“Whenever you find great strength, joy, and kindness in your heart, or when you feel free and without contradictions, immediately be internally thankful. When you find yourself in opposite circumstances, ask with faith, and the gratitude you have accumulated will return to you transformed and amplified in benefit.”
Silo, The Look Within, Chapter XIII, and The Path:
“Do not let a great joy pass without giving thanks internally.”
“Not only because of the importance of recognizing a great joy, but also because of the positive disposition which the “thanking” accentuates, reinforcing the importance of what is being experienced.”
“Do not let a great sadness pass without calling into your interior for the joy that you have saved there.”
“If at those precise moments we were conscious of these experiences of joy, we can later evoke them in difficult moments by calling on the memory (“charged” with positive emotions). One might think that in this “comparison” you will lose the positive state, but that is not the case, because this “comparison” allows you to modify the affective inertia of the negative states.”
According to Cicero, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others.”
Scientific studies of the benefits of gratefulness on individual (psychological and physical) and social well being have been emerging por the past few years under the general chapter of “positive psychology”. We quote here from a study by Emmons and McCullough: Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life
