By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Your celebration of Thanksgiving Day in the USA is likely to be focused on family and food. You are probably anticipating a wonderful event. However, it’s rarely a day of thanks, irrespective of the name.

In the many hours with others, how much time is actually spent in gratitude? Maybe 2 minutes? Maybe 5? We’re a long way away from the Pilgrims. They were thanking God as well as their neighbors, the native Americans who had saved them from starvation.

While food insecurity is still happening in America, hopefully it’s not one of your challenges. Since you don’t feel a shortage or need, then you’re not likely to feel grateful when it is met.

Gratitude abounds when you receive something you need. Thus you are not short on gratitude — your life is lacking need. While your wish list may include many wonderful things, your day-to-day needs are probably well under control. And that is worth celebrating!

To be aware of the blessings in your life, Thanksgiving Day is the day. To appreciate the small things, this is the day. To recognize the many people involved in simple stuff, like when you buy a pie, this is the time. Not only did the baker do something wonderful for you, but also the farmers who grew the ingredients and the truck driver who moved the farm’s produce to its destination. There’s always room for gratitude.

At a recent meeting I attended, the sound of leaf-blowers outside the window made it difficult to hear the other people. Of course, some complained. I offered a different perspective, “I’m grateful to the gardener who is doing this instead of me.  He’ll move to another area soon.”

Yes, even in the midst of difficulties, there’s always something to be grateful for. A grateful heart is a soft heart, open to receiving more and more of what is already being given. Your ability to receive is honored by yoga as a sublime surrender.

It is my Baba that made me able to surrender, thus receiving his great gift fully. This inner awakening gave me life, gave me a reason to live, and continues to give me the ability to care and to share. Ji, Baba. Yes, Baba. My gratitude grows every year. Every day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

To search for happiness is like trying to drink water from a mirage. As you get closer and closer to what looks like a lake, it fades and disappears. And you’re still thirsty.

The same thing happens in relationships. You make a new friend, who seems to be on the same wavelength as you.

After a while you find some discrepancies, some flaws, some imperfections – so do you stay in the relationship or not? And if they are a relative, now what?

Are you looking outside for your bliss or are you looking inside? If you look outward, your bliss will be temporary, impure and even cause pain. You are fueled by the delusion that the illusion will make you happy. Instead, you drown in your sorrows as your mind replays them for you over and over.

It’s a familiar story. Your mind concocts a plan to do something that will make you happy. Let’s start with something simple, even healthy — maybe to eat a raisin. A plain raisin. We’re getting out of chocolate and having raisins. Just one, maybe two.

So you’re going to have a raisin. You have it planned that it will make you happy. You have projected happiness onto a raisin. This is illusion. Raisins contain vitamins and minerals as well as sugar, but not happiness.

Even if they make a cartoon out of a dancing raisin, in order to convince you that happiness comes from raisins, it’s all illusion. It’s only an appearance or sham; it’s deceptive. Maayaa — illusion.

You eat the raisin anyway. Unfortunately it doesn’t really make you happy. So you eat another one. And another and then more. This is delusion, to keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping to get different results.

Delusion means your perception is erroneous, like attributing happiness to a raisin. Of course, you could say that, if it is an organic raisin, produced in a certain location, packaged in recyclable materials — it can even lead to infatuation. You’re falling in love with a raisin! This will certainly lead to pain, for raisins can never hold up to how you see them. Moha — delusion.

Maybe, for you, it’s not a raisin. It’s a new car, or a new job. Maybe it’s a riverside walk or a hot bath – or both. And these are wonderful things. They will even make you happy, for a while. And then, you’re stuck with your mind again. You drown in your sorrows as your mind replays them for you over and over.

I’d like to show you how to use your mind productively. When you use your mind differently, you get different results.  What if your mind replayed…