Stephen: This follows on from Neale’s article last week, titled What is Spiritual Growth?, which you can read here.
By Neale Donald Walsh, CWG – May 30, 2014 – https://cwg.org/index.php?b=595
My dear friends… The second major step on the Path to Self Awareness is Enlargement. The 3 minor steps leading to Enlargement are: stopping, starting, and sustaining.
My experience has been that once Contentment is achieved, the soul yearns for more of that experience. It wishes to have a larger encounter with, and a grander expression of, the True Self.
This feeling arises not out of a lack of contentment, but rather, out of an appreciation of it. The word “appreciation” is used here as a double helix. That is, two meanings are intended to be used at once.
1. The first, most common, definition of “appreciation” is: a show of gratitude, as in: He expressed his deep appreciation.
2. The second definition of “appreciation” is: an enlargement or increase, as in: There was a significant appreciation in the property’s value.
When Contentment is appreciated, it is both gratified and expanded. The appreciation of anything expands it. This is a law of the universe, and should not be forgotten.
Allow me, therefore, to repeat it: The appreciation of anything expands it.
When we are grateful for something, we give it the most positive energy. We send it a vibe that is irresistible to the universe. That is because it is in harmony with the core vibe of life. It is the essence of All That Is.
Appreciation, you see, is a form of Love. Gratitude is Love expressed as thanks. There is no higher form of energy in existence than Love, and Love in any form is extremely powerful. Love, and its expression as gratitude, expands the recipient every time. Every time.
The words I love you produce an immediate expansion of self-worth in the person hearing them. The words Thank you produce an instantaneous increase of self-image in the person to whom they are spoken.
Now here is a great secret. The above is true not only with people, but with everything. The energy field of everything in the world is enlarged when love and gratitude are showered upon it.
You can walk gently through a garden, and when you consciously love the flowers and say Thank you, God, for the beauty and wonder of these flowers , you will notice the flowers smelling sweeter than ever.
You can sit quietly by a rushing stream, and when you consciously love the stream and say Thank you, God, for the power and the glory of this stream, you will notice the spray of the mist upon your face in a way that you did not before.
You can lie serenely in the arms of your beloved, and when you consciously love that person and say Thank you, God, for the wonder and the preciousness of this person, you will suddenly see that person as twice the treasure you did before.
Nothing will have changed within the exterior reality in front of you. Everything will have changed inside of you. Your appreciation of these moments and of these experiences will make them come to life in a whole new way. The experiences themselves will seem to have been expanded. Yet it is not the experiences which have been expanded, but your awareness which has elevated your encounter with them to another level.
This process is known as consciousness raising, or what I call “enlargement.” It is when we become bigger than ourselves, larger than we used to be, broader and wider and higher and deeper in our sense of things, in our awareness. It is when we become fuller. Like a once empty vessel, we have poured ourselves into ourselves, and we are full in the knowledge of Who We Are in relationship to Life itself – and of who we now choose to be .
With Love,
Neale