A Little Gem On Grace
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
37
45
Trip End
Mar 10, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta),
West Bengal,
India
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, 2/19/2009: The night before I left Kolkata
In the car on the way to the Temple this afternoon, the topic turned to grace. As is so often the case with Baba, once his inspiration begins to flow, it opens into a deep, living stream:
"If you take prana (the essential, life-sustaining force and vital energy that is comes into the body through the breath) as an analogy to grace, prana is everywhere. It is all around us at every moment. It always has been there. It charges every molecule of air, and every breath we take. It is absolutely universally available. It isn't reserved, given as a special blessing, or parceled out to any one person or to a chosen few. It belongs to everyone. Its purity, its power to regenerate and integrate body and mind and spirit is always there, always available. No one is left out.
"The difference, the key, lies in the individual. What is the readiness, the ability of a person to take in prana? How healthy is a person's body? Can the lungs expand fully? Do toxins, does constriction of any kind keep one from taking a full breath? Is the person relaxed? Is he breathing abdomenally? Is the person breathing deeply? How consciously is the person breathing? What attention does a person give to the breath, to the prana that is being received in the breath?
"Prana is very, very subtle. It has a dimension of consciousness. It takes awareness for the subtle benefits of prana to be fully realized.
"So it is with Grace. Grace is a perennial, eternal river that is always flowing. Grace is always flowing out to us. It always surrounds us. Grace is always available to everyone. Grace is absolutely impartial. No one gets a bigger allotment than anyone else.
"It is not whether Grace comes to you. It is whether you come to Grace. Do you come to the grace that is there? Do you come to the river to drink?
"How often do you come to sit by the river and take Grace into your heart? How open are you to Grace? What is your readiness to receive it? ...to see it? ...to acknowledge it? What is your awareness of the Grace that has already come to you, of the grace that is coming to you at this moment?
"Grace is expansive by its very nature. But its expansiveness depends on awareness. How often do you let Grace saturate your awareness?
"Grace is magnetic by its very nature. Do you allow your awareness of Grace to fill your life, your mind and heart, so the magnetism of its positive energies can draw more Grace to you?
"There is never a question of whether or not you deserve Grace. You may not be as virtuous as someone else. You may not be as as dedicated, or as disciplined. You may not be as spiritual. You may not do all the good works that others do. You may even have done some horrible things in your life.
"None of that matters. Grace is given. It is given regardless. It is given eternally and universally.
"Isn't that beautiful? All we have to do is come to the river of the Grace in our lives. That river has been carrying us along every day. All we have to do is sit by the river. All we have to do is drink from the river of the Grace that there.
"Come sit by the river. Come often. Linger a while. Come with an open heart. See its swirling currents. Absorb its energies.
"Step into the river of the Grace already flowing through your life. Let it bathe and refresh your consciousness. Let your heart wash in its interlacing currents, in its mysteries, in its dancing light. Let the Grace that is already in your life, the Grace that has always been in your life, be seen with new eyes. Let it bring you back to joy and carry you away from all that is dead and gone. Let it dissolve the past as the transient apparition that it was. Let it effortlessly carry you away, like a leaf floating on its surface, to peace."
