All inner traditions that exist today or have existed in the history of humanity tell us that the central endeavor for any human being is to learn to control their experience. Inner traditions aim at liberating the human being from the tumultuous twisting of fortune. The wisdom of inner traditions teaches us that we fundamentally in error when we seek happiness and fulfillment in attaining success in the world outside of ourselves. Happiness and fulfillment is not acquired by making money, eating delicious food, becoming famous or even making lots of friends.
The point inner traditions are trying to make us see is that these things are not valuable for us in themselves. They are only valuable for us because of the experience they are able to unlock in us. These things can only produce happiness if they fill us with gratitude, they are good for us only so long as we allow them to fill us with gratitude. Gratitude, and not money or food or friends, is the elixir of happiness and fulfillment. Gratitude is an experience of overflowing. Gratitude experienced in its purest fills the experiencer with a boundless joy which overflows and makes them shine towards existence with the purest benevolence.
Inner traditions seek to unlock the capacity for gratitude in us. They seek to liberate us from the twisting of fortune by teaching us to greet all circumstances with gratitude. Our happiness and fulfillment becomes immune from the requirement from all these things because we are able to greet all events with gratitude, to rejoice in what has gone right for us and shine towards life with benevolence.
I have felt for a long time that the secret of the inner traditions was lost on the world of science. I felt as though the world view of the scientific community was too dogged by materialism to recognise the value of and requirement for cultivating the capacity to control the way we experience the world. I am really pleased to see that this assumption of mine was completely unfair.
As this clip clearly shows, science has caught up with the lessons of spiritual traditions the world over. More and more scientific studies are illustrating the value of gratitude. Science is coming to recognise that it is not what we have that makes us happy but rather it is how we view what we have. The essence of happiness is the psychological stance that we take towards what we have. Our happiness is determined by our orientation towards the world. If you have a grateful orientation towards the world then you will be happy. If you have a resentful orientation or a demeanor of not having been given enough, then you will be unhappy.
This orientation is completely in our control. It is time for us all to learn the secrets of the inner traditions, the secrets which science is now discovering. This will be productive of a happier and fundamentally benevolent humanity. This will produce a humanity which spontaneously produces harmony through the benevolence which abounds from gratitude. Lets us strive for this humanity by each of us unlocking gratitude in ourselves. To reach this humanity we must not strive to change others, we must strive to change ourselves.