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Marc Chagall - Notre-Dame in gray (1955) |
This incarnation has been a journey into the embodiment of a truth that I have known from before the beginning. Therefore, grace too has been with me from before the beginning.
Its work in my life is irrefutable. Statistically, I should not have survived my childhood, at least not with any sanity (however frayed). But I did (although at a great price).
In my adult life, I could have been stabbed in some alley, or shot on some street, or imprisoned in some distant hellhole, several times over. But I wasn't.
Furthermore, like every being who has ever loved deeply, and truly, I have experienced both crucifixion and self-immolation (on multiple occasions). Yet from the crimson egg of each excruciating execution another phoenix emerged. And so I love on.
This is all by the hand of grace. Yes, grace has moved with me from before the beginning.
But most of my life I have simply surfed on grace, as if it were a great wave.
Looking back over the course of it all, I realized there was even more power to be had in doubling down on grace. And so, instead of just riding on the crest of grace, I have chosen to take a stand within the wellspring of this grace. Moment by moment, it rises, and it is as if all aspects of this incarnation are becoming submerged in a sea of grace.
Of course, this submersion too has been the truth from before the beginning, but choice has power, and free will has meaning. When we choose well the universe shudders with joy.
In recent years, I have written a lot about the power of Gratitude. And it is, indeed, an agent of radical transformation. Gratitude is inherent in the nature of liberation itself. But it doesn't arise within us independently. Gratitude is the love child of Grace and Truth.
Grace falls upon us like rain. It is falling endlessly, and everywhere. It permeates everything. It is the rain of mercy that Shakespeare wrote of. There are certain stages of this quest in which you can literally see, hear and feel this rain falling as if with your physical senses.
As this rain falls, it shapes itself into lakes and rivers, and caressing the hair of inner mountains it flows into waterfalls. As this rain fails, it seeps into the ground of everything, filling great aquifers in the mineral-rich depths. It is the Grace rainwater collected in these subterranean aquifers that bubbles up to the surface in springs of Gratitude to further sustain all life.
Truth and Grace have a second love child; his name is Awareness. He is the space in which all of creation is held, his is the mirror in which its beauty is reflected perfectly. It is through this reflection that the ground spring of Gratitude reaches the surface of consciousness and renews our vision.
All of this is true for all of us, each in our own unique way. You just have to look for the evidence of it in your life, and then follow the trail of clues until you solve the mystery of how it is so.
Truth has a lover, and her name is Grace.
-- Richard Power
My new (ninth) book User's Guide to Human Incarnation, The Yoga of Primal Reality is available now from Amazon.com.
