Chief Joseph The power of appreciation, dear ones, is vastly underestimated in your modern society. When you are in an appreciation mode, if you will, you are fully connected and powerfully aligned with your higher self and the Universe. There are few states of being which can align and connect you so quickly and so powerfully.

So let us explore, for a few moments, the power of appreciation.

Think about what you’re really doing when you appreciate, whether you’re appreciating a person, a place, yourself, your home, your work, anything at all.

What you are doing is looking at the positives (or what you consider positive) in that person, place, job, etc. You’re seeing the good in them. And, at least for the moment, you see no negatives.

Two benefits, immediate benefits, come to you when you are appreciating.

First, you bring out more of the good you are seeing and appreciating from the "object" of your appreciation. You can see this most clearly when the "object" is another person. When you appreciate someone and say it, he or she will almost always respond warmly. And that person will see himself or herself in the same positive light you do.

Even if this person you’re appreciating is at odds with the entire world, you, by the power of your appreciation, will elicit from her or him a positive aspect no one else has ever seen. And perhaps never will. That is the power of appreciation.

Second, when you are appreciating anything or anyone, you immediately set up powerfully positive vibration. Your higher self and the Universe respond instantly to that high powerful vibration. After all, your higher self and the Universe (or God, Goddess, whatever term you prefer) exist eternally in a state of high vibration, a state of pure joy.

When you’re in a state of appreciating, you’re catapulting yourself, if you will, into the realms of Spirit, where your higher self, the Universe exist.

And so when the Universe responds to your high vibration of appreciation, guess what happens? It brings you more of what you’re appreciating.

Let’s explore a little example of that.

No matter how wonderful or dreadful your life may be, there is always something you can find to appreciate. Let’s say you’re short of cash. But you have at least a little. So you focus on what you do have, and not on what you don’t have. You give thanks for your blessings, in this case, the little cash you have. And you ask for more.

The Universe will respond instantly to your appreciation and to your asking, and more of what you are focusing on is on its way to you immediately.

But what so often happens is once you’ve put out your desire, you start thinking about all the reasons you can’t have what you want. And so you block the Universe from delivering to you what you want, and what it wants you to have.

Nonetheless the Universe has responded instantly to your appreciation and to your asking. And everything and everyone you send appreciation to, near or far, will, on some level, respond instantly and positively.

Such is the power of appreciation. It’s a resource literally at your fingertips. Yet you rarely use it. It would behoove you, dear ones, to appreciate the power of appreciation.

Copyright © 2004 Great Western Publishing