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3 Euro Tulips ~ Hannah Patterson
First, let me begin with a little side note. I’m switching pronouns. I’ve realized that what I am sharing is my experience of my spiritual path. So, there you go. Me, rather than you, our, we, one, etc.
It is clear to me that when I look into what the various religious teachings and lovers of God have taught throughout the ages, we are all expressions of the heart, the Great Spirit, Allah, God. The play of our lives is the play of God.
In divine ignorance, I identify with the experiences of my personality, the mutterings of my mind, and my oh so present ego, rather than with the Witness of these experiences. More and more I am coming to recognize this ignorance, this false identification as also divine, as part of play of the Great Spirit. I am in the play, watching the play and I am the forgetfulness that there’s a play going on.
I want to establish myself in remembrance. To do that, I believe in the power of cultivating a steady state, a state of peace, joy and love, a state of well-being. Because, I think that’s where I’ll meet the Truth. Indeed, in that state is where I have met that Truth.
If I’m not in a state of joy, peace, love or some variation, I think it’s totally, 100% my responsibility to engage a little self-effort and restore my state to well-being. Because, that’s where I meet God, Allah, Shiva, The Great Mystery.
My self-effort is in the thoughts, words and deeds that support me in rising up to meet the Grace of God. For me, this means surfing in the confluence of spiritual practices and change techniques from the field of psychotherapy. It means using every tool at my disposal to dis-identify from the experiences of my ego and identify with the essence of who I am, the Truth Playing in the Field of Consciousness, God.
Still with me?
Both common and more esoteric teachings of saints and sages across tradition teach that God is within, as near as the next breath, as near as our own heart. And, they teach God is within reach. I “only” have to do my part. I only have to engage self-effort to experience the inherent Truth of their mystical encouragement, their view of Grace.
There are times that “only” feels like a thousand miles long and 14,000 lifetimes. But, still no one else is going to confront and embrace that “only” but me. No one can do this effort for me. In embracing that “only” and engaging in self-effort, those are the moments that I seem to disappear in a meeting with Grace.
Mechtild of Magdeburg wrote with simplistic beauty on the nature of Grace. As a young girl of twelve in the early thirteenth century, she had a revelation of the spirit when she saw “all things in God, and God in all things.” Much later, with her life devoted to service and spiritual practice, she wrote “How God comes to the Soul.”
“I descend on my love
As dew on a flower.”
Mmmmmm. As a dew on a flower. There’s a quiet peace, a sweet love in that statement. It reinforces my experience that it is in those quiet present moments of the peaceful, loving, joyous NOW that I meet God.
Swami Muktananda, a modern mystic and meditation teacher, repeatedly suggested that being on a spiritual path is like the flight of a bird. He wrote, “Self -effort and grace are like the two wings of a bird: the bird needs both to fly to the goal.” Just as a bird needs both wings to fly, as a would-be Knower of God, I lean into both Grace and self-effort.
How do you meet Grace? Click on the comments above and share your experience.
