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The art of giving thanks in the new year Jim Hatton Friday Dec 30, 2016 at 8:53 PM Dec 30, 2016 at 8:53 PM By Jim Hatton ‘Tis the season of friends, family, pumpkins, nog, a new year, giving and feasting. I call it the "High Holidays." I’ve been at many a holiday table when before the meal we went around the table and each took their turn in saying what they were thankful for. A wonderful practice, and I highly recommend it — not just at the High Holidays, but as a daily spiritual practice.  This year, I’m sure, that as we gather with friends and family, many conversations will turn to American politics. It’s an ongoing energy that so many want to perpetuate. As important as some of these conversations are, I find no inner peace in them. Where I always find inner Peace is in the art and practice of giving thanks.  Appreciation is a powerful practice. Many great thinkers have endorsed and written about it:  • There is an old adage: Count your blessings. Whoever said that was a great metaphysician.  • This refrain came from a song by Johnson Oatman Jr. 1897: Count your blessings, name them one by one, Count your blessings, see what God hath done! Count your blessings, name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.  And, from the Christian Testament: • For everything God created is good, and nothing should be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4) • In every situation let your petitions be made known to God through prayers and requests, with thanksgiving. (Philippians 4:6) • From Earnest Holmes: And so, we need not take the worry upon ourselves, but rather we will "Make known our requests with thanksgiving." (Creative Mind and Success, p. 23, 1919)  • If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you,' it will be enough." (Meister Eckhart) • There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy." (Ralph H. Blum) • A grateful Mind is a great Mind which eventually attracts to itself great things (Plato, who figured out the law of attraction)  • What we place our attention on — with intention — becomes our experience. (Wayne Dyer) The very nature of the universe is love. When we allow the experience of love in our lives, we feel appreciation for life, those who are in our lives, and those things that are in our lives. It feels peaceful.  I like the word "appreciation." Giving thanks is appreciation. When we appreciate something/someone we are in vibrational alignment with our source, our very life-nature. The vibration of appreciation and the vibration of love is the very same vibration-consciousness.  It only follows that when we are in a state of appreciation, a state of love, we draw to us things and people of like nature.  Richard Blackstone: If you do this one thing, develop an attitude of gratitude, and be sincere and genuine in its development, then you will wake up. You have to wake up because when you are truly thankful for the abundance in your life, you then become “aware” of that abundance.  How can we be in appreciation more in the coming New Year? • Have an "Appreciation Journal." Write down and review all the things you appreciate daily. • Before meditation, review what you appreciate. • When you eat, have appreciation for your food. • Before you go to sleep at night, think about what you appreciate about your day.  It’s that simple! Appreciate what you already have today and get in alignment with your true self and in the new year, ask yourself: What do I want to focus on?  Jim Hatton is author (under the name James Apollonius Alan) of “A Spiritual Master’s Guide to Life,” available on Amazon or at SpiritualMaster.co. Send 600- to 700-word articles to Sally McKirgan at [email protected].