This exercise must show you the power of authentic praxis is and how difficult it is to translate it to another person through a semantic system (in this case, the English language).
If you do this right, you will be shocked that it took so many words to describe – no, to program you to do! – something very, very simple and very rewarding. (Don’t believe anything, but this is not Deepak Chopra BS, so drop the imbecilic comment you are making to yourself. Verify – repeatedly, and to your intuitive satisfaction.)
Visualize a person whom you are grateful to or for. One person. Begin with only one and do it right. To get the learning from this, not just the pleasant experience, it is important to pick someone to whom you can be very grateful without much effort. That way the authenticity of your gratitude is not a technical obstacle and does not interfere with the practice itself.
Write the selected person a note (the easiest medium to start). Use pen and paper to create it, even if you ultimately send by other means. In that note, do not “say thanks” or “express gratitude”. Instead, make gratitude become manifest.
Remember that you are the grateful one, so the gratitude is not what the other person is supposed to feel – it is you. No grammar error there. You are the gratitude. As you write, reach deeply into yourself and find the greatest sense of gratitude that you can feel for that person. Now put that into words. Do not forget that the gratitude is becoming manifest in you, not in the fucking words!
This sounds like nonsense, and there is a good reason for that: the dukkha/misfit between the semantic system and the action-decision, the “authenticity” of it. The more words you add, the more difficult it becomes to avoid increasing the dukkha. For example, there is a much greater semantic misfit between your gratitude and “expressing gratitude” because the gratitude is an authentic mind-state of yours (assuming you are not deluding yourself) and words (“expression”) do not have mind-states. You dilute if you “express” gratitude. The same applies to “giving thanks”. What is a “thank” and how do you give it to someone? But you know what gratitude is, don’t you?
Read the words you have written to make sure that they feel “right” to the gratitude that you are experiencing. Keep editing until you are intuitively satisfied with the result. Yes, that means you have to be grateful every time you edit until you get it right. Better yet, be grateful throughout until you are done. If your feeling of gratitude fluctuates, the practice will not work. Trust your instincts, not your analydiot “rationality” or superego appropriateness. Be appropriate only to your intuition and the actual gratitude you are feeling, nothing else. Leave all else aside and just experience it thoroughly. Send the note. See what happens.
If you do this as instructed, you will have taken authentic action. When the response comes (there will almost certainly be one), you will know experientially that you have committed an act of authenticity. You will know that instinctively more than “rationally”. Your thinking (which uses words and other “symbols” – another misfit word) will agree with your instincts, not the other way around. You will also notice that the person’s response has amplified/reinforced your gratitude or, if you were in a different mind-state at the moment of its arrival, invoked it again.
Remember: there is no formula other than the practice itself. Your gratitude must be authentic to you (“feel right” as you experience it) and the words must be authentic to the gratitude (“feel right” to that experience). That’s it! If you were paying attention so far (did you, or did you get distracted with your stupiphone again?), you will know that perhaps the only universal injunction is to use as few words as possible. Indeed, you can find ways to “send” gratitude that don’t use words at all.