What if our primary task as human beings is to learn how to express the deepest gratitude for the unmerited gift of awareness? Our very existence is owed to it, an eternal mystery of unconditional love—or, as some might perceive it, an eternal ‘debt.’ This perspective re-frames the pervasive guilt we often carry: the relentless drive to maximize potential, the self-criticism for perceived shortcomings, the persistent feeling of being ‘not-good-enough-yet.’ Could this negativity stem not from our failings, but from a fundamental misunderstanding—the misplaced notion that we must somehow earn this gift, rather than simply accept it wholeheartedly?
If so, the path to truly deserving this gift lies not in relentless effort driven by a sense of cosmic debt, but paradoxically, in first learning to fully accept it. This means embracing the existence that is you—your body, your mind, and all your unique ways of being and acting. Such self-love becomes the primal act of receiving, the key to unlocking unbounded gratitude. Instead of striving to repay a debt, assuming we will feel worthy only after sufficient toil, we can choose to first learn how to genuinely say ‘thank you.’ This cultivates a kinder, purer, and more gentle relationship with ourselves, an inner alignment from which authentic goodness and impactful actions naturally flow into the world.
Transforming our relationship with ourselves is a vital, yet often forgotten, lesson. It’s as if, somewhere in our evolutionary journey, the emergence of a ‘separate self’ created an enduring sense of separation—a deviation from an inherent perfection into a state of guilt and shame. This self, driven by a primal need to establish its worthiness and fearing its precarious position, strives endlessly, sometimes through prideful dominion, to earn its place and assert control.
Yet, moving beyond this struggle of the separate self, I have come to see that the true ‘task’ a Higher Being, or the universe itself, ‘gives’ us is simpler and more profound: to experience and create love. This, I believe, is the whole point. Perhaps there is a cosmic interplay, not a war in the traditional sense, but a dynamic tension between this inherent drive towards love and the self-asserting dominion that has forgotten its source. Our journey, then, is to return to love. That, in essence, is the core ‘technology’ of the cosmos—the fundamental operating principle that gratitude and self-acceptance unlock within us, allowing love to remember its source and guide our way.