Day 8 - The Magic Ingredient

"A thankful hearth hath a continual feast."

W. J. Cameron (1879 - 1953)

Journalist and Businessman

Giving thanks for food before you eat has been a tradition that has been followed for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians. With the fast pace of life in the twenty-first century, taking the time to give thanks for a meal has more often than not been left behind. But using the simple act of eating and drinking as an opportunity to be grateful will increase the magic in your life exponentially!

If you think about a time when you wore really hungry, you will remember that you could not think or function normally, your body felt weak, you might have started to tremble, your mind became confused, and your feelings plummeted. All of this can happen after not eating for just a few hours! You need food to live, to think, and to feel good, and so there is a great deal to be grateful for about food.

To feel even more gratitude for food, take a moment and think about all the people who contributed to you having food to eat. For you to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, the growers had to plant and nurture the fruit and vegetables with continuous watering, protecting them over many months until they were ready for harvesting. Then there are the pickers, the packers, and the distributors, and the transportation people who drive enormous distances day and night, all of them working together in perfect harmony to ensure that every fruit and vegetable is delivered fresh to you, and is available year round.

Think about the meat growers, fisherman, dairy farmers, coffee and tea growers, and all the packaged food companies who work tirelessly to produce the food we eat. The world's food production is a breathtaking orchestration that takes place every day, and it's unfathomable that it all works when you think about the number of people involved in maintaining the world's food and drink supplies to stores, restaurants, supermarkets, cafes, airplanes, schools, hospitals, and every home on the planet.

Food is a gift! It's a gift of nature, because there would be nothing for any of us to eat if nature didn't supply us with the soil, nutrients, and water to grow food. Without water there would be no food, vegetation, animals, or human life. We use water to cook our meals, grow our food, maintain our gardens, supply our bathrooms, sustain every vehicle that moves, support out hospitals, fuel, mining, and manufacturing industries, enable transportation, make our roads, make clothes and every consumer product and appliance on the planet, make plastic, glass, and metal, make life-saving medications, and build our homes and every other building and structure. And water keeps our bodies alive. Water, water, water, glorious water!

"If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water."

Loren Eiseley (1907 - 1977)

Anthropologist and Natural Science Writer

Where would we be without food or water? We simply wouldn't be here. None of our family or friends would be here either. We wouldn't have this day, or any tomorrow. But here we are in this beautiful planet together, living life with it's changes and ecstatic joys, because of nature's gifts of food and water! To say the simple, magic words,  thank you, before you eat or drink anything is an act of recognition and gratitude for the miracle of food and water.

The incredible thing is that when you are grateful for food and water, it doesn't just affect your life; your gratitude also impacts the wold's supply. If enough people felt gratitude for food and water, it would actually help the people who are starving and in great need. By the law of attraction, and Newton's law of action and reaction, the action of mass gratitude must produce an equal mas reaction, which would change the circumstances of scarcity of food and water for everyone on the planet.

In addition, your gratitude for food and water keeps the magic continuing in your life, and it will weave its glorious golden thread through everything that is dear to you, everything that you love, everything that you're dreaming of.

In ancient times people believed that when they blessed their food and water with gratitude it purified whatever they were blessing, and when you look at the theories and discoveries that quantum physics have made in recent times, such as the observer effect, the ancients may very well have been right. The observer effect in quantum physics refers to changes that the act of observation makes on whatever is being observed. Imagine if focusing gratitude on your food and drinks changed their energy structure, and purified them so that everything that you consumed had the ultimate effect of well-being on your body?

One of the ways to experience the magic of gratitude instantly with food and drinks is to really savor what you're eating and drinking. When you savor your food or drinks you're appreciating then , or being grateful. As an experiment, next time you're in the middle of eating food or drinking any liquid, when you take a mouthful, concentrate on the taste of the food in your mouth or the flavor of the liquid before you swallow it. You'll find that when you focus on food or drink in your mouth, and savor it, the flavors seem to explode, and when you don't the flavors weaken dramatically. It's your energy of focus and gratitude that instantly enhances the flavor!

Before you eat or drink anything today, whenever you're about to eat a meal, a piece of fruit, or a snack, or have a drink of anything, including water, take a moment to look at what you're about to eat or drink, and in your mind or out loud say the magic words, thank you! And if you can, just take one mouthful really savoring it; it will not only increase your enjoyment, it will help you to feel far more gratitude.

You can also try something I do, which helps me to feel even more gratitude. When I say the magic words, I wave my fingers over my food or drink as though I'm sprinkling them with magic dust, and I imagine that the magic dust instantly purifies everything it touches. Doing this has helped me really feel that gratitude is the magic ingredient, and I want to add it to everything I eat and drink! If you find it more effective you can imagine that you have a shaker of magic dust in your hand, and you're shaking the magic dust out of the shaker all over your food before you eat it, and into every drink.

If at any time during the day you forget to say the magic words, thank you, before you eat or drink anything, as soon as you remember, close your eyes, go back in your mind into that time when you forgot, visualize yourself in your mind for one second or two before you ate or drank, and say the magic words. If you forget to be grateful for food and drinks multiple times in the day, then repeat this same practice tomorrow. You can't afford to miss a single day in building your gratitude - your dreams depend upon it!

Being grateful for the simple things in life, like food and water, is one of the deepest expressions of gratitude, and when you can feel that degree of gratitude, you will see the magic happen.

Magic Practice Number 8

The Magic Ingredient

1. Count Your Blessings. Make a list of ten blessings. Write why you're grateful. Reread the list, and at the end of each blessing say thank you, thank you, thank you, and feel as grateful for that blessing as you can.

2. Before you eat or drink something today, take a moment to look at what you're about to eat or drink, and in your mind or out loud, say the magic words, thank you! If you want you can sparkle your food and drink with magic dust.

3. Just before you go to sleep tonight, hold your Magic Rock in one hand, and say the magic words, thank you, for the best things that happened during the day.