Appreciation and Gratitude: A Basic Primer

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This is a brief primer on the use of coherent emotions—specifically those of appreciation and gratitude—to affect your perception of both yourself and the world around you.

I wrote this to address a conundrum that arose in a Hathor message entitled, The Multiverse Sound Meditation. In that message they said that it was vital first to enter a state of coherent emotion such as appreciation or gratitude before exploring alternate realities. The reason for this is to insure that we enter the higher realms of consciousness that open to us when we are in a state of high coherency.

While many of you reading this probably know how to enter appreciation or gratitude at will, some of you may not.

This Primer is for those of us, who for whatever reasons find ourselves unable to enter these coherent states. By the end of this exploration into coherent emotions I trust that you will be able to enter into these restorative states whenever you wish.

I will talk a bit about coherent emotions in a moment but before we go any further let me say, right up front, what this article is not about. The goal of this endeavor is not to live in a state of appreciation or gratitude one hundred percent of the time. There will, for most of us, be times when we are rattled by incoherent emotions such as sadness, frustration, jealousy, fear, anger, etc. Rather the goal is to to recognize when we have stumbled into an incoherent emotional state and know how to extricate ourselves at will or how to enter coherency before psycho-navigating alternate realities. Furthermore, I consider it to be fruitful and even a vital psycho-spiritual necessity to deal with the roots of our incoherent states (i.e., unresolved unconscious material) rather than skip over them for the sake of seeming to be “spiritual.”

Various studies, including those conducted by the Heart Math Institute, show conclusively that when we are in a coherent state such as appreciation, our cognitive abilities and problem solving skills actually improve.

On the other hand, incoherent emotions, such as frustration, can have a deleterious effect on our cognitive function as well as our sense of wellbeing.

Incoherent emotions create physiological distress in your body/mind complex, while coherent emotions generate feelings of wellbeing and a general improvement in how your body/mind complex responds to situations around you.

Thus, at your physiological and psychological levels the ability to generate coherent emotions, at will, is a very good skill set to have.

The Hathors, however, promulgate the notion that the cultivation of coherent emotions goes far beyond your own body/mind complex. They say that coherent emotions are crucial when exploring alternate realities, such as the Multiverse.

The Multiverse is a very large concept. It includes not only our own universe but other universes, which the Hathors contend are innumerable in number. This idea of multiple universes is not unique to the Hathors but is shared by numerous yogic traditions that trace their origins back thousands of years.

According to the Hathors, the Multiverse is permeated by highly evolved and benevolent intelligences that freely emanate blessings of elevated perception and healing to all those who reside in coherent emotional states. The key here is that we have to be in an emotionally coherent state to receive the beneficent emanations of these beings. These energetic beings, by the way, come from many diverse spiritual traditions, many of which we have no names for here on Earth.

Exploring the Multiverse in a state of high coherency is one of the necessities required for you to derive the greatest benefit possible. And so without any further ado, let’s explore the practical steps involved in entering emotional coherency.

First of all, let’s define our terms. Appreciation is the recognition of a quality, value or significance of a situation, person or thing. Gratitude, on the other hand, is the state of being grateful or in a state of deep thankfulness.

While these two coherent states are most definitely related, there is a difference in their intensity.

I discussed this in a talk I gave about the differences between cats and dogs during a sound healing training a few years ago. You can listen to this short talk by clicking on the link below, which will, I think, help to clarify the differences between these two states of coherent emotion.

Note: When you click on the links below you will be taken to the Listening Page. After you agree to the Listening terms you will have immediate access to a large collection of sound meditation, lectures and interviews, which are offered to you free of charge for your personal use only, Just scroll down to find the title you are looking for.

Click here to listen to Cats and Dogs: Appreciation or Gratitude

While we are on the topic of emotions and animals, you might also find it helpful and amusing to listen to a talk I gave about a dog, named Merlin, who happened to be my co-therapist for several years.

Click here to listen to A Dog Named Merlin

The Basic Primer

1. For those of you who are already familiar with appreciation and gratitude in your life, all you have to do is recall the feeling. When you recall one of these emotional states, your body/mind complex immediately creates the effect. Suddenly you are in the actual state of appreciation or gratitude just by having remembered the feeling.

2. For those of you are are less familiar with these coherent emotional states, I would suggest adding a step in the process. Think of something you appreciate. It does not matter how big or small the appreciation is, just so long as it is something or someone you appreciate. This could be as simple as appreciating a cold drink on a hot day, a beautiful piece of music, a dazzling sunset, or the kindness of a friend or stranger. The list of possible things to be appreciative of is truly endless.

The idea is to pick something that engenders the feeling of appreciation in you and once you have the feeling, let the memory of what created the feeling drop away so that you are left with just the feeling of appreciation itself.

As you continue to work with this simple method eventually you will be able to enter into the coherent state of appreciation, or even gratitude, in a moment’s notice through the simple act of choosing to be in that state.

3. While it may seem implausible to some of you reading this, there are people who honestly experience impoverishment around the idea of appreciation or gratitude. For these persons, their personal history has been so traumatized or diminished they cannot, with authenticity, identify a single thing in their lives that they feel appreciation or gratitude for.

If you are one of these individuals, there is still a way for you to enter the healing powers of coherent emotion. The trick is to transcend your personal history (i.e., your stories) and rely on your brain’s innate plasticity to create new neural networks using the sheer power of imagination—or creative fantasy.

With this method you will be able to create authentic coherent emotions, which will—by their nature—create magnetic attractors that will eventually attract to you actual situations in your outer reality that will give you reasons to feel appreciation or gratitude for.

The first step in this process to generate appreciation is to imagine something you would feel appreciation for if you were to experience it in reality.

Imagine that you are actually experiencing what it is you would appreciate. Create a fantasy in which you see, hear and feel that which you wish to appreciate. Bring all your senses into play. Make it as real as you can. Your brain/mind will then begin to create both the experiential and physiological responses of appreciation.

After you experience the feeling of appreciation, let the object of your appreciation drop away so that you are feeling the emotion of appreciation on its own.

Experiment with this self-created sense of appreciation multiple times. As you repeat the experience, your brain/mind will create new neurological networks that will allow you to recall the feeling of appreciation at will.

In some cases, when someone manages to create the feeling of appreciation through fantasy, he or she will experience feelings of loss or sadness as he or she recognizes that this feeling is not part of his or her history.

If this occurs, let yourself feel whatever “negative” emotions come up for you. It is important to acknowledge these feelings. Don’t suppress them. Acknowledge that in the current reality of your life you have not—as yet—experienced situations that have created feelings of appreciation.

Just breathe into these feelings. Be with them. Don’t try to change them. When they decrease in their intensity, return to the creative fantasy work you were doing to generate feelings of appreciation.

If you work with this method, you will eventually be able to create the coherent feeling of appreciation at will. This will allow you to work with The Multiverse Sound Meditation as suggested and it will, as I mentioned earlier, create a magnetic attractor that will begin to attract situations to you in your real life that you will feel appreciation for.

A Sonic Ally

If you experience difficult emotions as you work with the method described above, you might find meditating on The Song of Hazrat Inayat Khan helpful as it vibrates the subtle energies of the physical heart. Just follow the listening instructions that are included in the link below.

Note: When you click on the link, you will be taken to the Listening page. After you agree to the listening terms, you will gain immediate access to a large collection of sound meditations, lectures and interviews, all of which are offered to you free of charge—for your personal use only. When the list of titles opens, just scroll down to the one titled The Song of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Click here to listen to and/or download The Song of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Learning how to create and sustain coherent emotions such as appreciation or gratitude are essentially brain skills. And like all skills, they can be learned. The rewards of mastering coherent emotions are immense—both in terms of personal wellness as well as the acceleration and maturation of our spiritual development. Taking the time to master these coherent states are, in my opinion, well worth the effort.