This morning, while taking a nice shower after my Sunday jogging, I did again what I’m doing since a while now: thanking and feeling gratitude for the water which was purifying my body & the more subtle and invisible layers of my energy field.

My Road to Happiness

Then I started my “gratitude tour”…feeling gratitude for my body which was in good shape to allow my gentle 3 miles run; for Françoise who was running with me; for the beauty and calmness of the nature we ran through; for my great jogging shoes which protected my knees and back; and so on…You got the picture 😊

If I had read this many years ago when I started practicing jogging, I would have thought: “Why that guy is doing this? Feeling gratitude for his wife or even nature, why not? But the water of his shower and his pair of shoes? What’s the heck?!”

Well, today I am the Future Self of that “Old me” and a few things have changed…Same soul, same mind, same body (hence with a little less hair), but a different energy inside, allowing a raise of consciousness which in turn brought more harmonious things in my daily life.

And what caused that different energy to emerge?

This is precisely the point of this article: the Habit of Gratitude!

Creating the Habit of Gratitude

It started in my first year as a student of the MKE, with a set of childlike (but not childish) exercises on Gratitude, and the belief that the teachers and my Guide were knowing what they were doing…and sure they did!

After just a few months of being immersed in the MKE training program, I started noticing myself feeling gratitude for mostly everything when I was in a good mood and in good company – a bird singing, the wind in the leaves, the delicious wine drunk with an old friend, my mountain shoes (again!)…

But this was only the easiest part on the way to the Habit of Gratitude, as the biggest challenge had yet to come: also feeling gratitude while living unpleasant situations.

This took me much more effort, energy and faith before Gratitude could also start to flourish in my dark days. First as little buds here and there, then slowly growing and multiplying until more and more of these dark days started to look as ‘not-so-bad’ gardens in which I could walk in peace and without too much stress.

One might think “why not just stay with Gratitude during the nice days and forget about it during the dark days?”

Well, for a very critical reason: the only moments where we have a chance to significantly and permanently increase harmony in our life are during our dark days, not during our bright days!

Really? How could this be?

Here is a little metaphor to illustrate.

The Magic Tiles Metaphor

Everybody agrees that the feeling of gratitude brings peace to the mind and joy to the body; and if we find a way to repeat this feeling often enough, it will eventually create more harmony in our life.

But how exactly does it work? 

Imagine for a moment that the course of your life consists of walking on a road paved with magic tiles, and while you are walking, thanks to a secret power of yours, you are in the same time constructing your future road a few miles ahead by laying down new magic tiles. 

Also, your magic tiles are of two different colors, some are white and some are black. 

The tiles on which you are currently walking were laid by yourself sometime in the past. Which means that the road representing your life is entirely…your own construction!

Another key point is that the magic power of the tiles depends on their color: the white tiles have the power to create the happy circumstances of your life, while the black tiles create your “dark days”!

Furthermore, your current mood determines the color of the tiles you are laying down to build your future road ahead: as long as you feel happy, you are building your road with white tiles, but as soon as your mood turns to some discordant feelings such as anger, fear, anxiety or sadness, you start to lay down black tiles…

And now we have all the ingredients in place to easily explain what is happening in the real life: of course, everybody would like to walk on a road made of white tiles only, but unfortunately for most people this is not how it goes…and it is easy to guess why! 

Creating a Vicious Circle…

You see, most people are unconsciously maintaining the feelings corresponding to the color of the tiles they are walking on…For example, if they are presently walking on white tiles, they feel happy, and they are thus laying down white tiles on their future road. 

But when they are walking on dark tiles, their feelings turn dark too, and they immediately start laying down dark tiles on their future road.

In other words, most people are always building their future with tiles of the same color as the ones they are presently walking on. Which means that their entire life looks like an endless repetition of the same sequences of good and bad days…no improvement ever in the course of their life…

…or Creating a Virtuous Circle

And now we have a clearer picture of what we could do to slowly but surely transform that vicious circle into a virtuous one: each time we successfully create a feeling of gratitude while walking on dark tiles, we are improving our future road because we are laying down white tiles on it (By the way, that’s also how we can verify that “Gratitude is a Cause”!)

The result is easy to see: more and more white tiles, and less and less black tiles on our future road!

Isn’t this magic!

From now on, if you are determined to reduce the number of black tiles and continue to build your road to happiness, I recommend you work hard at learning the Habit of Gratitude and how to practice it at any time, especially during your “dark days”!

Personally, the fastest way I’ve discovered so far to do this has been to immerse myself into the Master Key Experience 😊

With love and gratitude,

Luc