Gratitude is going beyond the mind
Your mind always stands between you and Existence. It prevents you from hearing, seeing, feeling and emoting with Existence. Once you go beyond your mind and see the beauty of Existence, gratitude will become your prayer and bliss your being! You will enjoy liberation and permanent joy!
When you drop the mundane logic of your mind, you will flow like a river – choicelessly, effortlessly, joyfully with the flow of the current. You will then play your role and enjoy every moment of it. You will understand that you are part of a wonderful drama, where the most sensitive you are to the director, the more effectively you can play and enjoy your part!
When you go against the current, you need to put in effort and exercise choices. When you go with the current, you don't need to make any effort; you will not feel tired; you will not feel frustrated; you will only feel a flowing lightness. Everything will then appear beautiful.
Instead of feeling gratitude towards everything around us, we are asking and questioning all the time. We need to get back this connection with Existence again. Gratitude can help bring back this lost connection. It can help find your roots once again. It can help you commune with nature and with Existence.
Gratitude makes you a nobody
Somebody once asked me, 'why should you be there and we should be here?' I told him very beautifully; actually understanding these few ideas will really give you the deep insights about gratitude. Where we miss and what we miss.
I told him 'because I am nobody, I am here. Because you are somebody, you are there'. Understand, if you are somebody, even if you are made to sit here, you will think, 'I think for my qualification, it should be little better'. Wherever you go, whatever way you are respected, you will feel that something more has to be done, should have been done. If you are nobody, whether you are respected or not, you will never be bothered, you will be in such easiness, comfort, there will no disturbances.
A person who has become a 'nobody' wherever he is he will be comfortable. A person who has become 'somebody', wherever he is, he will have some complications, some misunderstandings. Gratitude will make you a nobody; just you will be a flowing energy.
I have seen that flowing energy in the poems of Sufi mystics. Sufism is completely the tradition based on gratitude. And the way in which they flow, it was such a wonderful flow, it was such a gratitude-based tradition. It does not take any training at all to have the divine experience through Sufism. With all other traditions to have Divine experience the mindless, the experience beyond mind, it takes quite a lot of time.
So understand this one great quality; it can really transport you to different plane.
Gratitude can burn your Karmas
Understand, whenever the one simple quality of gratitude, if it starts, gratitude is like a small fire which can burn all your karmas. What is Karma? It is an unfulfilled action on your part that pulls you again and again to fulfill it.
In order to fulfill and exhaust all such karmas that we have accumulated, we take birth again and again on this planet. Just by being with the energy of gratitude, these karmas get burnt! All the karmas, anything which you carry on; which you brought, which you are accumulating, anything can be burnt.
A simple remembrance of gratitude; not only to the Master, to every being, to everything, it brings so much of sensitivity. It brings so much of love and so much of settled feeling, so much of connected feeling. It can burn away all your karmas. Such is the power of gratitude.
Gratitude will make you a nobody; just you will be a flowing energy.