.................................................. Understanding Gratitude
You might think, 'Giving your gratitude can be a social habit. But how can it be a meditation?' You will understand what this means when you actually start giving your gratitude. When you start giving your gratitude, you will understand the value of your life.
Instead of feeling gratitude towards everything around us, we are asking and questioning all the time. We need to get back the connection with Existence. Gratitude can help bring back this lost connection. It can help you find your roots once again. It can help you commune with nature, with Existence.
Whether you want to base your life on asking or on gratitude is entirely up to you. Gratitude is not some kind of morality that can be imposed on you from outside. It is an attitude that has to flower from within, out of a deep understanding of Existence and its ways.
When real gratitude happens, it can transform your whole perception of life and bring lasting peace and joy for you. Simply enjoy everything without questioning. Let enjoyment become your very nature, then gratitude will become your very being. Real contentment is when you feel permanent gratitude towards the benevolence of Existence. Real contentment asks for nothing more. It simply enjoys everything without a reason; it needs no reason. When you reach this state, you will not know what discontentment is all about.
Just by being in gratitude all the time, every so-called mundane thing in life can become sacred and wonderful! Life becomes mundane only because of your attitude of taking things for granted. Life is not mundane as you think. Every small thing is beautiful. Your mind is what is mundane; your mind does not allow you to penetrate and see the beautiful way in which Existence is flowing.
When you are able to look at things with a wonder-filled attitude, with awe, it fills you with such gratitude and fulfillment because you are not questioning at that point in time. You are not allowing your mind to play at all. You are simply resonating with your heart. It is then that you become a child and when you become a child, nothing is mundane; everything is wondrous!
When you operate from your heart, you are always in gratitude. Do we ever say 'mind-felt gratitude'? No! We always say 'heart-felt gratitude', do we not? We need to move from gratitude of the mind to gratitude of the being.
Every time you feel deep gratitude, you are actually in meditation. Whether you accept it or not, Existence is taking care of you every single moment. If you place trust in it and do your duty, you will simply be showered with the gift of life.
It is only when you start feeling connection with Existence that real gratitude will arise in you. There is no other way. When gratitude arises in this form, it is not directed to anything in particular, it is just there as your fragrance, that's all.