On Grace

As we tour this sacred site called Earth, we work hard to visit many spaces, to make the best of our pilgrimage. I remember going on a vacation one summer with a friend a couple of years ago to Victoria, British Columbia. We walked to many of the tourist sites, we visited the museum in the building that looked like the British Parliament, listened to music on the waterfront and explored the Butchart Gardens. The experience remained unforgettable but tiring. I thought vacation was meant for rest.

Between too much walking and sleeping throughout this pilgrimage called life, emerges a middle way. As we reflect on what the spiritual life entails: overcoming our human weaknesses, taming our animal tendencies, living mindfully and uniting with the divine in the process, serving ourselves in others, and the list goes on and on, this thing called spiritual practice can assume the dimensions of tedious work served us by a cruel taskmaster.

If we forget one great secret, that is. Spirituality is all about grace. If we meditate for hundreds of hours without the touch of the Master, in vain we practice. In vain we punish the body through fasting and vigils, through torture of any kind, in vain the struggle to overcome our faults if we fail to invite the Unknowable One to sanctify it all, if we refuse to allow the All-knowing to do the work in us.

Around February 2007, I noticed a particularly devastating planetary configuration in my partner's natal and progressed charts involving the planet Saturn. The aspects would be in force for about four months. I didn't know what to do.

I told her: "Please, please, please, do me a favor in the next months. Pray, meditate, connect with your high self." I have come to understand that when people have challenging aspects, the solution is for them to raise their spiritual vibrations.

Sure enough, in early spring Saturn knocked at our door asking for Dawn bringing her fear at work, rejections, depression, and more. I was tempted to do the work for her.

I remember one morning just when the four-month ordeal started. I had finished assisting her with a particularly powerful meditation. When she left I had this insight from within me that said: "Let go and let her work through this herself. Just be there for her. Don't do anything on her behalf."

I listened. Every day, for weeks, I heard one work trouble to the other. All I did was listen. It was so difficult.

Let me cut a long story short. She came back home one day almost four months after it all began, I think it happened the week after her birthday. She came home and said she had an amazing insight that brought her relief. All her troubles seemed to have melted away. Someone who made Dawn’s work particularly difficult resigned that same week.

Dawn's story reveals the power of surrender. The power of grace in our spiritual paths. The power of trust in the Great Mystery we call God. She helped me understand this spiritual secret: it's all grace, the path is God's work.

As we allow ourselves to be the living temples of the divine, God will walk with us through the darkness and through the abyss. God is on our side as we climb to the spiritual mountaintop. The spiritual path is an effortless journey of surrender to the power of God's grace.


To read Dawn's account of her experience, please visit: http://www.thelongarc.blogspot.com/