Enlightenment - Yudhishtara

We have to set the stage right for our daily lives here.

Although there are some days I forget, this is what I do. I wake up in the morning and the first thought that I allow to come to my mind as I’m opening my eyes is of my Beloved. And I say“Thank you for another day.”

Either I have accustomed myself to do this or my Beloved has accustomed me to remind myself of this. I don’t make any big, gigantic, complicated prayers. Thank you for another day!

It took me only a fraction of a second to do that. I didn’t have to get a mat and sit down in a corner and start meditating for twenty minutes or singing all kinds of songs. I’m not doing all this stuff in some kind of big ceremony where I never really, really say thank you.

I just say thank you with sincerity.

And then I have my day.

Sometimes I remember my Beloved during the day and when I do I say thank you. Sometimes when I get caught up in all the stuff that we all get caught up in, I don’t remember. Honestly, I don’t rememberand I still have my day just as you do. Sometimes we have so-called good days. Sometimes we have bad days. And sometimes we have in-between days.

By thanking our Beloved when we first wake up,

by just saying thank you for another day,

we don’t put conditions

on how we are to have a day.

We didn’t say thank you for a good day. We are not telling our Beloved to give us a good day. We said thank you for a day of whatever this day may bring.

If we thank the Beloved for what this day will bring, we can handle whatever comes because it was brought to us by our Beloved. No conditions. No results. We don’t say thank you for this day as long as certain things take place. The Beloved wasn’t placed here to be our servant. It’s not like that.

Then we say thank you during the day when we remember. When we see how awesome some particular thing is, or we look up at the sky in the night time and see all the stars and the planets and the things that are out therehow can we not say thank you once again! It’s not an exercise. It’s just a naturalthank you.

We may see some tiny, tiny things that exist. They have their lives just as we have. And who knows what they are thinking about, what they are doing. But they have whole colonies, whole civilizations. We look at them. We say, “Thank you for my seeing these things, and hearing them, and smelling them, and being with them”as opposed to saying I’m only going to be thankful if the day was a great day.

So this is my number one advice

thank the Beloved for another day.

We thank our Beloved for another day until the time comes when we are not going to be in this form anymore. Then when we are not going to be in this form, we thank our Beloved for whatever forms or no-forms are going to be in store for us. And when that happens, it happensand if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Under those circumstances we’ll see our lives are a lot better.

I don’t think this requires a gigantic piece of work. I don’t like to give work. But if we don’t want to thank somethingI call it the Beloved, but it doesn’t matter what we call itif we don’t want to thank something for the beauty of what we are, then I get very aggravated when I’m asked how to be enlightened. What kind of nonsense is that?

What kind of nonsense is it

to have a teaching to become enlightened

when we can’t even thank

That which made us to be here?

So, we say thank you when we wake up. We say thank you whenever we happen to remember. We don’t judge the day by how we think it should be. We just accept the day.

We cannot know until later if it was a good day or a bad day. I tell you from direct experience, that many times I thought I was having the most wonderful dayand days, months, or years later when I remembered that day, I’d say that was the worst day I had in my life now that I see what the circumstances were pertaining to that day. And vice versa.

Sometimes we have a totally miserable event that takes placetotally miserable! And we say this is the most horrible thing that ever happened. Then later we say to ourselves that if this had not happened, I would not be who I am today. But we only know these things later.

So we give thanks for having a day. We give thanks for the experience. We give thanks for the kindness. We give thanks for the love. We give thanks for being able to hear and to see and to touch and to feel.

Then we give thanks that we have become wise enough to love That which made these things.

So we keep thanking for things.

Then we will start to see

that life is better, I promise.

And finally, when the time comes that we are going to leave our physical form, we will have a moment to say thank you for my having had a life. It does not matter what the circumstances are for our leaving our form. It may be some type of a quick event or a longer time, but there is always a fraction of a second, no matter what the circumstances are, that we can say

Thank you, my Beloved; take me.

We have to train ourselves to be this way.

Then at that moment of so-called death we are not going to have all these other fears about all these things that I’ve mentioned. We will be able to say“I’m yours my Beloved, take me.” So that’s the main teaching that I have for this life here.

Gratitude