Gratitude

This morning I spoke with a man who called from London (UK) to express his gratitude for my guided meditations.  Our local meditation group had just left and I was already feeling quite mellow, but the phone call brought me to a deep state of love and gratitude that has remained with me all day.  I was so deeply touched as he related how much our podcast and CDs have helped him.  As he spoke, I felt such gratitude that this is happening in my life, that in some mysterious way people receive the same grace from me that I have received from so many teachers and others through the years.  It could just as easily have been me thanking him for how much he has enriched my life. When I sit with my meditation group or to record a meditation, I enter into a meditative state and speak from that place.  It seems that those who resonate with my meditations are somehow brought into that state with me.  Today on the phone, it felt as if the gratitude my caller was expressing was my own.  What a gift to be brought into that state of gratitude!  Gratitude is said to be the "highest" possible emotion we can experience.  To me, it is an experience of love -- not the emotion of love but of the very essence of life itself.  There's no way to describe or understand intellectually what gratitude is, but when we have the good fortune to feel it, it's good to dwell in it and allow it to nourish our spirits.