When I read this “Meditation on Swami Muktananda’s Words,” one of the things that stayed with me the most was Gurumayi’s question, “Do you step lightly upon the earth or heavily?”

Recently, I had been experiencing a sense of unhappiness about my life, stemming from changes at work. Contemplating Gurumayi’s words, I saw that I had been forgetting to feel gratitude for all the good times I have had in my life. The moment I realized this, something inside me transformed. I understood that, whether things are easy or filled with challenges, I can look at both these situations as prasad from God, which I can choose to accept with love and without attachment.

With this perspective, I am experiencing that my heart is full of gratitude and that the heaviness I had been carrying is beginning to dissipate. I feel light and am feeling increasing gratitude. I wish to focus on stepping “lightly on the earth” so that only love flows through me. I want to do this both for my benefit and for the benefit of those around me.

Pune, India

It was when I received shaktipat from Gurumayi that I began to have gratitude for life. Previously, life often felt like a hardship. Yet, through following the Siddha Yoga teachings and practices, I began to experience the beauty within myself and the world around me. I started recognizing the blessing of having been given a human life and how precious it is to be here, regardless of the many vicissitudes I may experience.

I have grown to appreciate the beauty of nature and its many inhabitants that wander through my property, such as wild turkeys with their broods, deer with their young, and all manner of bird life. The Siddha Yoga practices and teachings have taught me to have gratitude for my human life, to see that it is a great boon indeed. It has been many, many years since I received shaktipat, and since then the Guru’s grace has shown me the priceless value of God’s gift.

California, United States

Since receiving shaktipat initiation, I have learned, and continue to learn every day, to be grateful for everything and everyone I encounter—even for those things or people who may not initially seem worthy of my gratitude. I am inspired by the Guru’s generosity, which is so vast that it seems immeasurable. As I strive to make my own small offerings, I have experienced that this has opened an infinite path, one where, moment by moment, I continue to learn to be more and more grateful. In turn, this draws me ever closer to being able to fulfill my dharma.

Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz, Argentina

I have been contemplating and reflecting on the question that Gurumayi asked in her book Courage and Contentment, “Do you step lightly upon the earth or heavily?”

Specifically, I have been asking myself, “How do I step lightly?” I believe that in order to do that, I have to remember to breathe, relax, and not take myself so seriously. To do this, I must keep renewing my commitment to do the Siddha Yoga practices with greater focus and to keep trying to see the divinity in all. I have to do all that I can to foster the knowledge that I am the Self and to relax into that experience. As I am increasingly able to do this, the journey inward is becoming filled with greater happiness and joy.

California, United States

I believe that I am alive due to Baba’s infinite love and grace. I met him many years ago, at a time when I was feeling without purpose in my life.

I have been walking the Siddha Yoga path ever since then, hand in hand with my beloved Guru. I’m very grateful and moved to have received the grace to live a life full of meaning and love.

Milan, Italy

As a teenager, I participated with at least 150 other young people in a satsang at Gurudev Siddha Peeth. In the satsang, what stayed with me was that we were asked to journal every day about ten things for which we were grateful. A beautiful journal was given to us as a gift from Gurumayi ji. After some time of doing this physically, I learned to practice gratitude mentally on a daily basis, and I continue to do it today in my middle age.

This has been such prasad for me, both within and without. Each day I practice gratitude for all that I have—for my Guru’s presence and constant guidance in my life, for the gift of guruseva, for having grace as a companion always, for the Siddha Yoga path and the global Siddha Yoga satsang, and for my own supportive family.

As I reflect now, I see that gratitude has brought me a constant spring season of happiness and contentment, patience and endurance, positivity and forgiveness.

a Gurukula student in Gurudev Siddha Peeth

Each morning my husband and I take a walk, and we each take a turn sharing what we are grateful for. It’s like a walking meditation because we are often expressing gratitude for what we see, hear, and experience around us on the walk—children, dogs, nature, the elements—as well as for the myriad events, material well-being, and synchronicities in our lives.

There seems to be an endless number of things to name once we get started! I find it enjoyable to listen to my husband’s gratitude and take it in, and to express my gratitude. As we walk along and speak from the heart, the gratitude flows!

California, United States

In life I have experienced the ecstatic highs and the deep lows. I have also learned that both these experiences are brimming with God’s gifts, teachings, and learnings. The highs are thrilling, ecstatic, humbling, and gratitude naturally arises when they appear before me.

However, it’s in the lowest points in my life—when the challenges have been difficult—that I have experienced God most intimately. It is in these moments that God shines brightest, and I feel God’s light and love wipe out all the suffering.

I am grateful to my Guru’s shining light that guides me through the labyrinth of life.

Templestowe, Australia

For me, gratitude is a gigantic as well as very deep concept. My human birth in itself is a cause for great gratitude. Every breath that I inhale and exhale is a gift of God and of the grace of Shri Gurumayi. When I start to count all I am grateful for, I do not find anyone or anything for which I’m not able to express my gratitude.

I am grateful to my parents for instilling in me the values and ethics to be a humane person, showing me how to love and care for everyone and everything around me. I have immense gratitude to Gurumayi for bestowing shaktipat diksha, my second birth, on me and for her grace through thick and thin, high and low moments in my life. Gurumayi has always been in my heart, loving me and showing me the path to right understanding. 

What a joyful, blissful, and ecstatic human life I am leading, where I am living for everyone who needs my love and my care! Closing my eyes with gratitude, my heart is full and joyful tears are flowing.

Lucknow, India

I wish to begin by thanking Eesha for her insightful writings, and for her thought-provoking questions that invite me to reflect on my own understanding of the Guru’s words.

Gurumayi’s question—”Do you step lightly upon the earth or heavily?”—brings to my mind nature’s work, how it presents itself with such grace, with such perfection, expressing God’s glorious beauty, demanding nothing in return. It is simply God’s expression of himself. I find it so inspiring, seeing nature as a lesson on how to conduct myself in life.

I am grateful for this lesson because I feel a lightness of being and sense of calm in the midst of noise, which keeps me grounded in what truly matters in life. I am deeply grateful for the Guru’s grace, which has opened my eyes to the teachings that help me, with each passing day, to see things more clearly.

Wollongong, Australia