Saturday, August 18, 2007

Gratitude is the Foundation for Healing Your Mind and Body


"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful."

Buddha



We are so obsessed with attaining a certain status in our lives that we ignore the little things that make life comfortable for us. We fret over our work, the traffic jams as well as the monotony in our lives and ignore what is important to us.


Happiness eludes us when we do not appreciate the little things in our life. Just as the little drops of water can cause a flood, so can the appreciation of little things in our lives bring us happiness. Expressing gratitude for being healthy when we wake up in the morning, for the sun in the horizon, for the red rose in our garden and for the birds chirping on the tree behind our house give us much to distract us from other disappointments that can give us stress and make us sick.


The practice of gratitude in our daily lives is meditation in itself. It is a buffer for self-pity from life's disappointments. There is no life without some unfulfilled dreams. To live is to learn to walk away from those moments of disappointments and take the higher ground. To overcome your disappointments, replace them with the little things that make your life run seamlessly. For, by turning the other cheek towards the sun in the horizon, your tears would dry up. Therefore, in your daily prayers, practice the art of gratitude, the balm that will heal your wounds. This ancient secret of happiness is worth more than gold.


"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow."

Melodie Beattie



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