My dog had nerve not thanking me for the food I plopped into his bowl! Do I have unreasonable expectations of gratitude?
In this image, the character ‘X’Tzu’ from ‘11:11 El Luchador Gauntlet’ is contemplating the real reason for gratitude. Kicking back, he’s come to the conclusion that gratefulness is an expression of knowing there’s freewill. It’s the acknowledgment that ‘one is in the present’, seeing ‘fate’ only as a specter of freewill viewed through eyes fixed in duality.
Do you really have an expectation of gratitude? People who are rarely present can’t understand what it means when another person doesn’t buy into the excessive appreciation and flatter-worship of the commonly perceived world. Exaggerated gratitude for trees, bodies, health, environment, friends, and family is fine, but not as wonderful as the whole connected experience.
Who should give thanks? It’s tempting to think that gratitude cannot truly be in a place where ‘all things are in service to you, for what would be the point of gratitude if all was already decided.’ Yet this is the thought that stems from a relative vantage, one that only perceives in terms of time, never the here & now.
Should you expect a ‘thank you’? To be in the belief that you are ‘giving’ or ‘receiving’ is to ride a shallow belief system.
Demanding gratitude is unbecoming. Many profess their thanks publicly to solidify their belief systems(s), to give it a pharisee style attention. A god who doesn't know or trust you are thankful is no god at all. Now the professing of thanking individually, when done as an expression of one with totality is pure. That thanks is really a communion with god… unlike the forced social ‘I’m righteous thanking’.
We’re waiting outside the gate, come on out…