On Gratitude and Reverence

I have been thinking of Tara Singh’s reverence for Helen Schucman, the scribe of A Course in Miracles. He was not confusing her with God, nor implying she was special in the sense of deserving a pedestal or medal. Rather, he was deeply grateful to her, and he was not afraid of gratitude’s expression.

Taraji often spoke about his relationship with Schucman. She insisted he keep a gratitude journal. And later, she asked him to teach A Course in Miracles which, despite his reservations, he did. He placed the course at the center of his life and allowed himself to be guided accordingly. Really, what else is there?

Gratitude is not a list – it is not mental. It can start that way – that is why Taraji kept a journal and later encouraged others to do so as well. We make the list and we see how it grows and then – if we are attentive – something happens. We enter the actual space of gratitude. It becomes our reality, not merely an ideal to which we aspire.

When I am grateful I am in love. There is no other, no better way to say it. There is no significant difference between love and real gratitude. There is an energy to gratitude that naturally shifts my focus from myself – what I need, what I can get, how I am going to get it and so forth – to what I can extend. And it turns out that when I am grateful there is always something to offer. Gratefulness extended is love. The only way to have it is to give it, and it multiplies accordingly.

Reverence is an extension of this right perception of gratitude. When we realize that we have everything, and that our only joy is in giving it to our brothers and sisters, we see that God is in us in a tangible way, as we are in God. This is why I say often that we take the chapel with us everywhere, and that God is never silent within it. Given that profound, beautiful and altogether holy truth, how can we not be reverent? How can we not long in each moment to fall to our knees in joyous prayer?

This life is sufficient unto our longing to awaken to what we are in truth and to our real home in Heaven. No improvement is required and no additions are needed. The interior teacher has all she needs to show us the way to the hidden chapel and the secret altar because they are everywhere always. Nothing is truly hidden and nothing is truly secret. There are no mysteries.

Gratitude is never not appropriate and reverence will never fail to relieve us of all imagined burdens. When you are ready to know peace, you will know it because it is what you are and against such a glorious reality no illusion can long endure.