Grace

The iRest® class on Saturday mornings that I started in August 2019 has proven to be a gift of opportunity for deep reflection.  The other week I reflected on grace, and shared those reflections with the class, and then benefited from the class's reflections.  That is the kind of class it is.

Helpful key words are: 

• Anugraha - divine grace, the grace of universal consciousness pervading everything, that we come to recognise in spiritual awakening
• Shaktipat - (shakti - divine power, and pat - to fall) descent of grace

It is important to distinguish what we mean by Grace from how it is used in a Christian context, where God's Grace is frequently invoked. The word grace in the Christian context has an intermediary between the recipient of grace and God, it is, as so much of that theology is, a step removed. Grace is spiritual healing granted by God the Father, through the Son, Jesus.

Anugraha has no such intermediary. Shaktipat is direct, often sudden, undeserved. 

Grace, Anugraha, is divine consciousness in everything. It is present in everything because everything is it. We just do not recognise it when we are living in a limited, conditioned state. 

At a point in a spiritual aspirant’s life there will probably be a moment of Shaktipat – when the felt sense of that power of divine consciousness in everything breaks through the conditioned limitations of the mind at least momentarily. It leaves behind a metaphorical perfume the aspirant (if they were not one before they will be now) is bound to follow that scent.

In iRest we invite what we call the Heartfelt Desire to reveal itself. What does our heart yearn? we ask ourselves. What we yearn is that perfume even if only faintly discerned. Grace calls us. 

The writings of spiritual teachers are full of memoirs of Shaktipat.  Vast and amazing moments, perhaps in the presence of seemingly at the instigation of their own teacher, the sudden moments of the revelation of the connection of everything. 

However Grace is not always such a show pony.  There are gentle revelations. Don't dismiss them. 

There is that moment on the beach when the sun is setting. Suddenly the clouds are alight with orange and purple when suddenly the cold snap of wind, the sting of sand and salt, and that colour, are what you are, and while you are no longer separate from any of it, including the potential new boyfriend you have ventured there with, he is no longer of any special interest and when it fades, this moment, and limitations return, that lingering perfume have rendered him uninteresting and you yearn only for that again.

There is that moment when you are walking amongst great trees, trees that have stood for a thousand years. They do not exactly think, and they do not exactly talk, but in their great presence your heart feels that perfume and ancient treeness pervades your being. 

Or that moment when you are simply breathing in deeply the scent of a rose and suddenly scent of rose, the soft satin of petal, and your whole being are one.

An echo stays, lingers, draws you on. Ah, if only to melt in it always, to not return to the mundaneness  of the conditioned mind, to recognise the truth of who you are in every moment. Now you are caught in the quest, it cannot be let go.