Part 5: Don't Worry, Be Happy!
problem that he wanted healing for. After healing him, I was casually speaking to him. I asked him, 'Why are you preaching so aggressively? You are condemning all other religions. Your religion is great, no doubt, but why should you condemn others?'
He said, 'If I am not doing what I am doing, I feel insecure. When I see people believing what I am saying and following my ideas, I feel safe. I am convinced that what I am preaching must be the Truth. I feel people cannot be fools. I may be telling them the wrong things but, when so many people believe, there must be some truth in it. So, when people are converted, I feel stronger in my faith.'
The preacher himself developed a conviction through the response of the people to his teachings! That is how we all are. When many people believe what we say, we fall into the same net that we created. That's what we all do in our lives. We create an idea that our life is full of suffering and misery. By and by, we start believing it.
If we analyze ourselves, we will see, very clearly, that there are thousands of miseries created just by our own mind, our own words. It is simply our own creation but we forget that we are the ones who created it and suffer in what we ourselves have created.
When ego disappears, we merge into bliss. When we are merged with bliss, the ego disappears. When we go really Gratitude as Prayer deeply into our being, when we become one with Existence, when we experience, only then gratitude flows. A pure joyous feeling overflows from our being. It is just gratitude, nothing else.
There is a beautiful meditation in Sufism. They say the only way to relate with God is through gratitude because only with gratitude can we start experiencing Him. With prayer, we can only relate with Him. However, with gratitude we start experiencing Him. With gratitude, the deeper level of our being, our spiritual layer, starts experiencing.
Let us understand these few concepts. Let us appreciate the things we have been showered with in our life. Let us feel gratitude for all God has showered upon us. Let us not always think about what next, what next and what next.
- I never forget to tell this small, and very nice, story in this context:
One guy was praying to God in the temple, 'O God! Please give me just one hundred dollars to take care of myself for one week. Within the week I will get a new job and soon after I start working, I will start donating money to you. Just for one week, give me one hundred dollars to take care of myself.'
A priest who overheard his prayer felt very compassionate and thought that he should help this guy. However, not being rich himself, he put a fifty-dollar bill in an envelope and went to this person and handed it over to him saying, 'God told me to give you this envelope. Please have it.'
The guy ran to his house, opened the envelope, saw the fifty dollars and started praying again. 'Oh, God! Next time when you send money, please send it to me directly, not through this priest. He's taken half of it as a commission.'
The guy did not bother about the fifty dollars that he received; he was only bothered about the fifty dollars that he did not receive. This is how the mind works.
We bother about the things that have not happened to us but we never appreciate the things that have happened to us. If we are asked to write the things that God has not given us, will that list ever end? It will start with a limousine and it will go on longer than a limousine.
And if you sincerely start writing the things that God has given you, again that list will never end, because every single breath that we inhale and every single breath that we exhale is given to us by the Divine. It is God's own gift to us. Can we say we earned it? No!
The Divine gives every inch and every moment of life to us. Can we say we made it? Can we say we created it? No! Our very life, our existence, is given to us by the Divine. If we honestly make a list of all the things which were given to us by God, again it would never end. So many things, so much has been showered on us. Can we say we created Gratitude as Prayer our life? Can we say we created one single inhaling or exhaling breath? No!
- -A small story:
A big science conference took place, where the entire science community came to the conclusion that, now man could do anything that God could do. 'Why should there be a God at all? We can do everything ourselves. What do you say? God creates man? We can also clone. What do you say? Whatever God can do, we can also do.' They decided that they had become so advanced that now they could tell God to go and take a rest. We didn't need him anymore. 'We are doing everything ourselves. Let him retire'.
God said, 'Alright, let us have a small competition.' First, He created something to fly. Immediately, the scientists created the airplane. Then He created fire. The scientists also created something to destroy the fire. The competition went on and on. Finally, God just took some dust and created a human being. The scientists also took some dust and created a human being by cloning. God said, 'No, no, no stop! Bring your own dust and do it, not my dust!
The scientists were stumped! Do you understand? We cannot create anything that has not already been created by God. The Divine has given us everything but, when we take our life for granted, we live in deep misery. Two lists of things are there in front of us: one is the list of things that have been given to us, which have been showered on us, and the other is the list of things that we don't have.
Now it is up to us to either look at the things we don't have, and continuously suffer and make our life miserable or look at the things that we have and continuously feel joy, ecstasy and enjoy it. Whether we want to look at this side, or the other side, is our choice.
Bliss is our choice; gratitude is simply our choice. It is we who are supposed to decide what our life should be like; whether it should be hell or heaven. It is simply our choice. When we look at the things that we are showered with, which are given to us, then we will understand how much Existence protects us; Divine takes care of us; God showers on us.
One guy went to a real estate agent and wanted to sell his house. After a week, he ran to the agent and said, 'I don't want to sell my house. Please withdraw the advertisement.' The agent was surprised. He asked, 'Why? Why don't you want to sell?' The guy said, 'Only after seeing your advertisement in the paper, I realized my house is the dream house that I have always wanted. My house is exactly what I wanted it to be. It's really exactly what I always wanted it to be. Only now I realize how beautiful my house is.'
We take things for granted. We take people for granted. We take life for granted. Ultimately, when we take life for granted, we feel bored. When we do things unconsciously, we start feeling bored. If someone comes along and tells us how beautiful things are around us, we wake up to it suddenly. Instead, we should be able to see the beauty in what surrounds us, all the time. It is a shame if someone else has to point it out to us. When people tell us that we are lucky, that we are surrounded by beauty, we should be able to say, 'Yes, I know I am lucky and I am surrounded by endless beauty.' How many people can say this of themselves? The intelligent ones will be able to say this. The ones who have gone deep inside will be able to say this. The foolish ones will deny the statement and remain in suffering.
There was a great saint who lived in Maharashtra. During the last ten years of his life, he was asked to eat the same type of food. He was asked to eat a little rice and greens everyday, because his stomach had become sensitive. Every day, he would eat the same food. The devotee who cooked for him got tired of cooking the same food. Every day the same food! She went to the Master and asked, 'Master, are you not bored eating the same food? I am bored of cooking the same food. Are you not bored eating the same food?' The Master said, 'I am not eating the same food. How can I eat the same food? Everyday it's different. Everyday it's new. How can I eat the same food the next day? No!'
When we generalize, we feel bored. When we understand, when we live moment to moment, everything looks fresh. When we live moment to moment, things really look fresh and we live and feel grateful to Existence. When we take things for granted, we feel bored, dull, tired and depressed.
The biggest problem I see, at least in this country, (referring to USA), is people's attitude of taking everything for granted. That is why, even though there are so many possibilities for entertainment, you feel so much boredom. Depression has become a big disease.
Obesity is nothing but taking our food for granted. When we take food for granted, we try so many new techniques. Again we feel unfulfilled. Again we try some other techniques. Continuously, we take things for granted and try new things. The more we try, the more we get bored and depressed.
When we live with deep sensitivity, with deep understanding, without taking things for granted, we experience a new space in our being; we experience a new joy in our being. Then we experience gratitude towards the whole of life. We feel gratitude towards life, towards people, towards situations and ultimately, towards the whole of Existence.
Gratitude is the ultimate prayer and the ultimate attitude. Gratitude is the greatest attitude that we can have towards human beings, towards life and towards situations and towards God.
May you experience this gratitude and through this gratitude, the Eternal Bliss, nithyananda.
Enlightenment flowers when individual consciousness disappears into Universal Consciousness. When you start living enlightenment, you automatically raise the human consciousness around you. Living enlightenment holds the key to global peace and inner bliss. Every individual should be a pioneer in the transition of human consciousness to Divine Consciousness.
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