THE GRACE WE RECEIVE IS US

Or the Grace we do not receive, is us?

Is it voluntary, in that we sign up for it, or is it like an unsolicited gift? Or is the question really, do we allow ourselves to receive or not to receive Grace by treading or not treading on a ‘path’? Could it be like Social Security where you have to make application but you get it, dependent on contributing amounts earned during your working life?

If it is a gift, then is it dualistic? If it is a dualistic gift, then is it a question of control or surrender?

Can we surrender control? Who is surrendering to whom? When we remove the ‘I’ and the ‘me’, what is left over? If ‘I’ and ‘me’ is a shutting out of light, then what illusion is created? Is Grace an illusion? Are we an illusion?

Can Grace be given from some thing to someone in the spiritual realm?

If there is nothing to get because it is already here, then what do we get, anything? If there is nothing ‘to do’, where’s the Grace? Then what gets done?

To posit that Grace is ‘our’ removal of obfuscations, is to believe in the need to control. To not believe in control, is to surrender that ‘move’ and allow “What Is”. It would be the removal of ‘our’ that would ‘allow’. Belief has nothing to do with it whatsoever. Letting go of all ideas about Grace, facilitates It. Grace is Us allowing Us.

Being bound by an idea, even Grace, can compound our stasis. We may find ourselves in a more comfortable spot where we feel we can wait for circumstances, e.g. Grace, to facilitate further spiritual progress. However, this employs stasis, not movement. At a certain point waiting for Grace is like “Waiting For Bardo”. We let opportunities of Now pass us by.

In a lecture Ram Das had given in 1975, he enumerated two types of people. The phony holy and the phony unholy. The need to categorize others may be offensive to some but it is done to enable us individually to ’see’ some traps we may fall into. Ideally, no mind judgment is necessary.

The “phony holy” is knowing we are a jerk while believing we are more spiritually evolved than others, to wit, separate. The “phony unholy” are in greater numbers and are characterized by a desire for a ‘good life’ with a willingness to endure fantasy while knowing full well that there is so much more besides trinkets. Ram Das goes on to tease out the need for an endless ‘more’ to be added to this so-called idyllic life.

Either box we put ourselves in, is still a box. The spaciousness of compassion for self and others, is stalled. The smugness of self-satisfaction is often exacerbated through belief. Belief in Grace is still praying to the idolatry of ideas and future expectations. It is not fully accepting of the timelessness of Now nor seeing clearly of how we are throwing out our demands to the Universe, of how our little life, should be.

Awareness is the heavy hitter. Drilling down in awareness of whom we are is not depending on gifting some increase in consciousness by waiting patiently and contentedly, for ‘It’ to arrive.
‘Waiting patiently’, can be translated to separateness reaching out to that ‘other’ that has power over us. In this modality our identity is still loading up on an investment in the personal versus the profound. There is a ‘not’ letting go of whom we think we are. Burning ‘this’ up with Awareness is the ticket to ‘Grace’ or whatever else our minds want to call it.

Pushing the “Now” out with designs on something better, is still pushing. And it is pushing outside of the eternal timezone called the Moment. Instead, if we can embed ourselves fully in our internal selves with clarity, we would profit more from this ’seeing’, than a ‘separate’ strategy that allegedly has ’spiritual’ written on it. External conditions may indeed need improvement but searching for the external to change without internal revolution may be a specious undertaking.

“Silence is not an absence but a presence.” -Anne D. Leclaire

We Are the Grace given to the ‘Us’ that is infinite and incalculable. The foreground is not the focus. The backdrop is the infinite container of spaciousness. The compassion of connection, integration, and unity is the Grace We Are.

This Iz Daddy’O