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090. Gratitude

Conscious awareness of God acting in human life is called gratitude. Such a comprehension can penetrate one's being down to the physical in a receptive soul when he thrills. A dust in the eye hurts until it is removed. At least for a year no dust ever entered my eye. I never thought about how it happened. It rarely occurs to us that the eye was constantly protected and it was an act of God. On several occasions, good things happen to us, making us exclaim, 'Thank God.'

For one with subtle vision, the hand of God presiding over us can be seen. A jeep travelling on the road was obstructed by a tree and turned into the fields to avoid the tree. In that curve, two of the vehicle's wheels were hanging over a pit. The startled driver stopped the jeep and jumped out. A woman in the field screamed, "I saw amma holding the jeep in her sari's end."  We say the escape is providential, not fully realising the ever present Protection.

At moments of inner Fullness, if your heart is overflowing with goodwill for one whom you love - a brother, a friend, a son, etc. - try to send the Presence in your heart to him.  Soon he will meet you and inform you how more or less around the same time GOOD things happened to him, how he saw the sales tax officer whom he was planning to confront was an old friend, or something similar. Such an act of goodwill confers good luck on the recipient invariably.

God, the Spirit, the Divine Mother - by whatever name we call Him - sustains life by His Love.  To be consciously aware of it is the gratitude of mind.

When we are so aware of it in our feelings, we are pleasantly filled with positively overflowing energies. When we receive that knowledge in the very body, our body thrills. Sri Aurobindo says that such a feeling coming to stay is intolerable ecstasy. Mother calls it unflinching rapture.

 



story | by Dr. Radut