Gratefulness and The Path to Freedom
How can the power of love, clarity about our divine purpose and gratitude transform our lives? Join Yogacharya O’Brian as she shares how we can connect to that power and set ourselves on the path of ultimate freedom.
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian is the founder of the Yoga Hour. She is a spiritual teacher, writer, poet, and the founder and spiritual director of Center for Spiritual Enlightenment—a Kriya Yoga Meditation Center with headquarters in San Jose, California. She teaches nationally and internationally and has received several community service awards, including the Mahatma Gandhi Award for the Promotion of Religious Pluralism. She is the author of several books including Living the Eternal Way: Bringing Spiritual Meaning and Practice for Daily Life. She offers an on-demand online course, Live the Eternal Way which this book supplements. You can find out more about Yogacharya O’Brian, her many online classes, books, and videos at her websites.
LINK TO YOGACHARYA’S TALK: THE POWER OF GRATEFULNESS.
Center for Spiritual Enlightenment
YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: I thought that I knew all I needed to know about gratitude, but this program brought some new insights to me. I love that Yogacharya said that gratitude is a tool that offers us an opportunity to shift out of our narrow, egoic mind with attractions and aversions. It opens us up to the expansive mind, open to possibilities. That is the power of gratitude. Yogacharya O’Brian told us not to wait to practice gratitude, we have the opportunity every day to practice. She said refuse to let the small annoyances take away our peace and contentment. I found this program very inspiring.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I loved how Yogacharya O’Brian discussed the practice of gratitude as being important to all of the four branches of classical yoga: jnana yoga, the path of wisdom where we see the interconnection of all life and the ways we are divinely supported for which we feel gratitude; bhakti yoga, the path of love where all actions are imbued with love and gratitude; karma yoga, the path of service, where we are grateful for the opportunity to serve others because service is a vehicle for our own awakening; and raja yoga, the yoga of technique, where we are grateful for having a step-by-step path. We spoke about gratitude as affecting not only what is happening in the moment, but also the possibilities for us in the future. As Yogacharya O’Brian said, why wait? Why not begin a practice of gratitude each morning and evening right now?