I have climbed on the backs of countless souls; I have manipulated my environment for my greatest good.  I have survived these millenniums, growing strong with sharpened pride and elevated ego. I have saluted my endeavors and honed my powers, sometimes stumbling always enduring.

My path has not been easy.  I will not forget my journey of tears and anguish but also I will remember my journey of mirth and joy. I have crumbled into dust and risen through murk and grime.  I know my history well, sorrow and pain, success and enlightenment.

It’s an old story, tattered and worn like a piece of woven cloth aged with constant use.  How and why have I endured?  Where and when does this force begin and end?

Must I continually give myself credit for this quest?  What mighty strength I have to be at this very point in evolution.  I am ahead of the minerals, plants, animals and most humankind.  I must be in competition for the finish!

Something is missing.  I feel incompleteness, empty and intense.  Am I all there is?  Well, I know there is God, I am grateful to God for my existence.  I know there are higher beings than I; they have my absolute attention and respect.  I guess we all know this and give allegiance. 

Astonishingly, Annalee Skarin shows me that gratitude is part of a divine trinity that opens doors to higher worlds I have yet to traverse.  Love, Praise and Gratitude, she says is all you need.  How simple and humble. I can handle three!  Or, can I?

Through Annalee I am beginning to understand that no matter how persevering I am, I have not been able to survive and endure on my very own.  My physical body would not be here today if it were not for my parents.  I am so grateful to my parents for so many reasons.  But wait, it’s not only my parents but our lineages back to times unrememberable.  My lineages have shaped me into my future.  My race has given me uniqueness and geographical connection.  My clan has given me brotherhood and sisterhood.  My country has given me diversity and common aspirations.  My family, extended and immediate, has given me self identification.

I am starting to visualize the missing piece to my existence.  I exist and persist because of other beings and circumstances.  Without my un-severable connection to all there is, I am nothing.  I am free at the expense of the imprisoned; I am educated at the expense of the ignorant; I am well at the expense of those who suffer illness; I am aged at the expense of those who die young; I am loved at the expense of the unloved.  This concept may seem strange, but it is true.  We owe what we are to those who are not what we are.  This makes us genuinely unique but profoundly humbled.  No matter what our situation is right here and now, we must shutter in humility and gratitude.  For we stand on the shoulders of humankind and reach for the Heavens.

Being grateful and meek when I am feeling well about myself is easy.  However, being grateful to all that I am in debt to during times of devastating crises and plunging depression is the next evolutionary step for my soul.  I do not live in a vacuum with my ego only.  I am a woven being of all that I have experienced and all that I have become.  I have evolved by way of the Macrocosms and Microcosms.  There is nothing too minuet or too grand that I am not connected to and indebted to; I must be grateful for all.

I am an animal advocate, it is true, but I have always been wary of snakes.  I didn’t dislike them and knew they were part of nature and had as much right to live on this planet as I do.  Nevertheless, I was about to encounter my fellow living-kind in a most unusual situation.

It was a hot summer day.  I was walking from my home to my car when I was stopped by the site of a very large snake slithering out of my front planter into the road.  He was over four feet long and four to five inches around at his middle.  He had beautiful black diamonds on his back.  I got my cell phone and called the Fire Department to find out if there was an animal rescue that could come to my home.  The person said the firemen would come by, but if they got a call they would have to turn around.

I then decided to sit on my porch and watch the snake as I felt he was not going to come after me and if so I could run in the house.  He made an attempt to coil his body.  He was weak in this attempt but he did open his mouth and make a hissing sound at me.  I watched him closely as if I were in a trance.  This was a remarkable experience I was having.  He then proceeded to stretch his body out in a straight line, and then curled his body around into an almost perfect circle!  He then started to vibrate, shutter, and continued this strange undulating movement until his long body showed it’s under belly only, a dark to light grey underside.  The movement stopped and he lay still just as the fire truck with firemen pulled up my road.  One picked him up with a long pole -the snake was limp and the fireman declared him dead. We speculated that he was old and had probably lived under my house and in my flower bed and only crawled out to the street for warmth of the pavement.  Well that was that.  I looked to the internet to identify this snake.  He was a bull snake and indeed was at his maximum length for that species.  What a beautiful creature he was and to think he may have lived under my house all that time and I knew him not.

The picture of this snake and his need to circle and expose his under belly before death burned into my mind.  Somehow I felt honored to participate in this snake’s last ritual.

I can not give an explanation of why I felt so grateful for this experience.  But I did.  This is a piece of my puzzle and a way of understanding gratitude.  Of all creatures, I probably felt least connected to this species; and yet, I merged and shared with him in his last moment of deathly expression.  He was a beautiful kind.  I was elevated to a level of appreciation of all creation.  He allowed me to peek into the Higher World of Gratitude.