EVERYTHING IS AUSPICIOUS, JUST CELEBRATE IT!🔗

One thing has to be understood very clearly. The whole of Existence is an auspi-cious happening. You are part of Existence, so everything happening around you is also auspicious. This is the truth of Existence. Nothing that happens in Existence is inauspicious. Everything is only a blessing, for which we have to feel grateful.

If this is understood clearly, there is nothing to complain about in life. If this is understood clearly, your very eye becomes a grateful eye. It sees everything as extraordinary. Nothing appears mundane. Everything appears as a miracle.

Miracles are continuously happening in front of our eyes. But we continu-ously miss them! Only because we miss them, life itself appears to be dull sometimes. When we start perceiving them, our entire life becomes a miracle. The truth is, there are too many miracles happening around us in our lives.

Just accept and celebrate Existence with all its different dimensions and paradoxes. Don't judge anything. You continuously judge what is going on. You feel something is right or something is wrong, something should have happened this way or something should not have happened this way.

Become aware that whatever happens in Existence is auspicious. In the whole world there are only two kinds of people. The first kind feels that whatever is happening in the world is auspicious. The second kind feels everything is happening against their will and things have to be slightly altered all the time. Such people will try to alter, judge, criticize and develop the things happening in the world according to their ideas. These people continuously suffer because of trying to change things all the time.

Understand: everything has a message for us including death and disease. Everything has something to teach us. Every incident raises our intelligence, raises our frequency of consciousness.

You need to know one important thing: there is no qualitative or quanti-tative difference between you and an enlightened being except that he feels contented in the outer and inner worlds while you don't feel that way. You feel something is missing all the time. Just like how Existence wants him to be here

The villagers started doubting the sage. They started wondering in what way the sage was superior to them and whether he was in any way qualified to tell them such things. Some of the villagers proceeded to the next village to get some fire but the sage stopped them, sternly saying that they should not go.

Early next morning some of the villagers started making their way to the next village anyway. Suddenly they saw something like a sandstorm in the distance. After a few moments they could see it was actually a large invading army on horseback. They were on their way plundering the city and the villages surrounding it. The villagers hid behind trees and watched them. The army stopped ahead of the village and one of them screamed, 'Let us invade this village too!'

Another person said, 'No use will come out of it. There is no bird that chirps even so early in the morning, no dog barks, no smoke comes out of the chimney of any house. It doesn't look like a single soul lives there.'

The army turned back and went away.

The hiding villagers ran back to the village and told the villagers what had happened. They suddenly realized how true the sage was all along! They went to the sage's hut to tell him everything but the hut was empty. The sage had left.

Nobody knew where he had gone.

Existence is not an accident. It is independent intelligence. When you under-stand that it is an independent intelligence, when you understand that it is a profound mystery to be experienced and not solved, everything in your life will open itself and reveal to you the lesson it has brought with it.

Some people ask me, ‘Swamiji, how do we express our deep gratitude to you?’ I tell them that the only way to express their gratitude is to live enlighten-ment the way I have just described it to you. That is the best you can do for me and that I can do for you.

People ask me, ‘What service can we do for the mission?’ I tell them, the greatest service one can do to the world is working for the flowering of one’s own consciousness. Once this happens, automatically, you will serve where required, not out of ego or to gain credit, but because you are celebrating and overflowing. Then it is not called service. It is just an overflowing. That is the way service should happen – not as a giving, but as a spontaneous sharing.

Prayer is gratitude for the continuous showering of Existence upon us.

Try to sit down and make two lists. Let one be of all the things that you have and one of all the things that you don't have. The first list should include every single thing that you have, starting from your eyes, ears, hands and legs, because there are people who don't have some of these. Include all your physical and mental faculties before moving to material things. If you write very sincerely without leaving out anything, you will not be able to complete the first list! That is the truth. If you find you are unable to finish the first list, it means gratitude has started happening in you!

The problem is that there is a continuous expectation in us all the time. That is why gratitude doesn't happen easily. Working with expectation is like pouring clarified butter into the fire to quench it. Can you quench fire by pouring clari-fied butter into it? Never! In the same way, you can never feel fulfilled if your actions are rooted in expectation. You will only tire your senses.

You can live either in expectation or in gratitude, never in both. With expec-tation there is a desire to possess things. You become the owner. With gratitude, you become the enjoyer. When you are the owner you enjoy only the few things that you own. When you are the enjoyer, you enjoy everything in Existence. When you look to own, nothing will seem enough. When you enjoy, everything seems to be overflowing! That is the difference.

A small story:

In a village, the night guard was on his rounds blowing his whistle periodically.

He had an earthen pipe that he smoked. He filled it with tobacco and searched for a match box. He didn't have one.

He went to the nearby hut where an old lady lived and asked if she could give him some ember from her oven. The old lady said her stove had not been lit for the past three days and that she herself was managing with the little food they gave in the temple.

He tried in several places but it was of no use. He finally went to the village chief's house and asked the maids for fire to light his pipe.

One of the girls looked at him and asked, 'Fire to light your pipe? Why not use the lantern you are carrying?'

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