Positive Thinking 28 – Let gratitude energize you

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our discussion on positive thinking. We are discussing the energy sutra for positive thinking and we will be discussing E-N-E-R-G now.
G is gratitude. So how gratitude helps us to cultivate positivity. The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
Eric Hofer. Some of us when I studied mathematics some of us may have been good some of us may have found mathematics a little difficult. But either way whatever it is actually we need to know that even if however good or poor we are in mathematics the most important counting that we will do in our life is the counting of our blessings.
Unfortunately our default tendency is to count our problems instead of our blessings. Oh this is wrong that I don’t have. This is going that way that is going that way and by thinking thus we disempower ourselves we weaken ourselves and thus we end up frustrated in our lives.
We end up we end up de-energized. So counting our blessings and by keeping our attention on the things that we have on the valuable things that we have it enables us to move closer to Krishna to God and to not just that spiritual benefit we get because we feel grateful to the one who has given us those things but it enables us to channel our energies constructively towards using towards tapping what we have for doing justice to our talents for making a positive contribution and in the service of God and his children. Now let’s consider some of the gifts that we have which we take for granted.
You know if you woke up today with no pain you are luckier than most people who have chronic disease and pain. If you never known the dangers of war loneliness of prison or hunger then you are better off than 500 million people of the world. Your basic needs are covered.
You are richer than 75 percent of the world. If you have some savings then you are among the top 10 percent prosperous people in the world. If you can read this you are blessed more than 2 million people in this world cannot read they have no eyes.
So there are so many small small blessings which we mistake for granted which we don’t even notice leave alone use leave alone leave alone treasure and the reason for this primarily is that we are infatuated. Why is it that we are not able to cultivate gratitude? It can be many reasons. Primary is that many of us our society and our culture keeps us like children emotionally.
The children when they are given some toys rather than be satisfied with those toys quite often they crave and cry for more toys and if the parents don’t give them a toy they often throw a big tantrum and start crying loudly. Unfortunately many of us we grow physically but psychologically our minds still remain like children and when we don’t get something that we desire we get so worked up we get so angry that we end up infuriated that we end up with an adult version of a childhood tantrum. That means we may not cry aloud although sometimes that may also happen but we will end up going into depression going into dejection even becoming suicidal and or we may become irritable we may shout at anyone and everyone and overall we will become frustrated.
So when this happens the primary reason for this happening is that we have let ourselves get carried away by infatuation with toys and what do toys refer to? Actually our media especially the advertising world fills our consciousness with lifestyle products and glamorized toys. So certainly we need many products many gadgets many things for our day to day functioning but quite often the media fills us up with images. I want this I want that I want that and as we get infatuated by such things then we are never satisfied with what we have.
As it is said that fashion is a form of ugliness that is so intolerable that we have to change it every few months. Fashion that is now when you think of fashion somebody who is fashionable is beautiful is good-looking but this very thing that is good-looking now becomes when it becomes old-fashioned it becomes almost ugly intolerably ugly and we feel I have to change this. So we stay in a perpetual dissatisfaction mode because of the infatuation that comes from the mind getting caught in the toys that the media thrusts on us through its glamorization as long as we are focused on such things and if we are constantly seeing what we don’t have how can we see what we have and the whole advertising industry focuses on showing us and aggressively showing alluringly and aggressively showing us the things which we don’t have.
If we keep seeing the things that we don’t have all that we will have is dissatisfaction, agitation, greed only when we learn to see the things that we have will we be able to cultivate gratitude. So there’s a conscious shift that is required in our focus where we learn to see the things that we have now this does not mean that we have to become complacent that we have to become lazy that we are not to be constructive the point is not that we are not constructive the point is that we know how to work positively we know that we don’t want to get our energies dissipated so we talked about greed earlier in our previous talk but now we are focusing on the positive side of it gratitude so now we may say how when there are so many attractive things in the world why should I not see them should I move around in the world with closed eyes no we can’t move around with closed eyes and the point is not to not see those objects the point is not to not work intelligently it’s not to be lazy it’s not to be unambitious the point is to be focused to stay in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction is not a sign of intelligence especially if that dissatisfaction causes unhappiness causes our health to go down causes us frustration makes us snappy and that is undesirable when our endeavors flow from the richness of our life not the emptiness of our life then whatever we do we will be able to do it joyfully that means I’m satisfied I’m grateful for what I have and if I can do more and get more and share more that’s wonderful but my sense of self-identity and self-worth doesn’t depend on those things so when we have that sense of self-identity and self-worth secure independent of our possessions then we won’t be subject to negativity that inner positivity will keep us energized so gratitude Melody Beatriz has said gratitude unlocks the fullness of life it turns what we have into enough and more it turns denial into acceptance chaos to order confusion to clarity it can turn a meal into a feast a house into a home a stranger into a friend gratitude makes sense of our past brings peace for today and creates a vision for future when we are grateful we know how we can move onwards we can create a vision ok these are my strengths using these strengths I’ll move forward in future it helps us make sense of the past ok things have gone wrong but there are things that have gone wrong there are gifts that I have and it helps us to come to peace with our past and make sense of our present either way we can work it out but importantly we get oriented properly in our life and even when we face reversals we can stay positive when Arthur Ashe the former tennis champion when he got cancer he could have said that oh I was victimized by this why did this happen to me but he said that out of millions and millions of millions of athletes who practice few become professionals out of those few who become professionals very few actually qualify to the highest levels in the biggest competitions and out of those few very few become champions when I became a champion I didn’t ask why why should I ask why now so when we can focus on the positives when we can focus on the thing that we are thankful for then when some things go wrong that vision which is fixed on the positives enables us to take the negative in our stride so gratitude is a great strength which can channel our energy in constructive purposes and enable us to effectively counter the negativity that comes for comes towards us from within and from without thank you