16 Gratitude is thanking your body🔗

Every human being is a unique masterpiece of God. That is why no two bodies look alike. God is not an engineer. He is an artist. That is why each of us looks different. If He was an engineer He would have made us all with the same mold, like in a production line! He has uniquely created each one of us. But we never feel that we are beautiful enough.

We constantly compare ourselves with others and try to look like them. We never make our body feel it is beautiful. Our body is influenced by the thoughts we entertain about it. Every cell responds to our thoughts and feelings about it. If we feel gratitude towards our body, our body responds by improving our health.

If we hate our body, the body responds by shrinking with disease. It is just like the effect of out thoughts on other human beings. If we encourage people, they work better. Only because of this body you are able to now sit and hear this talk. The fact that you are here reading these words is because of your body.

Then how can you abuse it or take it for granted? If you just look around, you will see there are people born without an arm or a leg. There are people who were born without eyesight or lose their eyesight in an accident. We have everything and yet we take it all for granted.

Sometimes people who have a physical handicap are more grateful that those who have a perfect body. The handicapped person knows what it is to miss a body part, so he is automatically grateful to the other body parts.

Every human being is a unique masterpiece of God. That is why no two bodies look alike. God is not an engineer. He is an artist.

Your body can listen to you!

Every cell responds to your thoughts and feelings about it. When you feel gratitude towards your body, it responds by radiating well-being. When you ignore your body, it responds by shrinking with disease. When you pray intensely to your body, it responds to your prayers and requests. Its intelligence will activate its own healing.

Activity

Below is a powerful meditation for radiating health with gratitude:

This is to be practiced every morning, as soon as you wake up. Without even getting out of bed, without opening your eyes, visualize your body. Visualize your body as clearly as you can.

Next, touch each part of your body with deep love and gratitude. One by one, touch your body parts with great love.

You never touch your body with love!

Never think that your body can't feel your touch or your love. No!

Your body is a conscious intelligence that is continuously responding to you.

Carry this deep attitude of gratitude with you throughout the day.

In each of your daily activities, keep your awareness on the body part that is performing the activity. When you are walking, silently thank your legs for carrying your load, for supporting you. When you are working, eating, taking a bath, reading, be aware of how much your body is supporting you.

Keep with this feeling alive in you every moment, till you go to bed.

Gratitude is to revere the other

The first thing we need to understand is that no person has taken birth only to serve you. Every other person is also on the path of life just as we are. As a kind gesture, out of love, they do things for us. Even your own wife or husband is doing a very kind act of serving you, of providing for you or taking care of you.

Of course, marriage calls for give and take but the husband or wife can never be taken for granted. They can never be thought of as our birthright. Especially between partners, a lot of things are taken for granted.

Each individual plays an equal part in life. No one should be taken for granted. There has to be some gratitude for every person on planet earth. I always tell people that even if things don't work out between you and your husband or wife or between other relationships you have to part with gratitude.

Every relationship brings some good into our life. Every relationship is auspicious in its own way. Only, we are not able to see it that way. The problem is that somewhere we feel people are waiting to hurt us. It is not so. It is only our own insecurity that we project on others. We have a self defense mechanism that causelessly plays in every relationship. It is driven with the thought that others are waiting to hurt us. This very mechanism will disappear when gratitude flowers.

So many people feel ungrateful to their parents and society for conditioning them in certain ways. In one of the gratitude meditations that we offer, we ask people to first give their gratitude to their parents and all of the people who gave then their mental setup, their attitude.

Understand, with the intelligence that you have now, you are able to see that you did not receive the right kind of mental setup earlier. You are now trying to transform to a new mental setup. That is perfectly alright. But it is not right to curse the people who gave you the earlier mental setup.

Those who gave us this body and mind did not have any intention to deprive us or disturb us in any way. Whatever they knew as their best, they just gave to us, that's all. We are going beyond it now because we have become more intelligent. Just feel grateful to them, that is enough.

Whenever you feel grateful to the people in your relationships, you will never try to possess them. You will look at them as beautiful individuals and leave it at that. Possessiveness happens only when you think of the other person as an object and not as an individual. With gratitude, you will allow the person to have his or her own space.

Whenever you feel grateful to the people in your relationships, you will never try to possess them.

Activity

Below is a powerful meditation for expressing gratitude towards others:

Decide consciously that you will respond with pure love and gratitude for the next couple of days, whenever you encounter or deal with people, situations; whenever you speak or do anything, whatever the situation may be. Just for two days, decide not to react the way you have been reacting all these years. Decide that you will respond only with pure, unassuming love.

You will see that all of your relationships take a turn for the better. Automatically you will start seeing each and every person as a unique creation of Existence, as a reflection of the Divine. You will feel deeply connected to everyone and everything around you.

You will also find tremendous compassion towards everything around you. If you were a person who gets angry easily, you will find the anger disappearing. All the energy that was invested in other negative emotions will get released with this growing gratitude. You will be a compassionate and loving person.

Whenever you feel grateful to the people in your relationships, you will never try to possess them. You will look at them as beautiful individuals and leave it at that.