Gratitude, affirmations, gratitude affirmations. And with a devotional, we read sayings and beliefs and scriptures and stuff like that in the devotional portion itself, and we reflect on a writing piece, usually that is about that particular saying or topic, and then we pray over it, or reflect on it, meditate on it, write about it. And so giving a prayer of gratitude for what specific wisdom we receive each day, gives a different spin on gratitude, and allows us to be more grateful than we ever imagined. And so we don't forget the non material things. And so gratitude affirmations are more of a hardcore concrete thing that we can do. And I explained those in the previous section.

And basically, it's creating sayings that we're grateful for, or sayings that affirm our gratitude in general. And when we make those sayings, we can put them on a note card or a sheet of paper, maybe a note card like this, and Just read them at the beginning of each day two or three times with great expression, maybe pray before you say them or meditate before you say them or after and let them really soak in and say them with great feeling. And then maybe do some kind of meditation to go with that. So there's a lot of ways you can experiment with this and play with it. You could do them before or after a gratitude journal, a list or a devotional as well. And so try different combinations and see what works.

So, number 10, is meditating on gratitude. Meditation, you can read all kinds of books, get all kinds of recordings and get all kinds of great resources on the internet about how to meditate. There are many forms and so I'll leave that to you on how to practice that. But basically, what you focus on multiplies and meditation is basically focused thought or maybe in some cases focused non thought. So you know, why not increase the chances of bringing good outcomes into Your life by meditating there is the creative visualization, course or technique that are recommended by Shakti, Ngawang, that's ga WIN. And meditating on gratitude can be done in several ways you can do a creative visualization, where you visualize something that you would like to create a situation you would like to be in, or something that you are already grateful for.

And you would just sit there for 510 15 minutes, whatever you feel like you need, and you would just focus on that you might play music, you might not whatever works for you in regular meditation, I would do that. It can take many avenues. So prayer, I think is a form of meditation. I think meditation is a form of prayer. And so prayers of gratitude can be forms of meditating and vice versa. But instead of splitting hairs, let's focus on the basics of meditating on a concept.

Keep it in mind, and some of the same practical principles can be applied when praying and gratitude for a concept. Like if you're asking For something, but remember that meditation is a form of prayer in some ways and when the right steps are taken based on, you know the right practices, it can be a very successful form of gratitude. And so, some of the things that you do when you meditate, go to a quiet place, Sit in a comfortable but upright posture, breathe deeply, slowly and naturally to quiet your mind. If thoughts come into your mind, simply come back to focusing on the natural rhythm of your breath. The process is to learn to relax, focus and discipline your mind gently with whatever thought or image or situation you've chosen to focus on. Getting into the state actually takes your brainwave patterns and makes you more receptive to the goals you have for your meditation.

Basically, a relaxed and open mind is more likely to create good results from prayer meditation, and able to connect more deeply with the rhythms inside of your mind. With gratitude and attraction and abundance, and so put yourself in the picture and start to allow yourself to feel gratitude for the situation, whether it's something you're believing for, or something that you already have. And just feel good in that situation. It's people make granite, you know, make meditation out to be something elaborate, it's actually very simple, and people can complicate it. And so if your mind wanders, just be gentle with yourself and come back to it as many times as you need to. That's okay, that's part of the process.

But this process is a chance to have a spirit of gratitude, relax your mind more deeply focus on it more visualize things, and then allow the outcome to be surrendered. And so I know that's kind of hard to do. But if you can surrender that you're even more relaxed. attachment to an outcome can make it very difficult. And so work on surrendering. Use your higher belief system to help you to be able to do that in whatever way works for you.

Once you get done in your mind, write down the desires of your heart. And picture yourself. Basically with that happening to you in the meditation. The next practice is reading or repeating scriptures or sacred texts on gratitude. And so these could be like affirmations. You could even say these are affirmations.

But I wanted to make it a separate thing here. Because if you have a specific belief system, this may have more impact on you than a generic gratitude affirmation not to undermine those at all. And so scriptures or sacred texts are filled with great meditations and verses that foster the growth of gratitude in the mind and spirit. I don't know of a single belief system that does not venerate and show gratitude in its breath practices and beliefs as a cultivated practice, for example, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the the Quran, the punter shots, whatever the case may be are great sources Gratitude where you can find a lot of great sayings. Look at the context within which they are, you don't want to take them out of context and change their meaning. But within the context of those beliefs, you will find a lot of great things that you can meditate on and say and repeat.

But he right readers, e readers, websites and phone apps have hundreds of great features for finding and reading scripture and sacred texts more efficiently than in the past. And so some of the words you might use are thanks, praise Thanksgiving, grateful gratitude in keyword searches to find the text that you're looking for. But do a search across all of them and just focus on one text at a time, you could use multiple texts as well. But take those that resonate with you the most bit in the context of gratitude among all the scripture surrounding it, and then foster a practice of gratitude in your mind to encourage growth. So if you use the word Thanksgiving, for example, type that in as a keyword search in a trusted edition of your Online text, and then see what comes up, read through it narrow down the search and find the ones that work for you extract those, write them down, and then repeat them and meditate on them, I would just do a few, I wouldn't try to do dozens because it can be overwhelming, maybe pick six or seven, four or 510 or 12, something like that.

And then maybe make those your affirmations for each day when you get up in the morning or when you go to bed at night, or when you take that time out for 15 to 30 minutes a day to do your practice. And so once you find those, you know, memorize them and then when a situation comes up, they'll well spring up from your heart and you'll be able to recall them when you need them and use them, save them when you're in a situation where they can really help you and that I think will be very helpful. And so basically the best practices for using these different types of practices of gratitude is to overlap them, experiment with them, try different things and, and just keep the practice going. If you go away from it, come back from it, if you go away from it, come back from it, and and then just keep doing there and keep coming back.

Don't be on yourself, be open minded and just try different things. Those are some of the best practices I can think of when it comes to practicing these different exercises and doing it on a daily basis or several times a week. And so, this is the practices of gratitude. And I will see you in the next lecture, which is the practices of gratitude PDF, and then after that, we will look at how to take some of these and use creative gratitude to enhance them even more