Growing up I loved Thanksgiving, because we got to have a huge meal and usually had guests over in addition to our family of seven. We ate in the formal dinning room. (The rest of the year we ate in the kitchen dinning area, because my father claimed we were plebeian, not formal). We had turkey and goose (my father thought turkey was too dry) sweet potato casserole, homemade stuffing that the turkey was really stuffed with. Canned cranberry sauce. Pumpkin and apple pie.

But it was really Turkey day, not Thanksgiving because we never gave thanks for anything. It was more of a harvest celebration than an appreciation of the bounty we were enjoying. We were a Jewish family, but our religious observance  was relegated to weekend temple attendance by the kids and only high holiday and bar Mitzvah attendance by the adults. So we didn’t pray at home and didn’t say a rote (or even heart centered) prayer of thanksgiving over our food. This in itself became an actual blessing for me because I was not programmed for performing rote actions or programmed to offer obeisance to a beneficent God.

Today I do perform what  most  people would call prayer over my food. The word God and prayer have limited connotations that I don’t relate to. Prayer is known as a way to address God, usually to ask Him for something or thank Him for bestowing something already received. This particular God is the God of the Jews/Christians/Islamics. He is the all powerful “I AM THAT I AM”. But wait! If Jehova/Yaweh (some of his many names) is really the creator of all that is, why does he need your Worship? Why would he need to punish you if you didn’t follow his orders? Why does he need your energy? (Where your attention goes your energy flows.) I’m going to allow you to figure this out on your own. Here is a link that may help you to put this into perspective. http://www.scribd.com/doc/65820653/The-Archons-and-Gaia.

For those of you that think you are escaping this conundrum by calling on your “I Am Presence”, is the presence you are calling on any different than “I AM THAT I AM”?

Rather than being grateful in the sense of being thankful, I choose to be appreciative of my experience. Being appreciative puts me in closer resonance to that which I am appreciating. To me it is more a state of sharing, rather than giving or receiving. More  a state of being than a state of doing. At one with, instead of indebted to. My acknowledgment of unification. My acknowledgment of Truth.  www.grosenberg.com

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