There is a common expression related to care for the environment: “Leave no trace.” It could relate to the outdoors or the office. I used to think that was quite an honorable desire until I heard a new one: “Leave the place better than you found it.” That is an invitation to continually create and bring more Love, no matter where you are.

I have been considering the impact of Love on my world. I am feeling particularly drawn to magnify the atmosphere of Love and gratitude in my life, because there are things I just haven’t been able to figure out—things where I am required to create and I just don’t know why it seems like such a challenge, why I feel so much resistance, whether it’s in myself or in the people I’m doing it with. At times I feel frustrated and challenged.

Just this week, Oprah and Deepak Chopra began a twenty-one-day meditation on manifesting grace through gratitude. Much of what Deepak Chopra is speaking about is what we’ve been talking about with regards to the universality of Love, and God worshipping you before you even became aware of worshipping back. They are proposing that the way to knowing this Love, to receiving this grace, is through gratitude. I feel the accuracy in this practice and know I will find grace in these challenging circumstances by increasing my level of gratitude and openness of heart.

Joyce Karchere wrote a song with words I spoke a while ago. It goes like this:

You are Whole,
You are Holy,
Magnificent and Wonderful,
You are an instrument of Love.

I spoke those words at the time as a way of offering prayerful blessing to my two nieces. I spoke them again as an invitation to my world to know this truth. We don’t often use that kind of language when we address other people. I believe these words represent the voice of God and they are being spoken to you and to each one of us.

You are Whole,
You are Holy,
Magnificent and Wonderful,
You are an instrument of Love.

We have been created by Love, created by the Creator, and the Creator loves and adores and worships Creation because it is the manifestation of Love itself—the Creator’s Love is in the Creation. To live a fulfilling and happy life it is necessary to open your heart and feel this truth about yourself. Grace naturally follows.

If you were holding a baby—your baby or any baby—these words could flow to them so easily. “You are perfect and beautiful. You are magnificent and holy.” People have touched their own holiness in the presence of a baby because they see the innocence and are awed by it and then feel a connection to it in themselves. The baby knows nothing else but this innocent holy state. We feel it and offer our adoration to that baby. Do we think that the Creator is doing any less than that? Not only with a baby, but with us? These are the worship-filled words of the Creator: “You are whole. So magnificent!”

So what happens? Why do we forget? These words, “You are whole, holy and magnificent,” are much easier said to another person than they are said about ourselves. I know every time I have spoken that to people, they’ll nod, but when I ask, “Do you know this about yourself? Do you see your own magnificence, your own holiness? Or are you just seeing it outside yourself? Do you feel other people, other things are more precious than you are?” they are not so sure.

Until you actually acknowledge it about yourself, seeing it outside yourself will be the result of comparisons. “Oh no, you are the holy one. You are the magnificent one, not me. You are the one who is bringing all this Love into the world, not me.” I have a friend who says, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And when we in fact start comparing our expression and ourselves to other people, we start stealing our own joy.

In this meditation that’s being offered by Deepak Chopra and Oprah, they speak about gratitude freeing up the space in the heart, allowing grace to come into your experience. Deepak says, “The universe is my mother.” Therefore, being in gratitude allows the Love of your Mother to move through you. You receive the blessing of the Universe and you know grace.

Gary Chapman wrote a book entitled The Five Love Languages. It teaches people to express Love in their partner’s language. People hear things differently and feel things differently. We may think we are speaking the same language, and yet we may not be conveying the message in a way that means the same thing to the person to whom we are expressing our Love. This is a human dilemma. It is not a problem for the Mother.

If you are practicing gratitude, allowing yourself to be thankful for something, which gets returned by the Mother, that grace will always be in your language. The Mother, the Universe, Love, does not show you grace in a way that’s complicated in your own thinking. It comes in a way that is so natural and soothing to you. The language of Love to your heart is spoken by the Universe. Love speaks in the native tongue of your heart. What your heart needs to hear and feel and know is received through the grace of the Mother, both inside and out. It’s Love’s language. It makes it easy for you to see the wonders that are there.

For example, if you allow yourself to be in gratitude you have the experience of peace. Have you ever noticed that? When you take time to actually think about things that you are grateful for, you start feeling at peace. That peace is already inside you, and how peace feels to you is uniquely yours. You have this peaceful experience in your language, in your body, because it is you.

When you feel gratitude, you might feel stillness and joy. That joy is already residing in you. It is you. But when you allow yourself to feel gratitude, that familiar stillness and joy, that grace, is known. That joy, peace and stillness also flows back to you from the outside world. You start feeling joy for all kinds of things that are happening outside yourself. The snow looks different. The garden looks more beautiful. You start seeing a beautiful design everywhere, even though nothing has physically changed.

While taking time to be in gratitude you may find that the perfect answer appears in this brilliant mind of yours that couldn’t seem to figure things out, and that which seemed impossible is seen in grace.

Gratitude is the best fertilizer for unsolvable problems. With gratitude you become open to the brilliance of grace; you see design that wasn’t visible before. Love is certainly everywhere, but design is essential for Love’s Creation. When you are in grace you can receive all that wants to be given from the One who is adoring you all the time.

I have the feeling sometimes that a funnel filled with blessings and grace is above my head, and what’s limited its flow is my ability to receive. It has been speaking to me through the language of Love and I haven’t been listening. Or I have been listening with conditional hearing, saying, I’m waiting for the answer to look like this. What opens the funnel and allows grace to flow into me is gratitude. That funnel’s not sitting there empty. It’s not waiting for me to behave a certain way in order to fill itself full. It is waiting for me to let it flow. It’s actually full now and pouring grace into the world. It is limited by my participation. I can be the vehicle through which this abundant blessing can enter into and change the whole world.

People think they know what grace is about. Until you see it right in front of you, you sometimes have a great idea about it. When you have the opportunity to feel it because someone is bringing it, you start to know it in your own feeling realm in a very different way than just thinking about it. We may think of grace as “leaving no trace”—you elegantly moved through life and nothing was disturbed; no one knows you were there.

Grace is about Creation. It is elegant because life is elegant. It’s about transmutation through the power of Love. When you allow grace to move through you, it changes everything. When you bring grace and you are in the presence of a group of people, everyone is blessed. Grace is like the rain: it falls on everyone. And you have the power to bring it.

It brings new thought, new understanding. It brings the realization of your own resistance. It brings solutions to long-standing issues that will never be solved by the good intentions of your mind.

Do you ever go to a meeting where, before anybody even goes into the room, they’re groaning because they know it’s going to probably go the same way it goes every time? We bring our great ideas and expectations of how other people should be. What about the next time you go into one of those meetings you stop yourself and bring as much gratitude as possible before you even walk in the door? Gratitude for the opportunity before you to create with those people, gratitude for the people themselves, and gratitude for your own whole, holy, magnificent self. You’re the one who can bring the magic. So can they, but you can. And you can’t make anybody else do it. You can invite it by bringing grace into the situation. You can bring gratitude, stillness, power and grace into any situation.

You are the instrument of grace. You are the instrument of Love. Grace has often seemed mystical; only certain people were full of grace, and no one really knew why. Is it possible that we could all be full of grace? I know it is.

I want to give you some homework. Every day, think of yourself receiving that blessing that is given to a newborn child. That blessing was probably spoken to you by many people who held you. If you don’t think that happened, step into the feeling that comes when you offer that blessing to an innocent new babe. Feel what it’s like to give it, then imagine yourself receiving it. Remember what that feels like in your body, and know that that is real right now. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to feel it. You are holy. Can you say it with me?

I am holy. I am magnificent.

This is a powerful mantra.

I am magnificent. I am wonderfully and magnificently made. The Being who I am is an instrument of Love. I bring patience and grace and gratitude, the presence of the Mother, holding my world so that it might know this presence of the Father. I act in grace so that life is manifest in a way that blesses the world and changes the world back into paradise. AS my heart is filled with gratitude I know grace.

Change your experience, change the world.