10 Reasons To Be Grateful At Any Moment
How to deepen spirituality during your gratitude practice
We all know we should be grateful. Some moments are easier than others. However, gratitude lowers stress and changes our outlook on life. It also helps you let go of desires to live in peace. Finally, gratitude helps you become aware of your true nature in spirituality. So there are many reasons to learn how to be grateful in any circumstance and at any moment. So here are 10 ways to be grateful at any moment.
We tend to create ever greater expectations from the world around us. But these expectations only serve to raise the bar. We only feel gratitude when that bar is surpassed. But if we can lower our bar and expectations to simply the things we have been gifted by the universe, we can live forever in gratitude. Here are ten below that can help you at any moment you stop and think of them.
Breath - Slow down and pay attention to your breath. Notice that it works without your conscious awareness. It has continued to keep you alive from the instant you were born to this very moment. All without you needing to control it.
Heart - Take your hands and place them over your heart. For a moment simply feel your heartbeat. Remember that you don’t know and you never have had to ask for it to beat or control it. It simply does that, keeping you alive.
Stomach - Take your hands over your stomach and feel deeply any sensations that arise. Remember that no matter what you have provided it, it has done its best every day of your life to create life out of matter. It has given you life whether you fed it holiday cake and a bottle of coke or healthy food full of nutrients.
Voice - Place your hand over your throat, and say the words “I love you”. Feel the vibrations. You didn’t have to ask or do anything for your voice. It allows you to communicate and express your experiences.
Eyes - Cover your eyes. Think about what you just saw in front of you. Without your direction or desire, you experience the miracle of sight. You do not tell it what to do or how to interpret the beams of light. It does it for you in a timespan we can barely comprehend.
Ears - Take your fingers and rub your ears. Take a moment to simply hear the noises. You did not choose to create ears or tell them moment by moment how to hear. They are always pulling in the senses for you to see and experience.
Nose - Take a deep breath through your nose and see if you can smell even a subtle hint of a scent. Remind yourself that with every breath your nose is interpreting hundreds of potential sensations and providing you with a sense of the world.
Hands - Take your hand and reach out to rub something in your surroundings. Feel the sensation. Note that it was never within your control to develop the millions of receptors that allow you to feel pressure and sensation for every moment of your life.
Thoughts - Stop and take a moment to watch your thoughts. They may be driving you crazy right now. They may be bringing up old grievances or new issues. Or they may be appreciating family and the holidays. But either way, for us to have the opportunity to think is in itself a gift.
Brain - While we may never fully understand all that our brain does for us, what we do understand is incredible. At this moment your brain is taking millions of inputs from everything we described above and more. It takes those inputs and decides what to do with it. It does so without our active work or support. It does all the heavy lifting so that we can simply be. here. now. That is a miracle.
Each of these, with few exceptions, is granted to every one of us on this planet. They are a gift to us to use to experience life. When you stop and truly notice like a child, they are miraculous gifts like no other that could ever be given. All the money and fame of the world could not convince us to lose a single one of them.
And they were given freely by a source beyond our capacity to understand. They did not come with instruction manuals but rather operated almost entirely outside our control. We did not have to request them, and nothing was asked of us in return. Until we near death, they are working freely for us in every moment of our lives.
If we can stop and feel gratitude for this, we can follow it into the depths of spiritual understanding. A source beyond our understanding gave us these gifts. These gifts operate beyond our knowledge or will to continually give us life. These gifts are not who we are, but are within our possession. These gifts are given to a soul to allow it to experience creation. And for creation to be experienced from this level of gratitude, is an ongoing miracle with every breath.
Hello to any new readers, I’m David Longhini. Currently writing from Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh India, but as usual, I’ll be somewhere else by next week. So follow to keep up with what I’m thinking if I’m not always the best about sharing where I am.
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