Yesterday was ThanksGiving Day in America where millions celebrated this festival. In the mood of Thanksgiving and incidentally I am also teaching the topic of “Gratitude” to the eN-Vidyalaya children this month, I would like to share some insights I learned about gratitude.
The first truth is – gratitude is our real nature, but we don’t realize it because currently we are covered by layers of conditioning from society. For example, society taught us that any action needs a reason. Society knows only the language of utility i.e. when there is utility there is action, or else it becomes difficult to justify the action. Driven by results and performance, society immediately instils greed and fear in us if we don’t give the expected results. Society doesn’t know there is a path of gratitude that will give much better results than the paths of fear and greed. The next conditioning is the concept of individuality and freedom. We feel that we have a right to everything that we receive and because of this attitude, we desire and demand. We develop this continuous expectation in us all the time. Through 5 sensory inputs, we continuously expect something to happen in a certain way. These expectations move our energy outward instead of inward towards our self. When we work with expectations all the time, we will carry a subtle violence in our body language.
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