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“All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Grace is often spoken of in the same sanctified breath as God, exalting it as something supremely special. Traditionally, we thank God, believed to be the Creator of the universe, for the gift of grace. It’s customarily considered as something He bestows upon us if He decides we’re worthy. The old patriarchs say that grace emanates from the very footsteps of God’s favored saints, prophets, and the deeply devout as if they perpetually walked amongst lilies or lotus blossoms.
If these holy ones truly carried grace as the elder teachers said, was their religious belief a necessary prerequisite? Could they have discovered something inherent within the human mechanism, akin to our DNA, that could be called a state of grace without their religious faith? Can a non-believer, with a little-practiced awareness, discover that mysterious, spiritual essence within themselves?
Some years ago, I stepped away from the belief in a separate father figure God that decreed who was worthy and who wasn’t. There are a number of issues I have with the foundational religious beliefs of my society. Chief among them is the idea of an all-loving, all-powerful being who only offers the glorious gift of grace to a few believers, then turns around and punishes countless others, many of whom were pretty nice people, banishing them into an everlasting, fiery Hell. Seems severe (obviously not referring to ax murderers here).
It’s the ultimate cruelty to sentence a good person to eternal (forever and ever) suffering and damnation for basically minor infractions, like believing in the wrong religion, or no religion. If that is truly who God was, then I didn’t stand a chance. My sins weren’t too bad, but bad enough, according to the old patriarchs. I have enjoyed beautiful and passionate sex outside of marriage and I occasionally used God’s name in vain, especially when stubbing a toe or paying my monthly bills. That’s why I walked away. It felt like the whole thing was rigged to control me through guilt and fear. Being motivated by guilt and fear is a shitty way to live.
I knew I wasn’t an atheist, at least in the sense of believing that life was only an accidental, biological machine and consciousness a mere epiphenomenon of the firing circuits in my brain. I still believed in an invisible intelligence that infused all of life. And grace just seemed natural, something transcendental we all shared, a part of the basic human operating system that we could choose to access or not. I have had many miraculous experiences that hold a deep sense of a spiritual source to all things—though I couldn’t begin to name or describe that source. And I don’t believe any religion can either. The infinite mystery of life is just too damn big to be contained in any man-made story.
Many describe the miraculous workings of grace as currents of synchronicity, those meaningful coincidences that point us towards the ultimate connection of all things. These mysterious events are something that happens to most, if not all of us at some point. And once we open to the motion of the miraculous in our lives, synchronicity shows up even more!
Here’s one example of synchronicity from my life: Some years ago, I enjoyed listening to an in-depth conversation between two friends about “The Waste Land,” that most important 20th-century poem by T.S. Elliot. I didn’t offer anything because I had never read it. By the conversation’s end, I decided I would definitely make time to check it out—a promise to myself soon forgotten within the busyness of life.
Two weeks later, in the lobby of a Greyhound bus station, while waiting for the overnight to Fayetteville, I saw a thin, gray paperback under my seat. Sure enough, “The Waste Land” had been abandoned by a fellow traveler. I was deeply inspired in the wake of its reading on that long bus ride through the darkness. That’s just one instance of many.
Today I use the words grace and synchronicity interchangeably, though synchronicity is just a small part of grace. Another element of grace is the idea of flow, which is spontaneous action inspired from our inner being opposed to action inspired from the limited thoughts, judgments, and beliefs of our ego self. Grace is much bigger than we can intellectually understand, and so are we! Our thoughts, judgments, and beliefs can’t come close to the immensity of grace.
Grace, love, flow, synchronicity, or razz-ma-tazz, it’s not about the name or a contrived idea, but rather an experience that’s born from a richer and more wonderfully mysterious part of ourselves. It’s amazing what happens in our life when our beliefs take a back seat to the mindful inner quiet of full presence. That state of awareness is the space of invitation for grace to enter. Life and love become an entirely new and deeper palette of feeling in that aware space.
Once I was able to put some distance between me and my old, religious belief systems, I realized that grace had always been there, just waiting for the simple acknowledgment of my quiet attention, without the need for weaving any religious basket to carry it in. We are built for grace, we are designed to ride the currents of synchronicity, and to act from a place of mindful flow.
Grace is the glorious bridge that unites us all in this wonderful and crazy love-dance of life. And as it turns out, no belief system is required, just a welcoming presence where we become aware of what has always been there. It’s high time more of us started living this way!
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash
In common with the author of the above post I have had a number of personal experiences of Grace, none of which have been grounded in any system of belief and the practices related to such beliefs. Indeed, my experience is that any attempt to contact Grace by means of any such system is doomed to failure. Why is this you might ask? My answer is that there are three levels of human experience which, proceeding from the lowest level, are physical, mental and spiritual. Grace is only accessible from the spiritual level and only then, as the above quote… Read more »