Gratitude
Sunny days, moonlit nights, gratitude for good and bad fortune.
-Transcendental Axiom: Arcanum 78
We must cultivate gratitude because ingratitude and treason are connected. One must put an end to envy because from envy comes the Judas who sells the Master for thirty silver coins. Envy is the poisonous flower most abundant among the tenebrous swamps of all the spiritual schools of the world. Envy is often disguised with the judge’s robe. We must cultivate sincerity because in the substance of sincerity germinate the most beautiful flowers of the Spirit.
–Meditation training manual
Giving Thanks
“We give thanks to You! Every soul and heart is lifted up to You, undisturbed name, honored with the name ‘God’ and praised with the name ‘Father’, for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness and affection and love, and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain, giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge: mind, so that we may understand You, speech, so that we may expound You, knowledge, so that we may know You.
We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge. We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself. We rejoice because while we were in (the) body, You have made us divine through Your knowledge.
“The thanksgiving of the man who attains to You is one thing: that we know You. We have known You, intellectual light. Life of life, we have known You.
Womb of every creature, we have known You. Womb pregnant with the nature of the Father, we have known You.
Eternal permanence of the begetting Father, thus have we worshiped Your goodness. There is one petition that we ask: we would be preserved in knowledge. And there is one protection that we desire: that we not stumble in this kind of life.”
-Traditional Gnostic prayer of thanksgiving from the Nag Hammadi Library