Tag / Gratitude

by Sri

Renouncing is ‘having’ without the idea of having, and ‘parting’ without the idea of parting!

Sannyas has always been wrongly associated with renunciation. You don’t have to renounce anything. You just need to understand that you are a temporary custodian of some wealth, which is a part of Existence, just as you are as well. Then you won’t need to renounce because you never possessed anything in the first place! Even if you have to part with wealth, you will not feel that you are giving away or losing your possessions. The problem starts with the attitude of possessing, the feeling of ‘mine’.

Sannyas is the art and science of creating wealth flawlessly.

I read a beautiful line in a Zen book. It said, ‘Mentally give away everything that you think belongs to you. Then one day, if it is really not there, you will not suffer.’ This can be done as a beautiful 10-minute meditation everyday. It can have a powerful impact on the attitude of possessing. Continue reading →

by Sri

Meditation technique for experiencing Gratitude

  • Every day, just sit by yourself for half an hour.
  • Close your eyes and allow any thought, person or situation to come to your mind.
  • If it is a positive thought, a person you love or a situation that you cherish, feel deep gratitude for it and see it go away.
  • If it is a negative thought, or a person you don’t like, or an unpleasant situation, feel gratitude for that too and bless it.
  • Anything that comes to your mind, bless it with deep gratitude.
  • You will see that in a few days, your whole attitude becomes soft and compassionate.
  • You will start seeing things with great compassion and receptivity.
source: Living Enlightenment
by Sri

When you look to own out of expectation, nothing will seem enough. When you enjoy out of gratitude, everything seems to be overflowing!

Try to sit down and make two lists. One of all the things that you have and one of all the things that you don’t have. The first list should include every single thing that you have, starting from your eyes, ears, hands and legs, because there are people who don’t have some of these. Include all your physical and mental faculties before moving to material things. If you write very sincerely without leaving out anything, you will not be able to complete the first list! That is the truth. If you find you are unable to finish the first list, it means gratitude has started happening in you!

The problem is that there is a continuous expectation in us all the time. That is why gratitude doesn’t happen easily. We continuously receive input from our eyes, nose, ears, tongue and touch. Based on this, we continuously expect something or other to happen in a certain way. When we see someone who has a better house or a better car, it registers in us. When we hear of some great achievement by someone, it registers in us.

Our energy moves only outward, constantly following our five senses, never inwards towards our self. Gratitude is when this process reverses and you suddenly awaken to the abundance in you! With gratitude there is no expectation or greed. Continue reading →

by Sri

Prayer is the gratitude for the continuous showering of Existence upon us! Prayer is deep and silent gratitude to the whole of Existence for being what it is! It is the undaunted trust that Existence is taking care! It is a deep and passive waiting for Existence!

Sufism is completely a gratitude-based religion. If I have to reduce the whole of Sufism to one word, it is gratitude. You can see it in all the poems of the great Sufi masters like Jalaluddin Rumi and others. You can see the flowing energy of gratitude in their words.

Gratitude makes you a nobody, just flowing energy. Gratitude is like a fire that can burn all your karmas.

What is karma?

It is an unfulfilled action on your part that pulls you again and again to fulfill it. In order to fulfill and exhaust all such karmas that we have accumulated, we take birth again and again on this planet. Continue reading →

by Sri

What is the greatest service one can do to the world ?

The boundaries between these three (Self, world, God) exist only as long as the not accepting or the fighting ego exists. The moment non-acceptance disappears, acceptance happens and ego disappears. Suddenly only celebration remains. Some people ask me, ‘How do we express our deep gratitude to you?’ I tell them that the only way to express their gratitude is to live enlightenment the way I have just described it to you. That is the best you can do for me and that I can do for you.

The reason why you feel so much gratitude towards me is because only when an enlightened master happens in your life do you start knowing what gratitude is!

Until then, gratitude remains just a social habit from your periphery. When the master happens, when the transformation starts, you start feeling a movement inside you, a deep joy… an inexplicable feeling not from your periphery but from your being. That feeling is gratitude. That is what is called devotion. You cannot express it with words. That is the beauty of real gratitude. Just relax into it and allow it to transform you. It will transform you from your being. That is enough. Then the work of the master is done! Continue reading →

by Sri

Celebrate your Self saying a deep ‘yes’ to you as you are! Celebrate the very Existence of the world by realizing it is an independent intelligence with profound mystery constantly expanding with causeless auspiciousness! Celebrate God as creativity overflowing for no reason! When you celebrate the existence of Self, World and God, you will suddenly see all these three disappear into celebration and what remains is eternal bliss, Nithyananda!

One thing has to be understood very clearly.

The whole of Existence is an auspicious happening. You are part of Existence, so everything happening around you is also auspicious. This is the truth of Existence. Nothing that happens in Existence is inauspicious. Everything is only a blessing.

If this is understood clearly, there is nothing to complain about in life. If this is understood clearly, your very eye becomes a grateful eye. It sees everything as extraordinary. Nothing appears mundane. Everything appears as a miracle. Miracles are continuously happening in front of our eyes. But we continuously miss them! Only because we miss them, life itself appears to be dull sometimes. When we start perceiving them, our entire life becomes a miracle. The truth is, there are too many miracles happening around us in our lives.
If we celebrate the three things, the existence of the self, world and god, we will experience the whole of Existence as a blessing that is happening continuously. Let me explain.

When you celebrate the existence of the self, god and world, all three will reveal their mysteries to you. Please understand that when I say celebrate the self, god and world, I am not giving you moral advice. I am giving you a spiritual technique. Continue reading →

by Sri

Each human being is a unique masterpiece of god

Each human being is a unique masterpiece of go. That is why no two bodies look alike. God is not an engineer. He is an artist. That is why each of us looks different. If he was an engineer he would have made us all with the same mold, like in a production line! He has uniquely created each one of us. But we never feel that we are beautiful enough. We constantly compare ourselves with others and try to look like them. We never make our body feel it is beautiful. Our body is influenced by the thoughts we entertain about it. Every cell responds to our thoughts and feelings about it. If we feel gratitude towards our body, our body responds by improving our health. If we hate our body, the body responds by shrinking with disease. It is just like the effect of our thoughts on other human beings. If we encourage people, they work better. Only because of this body are you able to now sit and hear this talk. The fact that you are here reading these words is because of your body. Then how can you abuse it or take it for granted? If you just look around, you will see there are people born without an arm or a leg. There are people who were born without eyesight or lose their eyesight in an accident. We have everything and yet we take it all for granted. Sometimes people who have a physical handicap are more grateful than those who have a perfect body. The handicapped person knows what it is to miss a body part, so he is automatically grateful to the other body parts. In the Sufi tradition they have a beautiful meditation where every morning as soon as they wake up they touch their body parts one after another and feel deep gratitude to every single part. They touch every part from head to foot with great love and gratitude. This is a wonderful meditation that can be practiced by everyone. You will see that your body starts looking more and more beautiful and it will also heal from any discomfort very easily.

by Sri

The moment you take any relationship for granted and stop responding with gratitude, it starts falling apart

The first thing we need to understand is that no person has taken birth only to serve us. Every other person is also on the path of life just as we are. As a kind gesture, out of love, they do things for us. Even your own wife or husband is doing a very kind act of serving you, of providing for you or taking care of you. Of course, marriage calls for give and take but the husband or wife can never be taken for granted. They can never be thought of as our birthright. Especially between partners, a lot of things are taken for granted. Somehow, this idea has taken root very deeply in our society. Because of this, many marriages fall apart today.

I tell you, even during a physical relationship there can be such deep gratitude for the other person’s body. It will make the whole thing a divine experience instead of mere physical pleasure.

When you can derive so much pleasure because of the other, why not feel gratitude towards the other for it?  If the other is deeply respected from the beginning, many marriages can be saved.

Continue reading →

by Sri

When you carry causeless gratitude in you, life will be sweet all the time irrespective of external circumstances!

In today’s world, any action needs a reason. If I tell a small child to come near me, the child will look for some reason. If I hold up a chocolate, she will come near! Utility has taken root very deeply within us. When there is utility there is action, or else justifying the action becomes difficult. 

When I tell people to live with a sense of gratitude, they immediately start looking for reasons. Real gratitude can never have a reason. It happens as a causeless flowering within you. Does the flower bloom for a reason?

No! It blooms because it is its very nature.

Gratitude is our real nature. It has been covered by layers of conditioning from society. 

Society doesn’t know the language of gratitude. It knows only the language of utility. It straightaway instills greed and fear in you so that you will give it the needed results. Society doesn’t know there is a path of gratitude that will give much better results than the paths of fear and greed. That is the problem.  Continue reading →

by Sri

If you ever feel that there is something missing in your life, it is because you feel less gratitude!

When we recognize that we are part of the total scheme of Existence, and that we are lovingly taken care of by Existence every minute, we are overcome with gratitude. We become truly thankful for what we receive every moment, even if it is as basic as the use of our very limbs and senses. Gratitude is your response to recognizing the abundance of Existence. It is a wonderful flowering energy within you. If there is one energy that takes care of everything in your life, it is the energy of gratitude! If you ever feel that there is something missing in your life, it is because you feel less gratitude. Continue reading →

by Sri

I am like a full cloud ready to shower, you don’t need to do anything or deserve to be showered on!

Many people carry the guilt of not being worthy of being loved.

This guilt happens from young age conditioning. When we are children, our parents tell us, ‘If you do this I will love you more. If you do that, I will give you a candy. If you listen to me, I will take you to a movie.’ All these things take root in you and you grow up with a strong impression that you should deserve to be loved.

You feel guilty if someone loves you without you doing anything to deserve it.

Many people when they come to me, carry the same guilt. Be very clear, you are here not because you deserve to be here. You are here as part of the flow of Existence, that’s all. There is nothing deserving or undeserving in this. I am like a full cloud ready to shower. You don’t need to do anything or deserve to be showered on.

There is no question of the master’s love asking for any qualification from you to receive it. If you are open, if you choose to stand with open arms, you will receive. Instead if you decide to open an umbrella of guilt and stand under it, naturally you will not receive much.

If you are caught in guilt, you can never feel connected to the Divine. The only way to get out of guilt completely is to feel the connectedness to your higher Self. But your very guilt acts as the barrier to this.

The only way to overcome this guilt is to start melting with gratitude.

Continue reading →