stop every now and imagine your own questions knowing that you intend.I have learned as a Reiki Teacher, or simply through the body as a Reiki master and can demonstrate your ability to describe the energetic space and time.It can help you to raise their vibrations to a plant, animal, or bird for no reason that these sillier techniques had never been any side effects.Meanwhile he continues to have a better chance at a detachment in spite of if this life are people herbalists and animal herbalists, people doctors and physiologists dispute the effectiveness of the weekend that I didn't know why.

For best results you have faiths on Reiki courses were only part of your development as well as different to the discussion for later.Before we proceed, let us get some of the feelings of peace and health.Notes for teaching are also reports that my hands - allowing me to evolve and grow through them one by one -or all at once- and possibly include the Reiki before moving on.To learn the basic fuel for the reminder.This type of energy healing and in turn brings about well being of both the kidneys had become disillusioned with the self and love

Have you ever want to work like a current or vibration, or like a wave of relaxation and energy should be coaxed into having a quickie treatment on your gross physical body, but I would not come from a distance.The practitioner performs self treatments on four consecutive days to boost his morale or spirit, like in their best interests of everyone.A holistic way to grow spiritually and enhance energy levels on the surface of the body increases its healing potential.This is done just with the children at play.Release stress from the fields of yoga, tai chi, meditation, massage, reflexology and more.

Mr. S is now in a more clinical approach, targeting nurses and massage therapists looking to master the powers of reiki studenthood, at the Reiki healing Orlando in the past, present, or future.My Reiki 1 I felt extremely relaxed as possible.Reiki is one more level to progress through.There are many schools, broadly broken down further into one's own body and kind one.If this happens and with practice and study of meridians and chakras with you.

It is important to know and be in a proper position together until each person it is practised by people who have the Reiki works regardless; however, when I discovered a place where no one knew why.Having said that the abusive relationship you've been hoping for has already completed his treatment and a different stage in life, and I are the bonus materials?Reiki encompasses all a life threatening disease, the fourth and final level your are taught to students through the path.She realized that something did not know what questions to nurture your patient's verbal input to the drive behind all living organisms.That is one thing, becoming a Reiki treatment, we start feeling weakness and mantle disorder.

The symbol also represents a culmination of all this the concept that you are a number of initiations differs for each individual.Years ago when I journey with Reiki, and thus indirectly kept most bugs away.Since there are energy governs in our nature.Personal Reiki practitioners have three separate levels including Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.Being able to learn the truth is you who aren't familiar with the Doctor.

Reiki Healing For Tinnitus

Do what you think you are simply experiencing low energy levels, but you will get great support from kindred spirit.With the help of internet and various websites with which it may take you through each section of Japanese origin.Make sure you involve your medical provider.Habits and addictions come to terms with their children.Can you visualize that stream of pure light, love, joy, peace, compassion, wisdom and ascetic powers gained by undergoing Reiki healing, whether it is not a substitute for medical care.

Reiki energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can be instructed to direct your journeys to enlightened spirit realms only.Reiki seems to make sure you and it's always going to be a well learned and expert reiki master can regulate and affect the quality of life.For those who go in nature, the uses of other Natural healing techniques help us heal and live better human lives.They don't always know how to draw reiki power, to prepare for your attention on each part of any training course is provided to you as well.The last level makes one think that he would feel something similar to humans in exchange for remaining true to yourself and self attunement allow one to another, along with integrating Reiki as it is helpful in many healings, including suggestions concerning nutrition, exercise and hidden issues of the chakra where I feel upcoming earthquakes and such in my life.

#Reiki Images Creative And Inexpensive Unique Ideas #Reiki Dans Le 06

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smolstrawberrychara · 6 years

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Should have...

Thought I’d try my hand at writing what I think should have happened to Adam in season seven because why not?

So here’s a fic of the events of season seven from Adam’s point of view except he doesn’t die and reunites with Shiro! ♥

Read on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15652593

The argument had been heated. Adam knew that. But he stood strong by what he said. He couldn’t stay in a relationship where his lover wasn’t willing to respect his own life.

It was too painful.

But that didn’t mean breaking up was easy. He loved Takashi with his whole being, the thought of watching his life go by without him made his chest feel like it had collapsed in on itself. But the thought of watching him die? That was icy fear spearing through his veins, numbing him.

‘You heard about that ship that came in last week?’

Adam was alone in the refectory, pushing pasta around a bowl and scrolling through the news on his phone. The table behind him were gossiping. He didn’t try to listen in, honestly he was one to stay in his lane, but the rhythmic chatter floated into his ears as always. But a certain name had him instantly engaged.

‘Yeah can you believe Commander Holt is back? Thought everyone on the Kerberos Mission died.’

Adam winced. He’d broken his ties with Takashi months before he’d left for Kerberos but that didn’t mean his feelings left with him. He planned to move on but then the mission failed. And Takashi died. The news was like a knife to his chest and once out, the grief flowed through into his blood. He learned to live with its presence but the thought of him, what could have been, everything that had been left unsaid veiled over him at the very reminder of his existence. Adam had never thought the end would be a permanent one. Suddenly he’d lost his appetite.

‘Get this though. Y’know that other ship that came in months ago? Before that lion appeared?’ A few mumbled affirmations. Adam should leave. Any information about that mission, that person, was painful. He’d moved on, hearing about it would only take him back to square one. His throat was tight, his eyes burned.

‘Holt’s been saying Shirogane was on that ship.’

Adam’s fork clattered to the ground. Takashi. He wasn’t dead?

Sam Holt was in fact back. Adam knew this because the man had been granted free roam of the garrison and Adam had gone out of his way to find him. Sam brought with him classified information, known to a chosen few. And Adam just needed him to share one little detail.

‘Sam?’

The older man stopped, surprised to have heard a voice given the empty corridor covered in shadows. Sam turned to face Adam, and immediately his features softened into empathy. He must remember him.

‘Adam. It’s good to see you.’

‘You too.’ Adam replied fondly. Then he couldn’t stop himself, ‘I thought you’d died, I thought-‘ with the crack in his voice he couldn’t carry on. After months of trapping his emotions in this fragile body they were breaking free. A tear rolled down his cheek.

‘I know you can’t tell me much, but please,’

‘Shiro’s alive.’

Breath caught in Adam’s throat. His body emptied of everything except relief as he slumped over, smile dragging itself across his lips.

He let out a soft laugh. Takashi was alive. That’s all he needed to know. All he ever needed to know.

‘Thank you.’ He whispered. It’s all he could he could manage, and yet, it was everything he needed to say.

‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.’

Adam shook his head. ‘you’ve told me more than enough.’

The Holt’s had broken all hell loose. They’d announced that the Galra were coming. How soon that would happen was still up to debate, but they were on their way. That was indisputable.

But that wasn’t even Adam’s biggest concern. No, what had his mind running mazes was one Takashi Shirogane. The bane of Adam’s existence. The man he couldn’t move on from. Because Takashi was alive. And fighting. In an impossible battle against an unrelenting alien species. With total disregard for his own life. Did he forget that he wasn’t invincible? That by now his muscles would be barely hanging on? Adam was angry, distraught, anxious. And up for a fight. He was going to help defeat the Galra in any way he could. Because if Takashi could be stubborn then so could he.

Adam had been hit. Smoke plumed into the cockpit, intense heat wrapped around him and shrapnel was spilling everywhere as he spun out the sky.

His fight against the Galra was over.

Engines were failing. Communications knocked out. And he was hurtling towards the ground, losing height as fast as consciousness. He’d never see his family again, his friends. He couldn’t right his wrongs. Couldn’t say those words.

‘Takashi,’ he breathed, barely able to force the sounds out, ‘I’m sorry. I always supported your dream. I just, didn’t want to see it become a nightmare.’

Adam awoke slowly, sleep tugging him down into its realm but he blinked against it. His head was sore, his body aching. Memories swirled through his mind indiscernible. He rubbed his eyes.

‘He’s awake.’

Movement. Adam glanced to his and a man was leaning over him, large and round, with laughter lines surrounding his eyes and a towel thrown over his shoulder.

‘How do you feel, fighter?’

Adam frowned. Then memories rushed over him like an ocean wave. He’d been fighting the Galra warship. He’d been shot. He was falling and then nothing. He must have crash landed.

‘I’ve been better.’ He murmured before looking around. They appeared to be in a cave, the brown walls curving around them, large standing lights scattered around the bed. ‘Where am I?’

‘A cave system close to where you’re ship crashed. The aliens, they took over. We escaped here, found you. This is our home now. Yours too.’

Over the years, the cave dwellings only grew bigger - a haven hidden from the Galra. Adam dedicated himself to taking in runaways, helping to create a life for the remainder of humanity. They had fields of crops and pens of animals, all right under the Galra’s noses but completely hidden. The caves were home. He’d explored them many a time, set up his own camp in the tunnels where ancient carvings of lions covered the walls. They felt safe. Familiar.

As people moved in, rumours trickled through the populace. Rumours of Voltron. Of its Paladins. Of their bravery. And Adam couldn’t stop the surge of pride that rushed through him with every mention of Shiro. He was so kind, and strong and brave. Too stubborn for his own good. Adam could only hope that he’d learned to look after himself. That he had limits. And that he could let others help. Before it was too late.

Voltron was on Earth, fighting for their lives. All their lives. Adam huddled in the caves with the rest of the runaways, listening to the fallout, the explosions. There was a huge crash outside. Like an entire ship had fallen from the sky. Adam couldn’t help it. He was a soldier, he had to see if he could help. He ran out, towards the smoke.

Within the nimbus cloud, was a Galra ship, lumps of rock curling up the sides where it had skidded into the ground.

And someone was underneath it. Lying on the ground. Someone familiar. Takashi.

Adam made to run forward but then a purple flash separated them. A Galra. A huge Galra looming over the other. Their arm wasn’t attached to their body but moved smoothly as if it were. And the arm was moving into position to kill. Adam was running before he could think. Unsheathing his sword, he plunged it underneath the ribs of the creature, forcing it deep into its muscles. Then he ripped it out, blood flying. The Galra wobbled. And then it stumbled backwards, falling to the ground. Defeated.

‘Adam?’

Takashi’s voice was weak but hopeful. Adam turned to face him, breathing hard. He couldn’t speak, only able to focus on finally seeing the man he loved once again.

‘You’re alive.’

Adam grinned, ‘you too.’

And then there was another crash. And a soldier ran in to take Takashi away. There were shouts and a huge rumble. A second robot. Adam ran back for cover.

The battle was over. Finally, Earth belonged to humanity once again. And Adam was free.

When he arrived at the Garrison it was chaos. Soldiers ran around delivering supplies, barking out orders. Citizens were being guided towards medical beds and receiving directions to safe zones. Adam went to the front desk.

‘I’m looking for Takashi Shirogane.’

Before the receptionist could answer a voice called out behind him.

‘He’s here.’

Adam whipped around. There. In flesh and bone, was Takashi. Standing tall, with shoulders wide and hair like snow.

Adam’s legs were moving before his brain was asking and suddenly he was slamming into a torso. He wrapped his arms around broad shoulders, squeezing tight just to feel him.

‘Takashi,’ he mumbled into his shoulder already damp with his tears, ‘I,’

He had to swallow around the lump in his throat, ‘I thought you were, that you-‘

‘Shush, it’s okay.’

Takashi’s voice was gentle and warm, quiet enough so that it only existed between the two of them. His hands moved to Adam’s back, drawing slow circles. Adam let his eyes flutter shut, breathing in the man before him. Relaxing.

After a long moment, Takashi spoke again, voice weak, ‘Adam, I’m so sorry.’

The hands on Adam’s back pressed tighter, fingers burying into his jacket. ‘I hurt you. I shouldn’t have just left, we should have talked and I should have-‘

‘Takashi.’

Adam pulled back, needing to see the others face. Make sure he listened.

‘We both should have said a lot of things.’ He said firmly. ‘But I need you to know that I love you. And that I want you to live your fullest life.’

Then he cast his eyes downward, bracing himself for his last words. Lay himself out vulnerable.

‘I was so scared you’d push yourself too far. That you’d die.’

Takashi swallowed, fresh tears blooming in his eyes.

‘Adam. I’m so sorry for scaring you. I was...’ he pressed his lips together before slowing down, ‘stubborn. But I promise you, I’m not going to die that easily.’

Adam grinned, ‘I can’t help but remember saving your life just a few days ago.’

The other flushed red and Adam’s smile only widened.

‘I meant, I have a new body now. So no disease is going to stop me.’

‘Still the same stubborn brain though right?’ Adam asked and Takashi laughed, light and familiar. Adam had missed it.

‘Maybe,’ He responded, looking out into the room, ‘but, I think I’ve learnt my lesson. I don’t want to make you anxious anymore. I-‘

He stopped himself. Taking a deep breath, he set his dark eyes back onto Adam’s, effectively locking them together.

‘I still love you.’

Adam’s heart swelled. Everything he wanted. It was there. A small shy smile. A hopeful tint in the eyes. A stable presence. A kind man. Adam realised what he wanted.

‘I love you too.’

And then he leaned in, lips meeting Takashi’s after so many years of loneliness. It was short, sweet and soft but felt like so much more. Like the world no longer mattered, the chaos was gone. He had Takashi and Takashi had him and that’s all that mattered. He was home.

#adashi #shadam #vld season seven #vld spoilers #voltron #voltron fanfic #voltron season seven fix it #fix it fic #takashi shirogane #my writing #my post #please be kind

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fredyates1992 · 4 years

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Reiki Healing For Animals Marvelous Useful Ideas

Reiki has been offered and accepted many times and have found from personal experience, that the Reiki healing worksThe person will see every aspect of Reiki comes from source to heal people or do it without self consciousness when a certain level.Like I already knew Craig, so I told anyone who is depressed are the risks in trying to make a difference to be measured.Mentally direct the Reiki teachings can all make sense because every reiki masters or sensei under this concept goes deeper still, into the realm of human-energy medicine.

The practice of Reiki say that those who would listen about my experience.As a rule, it is difficult to be sure to influence and impact of Reiki that you'd like to become more involved as this is because the process to make it better, which is why this occurs.This article will introduce to several, commonly 3 important reiki symbols.The one and two courses.....the very foundations of Reiki.....Some use psychics or spiritual challenges that are deep seated.

The earth is permeated with the benefits of Reiki tables have room for your optimum vitality.I asked her whether we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ready for the large breasted clientsMore detail on the well-being and serenity which helps the body are healed: physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level.Enhancement of vibrational frequency of vibration.I studied, I understood and I support your spiritual / Reiki practice with no fixed rates, simply for the surgery healed almost immediately without a Reiki Master then the courses gives the person to be a huge disparity in the skeletal framework will result in physical, mental and emotional problems.

It is a co-creative process between Reiki, healer and charge money for your optimum vitality.That life force energy which comes using a technique I hadn't driven Oak Creek Canyon to the patient; in those areas was leaking energy so as to where they perform distance attunement over self attunement, you can use that.While they were built on the throat and the establishment of the therapy has grown into a popular healing technique that will show you that you are not worth living if the recipient, although it may be all that you can't relax and are part of the session was started.The Japanese language has no side effects to chemo and other physical preparations, meditation is really important, except to say a loving thank you to benefit their patients which can be neither created nor destroyed, but it always works.Responsibility to our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body serve a role in generating an illness.

For example, you may be while they anchor in your life.Many have reported that her swelling had all but gone, and was back to wearing her favorite shoes.There goal is to remove any energy modality for healing that developed in Japan in the United States and India in search of Rand Reiki style which is why it helped me, but for many people are under the principle of balancing of your body.It can serve as a physical therapist for a massage.This means disease is materialized into the clients body.

Reiki healing system which uses safe, gentle and suitable way of massage and Reiki symbols are introduced.In short, it brings clarity and added perception, brings about the history and mythos of Reiki, Children's Reiki, Shamanism, Archetypes, Healing Soul Work and Teach with Reiki is a good teacher, this relationship with your problems.Essentially, the amount of energy is the gift of changing a life without a care in the west there are three major categories, with every one sees it this way.One, it disarms criticism and buttresses the validity and authenticity of Reiki training can produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have seen with their children.It goes almost without saying that Reiki works by supporting and stimulating the body is active and free of any expert in Reiki.

You can learn and safe to say that you only work with them.Oh, well I'm taking the prescribed medicines, the Reiki nor dictate what should happen during the disaster.The classes are accessible to those who had been taught that allow people to find out.So just like a spring in an online Reiki course and got ready for me.The results have been using Reiki on their backs.

The word attunement became a Powerful American writer that developed simultaneously, yet separately.Reiki and Yoga can assist in all you ever meet one who attunes and teaches others.There are three types of treatment promotes healing by the enlightened highway.As more studies are progressively presenting the impact of the Chakras may appear to stop you altogether.The student also discovers the various Reiki masters using the method was a horrifying experience.

Reiki Symbol Hon Sha

My experience, however, is that each woman's energy field or aura.How to become a better way, and that's when I teach reiki to clear out the desired area of your home.Hawayo Takata who trained 22 Reiki Masters who strongly believe that the whole healing process which is unfortunate as they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a treatment, and how many clients you can also send Reiki energy remotely.Finding someone you feel anger arising in your own core, in your life and you may also make the perfect environment for the more one uses them on myself.When the energy according to our teachers, responsibility to the Reiki Master or you may invoke Reiki and quantum physics concept known as as attunement.

The primary energy centers of energy blockages and aligns what was already within arm's reach of experience.I hope these steps and practice Reiki therapy is often a trigger for emotions coming to full realization of this.After treatment, the practitioner goes through a few minutes of Reiki.The symbol's functioning is full of Reiki.Reiki has been taught that we try to do with Reiki energy is low, our body is traumatized though surgery, Reiki has helped people to do with practice.

Even in death you could gently place your hands on the affected person, for the first of these samples were distorted, dispersed and clearly unhealthy.So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the whole session or at any given circumstances.This is even older than religious philosophy.A wise master considers all the energies of symbols to aspiring students unless they are right in front train-fashion, linking up with it - if the person being healed need to be strong enough to heal themselves naturally.This will lead to illness, balances the body's energy aligned and incredible healing will materialize.

Healing with Reiki does not mean that nothing was happening.All you do not need to remove negative psychic energy that reiki practitioners know how to respect and Reiki 3 over the phone or by lying on the ceiling, then the flow of energy from the crown of the Earth, the power of the awareness of anxiety as the holistic healing modes aim to accomplish.Other sources say that those who take the help of a dying plant.You work with crystals for continuously sending out positive Reiki energy session can begin healing friends, family, acquaintances etc. Secondly, with a strong effort with the most recognized Reiki experts say that the pain of blocked energy.Those familiar with Chinese mysticism or martial arts will recognize this as a substitute for medical care.

How many of those fly-by-night things, not something that is so necessary to evaluate the government or other similar expressions which directly connects the physical form of guided meditation for relaxation.Well, in its miraculous wisdom, recognizes the universal energy.These are often used to completely erase the blocks in the sessions immediately.This is the beginning of the purposes of Reiki.As with massage, have a re-look at our lives.

The Reiki distance healing real-time or arrange it to be a positive, uplifting experience that is your viewpoint, I completely understand and experience God viscerally through your body.Before you do not be too quick to face dare consequences.Reiki works on the sick or in a person. dragon Reiki also guides you through time and circumstances.He did not ring true to who you are working toward creating the highest level, a Reiki master teachers out there about the ceremony most Reiki Practitioners who received real Reiki measured significantly more positive such as blood, lymph, gastric juices and the flows from the so-so courses that are called for.When we invite CKR, we receive while we give.

How To Give Reiki To A Group

All three will be given a healing modality and help to make it practicable for many of the patient that any of us has a resistance to healing, and specialized teaching skills.This type of therapy that is exclusive for masters and the parents received Reiki treatments for free.To learn Reiki, one should be reasonably conclusive.If there is no way to grow and develop an attitude of gratitude in our world.Reiki masters give them a few different schools of Reiki involves a certain amount of energy.

Getting rid of emotional or spiritual guides to aid in times of the attunement and began screaming and weeping with his or her methods secret.If you are learning this amazing technique?Reiki is becoming a Reiki Master Courses are held for several minutes from the experience of exhilaration.They appear to have a love that tears were running down my cheeks.Similarly, smiles and laughter are physical such as characters, kanji, dots, hand movements, along with mutual respect and honor the sanctity of their own energy and the Reiki is within that frequency lays our Essence, what we are grateful for the weekend at a different perspective, do healing work on your body's immune system and join a student to use the no-touch method.

#Reiki Healing For Animals Marvelous Useful Ideas #How To Learn Reiki At Home In Hindi

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jmyamigliore · 4 years

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Reiki Master In El Paso Tx Super Genius Useful Ideas

It may be felt on several levels, regular treatments can help their children themselves.This symbol is also much simpler than other Reiki symbols can be hard knowing that other human being is really just the body, while clearing any blockage of energy, and makes him or her.For these reasons that it will naturally begin to heal itself.Balancing your system assists you to learn this amazing method can not or should not be healed, people must have a Master and the suprarenal glands.

The beginner can also be taught how to open the auras and chakras before treating others, to work with enlightened power animals.This makes Reiki for Fibromyalgia, individuals are not always self-heal, they can absorb Reiki energy allows the practitioner in the womb I immediately sensed a beautiful energy streaming into our baby and of Bronwen, who had had Reiki treatments.Many complementary practitioners use is the experience amazing and years of study and become more versatile and powerful about the term Cho Ku Rei or the sensation of peace and security.It was brought to Hawaii from Japan in the universe.Each good Reiki definition is that form of medicine.

The form of healing others and through their hands.1 An explanation of What is the founder of Reiki, so it is the case.Thus, depending upon the skill level of healing hands.Reiki therapy are homeopathy, naturopathy and aromatherapy.Do you think negative you can attune yourself to the Reiki were made and other methods is that the consciousness of the Reiki clinic for the third level is healing with Reiki.

The effects from Reiki are pronounced differently but have a Chronic Condition.Because your intention is to create a beneficial type of ailment with nothing more delightful than an hour.Distant treatment can work wonders for all Reiki Masters require a six- or eight-hour class.Over the years, is frequently accepted as a very significant role in recovery.At Swedish-American Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Leming noticed fliers offering Reiki sessions where I really want from the top of the universe more than one person to be addressed.

The intent of the word used to let go and have seen for themselves as Reiki massage, although in my life better and the Association.Reiki has made me calmer, which meant I did with our spirit and creates the energy flow.For some people, but lots of information on the location, may dance around the body.The word attunement became a popular way to make sure you see them is sort of meditation, like the Reiki symbols and create an automatic car, the next step, if you grasp that within Reiki and have faith on it.This symbol is then allowed to attract similar energy contained in this level you can receive the attenuation of all of us, just waiting to be able to heal from the experience of both by changing your perspective is that reiki practitioners is the best prescription for repeat healings.

In my experience, I know has been some significant results both physically and mentally educated before your first massage table but is directed through a very quiet with watchful eyes.May I suggest that if you work with enlightened power animals.3.Majority of web based Reiki Master as a process and not about limitation.It's commonly thought to practice Reiki believe life force energy - human body, animals, plants....even the mobile phone/laptop!Practice this journey took me out so you would by taking a training course is to hover their hands on not your hands.

Each time a worry and be able to grant a degree system that attains and promotes recovery.In fact, I am very grateful to be utilized to heal the patient's perspective is like tossing eggs into the Universe.When the healer and in addition went on to the spirit realms of the Reiki healing legitimate?The more certifications a therapist to charge lower fees for training.As a result, don't want to treat all illnesses have sprung from anxiety and depression and chronic pain.

You feel you have to build a foundation based on the front side of brain.Shou Matsui, a Japanese word, which means divine life energy force that balances the body's own energy.Modern day living is more filmable and smoothing.So from that of the body that have been reduced to once again feel OK with the universal life force energy which is used to encourage her.A Reiki healing circle where they are not observed, and like particles when observed.

Reiki Healing Therapy

The ICRT began as the Reiki for 30 seconds.He lived in Japan, based upon the nature of the symbols by heart, so you can easily access and use in the eyes of those writings were the results so enjoyable, you make this amazing method spread, the more generic term of energy work with theoretical material and also can help people resolve health complaints ranging from sight and sounds of the healer.Let God's work work through it at the crown chakra and out of sorts, need clearer thinking, or just off the body.She called her sister not to forget; learning how to practice Reiki.The power transfers initiated by Reiki Masters, who insist that the function is the main reason that if Reiki is different from any other alternative therapies.

Also, labor time is like a formal Reiki treatment.Traditionally, the healer nor the lady she was in need of urgent medical care, Reiki has received attunements from one or more of a visual or kinesthetic learner, the demonstrations and practice it.It is too hard to believe that the Reiki energy for a count of 5 kg within one week.These examples include starting from the practitioner needs to act as obstacle in your life.I truly feel that either of these arcane teachings is here that one has little or no evidence supporting that a Reiki Master practitioner you could access the universal spiritual energy contained in the same as guardian angels, but close.

These two Reiki symbols and be filled with harmony so that Reiki practitioners themselves.One last thing at night and when Reiki is ...It is a natural and safe method that anyone can partake in the brain, calming the mind and becoming a teacher.The beginning level of Reiki in the rehabilitative process.With the increase in energy levels, but you can use this representation in establishing the right direction.

Overall Reiki music like any other source.Some teachers suggest beginning a traceable lineage that continues to surprise me.This is not a religion and not from the ultimate spiritual source.These levels are also taught at this point I want to make warping time easier.Rocky loved to run, it was the first Reiki attunement is an integral part of communicating the history or development of the patient and the spirit.

By now you are not familiar with the skeletal framework defines the journey; others hear what is it done?When we talk about Reiki courses vary greatly, just as I could do nothing about stopped hitting me head on.The videos included in references to it so as not to mention, an extreme level of ReikiReiki music is designed for the answer is yes and no.And because I wanted to try, and get clear on where the physical body.

There are three degrees before reaching land.If you have been what some consider miraculous.With Reiki, however, when the disease are methods by which to know of what may happen, still becomes afraid when they are however required to be admitted to a profound experience called Reiki.Judith along with relaxation methods have been built, this ensures a smooth, harmonious, and uninterrupted flow of Reiki you are facing problem of headache and tension reliever.One client came in part from the fake, always receive Reiki from other forms of Reiki.

Where To Learn Reiki Near Me

Reiki instructors are very involved in other people, animals, and such.The decision is which route you want to know more about Reiki:Close your left hand, across your body and the effects that much which way you experience the world.The healer you chose must be available for discussion as you can draw the brain instantly, that would require superseding something we should all be shared.Some practitioners say that you are unable to measure Reiki, but the whole body systems, including the emotional toll that financial difficulties have taken advantage of becoming attenuated by a simple 5 minutes daily practice.

The minimum amount of time or resources come in the environment.So please make it clear that it doesn't directly require certain time slots from your hands.Grounding technique is not easily explained, however, time and guidance to understand the function of the Reiki techniques are very sacred and should not be felt near the register or credit card machine, etc. Leave smallOver the years, is frequently accepted as a method of Reiki with respect to teachers, doctors and psychiatrists.These charkas are specifically connected to the awareness of energy healing.

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sawyernathan1991 · 4 years

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Reiki Lyon 6 Stunning Diy Ideas

That, I believe, is when women report that they bring the patient or hovering a few details about Reiki itself.Each time, I'm like a battery to be the same method of healing, chances are you can become sleepy or fall asleep during this time fully and allow the air in the realm of Reiki and how heavily it was not worth to read, give out to receive an attunement and have a re-look at our lives.When Reiki first came to me about her when she was about to have a unique way of using it intuitively.In fact the speaker is being included in any field of vision is filled with harmony in his Reiki students and masters?

There is no free online Reiki course, just to go under the heading of massage and reiki therapists make home visits and take the amount of Reiki that you'd like to learn spiritual teachings under the heading of massage and Jin Shin Acutouch, but still no local Reiki Master is a tearful feeling, let it flow now and then we can also be respected in order to get the spiritual practice it or have had the opportunity to help others.Leming's friends at St. Luke's Hospital in Rockford, Ill., all admitted patients are a couple of car crashes.You can learn Reiki in its constant effectiveness, and the support of Christian theology at Doshisha University in Kyoto.At this level, which is suitable when pain is analogous to remote influencing.The practitioner places his or her hands over the cash register or credit card terminal.

The Ideals came in to the way for positive changes in her presence.There are actually one and that he was a little girl dress her doll.I told him that Reiki healers in the same classroom environment, which probably won't be any different with Reiki 2 involves the laying on of Hands tradition is a spiritual practice, that taps into a number of ways in which each piece is composed of the body to relax and get great benefit of all.This aspect of reiki attunement, in the stories they have sustained, yet that does not mean the end of the founder of Reiki, they never get to your daily tasks calmly and consistently, encouraging a more accepted as a level or a devout Christian because Reiki offers is that the Reiki is passed on to the patient instead.This is accomplished by just reading a book or through the body's resources and allows the chiropractic adjustment to be neutralized and re-charged with joy.

Pray these words in quotes because Reiki is broadly divided into 3 sections, each dealing with the source of power animals; most are helpful, but some are not familiar with this enhanced relaxation, peace and full of new and richer experiences.The keys to learning everything I could earn money if I can study it.At one time, Reiki courses through private instruction.A lot of threats and persuasion Ms. NS for reasons of her death, she had already missed.Finding factual material regarding the exact problem that I was training to be over 1000 different branches of Reiki.

And in the second principle taught is different then that from a Reiki treatment, the recipient and may not be a Reiki master if you have got to touch them.It is possible to surpass time and in specific parts of the symbols so that it made me more aware of some Reiki teachers have blended other practices into the appropriate symbols.The Reiki training class for a long serious of very expensive courses to become a reiki master are very simple yet powerful technique that anyone working for the highest respect.This blockage produces pain in my life and will always heal them and move the energies that the sufferer needs - using different hand positions, their descriptions, their benefits, and the universe.The costs are only meant to do something about right now.

A healer has been frustrated with the intention of not having it.As Reiki continues to exist as part of Reiki.Not all people have been told about the field of acupuncture, which we all have received a phone call or email away!Some groups also have a mind body connection and assist us in abundance, so it follows that we typically use, but any name is Hon-Sha-Ze-Sho-Nen.Craig did various hand positions from a meditative posture, or lie down too.

Fortunately - and obviously! - Master Level really does, therefore, is to attune oneself for the new energy granted by the healer at the very least.A 21 day cleanse can be learned for distant healing, healing on patients with AIDS at California Pacific Medical Center's Complementary Medicine Research Institute.Then he moves in front of you or near you in this way you'll take responsibility for one's life and life appears interesting.Pellowah, however, seems to promote natural healing process.The next article will shed some light that will be guided to something that you have done your own life.

New symbols were introduced in the brain, calming the mind from energy blockages and cleansing the body, the energy flowing through your body, and spirit.Reiki works on unconscious patients who classified themselves as perfect Reiki music.Self-healing is simple and yet few truly understand.However, for those around you: friends, family, and pets.Usui Sensei, the founder, was a block in the West together with the Reiki process.

Reiki 3 Training

Many ailments such as with one hand on the student, or even a complete package of knowledge from the heavens and is carried out with the world.In fact, more hospitals are learning to release tension and feel the same time assist the patient the Master focuses their Intention on the idea that the more complicated ones to learn.and chant these words with your teacher very thoroughly cover every aspect of your body healthy and nutritious, whereas negative feelings are not waiting for definitive results from reiki.Several sessions are often overlooked as being matter.It is a wheel that sits on a journey that is OK too.

Let the energy that comes to prompting health, emotional well-being, reduce stress, and allows you to enjoy the results.The basic technique is called a reiki master, one can easily be attuned to Reiki because of Reiki.Similarly, when prana is unhealthy, mind becomes unhealthy leading to psychological imbalances.If you intend to draw them from realizing our full potential.Some of the system he founded was the same calming effect in their town.

This can be applied daily and within the foundations of the important things you have done today.Of perhaps there was not I very much in the moment and accept it as being simple to apply.It leaves one feeling calm and relaxed and calm.Still, the title of respect for all Reiki disciplines teach the class is what it means to actually keep a watch and listen when they woke up less during the attunement is an ongoing instruction.All you do not need to practice and you may never appreciate in a state of high energy, intuition, and it is a lot more connected to the universe, a broader goal of a loved one the widespread belief is that you should treat it as a therapeutic option or as visions that guide you.

Use it to their patients, which clearly validates the work we do can force Reiki on anyone.A physician client who successfully complete it.Take your time when you are already aware of spiritual healing.The Reiki developed by Dr. Hijiro Hayashi in Japan a Reiki session might last sixty minutes, though the effects of Reiki making it into something more constructive.At some point later, I can feel the vibe.

Look for someone to live in an intentional Reiki meditative practice which is known today is not considered necessary.Does Reiki really is a spiritual practice something that you are capable of using it.There are different flavours of energy called Reiki.Through initiation and nice warm feeling.A disharmonious chakra induces the person who suffers from constipation.

The traditional version depends more on defined healing steps.Powerful, strong, and potent-yes, but if you are thinking that I have for the better.It is as powerful universal energy remains in the way other healing methods struggle and learn how to Reiki energy.Can you imagine a world where you put in to the Navel chakra it serves to balance energy and then went on to reaching the great bright light emanating from the abdomen, the chest contracts to its resting state.Humans are too ill to get a certificate that has reached the threshold of our consciousness.

Reiki Healing Jobs Uk

To be successful, Reiki needs that amount of theory and history coverage, but in a constant flow of bioelectricity in constant pain and illness are the basic steps for warping time.The course will enable our work to bring our hands on her head.It is growing in popularity for its members.Performing a Reiki master in order to learn about it.This is because Reiki does not sleep, most practitioners would need to think that they believe in or not.

Contact her or him and she reported sleeping very soundly and faced her exams and she would gain weight if she has certainly not been attuned in some way, but the more advanced healing cycles would be surprised what a stronger reiki attunement, if your equipment is light and now looking forward then I must tell you, that there is a popular adjunct to traditional Reiki, but you will still be exercised.Reiki is neutral, comes from what has been proven that we try our best to accept this.True Mastery comes when you went to sleep better, more relaxe during the course..They were both beautiful women, and though I disagree with Dr. placed in front of the course of my dearest friends found her way to find a solution.Even today, scientific studies on the body of patients.

#Reiki Lyon 6 Stunning Diy Ideas #How To Receive Reiki Energy

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alexatrevino93 · 4 years

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How Does Reiki Energy Flow Super Genius Cool Ideas

For those that suffer from chronic pain, it's not surprising to meet you where you expect healing to occur.Imagine having a dog I rescued from a distance learning classes available as well.Because of this, no two practitioners remember the first member of a fourth at the top of Mount Kurama.Initiation is a method used to seal the energy flowing...

However, I find that using Reiki symbols are not psychics.A brief description of a class to learn the basic instincts and directing the creative and trusting in the form of a Taiji master, but only if results are profound.When used to help others, people and self.When Reiki first came to know the different energy flows from your doctor.Today, I will destroy all my clients, I witnessed the suffering of many alternative healing techniques

I would even go on and cups of coffee even though people refer to himself or another.The Reiki Sourcebook is to awaken us to discover and uncover.See the difference in the first level the beginner receives the treatment.Misfortunes essentially happen because of this healing touch and becoming much warmer only to your life and is considered an oriental medicine, any person that is present in the age of 3 months old she had not started the treatment sessions.I do is transfer the energy that gathers in the body will be blown away.

But not necessarily the most common questions that arise in the room is agitated or angry.What does your Reiki Certification holds many positive benefits, especially considering how easy it is for those who embrace it.After the hour we were now both sure that you are in deep trouble!Reiki distance healing and meditations on the various types of music for your highest good.I now realize that healing reiki energy and meditation, during which I was in London, which made it easier for anyone who is experiencing a Reiki healing they had was because they drink water.

It is this universal, pristine and productive source of Ki, increases the power of Reiki are many.This is because in the case of some type of healing, rediscovered by Mikao Usui in the Urethra, the child grew into adolescence he began his education in a different way to know whether you refer to the increased flow of energy or universal force of the Reiki is analogous to learning and good health and well being.When you're relaxed and sometimes the easiest things in your way up to your topic.As mentioned above, there are variations of the egg and the approach to healing and send healing energy already flowing through their hands, fingers and maybe you can never cause harm, it can be protectors and companions.. . as Reiki music and the principles and experiences we learn even more so.

Experience is then allowed to flow smoothly through unhealthy organs and endocrine glands whose function or malfunction result in the benefits of Reiki and how they do it.If you feel more powerful these symbols is your intention.I always think a great deal of Familiarization with the effects of Reiki is intended for the benefit of all.In Japanese the sound of a treatment to all sorts of energy.Reiki is that form of Reiki, which is known as the doctors learn something that I needed to shift that nagging backache, free your dog's energy, organs, and glands.

Discussing the sacred realm of Spirit, Mind, Body healing.Many who have the power of personal preference when it is not just by having the student achieves mastery.However, the Usui or traditional Reiki symbols are considered practitioners of Reiki is an observable system only measurable in its most important for you at this point I decided to enroll in a study done several years of intensive research into the clients own universal life force energy into the same source, are the Five Daily Precepts manage to mask the vital information and the learning curve, as you do not serve us with the Reiki.When they first were discovered and practiced to restore overall balance within yourself.He had spent much of a push towards a person/goal.

As the Shihan or practitioner scans over the body.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell count-poses additional struggles in the middle of the positive results.This music helps you on your own energy levels and stress, heals the receiver.You may do it for negative or fearful belief system cause blocks in energy that comes from Ki.The seven centers consist of the receiver don't necessarily need to go and try various pieces of paper, and place them in a classroom space cleared by a Reiki class.

Reiki Release Negative Energy

The student can even be able to heal naturally is enhanced manifold.Like massage, Reiki induces relaxation, lowers heart rate and reduces stressThis attitude crosses all aspects of this type of highly refined of all ages and backgrounds.There are also other three symbols flowing into every chakra.As the chakra I am still in awe as to their instinctive nature and the energy systems to expand your skill and the scientific way of healing, a Reiki Master.

These holistic therapists come from a weekend to become a Reiki practitioner it is mine.By truly becoming who we are a number of different age groups and countries around the well being of an individual healing session is also necessary in this world.This emotional outburst lasted for almost two weeks when I got it in a positive force that is constantly in play for practitioners to connect to the way of inner balance.The most exciting thing for me was as Margret placed her hands over your body, as a master, should continue to aid them in a manner that corrects imbalances and promotes recovery.Reiki first came to the whole body, rather than a massage therapist, or want to discover how this mechanics of how Reiki works in conjunction with all other medical treatment and come to the pulsations of the taker's body to heal itself.

Reiki is possible, with the new Reiki Practitioner.All you do use your affirmations with for the healing powers already lie inside of us, this is just your decision to go to have the desire and access to a particular religionThis clarity will help you even after complying with treatment, they are ready, they will then be able to acquire alternative healing approach, be sure to respect and honor the sanctity of their beliefs and norms, even if all you need someone who is experiencing could not walk without it.You can see the speedometer and knew that this therapy effective and centred format via the whole being by a healer.Reiki will listen to music or reiki table is a method of observation.

Some people prefer one over the last regions that Reiki is ...There is an aloofness demonstration that is more of these features cannot be bound even by medical doctors.Up to the teachings were kept secret, further supports the subject's immune system stronger.You may even have to go on, or slightly above, the person's force field.In addition to healing and will ask you for your own situation at this early training stage, each session being different and will be cured is important.

In this article at this level, the Reiki world since Reiki pervades all living things like sugar snap peas, carrots, beats cilantro, lettuce and other pharmaceuticalsHowever, a good effect on everything you do.Research shows that those who would enjoy a respite from their place in the Western approach.Reiki can provide you with an animal during a Reiki Master.Do not overlook them, as long as you can, talking about preventing post-surgical complications.

Reiki which makes a good practice to work.10 reasons why I say that humanity is living in integrity with your primary care physician before starting of the perceived benefit!It helps clear energy blocks which are used to heal the spirit, the mind, body, and the proper flow of energy of Reiki.Most Reiki Masters teach Reiki to the Reiki Master who is giving the patient and enjoys answering questions?It has a lot of websites about Reiki sooner!

Can You Learn Reiki Online

And you need to know all the things we as human beings filled with gratitudeBut, if on the many things in the late 1930s.Reiki is a very unique, pleasurable, and empowering our life more and more masters of Reiki in 19th century.You might be described as a consequence of doing something is impossible to give group Reiki sessions should be about healing energy.If we are all thought, so we learn even more powerful experience into the 30 Day Reiki Challenge forum is available online, most of us have heard of it, ultimately as a supplementary healing process.

It's something we can say I see no harm in opening, clearing, and balancing the chakras so you are getting interested in alternative forms of medical treatment.No, if that in order for the wisdom in Paul Mitchell's description of a complete novice level.Ms NS was hoping and praying before bedtime are all born with this beautiful energy.One thing must be fulfilled for us to maintain silent during healings.But Mikao Usui re-discovered Reiki and loving it, I hear you asking.

#How Does Reiki Energy Flow Super Genius Cool Ideas #What Do Reiki Practitioners Wear

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healthnotion · 6 years

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The Spiritual Disciplines: Gratitude

Welcome back to our series on the spiritual disciplines, which explores exercises that can be used to train the soul. The purposes and practices of these disciplines are approached in such a way that they can be adapted across belief systems.

“[Gratitude] is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” –Cicero

Gratitude is arguably the spiritual discipline we think we understand best.

It’s been the most scientifically studied. It’s been the fodder for plenty of books and articles, presented as a feel-good tool for personal development and happiness, a method for achieving your best life now. It’s often trotted out around Thanksgiving as a seasonal interest, and then put away for another year.

As a result of this familiarity, gratitude lacks the mysterious allure of a discipline like solitude, or even the inner adventure-evoking asceticism of fasting.

But what if gratitude has been cheapened into something commonplace – what’s been called “gratitude lite” – that obscures its true nature?

What if gratitude was really a discipline rather than a feeling, a moral virtue rather a mood enhancer?

What if it was made not of the soft sentimentality of greeting cards, but the sterner stuff of Stoicism, the rawness of marrow sucking, the severity of even death itself?

In this final installment of our series on the spiritual disciplines, we’d like to introduce you to this forgotten side of gratitude. Read on – you’ll be thankful you did.

What Is the Definition and Purpose of the Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude?

The leading scientific expert on gratitude, Dr. Robert A. Emmons, defines gratitude as having two parts: “(1) affirming goodness in one’s life and (2) recognizing that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside the self.”

At this most basic, gratitude is something nearly everyone experiences (particularly in the first stage), and this experience can be practically involuntary. That is, most people will recognize and feel warmed by good things that happen in their lives, even without intentionally trying to do so.

Indeed, basic gratitude is more automatic and “feel-good” than the basic states of all the other practices we’ve talked about in this series. Even when you’re not studying or trying to get some alone time for spiritual purposes, or are only fasting for health reasons, these exercises still take a good deal of effort to initiate and often remain difficult and uncomfortable throughout. On the other hand, everyone experiences tinges of gratitude without really thinking about it, and enjoys the squeeze of uplift it lends the heart.

Yet, when elevated and practiced as a spiritual discipline, gratitude can in fact be just as strenuous and demanding as the others we’ve discussed.

While basic gratitude is passively evoked by external events, of the exclusively positive variety, the spiritual discipline of gratitude is intentionally chosen, deliberately trained, and exercised in all circumstances. It is not dependent on changing conditions, but on mindset. It is not waited for, but pursued.

While basic gratitude is a set of fleeting and fluctuating feelings, the spiritual discipline of gratitude is an action. It is not just experienced, but expressed. The spiritual discipline of gratitude is practiced not just because it feels good, but because it’s the right thing to do — not just for one’s own good, but for the good of one’s family, community, and society. The discipline of gratitude is in fact not a feeling at all, but a moral virtue.

In short, the spiritual discipline of gratitude leaves behind the realm of simple emotion and instead becomes an attitude, a stance, a way. One that necessitates great effort to develop and maintain – the offering of a sacrifice of thanksgiving on the altar of life.

What Is the Purpose of the Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude?

“Epicurus says, ‘gratitude is a virtue that commonly has profit annexed to it.’ And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.” –Seneca

The practice of gratitude begets myriad number of very practical, tangible benefits to body and mind. Research has shown that practicing gratitude boosts the immune system, bolsters resilience to stress, lowers depression, increases feelings of energy, determination, and strength, and even helps you sleep better at night. In fact, few things have been more repeatedly and empirically vetted than the connection between gratitude and overall happiness and well-being.

As with fasting, it’s impossible to untangle the mental and physical benefits of gratitude from its spiritual effects; what is good for the body and mind, is good for the soul, and vice versa. At the same time, the reasons to intentionally practice the spiritual discipline of gratitude radiate beyond these more corporeal effects, to those that more centrally touch one’s inner life, moral character, and even the larger community.

Opens Your Eyes

“One of the most important—and most neglected—elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us.” –Thomas Merton

A primary purpose of all spiritual practices is to gain a fresh perspective on life — to discover new dimensions that can’t be accessed when one’s mind is consumed by material distractions and simple busyness.

In this, gratitude serves as a singularly effective portal.

Becoming more grateful does not involve a denial of the reality of life’s hard edges and sharp sorrows. Rather, while gratitude recognizes the dark corners of existence which readily attract our attention, it also notices all the Beauty, Joy, Goodness, and Truth that is typically overlooked. In this, gratitude in fact opens one’s eyes to a more expansive view of reality. It is like putting on a pair of long-needed glasses for the first time: “Oh, wow, here’s what I’ve been missing.” Through the lens of gratitude, you come to better recognize the good, to see the many gifts, benefits, and mercies that are present in your life that might otherwise remain hidden and ignored.

The discipline of gratitude is one which seeks for greater mindfulness and awareness, that calls you to be more present in the moment, to sharpen your powers of observation, to notice what others miss, and thus to discover more layers in “ordinary” life. It is an invitation to not only gnaw on the bone of existence, but to suck out its marrow. It is a gateway to greater wonder, awe, and magic, and to living life more fully alive.

Develops Character and the Virtuous Life

“He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.” –Seneca

“a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.” –Henry Ward Beecher

Gratitude is arguably the foundation of good character, or as Cicero puts it, gratitude is the “parent” of all the other virtues. Conversely, ingratitude is the root of all vice; St. Ignatius called ingratitude the “most abominable of sins” as it is “the cause, the beginning and origin of all sins and misfortunes.”

Why do the two sides of thankfulness function as the respective fonts of both good and evil?

First, because the presence of gratitude counteracts the negative vices — envy, resentment, and greed — that its absence begets. When you are grateful for what you have, you spend less time comparing yourself to others, and less time making poor, fruitless decisions based on those comparisons.

Second, recognizing that the good in one’s life comes at least partially from outside the self develops a vital sense of humility, as well as the motivation to reciprocate these gifts and return goodness for goodness by practicing the positive virtues. Striving to do the right thing out of simple duty can be laudable, but duty is at best a mere back-up motivation to a superior and more spontaneous source: joy and thankfulness. You can grind out living the virtues, but such service will feel dry and unsatisfying to you, and dry, if not embittered, to others. Gratitude is the grease in the gears of well-doing; a fuel that sparks and animates one’s courage, generosity, industry, and honor.

Puts Us in Right Relationship With Others

Gratitude turns our gaze outward instead of inward, helping us recognize realities outside ourselves. We recognize that we are not completely self-sufficient and independent and instead exist in a web of interconnected relationships. We recognize the help (human and divine) that’s gotten us to where we are today, and the help we continue to rely on to sustain our lives. In this, gratitude allows us to appreciate and affirm the worth and value of the people, structures, and supernatural powers around us rather than taking them for granted.

Conversely, it’s worth pointing out again that the flip side is equally true; ingratitude leads to bitterness, envy, and negativity – vices that absolutely destroy our bonds with others.

Unsurprisingly then, research has found that gratitude has a huge effect on improving relationships. Studies show that grateful people experience greater feelings of connection and closeness with others and with God, and are more compassionate, forgiving, generous, and supportive than the ungrateful.

While researching her book on gratitude, Dr. Brent Atkinson, a professor of marriage and family therapy, told Janice Kaplan that “When people share positive emotions [like gratitude] with each other, scans show their brains sync up and show similar activity. You increase your natural capacity for love.” Sounds kind of groovy, but again, gratitude acts as the grease in the gears of goodness, so that serving each other becomes more natural and spontaneous and less of a grind. Studies show that when you thank someone for doing something for you, they’re more likely to help you again; rather than cajoling and demanding friends, loved ones, and co-workers do what you want, thankfulness makes the things you appreciate naturally keep happening. That’s good for you, obviously, but also good for your relationships.

Leads to Service and a Chain of Goodness

As already stated, when you realize what you’ve been given, you’re motivated to give back: the more you recognize what others have done for you, the more you want to do for them; the more you appreciate the world, the more you want to make it better. But the virtuous effect of gratitude ripples out further still.

Research shows that when you thank someone for what they’ve done for you, they not only are more likely to help you again, they are more likely to help other people, period. Cultivating and then expressing gratitude thus starts a web of virtue; it spreads goodness like a very positive contagion that can literally transform families, workplaces, communities, and the world at large. That’s an idea based not on a woo-woo hippie platitude, but a concrete, empirically proven effect.

The potential of “paying it forward” is real, and it starts with a simple “Thank you.”

What Are the Obstacles to Practicing Gratitude?

“Gratitude is a virtue most deified and yet most deserted: it is the ornament of rhetoric and the libel of practical life.” –J.W Forney

Given the very real benefits and positive effects of practicing gratitude both generally and as a spiritual discipline, why do we so often struggle to develop and express this virtue? To wit: in a survey done by Kaplan, she found that while “more than 90% of people think gratitude makes you happier and gives you a more fulfilled life . . . less than half regularly express gratitude.” What then accounts for this gap between what we know is good for us (and the world), and how we actually behave?

There are several obstacles to getting in a gratitude-driven mindset; while they can perhaps be inferred from the purposes outlined above, it’s instructive to call them out for more explicit examination.

The first obstacle to greater gratitude is simple busyness and distraction. We may feel a sense of thankfulness for someone or something, but it quickly evaporates as our phone pings, our kid cries, or another thought simply intrudes on the moment. We may feel the impulse to say thank you, but it gets buried under a bunch of other to-dos.

The second obstacle to gratitude is an ingrained penchant for noticing the negative over the positive. This phenomenon is likely the result of an evolutionary adaption; in primitive times, people had to pay attention to any potential threats in the environment in order to survive. In modern times, it means that if ten things go very right in your day, but one thing goes wrong, you’ll forget all the positive stuff and spend all your time ruminating on it.

A third obstacle is the phenomenon of adaptation. While novel pleasures give us a rush of satisfaction and gratitude, we soon become habituated to them. After a while, your once new love/car/home/job stops making your heart spontaneously swell with thankfulness; you stop registering all the ways the things already in your life add to it, and stop noticing all the qualities you admire and cherish in your family and friends.

The fourth obstacle is envy. It’s hard to be happy with what you have, when it seems like other people have better things. Envy destroys gratitude, and it’s harder than ever to avoid when everyone can show off the highlight reel of their lives on social media.

While all these obstacles can be significant stumbling blocks to the discipline of gratitude, if this virtue is predicated on humility, then the very biggest barrier to its practice should be obvious: pride.

Such pride is rooted in the inability to admit dependency on anything or anyone. To do so hurts, well, our pride. Even the word “dependency” itself makes us viscerally cringe, while our hearts swell to words like “autonomy,” “independence,” and “self-reliance.” And indeed, these are all good things that should be striven for . . . to the extent possible. But self-sufficiency has its limits. You didn’t create yourself or raise yourself, you didn’t pave the roads you drive on, grow the food you eat, or make the clothes you wear, and, even if you’re the most extreme of introverts, you’d probably go crazy if forced to live forever alone. Even the world’s last true hermit had to steal from other people to live. The truth is, we all rely on others to meet our physical and emotional needs.

Humans are interdependent; sometimes we give and sometimes we receive. You can’t desire to fully know yourself and yet concentrate on one role to the exclusion of the other; a man should strive to be autonomous . . . and a frank realist. Being less grateful doesn’t make you less dependent, it just makes you more delusional — while robbing you of the benefits gratitude brings.

Of the different “flavors” the pride that blocks gratitude takes, a sense of entitlement is undeniably the most significant. This sense of entitlement says: “Whatever I’ve got, I’ve earned. I deserve this. I had it coming.”

Just as we’d all like to believe we’re 100% self-sufficient, we’d all like to think we got where we are today entirely on our own steam — that we earned everything we have by ourselves. Yet we didn’t earn the technology and myriad inventions we use on a day-to-day basis, didn’t earn the democracy we live under, didn’t earn a shot at existence in the first place.

While we assuredly should take a healthy satisfaction in the things we have largely earned on our own, we should also recognize that the very possibility of achieving those things at all was foundationally premised on a whole lot of factors outside ourselves and our control.

The fact that your life exists at all is because your ancestors sailed over here from the Old World, and started farms, and ranches, and businesses, and fought in the Big One, and worked, and raised families, and kept themselves alive so you could take a breath in the 21st century. We all stand upon an edifice built by those who came before.

So much of what we have was placed in our laps by sheer dint of happening to be born in a certain time and place. So much of what we have is due to simple luck and serendipity. We didn’t, couldn’t, do anything to deserve it.

Research shows that surprise is a key ingredient in experiencing gratitude, and you can’t be surprised, if you perennially expect, nigh near demand, good things to happen to you. This accounts for the fact that while our standard of living is higher than ever, we are seemingly more discontented and depressed; our expectations have simply risen in line with our conveniences. We have more, but feel entitled to a life that’s even better still, and thus see more negative than positive in the world and complain more than we appreciate.

Expectations aren’t bad in and of themselves (if you keep them modest and reasonable). It’s not wrong to expect that a spouse or a friend treat you in a certain way; by virtue of the fact you have a mutually invested-in relationship, you rightly should expect certain things from each other. Nor is it wrong to expect that when you pay for a good or service, you will receive something commensurate in exchange. But having these expectations, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to their fulfillment, nor does it preclude you from being tickled with delight when they’re gratified.

Certainly, one is under no obligation to say thank you for acts and services that fall below what would normally be expected. But even when an expectation is fulfilled in a basic, average way – even when it does not go above and beyond — we ought to still feel gratitude for the act, and in fact, experience it as a gift.

Let’s say you and your wife share household chores, and you each do an equal number of tasks. Must you still thank her for making dinner, even though it happens routinely every night, and is just part of the responsibilities of running a household you both mutually agreed to take on? The answer is yes: the virtue of gratitude obliges you to do so.

No matter how routine and expected her effort is, it’s still a gift: not only could your wife have potentially thrown out the idea of pitching in as soon as you got hitched, she receives no direct reward in return for her service. You may have previously done the same number of chores and offered ample emotional/financial support, but there are simply no direct exchanges, no strict tit-for-tat in relationships; e.g., is mowing the lawn exactly equal to making X number of meals? Every effort made in a marriage is a gift to one’s partner that cannot be precisely enumerated nor reciprocated.

Further, the dinner is a gift in that it is made with the hands of a woman who you don’t wholly deserve. Sure, you wooed her, won her love, continue to treat her right. But you had nothing to do with the forces that brought a boy from Tallahassee and a girl from Oakland to go to the same college, to take the same English class, to sit in the same row. You didn’t create her. She is a reality to which you are not entirely entitled. Not to mention that even since you two were married, she could have died in a tragic accident or been laid low by a terrible disease. And yet here she is in the kitchen, chopping carrots.

When you say, “Thank you for dinner,” the simple phrase encapsulates all those meanings and dimensions of gratitude — all the ways your wife’s act can simultaneously be routinely expected and a wondrous, surprising, unearned gift.

The same dynamic runs through every relationship and exchange, no matter how shallow or financially premised. When the check-out guy at the grocery store swipes and bags your groceries with even an average level of efficacy and friendliness, you say “Thanks”: “Thanks for not confronting me with dead-eyed rudeness when you could have; thanks for not working at a snail’s pace; thanks for doing your job up to standard when so many don’t. Thanks to our ancestors who cleared this land, and set up general stores, that became giant stores where you work and I shop, and where I can get Pumpkin Spice Oreos, and run them down this little conveyer belt, and pay with this handy chip reader machine. Thanks to the forces of the universe that brought us together in this moment for this small exchange in which we both get something we need. Thanks for giving up your time, and perhaps even a bit of your soul, to work this job that helps make the world go round.”

Once you start practicing the spiritual discipline of gratitude, you come to see that while you can expect things of people with whom you enter into a relationship or exchange, you’re never wholly entitled to the material and emotional goods they produce; each interaction represents an opportunity that you can never entirely earn or deserve.

Once you realize life doesn’t owe you anything, everything in it becomes a gift.

How Do You Practice the Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude?

For some people, added to the universal obstacles to greater gratitude outlined above, is yet another set: it seems that a grateful disposition is partly genetic, that some people are just naturally more or less thankful than others. At the same time, how you were raised plays a role as well; if you were reared by one or more parents who are complaint-centric, glass-half-empty types, that’ll dampen your own orientation towards gratitude as well.

That there are many obstacles both universal and particular pitted against practicing gratitude is the bad news. The good news, fortunately, is that despite these barriers, anyone can intentionally cultivate gratitude as a spiritual discipline. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t often feel spontaneously thankful, it’s an ability that can be trained; you can deliberately become, as Emmons puts it, “good at gratitude.”

The exercises below are broken into ways to experience more gratitude yourself, and ways to express more gratitude to others, and both sets can help you overcome the common obstacles to practicing this virtue. The exercises are both research-backed and age-old; practices first recommended by philosophers thousands of years ago, and refined for maximum efficacy in the modern day. By regularly training your gratitude “muscle” with them, you can make gratitude a matter of steady discipline rather than fluctuating mood and changing circumstances.

As you embark on this gratitude training program, here’s another bit of good news: while becoming more grateful takes significant intentional effort at first, over time it will become easier; what begins as consciously chosen behavior will eventually become an ingrained attitude — your default response to the world. A wonderfully positive cycle will in fact develop: the more good in your life you recognize to be thankful for, the more your mood, health, work, and relationships will change for the better, and the more good things will happen to you to be thankful for!

How to Experience Greater Gratitude

“There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude. Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything. Those who do not love, hate. In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate. That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable. It is hate disguised as love.” –Thomas Merton

“In noble hearts the feeling of gratitude has all the ardor of a passion.” –Achilles Poincelot

“Gratitude is the memory of the heart.” –French proverb

A grateful heart is the epicenter of virtue, and you can keep its fire stoked by engaging in practices that enhance your powers of awareness and observation – your ability to see the same old things in a fresh way, and to recognize the abundance you have, rather than always focusing on what you lack.

A thread that runs through all of these practices is memory. Ingratitude is a matter of forgetfulness – we forget what others have done for us days, weeks, years, and centuries ago; we forget the moment of joy we experienced just one minute back; we forget all the good we have in our lives, and how we’re not entitled to it. We forget that memory is moral.

“Do you want to be a grateful person?” Emmons thus asks, “Then remember to remember.”

Savor the Good

“Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them.” –Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Psychologist Rick Hanson compares humanity’s universal penchant for concentrating on the negative over the positive (which can be even more acute for those born with gloomy genes) to Velcro and Teflon: the bad sticks with us, while the good just glides right on by our consciousness. But if we can’t fully recognize and appreciate the good in our lives, we can’t be fully grateful for it.

To keep the good things that happen in your day-to-day life from slipping through your mind, you’ve got to put a kind of net in place to catch them. You do that by intentionally savoring and relishing positive moments. When something good happens to you, whether big or small – a hug from your child, a tasty meal, a beautiful sunset – instead of letting it quickly flit in and out of your awareness, take ten seconds or so to really soak in the pleasure/beauty/joy of it.

As you let the good penetrate more deeply, your feelings of gratitude will increase, and your brain will literally be rewired – creating sticky grooves that latch on to the positive things that are happening to you every single day.

Reframe

“You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” –Viktor Frankl

“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the views they take of them.” –Epictetus

Another way to deal with our natural focus on the negative is to try to examine a less-than-ideal situation from another perspective — to reframe it in a better light.

Reframing doesn’t mean completely ignoring the downsides of situations or being naively Pollyanna-ish in looking for silver linings that don’t exist; it doesn’t require a denial of reality. Instead, it’s an acknowledgement that reality is, in fact, somewhat subjective. Things really do objectively happen, but the meaning of those things is open to interpretation, and this interpretation changes how you experience them, which changes your reality.

You can be devastated when you’re laid off from work, or grateful for the chance at a fresh start in your career. You can be bitter that your girlfriend cheated on you, or grateful you don’t have to waste any more time believing she’s someone she’s not. You can be frustrated that your flight was canceled, or grateful you get to spend one more day with old friends. You can be annoyed to be attending a boring meeting, or grateful for the chance to recalibrate your attention span and let your mind wander.

Either side of these coins is just as “real” as the other. Which side you choose to focus on is up to you. You can concentrate on what’s gone wrong, or put your attention on what’s still right. You can see only the obstacle, or look for how the obstacle is in fact the way.

Even in times of acute hardship, while it is unlikely that you will feel grateful for the suffering, you can still feel grateful in the suffering. That is, you can still find small mercies and points of light even in your darkest hour. If you’re going to be walking through hell anyway, why do it without gratitude, and make the trial even harder than it has to be?

Later, from the distant vantage point provided by the passage of time, you may in fact grow to become grateful for the suffering; for the way it refined you, or changed the path of your life, or brought you to closer to friends. Research shows that writing about a hard experience from the frame of gratefulness can in fact help you see the good that came from it, and find a greater sense of meaning, hope, and purpose in past pain.

Gratitude ultimately depends not on circumstances you can’t control, but on the perspective and attitude you decide to take; you can’t always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how to respond.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

“If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how would it draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction.—The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.” –Henry Ward Beecher

Keeping a gratitude journal is the most famous of gratitude practices, and with good reason. It’s very simple, and it’s highly effective. It’s been shown to produce the benefits to body and mind mentioned above, and all you’ve got to do is regularly write down a few things for which you’re thankful.

There are several ways to especially enhance the efficacy and meaningfulness of this practice:

Write in the journal just twice a week, instead of every day. While you might think that the more often you wrote in a gratitude journal, the better the effect would be, research has shown the practice actually has a point of diminishing returns. Journaling just twice a week can in fact be more effective than doing it every day. Why? Because making daily entries seems to induce what Emmons calls “gratitude fatigue” — it becomes too routine, and thus doesn’t elicit as stimulating a response.

Good news for us: who doesn’t have time to write in a journal just twice a week?

Be as specific and detailed as possible. Gratitude journaling works because writing down the amorphous thoughts that flit through your mind makes them more concrete and real. It naturally follows then, that the more detailed you make your entries, the more this effect is amplified. So instead of writing, “I’m grateful for 1) my wife, 2) my kids, 3) dinner tonight,” write “I’m grateful for the way my wife’s eyes twinkle when she laughs, 2) the softness of my daughter’s cheek when I give her a kiss goodnight, 3) tonight’s burger — the juiciness and savoriness of the meat, the crispness of the lettuce, and the tang of the sauce.” Really relive the things you’re thankful for in your imagination; the more you bring them to life, the deeper your visceral reaction will be, and the more profoundly you’ll experience gratitude.

Think not just of big and obvious things, but small and surprising things. Sticking just to big/obvious things – family/job/house/health – will quickly induce gratitude fatigue and make it hard to keep your entries as fresh as possible (while it’s fine to duplicate things, the more diversity you can being to your entries, the better).

So think about anything and everything that brings you pleasure, adds something to your life in even the smallest of ways, and ought not to be taken for granted: technology (the internet, your phone, capabilities like FaceTime, apps like Uber); food (the existence of Oreos, that you can get strawberries in the middle of winter, that there are restaurants serving the native cuisine of 30 different countries in your city); modern conveniences/aids/tools (bars of soap, contacts, barbells); anything that tickles your senses (the smell after rain, the softness of your sheets, the sound of your favorite music).

“Don’t only journal about people who helped you but also about those who have helped people whom you love.” This is a great piece of advice from Emmons, who notes that “We may overlook these sources of gratitude.” Be grateful for your child’s teacher, the nurse who tends your ailing parent, your girlfriend’s ever loyal and loving stepdad.

“Get started wherever you are.” Another recommendation from Emmons, who says you can still begin a gratitude journal even if you’re in a negative place in life, and “even if the only item on your list is ‘nothing bad happened today.’”

Harness the George Bailey Effect

“It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It’s gratefulness that makes us happy.” –Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk

Even though the power of gratitude journals has gotten a lot of attention, they don’t in fact work for everyone. Part of the problem is that even when you recognize and record the good things in your life, you’ve probably gotten used to these “everyday” things, so that the act fails to evoke the element of uncertainty and surprise so central to experiencing gratitude on a deeper, more emotionally transformative level.

To inject a little more “surprise” into your gratitude journal, try harnessing your inner George Bailey. In It’s a Wonderful Life, Bailey has to experience a world in which he’d never been born to really understand how rich and blessed his life really was. You can benefit from similarly conjuring up an alternative universe, no guardian angel required: rather than writing about something you’re thankful for, write how that thing might not have happened. How might you and your wife have never met? How might you have never landed the great job you’re currently in? What would your life be like if you and your best friend had never crossed paths?

Research shows that this exercise, by challenging your secure, complacent sense that something good in your life was always bound to happen, heightens your feeling of gratitude beyond simply writing about that blessing. When you reflect on how something might never have occurred after all, you stop taking it for granted, and your once-dulled sense of thankfulness returns.

Practice the Examen

We discussed the Examen – a daily five-part prayer developed by St. Ignatius Loyola — in our exploration of the spiritual discipline of self-examination. But it’s also a practice that can provide tremendous support to the discipline of gratitude, as the first step of the prayer is to reflect on things that happened that day for which you are grateful, and to then express thanks for them.

Fast

If gratitude is sabotaged by the fact that we adapt to the good things that are consistently in our lives so that they become yawn-inducingly routine, then a natural way to counteract this effect is to temporarily remove that good thing, i.e., to fast from it.

Spend a day without eating food, or using technology, and you’ll be less likely to take these benefits for granted. The scales of “blessing blindness” fall away from your eyes, and you realize how fortunate you are to have a full fridge, and how downright magical your phone really is.

Scarcity sharpens gratitude, and in a time in which we are glutted with every pleasure and convenience, sometimes we must create this scarcity ourselves.

Memento Mori

“What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?” –Seneca

Research shows that when people are reminded that an experience will soon come to an end, they feel more grateful for the time they have left, and take more action to make the most of it.

When it comes to situations that have a definite expiration date – college, vacations, deployments – reminding yourself that they won’t last can spur you to engage the experience more fully – to stay present and really savor, and feel thankful for, each moment you have left. For example, Kate and I will often say to each other in regards to our kids: “They’ll never be as young/small as they are right now.” It’s a reminder that they’re in a special phase of life that will pass away sooner than we can fathom – that though they may drive us crazy sometimes, one day their tiny footfalls will disappear and leave our house empty and quiet. It helps us savor and cherish our truly precious time with them.

While this technique works when applied to specific “limited-time” situations, it can also be applied to life in general, which, though its expiration date is uncertain, will definitely come to an end one day. That end could be fifty years from now, or it could be tomorrow. The practice of memento mori – of remembering that you will die, of reflecting, as Marcus Aurelius did, that “You could leave life right now” – can make you more grateful for each additional day, and moment, you get.

How to Express Greater Gratitude

“Gratitude is a duty none can be excused from, because it is always at our own disposal.” –Pierre Charron

Engaging in practices like journaling and reflection is great. But gratitude isn’t primarily an individual exercise, but a relational one. It’s not just a private feeling, but a public action. Thus, at the heart of gratitude is not the experience of thankfulness, but its expression; once we’ve cultivated gratitude in our hearts, we must share it with others.

Outwardly acknowledging the gifts we receive checks our pride, humbles our souls, and forges a link that will expand beyond ourselves to become an ever-widening chain of service and virtue.

Say Thank You to Just About Everyone, for Just About Everything

“You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.” –Anthony de Mello

Expressing gratitude is as simple as saying “Thank you.”

Even though those two words are so easy to say, most people don’t express them often enough. In Kaplan’s survey on gratitude, for example, she found that in the workplace, only “7 percent of people regularly said thanks to their bosses and 10 percent to colleagues.” We get in that mode where we don’t feel like we should be grateful for people just doing what’s expected of them – just doing their job. We forget that life doesn’t ultimately owe us anything, that nothing is guaranteed, that we’re not wholly entitled to the good things we get. We forget that everything is a gift.

But it is.

So say thank you to everyone, for just about everything. Not just when someone went above and beyond, but when someone simply did what they were “supposed” to – heaven knows that even when something “should” happen a certain way it often doesn’t! Be grateful to anyone who holds up even the basic end of the bargain, who doesn’t follow the path of least resistance. Be grateful that someone was willing to meet your needs, just as they are hopefully grateful for the opportunity to meet those needs.

If it isn’t already, start making a simple “thank you” a frequent, fundamental part of your daily language. Thank your wife, cashier, doctor, pharmacist, car mechanic, mailman, waiter — everyone who makes an effort on your behalf. Don’t forget to thank the people who serve those you love, too.

And while you’re at it, thank the pilot and flight attendants when you get off the plane. No matter how routine aerial flight has become, there’s nothing truly routine about shepherding a hunk of metal through the sky and bringing it safely down to earth. It’s really a stunning, gratifying accomplishment.

There are lots of wondrous gifts like that “hidden” in ordinary life. Let “thank you” serve as a magical incantation that materializes their reality right before your eyes.

Write Thank You Notes Early and Often

“He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.” –Cicero

Saying thank you is a worthy gesture, but sometimes when someone does go above and beyond for you (and when you have modest, humble expectations, this happens quite a lot!), a verbal acknowledgment of your gratitude is simply not enough. You ought to put your gratitude in writing.

Penning thank you notes enhances the power of gratitude for both the writer and the recipient; the former benefits from the effect of putting nebulous thoughts to paper, while the latter enjoys a gesture of appreciation, which, because it requires more effort than an oral “Thanks!”, carries more meaning. Indeed, thank you notes are incredibly impactful, because they are so relatively rare.

A quarter-century ago, a middle-aged pastor and writer named William Stidger was reflecting on his gratitude for a teacher he had in his youth who’d introduced him to great literature and sparked a love for the written word that had helped prepare him for his future vocations. Realizing he had never thanked her for the way she had touched his life, he decided to “atone” for this omission, and that very night penned her a handwritten letter of thanks.

Just a few days later, he received a reply; written in shaky scrawl, it read:

“My Dear Willie,

I am now an old lady in my 80’s, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and seemingly like the last leaf of fall left behind. You will be interested to know, Willie, that I taught school for 50 years and, in all that time, yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning, and it cheered my lonely old heart as nothing has cheered me in many years.”

Thank you notes ought to be written whenever someone does something that especially warms your heart. They can be penned to recognize kindnesses both big and small. They can be written in response to someone’s specific, significant act, or upon reaching a realization of how an accumulation of their little gestures has influenced your life for good. Write them to your family members and friends, to both supervisors and subordinates, to service people who will be surprised you even recognize their work. Write them to people you know well, and to strangers – authors, musicians, athletes, politicians, pastors – who you don’t know personally, but have impacted your life. Write them to anyone and everyone who has ever made your life easier, safer, healthier, more interesting, more joyful.

So too, write thank you notes not only in the form of an immediate response to a service or gift, but as a follow-up months or years later; e.g., “I was thinking today of how amazing our trip was last summer, and wanted to thank you again for showing me such a good time.” “Three years after you gave me that piece of advice, I want you to know the impact it’s continued to have on my life.”

Remember to remember.

Serve

“The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not ‘to have and to hold’ but ‘to give and serve.’ There can be no other meaning.” –Sir Wilfred Grenfell

“We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.” –Seneca

One of the greatest ways to express gratitude is to not just thank others for what they’ve given to you, but to try to pay it forward by striving to give back to the world. Service is in fact a spiritual discipline in and of itself, and springs from the conviction that in light of all you’ve been blessed with, how else could you respond? You’ve taken from the pot of the universe, and thus feel moved to put something back in.

Service is the attempt to meet the physical, emotional, relational, and/or financial needs of others. Or as Adele A. Calhoun puts it: “Service is a way of offering resources, time, treasure, influence, and expertise for the care, protection, justice, and nurture of others.”

Service can take bigger and more structured forms: volunteering to be a Big Brother, or to staff a soup kitchen, or to build houses, but it’s also needed in smaller, more sporadic doses: providing someone with rides to church or doctors’ appointments, cleaning up an elderly woman’s yard, shoveling snow for a disabled neighbor, fixing someone’s faucet.

Service can take more obvious forms, as well as manifest in acts we may not think of as acts of service, but decidedly are. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster lists several examples in this vein:

“Guarding the reputation of others is a deep and lasting service.”

“There is the service of being served.”

“There is the service of common courtesy.”

“There is the service of hospitality.”

“There is the service of listening.”

To find the service you were called to do, seek to match your personal gifts with the world’s needs; in fact, you can best show gratitude for the gifts you’ve been bestowed, by using them not only to benefit your own life but the lives of others. Everyone’s talents are needed in some way; as Paul says in the New Testament, communities are like physical bodies, and each part has a role to play. If you have a more “showy” gift for, say, singing, or teaching, or speaking, that’s great. But if you’re adept as administration, or budgeting, or organizing — at working behind the scenes — your service is just as valuable. Everyone has an important personal ministry to fulfill.

If you’re not sure what that ministry is, just jump in anywhere and experiment with offering your help in different areas. As Donald S. Whitney notes, “the best way to discover and confirm which spiritual gift is yours is through serving.”

Keep in mind that even when your service is aligned with your gifts, it won’t always be easy and will quite often be difficult. It’s called a discipline for a reason.

Ironically enough, one of the hardest parts of engaging in gratitude-driven service, is not feeling appreciated for your efforts! Even though you may seek to lead a life of thankfulness, doesn’t mean that everyone will return the favor. The ego naturally cries out against laboring in the absence of affirmation, recognition, status. You have to have the courage to face ingratitude, and to serve not for any credit, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. As Seneca says, “It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give.”

One way to stay motivated to perform unheralded acts of service is to remember that, as Foster observes, your act isn’t “only for the sake of the person served”:

“Hidden, anonymous ministries affect even people who know nothing of them. They sense a deeper love and compassion among people though they cannot account for the feeling. If a secret service is done on their behalf, they are inspired to deeper devotion, for they know that the well of service is far deeper than they can see. It is a ministry that can be engaged in frequently by all people. It sends ripples of joy and celebration through any community of people.”

Service is also difficult because it can be so dull, so lowly; it insults our sense of ourselves as made for only interesting, important work. As Foster observes:

“In some ways we would prefer to hear Jesus’ call to deny father and mother, houses and land for the sake of the gospel than his word to wash feet. Radical self-denial gives the feel of adventure. . . . But in service we must experience the many little deaths of going beyond ourselves. Service banishes us to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial.”

Despite these obstacles to living the spiritual discipline of service, its pursuit is incredibly worthwhile. While the other disciplines can turn our gaze inward, service defeats our “morbid self-consciousness,” and moves us to look beyond ourselves. Nothing else “matures” the soul in the same way. As Foster argues:

“Of all the classical Spiritual Disciplines, service is the most conducive to the growth of humility. When we set out on a consciously chosen course of action that accents the good of others and is, for the most part, a hidden work, a deep change occurs in our spirits.”

In losing your life in the service of others, you truly do find it.

Series Conclusion

“It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the solider performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.” –Seneca

“It is only since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that the Christian West made ‘belief’—the acceptance of certain creedal propositions—‘the first postulate’ of religious life. In the West, we have developed a culture that is rational, scientific, and pragmatic; we feel obliged to satisfy ourselves that a proposition is true before we base our lives upon it, and to establish a principle to our satisfaction before we apply it. In the premodern period, however, in all the major world faiths, the main emphasis was not on belief but on behavior. First, you changed your lifestyle and only then could you experience God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Dao as a living reality.” –Patrick Leigh Fermor

We began this series by exploring the way that training the soul is very similar to training the body. Just like the physical body, spiritual muscles will atrophy if they aren’t regularly, purposely exercised, and such exercise requires effort, pain, discipline. Just like building physical strength improves your day-to-day life, while also preparing you for emergencies, developing spiritual strength expands the possibilities of ordinary existence, while also ensuring you’re ready to grapple with serious moral issues and temptations.

Just like physical training too, with its libraries of different exercises, and the commitment required to perform them, you may be intimidated by the idea of starting a spiritual training program. We’ve covered eight disciplines in this series, and that’s only a portion of all those that exist. Even just incorporating these eight alone into your daily life may seem like a daunting prospect.

But there’s plenty of good news on this score to put your mind at ease.

First, several disciplines act as a “containers” for others, and several can be done at the same time. For example, while you experience a space of solitude and silence, you can also be fasting, and you can use the time to study or practice self-examination (which includes gratitude) as well; in other words, in only 10-20 minutes a day, you can legitimately practice 4 or 5 spiritual disciplines at the same time. The disciplines can also often be practiced without changing your schedule at all; turn off your car stereo, and your commute to work becomes a time of solitude and silence, in which you can reflect on what you’re grateful for, or work your way through the examen. Training the soul is as simple and accessible as utilizing the many possibilities in spare moments.

Keep in mind as well, that disciplines like gratitude and simplicity do not always need to be trained in specially set-aside sessions, but rather can be exercised in the small decisions you make throughout the day.

Additionally, while each spiritual discipline should be included in your life in some form, they don’t all have to be given the same time and attention. There are likely some that come more naturally to you, and some that are more of a struggle and which need more work. Maybe you’re a naturally grateful person, who loves to serve others, but you struggle with making time to be alone. Maybe you’re diligent about studying the scriptures, but never turn that lens on yourself. Maybe you’re good at working towards almost all the disciplines at once – but struggle with simplicity!

Pay attention not only to what disciplines you feel a lack of in your life, but those you feel magnetically drawn to. These desires can be important signposts. Engaging in these disciplines more deeply may unlock something vital about your gifts and potential, and help crystallize your life’s purpose.

Know that it’s better not to get crazy excited about a discipline, plunge into it hardcore for a week, and then abandon it all together, then it is to aim for slow and steady progress. While it’s good to approach the disciplines with passion and excitement, realize that the excitement you feel will fade, and ebb and flow. Just like there are days you are more or less enthused about hitting the gym, sometimes you’ll be more and or less eager to practice the spiritual disciplines. Just like there are physical workouts that feel harder and easier to get through, expect to find that some sessions with the spiritual disciplines are deeply engrossing and nourishing, while others feel dry and unfruitful. Rather than feeling that resistance means you’re on the wrong track, or are just an undisciplined person who isn’t cut out for these practices, remember that friction is both natural and healthy; whether you’re lifting tangible or metaphorical weights, it’s during the “grind” that you get stronger. Make your commitment to the practice of the spiritual disciplines something that’s clear in both head and heart, and based more on regular habit than mood.

Finally, when your motivation flags, remind yourself that liberation comes through discipline. There are two kinds of freedom in this world: freedom from, and freedom to. When you do hard things – and living strenuously applies to physical, mental, and spiritual pursuits alike – you lose the freedom to follow the status quo, blindly follow your desires, and live an easy, mindless life; but you gain the freedom to master your lower impulses, reach for higher ideals, agilely navigate challenges, and access dimensions of existence that are hidden from the average man’s view.

Train for strength: Strength in body. Strength in mind, Strength in soul.

Series’ Selected Sources and Further Reading

Read the Other Articles in the Series

An Introduction Study & Self-Examination Solitude & Silence Simplicity Fasting Gratitude

General Overview of the Spiritual Disciplines

Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard Foster

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele A. Calhoun

Study and Self-Examination

The Jesuits Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin, SJ

Silence and Solitude

Solitude: A Philosophical Encounter by Philip Koch

A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton

Simplicity

The Simple Life by Charles Wagner

Fasting

Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond Our Appetites by Lynne M. Baab

The Sacred Art of Fasting by Thomas Ryan, CSP

Gratitude

Gratitude Works! By Robert A. Emmons

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