If we peel our eyes properly and look around at the way life is happening to us, if you are able to clearly see all that is involved to make your life happen, you cannot help being grateful. Let us say a plateful of food appears in front of you. To make bread, do you know how many people have worked? From the farmer who sowed the seeds to all the things that happen on the land, the one who harvested, the one who sold it, the one who brought it to the shop, the one who bought it from there, just look at the whole lot of things involved.
Just look like this at every aspect of life, from your breath, to food, to everything that you are enjoying and experiencing, instead of thinking, ‘Okay, I have paid for it, so what the hell, I have to get it.’ Everything in the existence is somehow collaborating to keep you alive and well right now. If you are able to look through just one chain of events, you cannot help being overwhelmed with gratitude for all those people and all those things which have nothing to do with you right now, but they have given everything to you every moment of your life. If you see this, how can you help but be grateful? You do not have to develop an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude is not an attitude. Gratitude is something that flows out of you when you are overwhelmed by what is being given to you. If it is an attitude, it is horrible.
If you are grateful, you are also receptive. If you are grateful to somebody, you look up at them. If you look up at something, you are you more receptive. The whole process of yoga is to make you receptive in deeper and deeper ways, in ways that you do not know right now. That is the only goal. So definitely being overwhelmed by gratitude is a very beautiful way to be receptive. It opens you up to a certain extent.
Even if something is given, somebody should take it. If everybody in the existence, everybody in this world is absolutely receptive, just in a moment I will enlighten the whole world. The hardest part of the work is to make them receptive. If they worked on their own receptivity, giving them what they need is very simple. If one is hungry, is it difficult to make that man eat? No effort is needed. But to make him hungry, that is a hard job.
Isha Foundation New Zealand conducts Isha Inner Engineering and Hatha yoga Programmes. It also offers free Isha Kriya and Isha Upa yoga practices for the General public regularly. For more information Pls contact: 0224637811 or Visit: www.ishayoga.nz
Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.