Increasing your Receptivity

The more you can offer gratitude to the Supreme Pilot within you, the more and the sooner you will increase your receptivity.

Sri Chinmoy

Receptivity is the flow of cosmic energy and cosmic light. Receptivity is the capacity to absorb and hold the divine gifts that the Supreme showers upon you during your meditation. If you want to be receptive, when you sit down to meditate, consciously try to bring light into your being. Once you have brought light inside, direct it to the right place, the spiritual heart. Then try to grow into that light.

If you feel that you have a little receptivity, then cry for more. Do not be satisfied with the receptivity that you have. Today if it is a tiny pool, then make it into a pond, then into a lake, and finally into a vast ocean. Receptivity can be expanded gradually and endlessly. But without receptivity you will not be able to achieve anything in your spiritual life, even from countless hours of meditation.

One way to increase your receptivity is to be like a child. If the mother says to the child, "This is good," the child has no tendency to think it is bad. No matter how advanced you are in the spiritual life, you can make the fastest progress by having a childlike attitude, a sincere and genuine childlike feeling.

Gratitude The easiest and most effective way to increase your receptivity is to offer your deepest gratitude to the Supreme each day before you meditate. Many of your near and dear ones are not following the spiritual life, but you have accepted the spiritual life. How is it possible? It is possible because the Supreme inside you has given you the aspiration, whereas there are many, many people who are still not aspiring. You should feel that He has selected you to be spiritual. Because He has given you aspiration, you have every reason to offer Him your gratitude. He will be able to give you more receptivity if He sees that every day you are increasing your gratitude-capacity.

When you offer gratitude to God, immediately your inner vessel becomes large. Then God is able to pour more of His blessings into you or enter more fully into you with His own divine Existence. God is infinite, but only according to our receptivity can He enter into us. God is like sunlight. If I leave the curtains open, sunlight will come in. If I keep all the curtains closed, it cannot come in. The more curtains we open, the more God enters into us with infinite light. When we offer gratitude, immediately God's light comes pouring into our being.

Gratitude means self-offering to one's highest self. Your gratitude is not going to somebody else; it is going to your own highest self. Gratitude helps you identify and feel your oneness with your own highest reality.

You should always be grateful to the Inner Pilot, the Supreme. When you are grateful, your receptivity automatically increases.

Every morning try to greet God with only one thing: an ever-increasing gratitude-gift.