Forgiveness and Gratitude:
Keys to Prosperity, Peace and Loving Relationships

Ruthie Grant, Ph.D.

Are uphill battles, unexpected obstacles and/or financial upsets familiar companions? Weary of entertaining ungracious, ungrateful and unwelcomed guests?   Feel blown about by the winds of fate; doomed by being born under a bad moon, or simply unclear about how to heal relationship issues with parents, significant others or oneself? The key to calming this inner chaos is connected to thinking outside of the conceptual frameworks absorbed in our unconscious during conception, birth and childhood.

More specifically, the solution lies in setting right relationships with ones original caretakers, who, in the eyes of children, are all powerful gods and goddesses whom they totally depended upon for their very existence.   More importantly, there can be no lasting happiness, peace of mind, or satisfaction in the lives of adult children who fail to find gratitude for their original caretakers who nurtured them when they were helpless infants.

Granted, asking an adult child, who has been emotionally and/or physically abused or abandoned by a parental figure to be grateful for such a parent, is asking a lot and can be equated to self betrayal.   In reality, it is not.   Think of it this way: grace is a gift and gratitude is the gateway to receiving grace. The amazing benefit of grace is that once we allow it to enter our lives, grace will fill us with the satisfaction and peace of mind we have been seeking through addictive behavior such as over eating, over working, drug and alcohol addiction, thrill seeking, sexual addiction, addiction to drama, craziness and chaos, or loneliness, alienation and estrangement from others.

Naturally, if we find it difficult to be grateful toward others for small favors or little lessons that can transform our lives in big ways, it is equally difficult to be generous toward ourselves or grateful for the opportunities inherent in adversity.   The irony of adversity is that it can be our greatest teacher when we humble ourselves enough to be willing to learn from it and accept that, from adolescence onward, we played a role in allowing friends, loved ones, or business associates to take advantage of us.   Granted, the lessons of adversity are difficult ones to learn when we are experiencing the pain of betrayal from an ungrateful individual who has repaid our loyalty with disloyalty, dishonesty or inauthenticity.   

However, if we stop for a moment to feel the slap in the face we experience when others respond to our kindness or generosity with ungratefuness, or by taking us for granted, it becomes easier to grasp the fact that, even an imperfect parent or an abusive one, becomes more so when confronted with an ungrateful attitude toward what they are able to give. Ingratitude inspires anger and resentment, not generosity of spirit; it fact, it repels it; whereas, gratitude automatically inspires a desire to give or do more.

Essentially, it becomes easier to embrace gratitude when we give up our sense of entitlement by realizing that no one, not even our parents HAS TO DO ANYTHING for us and NO ONE OWES US.   Thus, any act of generosity or kindness extended toward us truly is a gift and gifts that are appreciated do, in fact, multiply.   The problem with common sense concepts is that common sense is not so very common and we love to indulge and/or excuse foolish behavior in ourselves and others.

The other block to finding or maintaining an attitude of gratitude is the ego. Regardless of how wrong we are, the ego compels us to be right at all costs, when we could just as easily choose to be at peace.   Thus, if we are to become the masters of our fates and captains of our souls, it would behoove us to familiarize ourselves with the following six games the ego compels us to play: (1) dominating others; (2) avoiding domination by others; (3) being right; (4) making others wrong; (5) covering up mistakes; or (6) throwing guilt and/or catching it.   With the foregoing in mind, once we become mindful enough to observe ourselves engaging in any of the six ego games, we can then choose not to participate. And, after disengaging from the game, it then becomes easy to recognize when others are trying to bait us back into it.   At that point, it's a matter of making a conscious choice not to take the bait by not reacting negatively to any form of accusation or attack.   That's the beginning of awakening from The Matrix.

The process of liberating ourselves from the ego is also aided by recognizing that the ego loves to elicit empathy, pity or compassion from others by wearing its pain or victim-hood as a badge of courage. "Misery" does, indeed, "love company." When we operate from the ego, there is a disconnect between emotions, objectivity and logic resulting in a failure to use common sense or to listen to intuition, which is right 99.9% of the time.   In effect, the ego prefers commiserating with other ego driven individuals who are also disconnected, thus, explaining why millions end up living lives of quiet desperation, chaos, or perpetual drama.  

It is also healing to be willing to sit with one's pain or the pain of others in order to hear its story and learn from it.   The ego lives in denial, avoids truth at all costs and will run from the ring of fire or the heart of pain.   Who can blame it, really? Pain is not for the weak or faint of heart and is certainly no picnic in the park. Unfortunately, refusing to face, work through, or learn from pain contributes to diminished self esteem, incapacity to love, or inability to trust again.   Moreover, the ego tends to take everything personally and is quick to jump to conclusions without gathering all of the facts or evidence. As a result, the ego will make assumptions based on only one side of the story: usually the ego's side, which has little or nothing to do with facts or reality. This is how the ego ends up with an attitude against someone who has only wronged it in the ego's mind or imagination.

In that the ego is hell bent on keeping us separate us from each other, our godselves, and the cosmos, while wreaking havoc on us and the very earth that sustains us, it is time to consider that we are at a point in the evolution of human consciousness where it is imperative that we confront the ego and end its hold on us, if the human race is to survive.

An important step in freeing ourselves from the ego, is to acknowledge the wisdom of the analogy Nelson Mandela shared regarding the fact that when we hate (which is separation from others) we are drinking poison and expecting it to kill the person who caused our pain.   In reality, the poison of being a resentful ingrate stems from ego identification which creates stress that ages us, makes us sick and causes premature death. The irony is that the person we are holding resentment against is usually not losing any sleep over us. The reasons are tri fold: (1) most people act out of self interest and do what they do primarily because they consider it in their best interest; (2) many believe that they are acting in the best interest of those they hurt; and, (3) everyone does the best they can, given their level of education, information, knowledge, skills or lack thereof.

Thus, it is foolish to hold an individual, particularly one with arrested emotional development, to the standard of behavior we would someone who is operating from a level of emotional maturity.  

Another powerful death blow to the ego is acknowledging that we do not truly know another.   In fact, we do not even know ourselves, nor do we fully understand the underlying reasons why we do what we do.   So how can we expect to truly know another? On top of that, it is impossible to change others.   Just look at the uphill battle inherent in trying to change ourselves?   Further, we lie to ourselves, so what makes us think that others won't lie to us?   When we take into consideration that most people suffer from low self esteem, it is easy to acknowledge that much of what they tell us about themselves has been fabricated to make themselves look good or to get us to accept them. Ultimately, we have no way of getting inside of other people's experiences or pain that might be motivating them to act from a limited paradigm or world view, and we tend to judge others based on how we would have behaved in a given situation, which is a logical fallacy in that, even siblings who are raised in the same household, do not behave the same under similar conditions.

The other reason to let got of judgment and embrace accepting others just the way they are is because what we resist persists in our lives and what we dwell upon the most or what we fear the most or dislike the most, we will manifest in our lives through the law of attraction.   So if we wan to attract positive people or things we have to look for the positive in others and dwell on that in ourselves and in the world in order to attract that into our lives, which will automatically repel the negative.

  The best method to attract good into our lives is through an attitude of gratitude, which invalidates the ego while helping to heal the world of its old wound of separation from others.   We are each a part of the human heart and anything we do to others we are, in effect, doing to ourselves, good or bad.   So it makes sense to give out as much good as we can since it comes back on us anyway. This includes having the courage to tell others the truth and not allowing them to take advantage of us or to violate our boundaries, which is a gift in that it helps them grow and allows them to learn the lesson that negative behavior does not pay off with you.  

What are other benefits of a grateful heart versus the hazards of a hard heart filled with ego generated resentment and ingratitude?  

Well, resentment and lack of gratitude toward our mothers attracts unexpected obstacles that prevent us from fully reaping the benefits of our labor.   It also creates perpetual struggle in our lives, which is why we should rush to forgive our mothers for every wrong we think they committed against us.   Moreover, a man who resents his mother will never experience a truly intimate, loving relationship with a woman, just as sure as a man who has not individuated or separated from his mother cannot have a healthy relationship with a woman.  

Gratitude toward our fathers is essential for financial security, career success and for making our money work for, instead of against, us. Enough said, unless we like working and having our cash disappear as soon as the check is deposited.  

Resentment toward ones father also causes women to have difficult intimate relationships with the men in their lives as well as adversarial or non existent relationships with God since patriarchy created God in the image of man. In that the role of the male is to protect and provide, an unhealed father relationship engenders feelings of insecurity, vulnerability, and lack of faith in the benevolence of others and the universe, as well as alienation and estrangement.

  A grateful heart is also essential for finding and maintaining true peace of mind, a sense of well being, and a feeling of security in our homes, community, the world, and the cosmos.   Not only will one feel lighter, after letting go of the emotional pain and resentment of the past that the ego loves to cling to, but one will also experience an added bonus of excess weight loss, associated with letting go of the emotional baggage connected to holding on to resentment, as one moves into the warm waters of acceptance, peace and compassion.

In summary, an humble and grateful heart toward our original caretakers, irregardless of what they failed to give us or the harm they intentionally or unintentionally caused, is all that's required to remove unexpected, ego generated obstacles or blocks from our paths; for manifesting and keeping money; or for attracting loving, supportive relationships. And it's easy to come up with just one act of kindness; one lesson we learned from another that has made us a better person or has added value to our lives (even if the lesson is not to be like that person); or, one act of generosity given to us when we needed it.   After we find one thing to be grateful for and hold on to it, the gift of grace can enter our hearts and do the healing for us. All we have to do is find a quite space to meditate, invoke the presence of grace, and ask it to fill our hearts with gratitude and healing.   That is the meaning of "ask and ye shall receive."   At this point in time, grace cannot enter a closed mind or ungrateful heart on its own due to free will. We must humble ourselves, open our hearts and ask for it.   The choice is easy: continue to wallow in misery or call on the gift of grace for profound healing to take place in our lives.