Using the "armor of light”

[Vestige]

I wonder Quincunx if we simply can ever be sure that the Thank You would never be returned. 

Early in life I was helped and was stupid enough not to return a thank you. But with time I recognized this as I grew a little less dumb, and I did send Thank Yous as life went. Not always directly for sure as some of those entities eaters passed away or moved out of my life.

It's interesting, in the one reading I had a long long time ago, I was told by my spiritual guides, always send love, whether the person in somewhere else on Earth or not on Earth anymore, love is always received.  That's a nice thought to know.. 

Thank you is not a goal . It is just a tool like any other to polarize a little, if you offer it timely. If "thank you" would matter probably the negative path won't exist. The deed is the goal and is where the happiness of the entity which does it come from. Whoever helped you felt rewarded by your well-being more than a thousand "thank you" from you.

Your well-being was the most precious thank you you could have given to someone who cared enough to help.

I would opine that the specific receiving or hearing of a, "thank you," may indeed be a shallow goal for which to aim.  When you say that "the deed is the goal" and that the outcome, the well-being of the one helped by the deed, is another gift added unto the opportunity reach out at all--I certainly hear no flaw in this definition of gratitude, and I do affirm that what you have recognized here would be the truer aim for anyone attempting to give or to receive service more graciously.  

As Q'uo would echo,
What is gratitude? Gratitude is breathing in and breathing out with the awareness that this act is a gift. Each of you is like a cut flower. You have sprung from the soil of physicality, you have the life of a blossom, and your only responsibility is to blossom, to be, to share that which you are and take in that which all else is exchanging with each other’s energy fields, those dynamics which lie between the two of you. It is easy to give thanks when there are good times, but that is not the heart of thanksgiving. The heart of thanksgiving is to see in all things the gift of manifested experience. Oh how precious that is! Oh, how dear! We cannot convey to you our appreciation of the challenges that you face by being in a physical body and in third density, and yet we say to you that such an adventure calls to us simply because each of you is experiencing, within the illusion, the ten thousand colors and shapes and forms that are what the Creator knows about itself so far. As each of you takes in the air and gives it back out to the universe, you are singing a song that no one else has ever sung, lifting to the heavens a beauty that has never before been seen. And the Creator knows more now than before, because you have been open and vulnerable to experience, and the world and all its experience has been opened and made vulnerable to you. This is the heart of thanksgiving—the knowing that every breath you take is significant, meaningful and helpful to the Creator, truly a gift given and a gift received.

I would also affirm that when there is a particular heartfelt statement of thanks, when there is the reminiscence of a singular meaningful exchange, this can still be valuable.  I am, of course, biased in this regard, for I myself find that the reminiscences can be as inroads toward the wider, grander appreciation of all experience, especially when the good times are seemingly not rolling. For, many of those fond and reinvigorating memories that I find myself drawing upon--many of them, although not absolutely all of them--are so vivid to me thanks to the color that the seemingly-bad experiences (or, even, just seemingly-drab experiences) also had provided.
Q'uo says we have "the life of a blossom," and when I look at this photo here...

...Those blossoms in the foreground catch my eye, and I admire and distinguish each one from another by the curl in their petals and their tilt toward the sky--and I can do this only because I see them with the green of their stems and leaves and of the grass.  Those blossoms in the background capture less of my attention, for I cannot distinguish them.  
If I had looked at the picture as through a pinhole, from the foreground I might still recognize a whole blossom, but from the background I would see unrecognizable smudges of pink, or, green, or blue.  
Yet, I prefer the whole picture, for when I can see the sky and the trees alongside the bunched blossoms, those blossoms become as striking as the ones I can see peeking out of the grass.  

The single flower belongs to the bunch.  It grows with the grass and the trees.  Maybe we see one flower on the hillside, and we see it apart from the bunch.  Still it grew with the bunch.  Likewise, we may appreciate certain gestures from another as pivotal experiences--the inspiration to vocation, or the act of mercy, or the start to a long friendship--and these do become signposts.  They are also features on the wider road.  

Now, the insights into gratitude that you have offered, Loki,
Whoever helped you felt rewarded by your well-being more than a thousand "thank you" from you.
Your well-being was the most precious thank you you could have given to someone who cared enough to help.
are relevant not only to our path in the third density but also, fittingly, to the widest road--the endless exploration of the Creator.

Now, we could interpret, in isolation, this particular statement from Q'uo--
The heart of thanksgiving is to see in all things the gift of manifested experience
--as encouraging us to be grateful that we have any life at all.  I narrow in on this one statement because of its similarity to a particular verse in the Bible (as we had already brought the Bible into the discussion in the context of the original focus of this thread upon the armor of light):
Isaiah 45:9  
“Woe to him who strives with his Maker,
an earthen vessel with the potter!
Does the clay say to him who fashions it, ‘What are you making?’
‘Your work has no handles’?" ... 
IndigoSalvia and Jafar, you both have addressed the apparent ambivalence or mixture of both the negative and positive polarities within this venerated text.  You both also characterized the negative polarity as one which demands obedience.  And, Jafar, as I perceive you as implying, obedience can be reformulated positively as faith or even simply as prudence: if we want to run a marathon, we will train for it, trusting that this will indeed make us more capable at running.  If we want the armor of light, then, likewise, we must work for it.  I would appraise Isaiah 45:9 as erring toward the negative polarity, for there is no allowance there to question the process or to demand anything at all.  
For me, this does not encourage at all a grateful attitude at all.  However, I wanted to briefly narrow to this perspective on existence to illustrate, if that was at all necessary, how the true nature of our existence does indeed inspire gratitude.

Loki, you had specified well-being, not just being, and I see that as an essential distinction to make.  The Confederation emphasizes being over doing.  They also assure us that "all is well."  Thus, our being is innately well-being.  

One certainly could hypothesize a cold, cruel Creator who operates exactly according to Isaiah 45:9.  We even have imaginations about the implications of that floating around in our cultural consciousness, such as within the harsher formulations of "Hell" as a place or state of unending pain and punishment and within the (corrupted form of the) Gnostic Christian concept of the Demiurge.

However, my position is that the essential nature of the One Infinite Creator is by necessity benevolent... otherwise there would be no creation as we experience it.  

Ra affirms that portions of the Bible also express the Law of One, and this law Ra summarizes thusly:

The Law of One, though beyond the limitations of name, as you call vibratory sound complexes, may be approximated by stating that all things are one, that there is no polarity, no right or wrong, no disharmony, but only identity. All is one, and that one is love/light, light/love, the Infinite Creator.
There is also this exchange:
27.8 Questioner: Now, I understand that the first distortion of intelligent infinity is the distortion of what we call free will. Can you give me a definition of this distortion?
Ra: I am Ra. In this distortion of the Law of One it is recognized that the Creator will know Itself.
alongside this earlier exchange,
13.9 Questioner: Then can you tell me how [the] galaxy and this planetary system were formed?
Ra: I am Ra. You must imagine a great leap of thought in this query, for at the last query the physical, as you call, it, universes were not yet born.
The energies moved in increasingly intelligent patterns until the individualization of various energies emanating from the creative principle of intelligent infinity became such as to be co-Creators. Thus the so-called physical matter began. The concept of light is instrumental in grasping this great leap of thought as this vibrational distortion of infinity is the building block of that which is known as matter, the light being intelligent and full of energy, thus being the first distortion of intelligent infinity which was called by the creative principle.

Infinity becomes aware of itself; aware, yet without knowledge about itself.  What is the distinction between awareness and knowledge?  
Well, Ra seems to link awareness with intelligence--at least, in this context.  Unlike the "blind god" or "idiot god" or "false god" or "incomplete god" characterizations of the Demiurge, the One Infinite Creator, or, intelligent infinity, has much more than a rudimentary awareness of its own existence.  Intelligent infinity is aware, with perfect clarity, that it is truly infinite and thus completely unified or singular.  (The corrupted concept of the Demiurge believes itself to be alone when really other divinities preceded it; intelligent infinity really is 'alone,' or, all-one.)  
The benignant concept of the Demiurge more closely resembles Creator, styled as a "craftsman."  So, perhaps like a craftsman, then, the One Infinite Creator is also aware that it can indeed create--it can make anything at all from itself, from infinity, like how a craftsman here on earth can chisel a magnificent variety of shapes from a uniform block of stone.  That's the First Distortion, free will--the talent to create, if you will.

However, only by actually chiseling the stone can the shapes be seen and appraised for their qualities.  The decision or resolution to actually create is intelligent energy, or, Love.  I say again, Love is energy, or desire, or will.  So, the opposition to Love, at the level of the Creator, would not be malevolence.  If the craftsman has no desire or will to sculpt at all, would he then spend the effort to sculpt horrific shapes?  
The stone will simply remain unchiseled...  

...since we do exist in creation as Creator, obviously the Creator had the desire to create.  The Creator was eager to create, the Creator enjoys creating.
Thus, Q'uo's other key statement there, it is the nature of consciousness to find an overwhelming, ever-overflowing cup of beauty and peace. Why provide the armor of light? For peace.