We can find real liberation and real satisfaction in this life and beyond! And that is why there are so many spiritual systems within the world. Religion comes from the Greek word religio, which means to bind back. Yoga is a Sanskrit word, which means to reunite. It’s the same word, same essence.
But today, unfortunately, people are more concerned with the superficialities than the real characteristics of devotion and integrity towards truth.
Through prayers, through meditation, through these various spiritual practices we can reconnect with our own essence. Spirituality is meant to awaken the eternal potential to love and to be an instrument of that love in our life. By reconnecting with our own essence and by accessing that empowerment, we can be instruments of positive change in the world.
Gratitude is an essential quality to access that potential. The heart is like a field and all our good qualities are like the seed, a small plant that’s meant to grow in that field. Our morality, our integrity, our spiritual practices, our prayers and our meditation are like the watering of that seed. But the fertility of the soil of our heart is our humility and our gratitude. Without being grateful, we can’t really receive anything.
Real culture is based on the principle of gratitude. A person could be happy in any situation if he is grateful, but a person can never be happy–really happy in the heart–in any situation, unless he/she is grateful. But we should be grateful for our failures as much as for our successes. We should be grateful for the dishonor that we receive as well as for the honor. We should be grateful for the opportunity to grow and to learn from that experience.
Gratitude is the foundational principle for all spiritual growth and it’s foundational for basic human kindness.
An Article by Radhanath Swami
