Gratitude is not a word that comes foremost in today's busy lives - the last time many of us probably heard it is when we were children and were told to stop complaining and be grateful for what we have! Certainly, 'gratitude' and 'power' are not two words we normally tie together; we tend to think of it as a very meek quality reserved for frail old saints and do-gooders. However, bringing gratitude into your day-to-day existence can have a tremendous transforming effect on your entire life and the world around you.
Gratitude is primarily a quality felt by the heart centre, that place in the middle of our chest where we can feel our soul, or the essence of our existence. Therefore, when we are consciously grateful, some inmost part of ourselves is awakened and we enter into the higher and nobler realms of our being. Being grateful for the things we have in life is a way of taking us away from the distractions of life and making us focus on what is truly essential. In fact, you can make tremendous inner progress simply by bringing forward the quality of gratitude. Contemporary spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy was once asked what three qualities were most needed to survive on the spiritual path - he replied simply: gratitude, gratitude and gratitude.
Being grateful also helps your inner awareness. Human beings have this self-defeating propensity to reflect always on the bad things that are happening: if even one bad thing happens, we will dwell on it and get depressed over that rather than the many good things that are happening! When you are grateful, you are aware of the good things in life as well as the bad, and you get a much more balanced view of life. In fact, the more you develop the quality of gratitude in your life, you will start feeling grateful even when bad things happen to you, because you will have developed the inner vision to see that good things and bad happenings are nothing but experiences to shape you and make you stronger. This also has a very infectious quality on the people around you, and your example helps them also to see things in their proper perspective.
Gratitude also helps us to expand ourselves and become bigger people. The main thing limiting us is our ego - our finite view of ourselves which is often distorted and exaggerated. If for five minutes daily we can offer our gratitude to your soul or to God or to whatever you perceive as the source of creation, you will gradually feel you are part of something much more infinite than your limiting ego and finite mortal frame. Gratitude helps us turn away from self-centredness and realise our place in the universe.
Photo taken by Trishatur LaGalia at Po Lin Monastery, Hong Kong