06/16/2026
Happy Tuesday!
This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before” — what an orientation to this day. I’ve been stopping and looking, listening and even smelling. It’s been marvellous as I prepare for Summer Solstice.
In Reiki practice, we understand that all human beings seek to be happy. It is the common core state we all seek. Imagine, we have something that unites us everyday! What creates diversity is how we imagine that happiness and seek to live it out in our own precious ways.
As wisdom tells us, it's not happiness that makes us grateful. It's gratefulness that makes us happy. Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian, lived through Hitler's fascist regime, rebelled against it, now offers us some wonderful ways to embody gratitude for the moments in our lives.
"Well, for me, this idea of listening and really looking and beholding — that comes in when people ask, “Well, how shall we practice this gratefulness?” And there is a very simple kind of methodology to it: Stop, look, go. Most of us — caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.
But that doesn’t have to be long. When you are in practice, a split second is enough — “stop.” And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in. And if we really see what the opportunity is, we must, of course, not stop there, but we must do something with it: Go. Avail yourself of that opportunity. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, tonight, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.
I always say, not — I don’t speak of the gift, because not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence or domestic violence or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful.
For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience — what to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up and take a stand — that is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, “Can you be grateful for everything?” — no, not for everything, but in every moment."
“I am grateful, allowing my emotions fully to taste and to express the joy I have received. And thus I make it flow back to its source by returning thanks. The whole person is involved, when we give thanks from our hearts. The heart is that center in which the human person is one. The intellect recognizes the gift as gift. The will acknowledges my dependence. The emotions, like a sounding board, give fullness to the melody of this experience.”
these are excerpts from a larger conversation at
https://onbeing.org/programs/david-steindl-rast-how-to-be-grateful-in-every-moment/
