Religion, if followed out of fear, will not take you anywhere; it will not pave the way for a transformation to happen in you. You might progress materially by the faith that you have in your asking, but you will remain where you are at the being level. The purpose or real fulfillment of life can never happen on the material path; it can happen only at the being level.

Religion has to be followed out of deep love and gratitude for the divine or Existence. Although society teaches you to worship God in the name of fear, never do it. Always pray with love and gratitude towards the divine.

Here is a small story:

A Sufi Master, Junnaid, use to pay his gratitude to God five times a day. One time, he and his followers were wandering throught some villages where Sufism was not accepted as a religion.

In the first village, people accused them or begging, and threw meager alms at them. The next day, the people refused to give them any alms. On the third day, the village they passed through was so hostile that the villages drove them out with sticks and stones. That night as usual, Junnaid knelt down and offered his gratitude to God. His disciples were watching him. It was too much for them. They could not understand why Junnaid was thanking God. They were furious.

They cried out, ‘Master! For three days we have gone without food! Today we were even driven out of that village like dogs! Is this what you are offering your gratitude for?’

Junnaid looked at them and said, ‘You talk about three days of hunger! Have you thanked God for the food you have received for thirty years? And know one thing: my gratitude is not for receiving or not receiving anything. It is simply an expression of the deep joy and love in my being; it is a choice-less and prayerful expression, that’s all.’ When youlive with overwhelming gratitude in you, you have found a space wherein nothing else is needed.

It means that you have fallen into meditation. We all simply miss the beauty of Existence when we don’t know how to resonate with it! We are always looking for reasons to enjoy, reasons to celebrate, questioning what we enjoy, and what not! Wh have lost our connetion with Existence altogether because of this.

Instead of feeling gratitude towards everything around us, we are asking and questioning all the time. We need to get back this connection with Existence again. Gratitude can help bring back this lost connection. It can help you find your roots once again. It can help you commune with nature, with Existence.

Being an ‘evangelist’ has negative connotations in the world we reside in. But an evangelist, by definition, is simply someone who spreads good news. It’s someone who gets stick on a big idea or a passionate cause and then walks out and spreads the message like a virus. It’s someone who gets so engaged in doing something important that it’s all he thinks about, dreams about and talks about.

It’s a human being who understands – at cellular level – What Dr Martin Luther King Jr meant when he said: “If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.” This troubled and uncertain world of ours needs more evangelists: human beings doing great things, blessing lives by their actions, making a difference.

Where did most people’s passion for the greatness go? Each of us had it as kids. We wanted to be superheroes, astronauts, poets and painters. We wanted to change the world and stand on mountain tops. Then, as we aged, life began to work on us. Disappointments began to show up and life began to hurt us. We started thinking that and we should not high too big or love too much. It breaks my heart to think about it. But that’s exactly what happens.

You are meant to shine. You are here to find a cause. You are meant to find something that your life will stand for that will consume you, something so beautiful and meaningful that you’d be willing to take a bullet for it. It might mean developing people at work and helping them work to their highest potential. Your cause might involve elevating communities or helping people in need.

When you find the mission that your life will be dedicated to, you’ll wake up each day with that fire in your belly. You won’t want to sleep. You’ll be willing to move mountains to make it happen. You’ll find that sense of internal fulfillment that may now be missing from your life. And you’ll preach that message to anyone who’ll listen. You’ll become an evangelist.