Practice Gratitude
Saying “thank you” to other people can have numerous benefits, from improving the relationship with that person to even boosting your own immune system, but taking the time to express your gratitude to eternity for all the great things that you have in your life is even more powerful.
“Feel grateful for the fact that you’re alive, for the fact that you can sit and feel grateful. Feel grateful just to be, to be happy.”
-Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz
Essentially, gratitude is self giving in its purest form. Whenever you feel gratitude growing inside your heart, you are diverting your attention from your ego self and directing it towards something or someone else. Gratitude enables you to transcend the ego and become conscious of yourself.
How to do it:
As with all beneficial practices, it’s worth making this one a habit as well. That means, you need to practice this on a regular basis. According to Rama, it’s best if done during or after meditation.
After you’ve started to meditate and you’ve meditated on the yantra or a candle flame for 10-15 minutes, continue with simply trying to feel gratitude. Sit and feel grateful to existence or to eternity or to life because you are, because your life is good, because you’re meditating and if you’re meditating, that means that your life is going to continue to become more beautiful, you’ll become happier and clearer and more aware.
Feel grateful for the people you love, for the beauty of the day or evening. If you can’t feel grateful, if you’re discouraged or depressed, then think of the fact that things could be a lot worse than they are, and you should be grateful that things are not worse because no matter how bad things may seem, they can always get a lot worse.
“So just start gratitude. Create it. Gratitude is a bird that soars very, very high, and you can get on its back and fly with it, way above the clouds.”
-Rama
To meditate with gratitude, all you need to do is think of someone you feel gratitude for. You may feel grateful for your friends or loved ones. You may feel grateful to for the beauty of nature. You may feel grateful to God. Whatever the cause, if you can feel grateful just for a few minutes, you will start a chain reaction of gratitude within your heart.
Take that feeling of gratitude and expand it. Immerse yourself in pure feelings of gratitude. Feel grateful for all of existence. Smile and feel that nothing but gratitude exists. Then let go. You need do nothing now but let go and flow with the currents of eternity.
