Sri Chinmoy spoke on the connection between receptivity and gratitude:
“Receptivity increases only in one way: by increasing our gratitude to God. There is no other way to increase receptivity. You can offer gratitude to God not only for what you have, but for what you are going to have. What you already have, what you are right now, how can you deny? What you are going to have or what you are going to become, you may not know. But you can use your imagination. The more gratitude you can offer to God, the more you can create positive thoughts, positive ideas and positive goals for yourself.
“So if you want to increase any good quality in your life, just increase your gratitude to God. If you are an artist, offer gratitude; if you are a cyclist, offer gratitude; if you are a singer, offer gratitude. As an individual, you have capacities in perhaps seven or eight areas. For each thing, try to offer gratitude to the Supreme.
“This morning, if you had a good meditation, if you did not suffer from doubt, fear, anxiety, worry, jealousy and so on, then offer gratitude, sincere gratitude. The following day, your meditation will be better.
“We can offer gratitude to God not only for the positive things in our life but also for our weaknesses. We can say, ‘God, I am so grateful to You that I have only one weakness, it is limited.’ If you can offer gratitude to God because you only have one weakness, then God will take away that weakness.
“So our gratitude-heart can be of great benefit to us. The more gratitude we can offer to God, the more He will increase our receptivity and capacity in so many different fields.”
– Sri Chinmoy