Meister Eckhart's The Power Of Gratitude: Modern Concepts

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE: MODERN CONCEPTS

INTRODUCTION

The great 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.”

Gratitude has a dual meaning: a worldly one and an ascendant one. In its worldly sense, gratitude is a feeling that is present in interpersonal exchanges when one person accepts receiving a valuable benefit from another. Gratitude is a cognitive-affective state that is typically linked with the discernment that one has received a personal benefit that was not intentionally pursue after, deserved, or earned but rather because of the positive intentions of another person.

Gratitude is a dedicated practice, a way of knowing and thanking God.

He spit it out, saying it was terrible. Apparently, over the four days in the old leather container, it had become dry. The student challenged his teacher: “Master, the water was awful. Why did you pretend to like it?” The teacher replied: “You only tasted the water, whereas I tasted the gift. The water was simply the container for an act of loving-kindness.”

This riveting story speaks to a profound truth about our lives. It tells us about the monumental importance of practicing thankfulness was in our lives and relationships. We often think of gratefulness especially during holidays or special events when we get an opportunity to remember and celebrate what we are thankful for. However, gratefulness does not have to be downgraded only to these occasions. We are able to tune in to our innate capacity for gratefulness each moment of every day.

Each one of us has the innate spiritual power of free will. This means that we always have the ability to choose. While we may not always have a choice about what we experience in life, we definitely have a choice about how we experience events. Even when we find ourselves in the midst of difficulty or things not going like we want, we can decide to behold the good in the