Happy Thanksgiving!
This is one of my favorite quotes from my guru:
“Gratitude and appreciation are the key virtues for a better life. They are the spell that is cast to dissolve hatred, hurt, and sadness, the medicine which heals subjective states of mind, restoring self-respect, confidence, and security.” ~ Gurudeva
If gratitude isn’t part of your daily practice, I encourage you to incorporate it into your rituals. For me, it’s woven into my evening routine when I sit with my family for a prayer before my daughter goes to bed.
We have so much to be grateful for. At the very core of it all, I am deeply grateful for the simple yet profound gift of life itself. I am so grateful for this privilege. I truly am. This deep gratitude and appreciation for the preciousness of life drive me to live each moment with profound purpose. I have no intention of wasting a moment of my life. This doesn’t have to be the way for everyone—it’s simply how I choose to live my life.
If you’d like to make gratitude a part of your ritual going forward, I suggest starting by picking a specific time of day to do so. To ensure stickability, anchor the ritual to a recurring event in your life. For example, every night you go to sleep. It recurs. It’s non-negotiable. So, immediately before you lay down in bed, write down three things that you are grateful for. In doing so, be specific.
Here's an example: I once told my guru, after he gave a talk in the monastery temple, that it was a great talk. One of the senior monks overheard this and, later that day, wisely encouraged me to express appreciation with specificity. He said, “You can say, ‘That was a great talk, Gurudeva. I especially loved the insight that intuition, which finds its origins in the superconscious mind, works through a clarified subconscious. And effort needs to be put into working with the subconscious, not the superconscious.’”
As you write down the things you are grateful for, it is important to truly feel that gratitude. Feeling it is critical.
