The Way of Grace

FOREWORD Grace. It is such a simple and beautiful word—a word that tends to lighten our mood and inspire us when we hear it.

Grace is not “a thing.” It is not something we can touch, although we may feel touched by it. It is not something we can see, although we may very well see the effects of Grace on ourselves and others. It is not something that we can hear, yet we may feel called by it. And it is not something we can taste, yet there is some particular sense to it, and some tastes may remind us of its presence.

Further, Grace is not an emotion, although it may produce many emotions—even profound states of feeling. It is not a thought, though when we have experienced it, we are likely to have a lot of thoughts about it! It is not a sensation, although the action of Grace may well produce many sensations in our body. We begin to realize that what we are seeking to understand is beyond the usual categories of objects and sensory experiences by which we usually navigate the world. To find the realm of Grace, we need to look deeper.

Its presence is unmistakable—and we do indeed learn to recognize the sensory signals that let us know we are in the proximity of this mystery. And even then, it takes a long time to really understand how to dance with this inner partner—how to surrender to its profound and astonishing influence.

Second, The Way of Grace shows us the tremendous blessings and benefit that come from contact with our essential nature. It is a huge relief when we discover the gentle and expansive qualities of our essential being. It holds our difficulties with patience, compassion, and loving kindness, and we learn to trust that this inner fountain of benevolence is always available. We merely forget its existence in the daily preoccupations of our ego and its agendas. Yet in a breath, a pause, a single moment when we are willing to notice and sense into the deeper layers of our being, this miraculous quality of blessing is always present, waiting for us.

Thirdly, Miranda helps us see that it is this blessing of Grace that actually transforms us, both psychologically and spiritually. To understand this, it is useful to think of our Self as being a dynamic relationship between our usual sense of self—what is commonly called our ego consciousness—and the deeper ground of essence of which we were just speaking. We learn that Grace is not a bypass of our egoic life and its attendant suffering; rather, Grace brings light and compassion to our pain and difficulties and actually transmutes them into something useable for our growth. Grace gives us the capacity to be with our experiences so that they can be digested and integrated into our soul’s greater purpose. There is no “spiritual bypass” here. We are bringing loving awareness to our distress—not denying its existence. Grace gives us the grounded presence and lightness of heart that lets us stay, even with our historic pain and fear. It is this vital distinction that helps us live the truths we are learning and make them part of our lived lives.

As Miranda mentions in this book, realizations can happen in a moment, but learning to integrate them in a way that supports our…

Grace teaches us to slow down, to enjoy the ongoing discoveries and flavors of our existence while growing in our sense of love and service in this world. It teaches us to meet our shame and fear and anger with consciousness and tenderness. We stop berating ourselves for our apparent lack of progress and get interested in what is arising in our consciousness moment by moment. Really, Grace teaches us to live in two worlds at the same time, and ultimately, to see that they really are one. We learn to embody the essential qualities of our consciousness and discern the meaning of the spiritual advice “to be in the world but…

And we understand this is not a race with a finish line; we will be dancing with Grace and realizations of deeper aspects of ourselves for the rest of our lives. Participating in this…

We eventually discover that we do not decide to surrender. If we still think of it as a decision that we can choose or not, we have not yet fully understood what surrender is. We come to see that surrender is not an action we can take—it is really found more in seeing a greater truth. When we open to the deeper dimensions of our experience while we are engaged in the day-to-day challenges of life, we start to see that we are not directing our lives in the way we may…

As we will see in the pages of this book, so much of inner work is really a process of helping our frightened ego patterns to relax into the ground of being and discovering that doing so brings us everything we have been seeking. We might well wonder what role we play in this process. Clearly, we are not in charge of our own transformation—the ego does not fix the ego—and at the same time, we know that passivity is not going to help us much either. What is required? As it turns out, our active attention attracts the…

the living balance of active attention and receptivity—no small feat and an incredibly important…

Step by step we come to understand what she means by ego relaxation. She kindly invites us to drop into the mystery of our own depth, while being sensitively aware of the fears and reactions that inevitably arise as we do. Her wisdom helps us address those fears and issues every step of the way.

What will be most encouraging for many of us is her willingness to share her own journey, and she lets us into her moments of vulnerability, confusion, and difficulty, helping us see how her being with those experiences opened doors to the breakthroughs of Grace that transformed her life. Again and again, we will see how the principles of Grace and the barriers to its unfolding are dealt with in real human ways.

She lays them out, one by one, taking us through the barriers to Grace as we move deeper and deeper into the mystery. If you actually engage the practices—and I hope you do—you will discover that while the lessons must be put into some kind of order so we can learn them, they also accumulate. As you progress in the book, you will find that the lessons are coalescing into a new sense of you, and this indeed is the work of Grace.

INTRODUCTION Grace is always present. You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you merge the mind into its Source, Grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring from within you. RAMANA MAHARSHI, The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi (by Matthew Greenblatt)

Perhaps you hunger to finally end the struggle of living from the consciousness of fear and separation. Perhaps you yearn for a saner, wiser, more spiritually elegant way to move through our world that is so painfully lacking in Grace. You might have tasted luminous moments of freedom.

It is usually when you are not trying so hard that Grace emerges.

For once, I was not trying to get anywhere. A thunderous silence emerged, reverberating with this transmission:           Be nothing.           Do nothing.           Get nothing.…

Be nothing.           Do nothing.           Get nothing.           Become nothing.           Seek for nothing.           Relinquish nothing.           Be as you are.           Rest in God.

Relinquish nothing.           Be as you are.…

It was complete stillness—alive with an unshakable presence. Prior to this, I was intimate with the Divine as a scintillating ocean of light, boundless love. But this was an entirely new dimension of Grace. Like merging into the velvety blackness of the infinite night sky, it was beyond any concept or definition I had ever known. Any sense of “I,” other, world, and even God disappeared. All commentary dropped, all thought stopped, all…

Everything was the same and yet totally different. It was profoundly easeful and direct. There was no need to fix anything. No need to get anything. No need for anything…

It was profoundly easeful and direct. There was no need to fix anything. No need to get anything. No need for anything to happen…

I felt utterly natural, settled in the primordial condition, and part of the mystery that animates this world. It took me years to fully understand the significance of…

Transmission Of…

Grace has a way of stopping you in your tracks. It often comes with a transmission, an energetic communication from a higher state than our linear mind can understand. Grace always requires some kind of surrender, what…

Our ego presumes that surrender will be the end of the color, the juice, and the fun. Paradoxically, the opposite is true. The more I learned to rest in the open, empty spaces, the more Grace came alive inside—literally, as Ramana…

What Is…

Grace is way more than a beautiful state that fills your heart with gratitude. Rumi described it when he said, “Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us.”1 Grace is the living presence that brings online the qualities of your true nature, such as love, peace, joy, strength, clarity, inherent intelligence, and so much more. These divine qualities are sewn into the very fabric of your being, so they are always present. However, they are covered by many adaptive layers that must be addressed if you are to gain access. Grace brings forth precisely what you need to heal, evolve, and thrive…

Grace has four primary dimensions, or ways that it comes alive. These dimensions form the structure of this book. Briefly, Grace is simultaneously the unchanging ground of your being; the blessings that refine, uplift, and nourish you; the transforming power that lifts your veils; and ultimately, a more easeful, spiritually elegant way of being in this world from a consciousness way beyond it. But every dimension of Grace needs space. It needs you to empty out your…

WHATEVER YOU LEAVE EMPTY, GRACE CAN FILL The transmission that emerged in Ramana’s cave was the beginning of a quantum shift in identity. The two years that followed were a powerful period of undoing all that prevented its embodiment. It was the deep spiritual winter of my life, where I was pruned back to the root. Like learning to appreciate the starker landscape of winter, the more I emptied out, the more it revealed its own kind of beauty. Many structures of my familiar identity started falling away. This included a marriage of thirteen years, my role as the spiritual director of a groundbreaking interfaith seminary in London, the city I called home, and all but a few friends. Even practices that had been my well of spiritual nourishment for years no longer fed me. It felt as though a giant hand was sweeping…

Navigating change gracefully all hinges on your capacity to say yes to what’s happening, rather than no. Thankfully, twenty years of prior spiritual practice had developed my inner musculature enough to say yes. This period of fierce Grace was not easy, but ultimately it was very helpful. Miraculously, the strength and guidance as to what to say and do emerged, even though I had to adapt to a level of vulnerability that felt like having no outer skin. The more I surrendered in and through what was, the more I came alive like…

Realization Happens In An Instant;…

Too often, spiritual awakening is presented as some gigantic spiritual orgasm, after which you are “done” with the muck and…

you such a disservice. Awakening can happen in a split second, but integrating its wisdom is a lengthier, nuanced process. It requires ongoing practice even though you are not aiming to fix yourself. Spiritual openings inevitably dislodge hidden corners of our psyche we did not know existed; therefore, authentic embodiment demands psychological unpacking and usually the support of an elder on the path. You might hear some teachers say that including the psychological keeps…

A Holistic, Feminine Approach To…

The practice of ego relaxation, which we will be working with throughout this book, not only makes you receptive to all dimensions of Grace, but also powerfully heals the parts of the ego that cannot let go without sufficient love. This is especially the case for westerners, whose ego has formed amidst greater cultural…

However, the transmission of ego relaxation revealed a much more integrated, feminine approach to walking the path—to surrender in and through all that we encounter, including our animal humanity and all of our emotions. When I say “feminine” I do not mean that this is just for those with a vagina. The way of Grace is for humanity. Its objective is to love everyone back into the full embodiment of who we really are. This is a lot more…

A COSMIC DANCE OF EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS As an interfaith minister, I had always revered the great wisdom traditions as distinct streams but ultimately…

If you have explored some of the Eastern traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, you will have noticed that true nature is emphasized as emptiness, spaciousness, and witnessing awareness. Thus their practices focus on dissolving the self, emptying into the void of pure mystery, and abiding in spaciousness. If you have studied the Western traditions, perhaps mystical Christianity, Kabbalah, or Sufism, you will have noticed quite a different emphasis on the relationship between…

I come out of a Christian culture and have always been devotional by nature, with a Sufi heart and a Hindu soul… for reasons I cannot explain other than reincarnation. Embracing “no-thing and no-one” led to the integration of all that I had studied for so many years. No-thingness (emptiness) and living presence (full of every divine attribute) began to feel like a cosmic union at my core and the core of all things. This divine lovemaking is constantly taking place in the paradoxes we regard as heaven and earth, body and spirit, form and…

Already Within The…

what I call the “thirsty fish syndrome,” seeking the living water that can truly quench your thirst, while not recognizing that you are already in and part of it. You might have heard of the term nonduality, which literally means “not two.” Nondual awakening is important because it dissolves separation, ending the search for love, peace, and freedom. It restores awareness that you are and have always been in and part of everything you always wanted. Nondual awakening means not only tasting Grace but also recognizing that you are Grace. Yet you can’t talk yourself into this. You cannot intellectualize or theorize. You must…

Be as you are. Rest in God. Right here, right now—with this. There is nowhere…

Better still would be to invite a friend to offer these questions to you for at least ten minutes, with no commentary—only the question, a little space, and a thank you for whatever you share. Then switch roles. It is crucial that your partner does not offer solutions to address your “issues.” That will pull you out of inquiry into ego fixing! Holistic self-inquiry is not thinking, but journeying. Let the questions enter into your body, noticing the sensations and energy that arise; your heart, noticing

the feelings; and your mind, letting the insights come. The more detailed and dimensional you are as you work with these questions, the more they will open you.

PART I RELAXING INTO THE GROUND OF GRACE When you are not, the whole of existence comes into you. When the drop disappears, it becomes the ocean. OSHO, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding

The primary reason most people struggle to gain real traction on the path, even after years of dedication, is that it has not occurred to them that there could be some true ground to relax into. When you identify with your personality as who you are, it feels as if you have to somehow create the support and strategize to keep safe. You believe that you are the one who has to make it happen. These presumptions feel so normal that you might not even stop to question them. Your body braces, your breath becomes shallow, your heart pulls back, and then your mind gets busy thinking and commentating. It is all a reaction from a felt sense of disconnection from Grace as your

natural foundation. Until you recognize what you are always in and supported by, the mind just cannot quiet down, let alone surrender.

You cannot see it with your physical eyes, yet the evidence is everywhere, animating all things. This is the underlying ground of Grace. It is the cause of your being and all being. This is what you can let all of your concerns and fears relax down into. Your ego defenses and all of your complicated history can melt into a mountainous presence that gives you true support to be as you truly are. Turning more substantially within, you will inevitably meet the dense forces of ego fear, control, and judgment that everyone meets on the way home. It does not serve to deny or bypass them, for even after significant openings, these defenses can easily reemerge.

1 SURRENDER The Practice of Ego Relaxation Just sit there right now. Don’t do a thing. Just rest. For your separation from God Is the hardest work in this world. Let me bring you trays of food And something That you like to drink. You can use my soft words As a cushion For your Head. HAFIZ, The Subject Tonight Is Love (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Yet surrender is often misunderstood as trying to amputate the frustrating habits of your personality that you think should not be there. Surrender is the great conundrum of the spiritual path because the self who is trying to surrender is the one blocking the…

EGO RELAXATION, NOT EGO ANNIHILATION To live into the promises of awakening, we must somehow turn the hard chunk of ice that is our ego fixation…

Ego annihilation engenders fear, creates unnecessary resistance, and can even build a more spiritualized ego, strengthening the delusion you are in charge of the show. While dedication, rigor, and discipline are important, so too are compassion, mercy, kindness, and, most of all, love. Consider how the fundamental substance of ice is still water, even though it may be hard, opaque, and dense. So too at the deepest level is your ego still part of the divine fabric of God—just frozen in fixed patterns and ignorant of its holiness. Understanding this nondual principle helps you recognize there is no enemy and thus nothing that needs to be hacked away. Rumi explained it when he said, “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”1 True surrender is really a process of melting, yielding back into our primordial condition. Just as the warmth of the sun will naturally transform the hard block of ice back to its original fluid state of water, exposing your dense, fixated patterns to the presence of loving awareness will melt the distortions. You don’t do the melting; Grace does that. Your part is learning to just be here, right where you are, relaxing the usual…

Ego Relaxation Is Both A Transmission And…

The transmission of ego relaxation provides a much-needed vacation from your story, silencing that bad radio station in your mind. Like a Zen koan, “Be nothing, do nothing, get nothing, become nothing, seek for nothing, relinquish nothing. Be as you are. Rest in God,” interrupts your frantic ego grasping and rejecting. It invites your separate self, which has forgotten that it is…

Ego relaxation asks for your commitment to being present while meeting your direct experience fully, without trying to make it different. You might feel relieved to hear that Grace does not ask you to fix yourself or amputate anything. It does not ask you to fulfill some…

Often, we do not trust that transformation can happen without punitive treatment and a ton of effort. Could…

BE PRESENT AND OPEN TO EVERYTHING Ego relaxation is indeed very simple because it is ultimately not something you do;…

Once you learn that you will not die from feeling hurt, fear, anger, disappointment, or any manner of things, you become more surrendered. You discover that what actually surrenders is not technically you. Rather, it is your self-image, who you have taken yourself to be, that gives way. Then you naturally forgive your ego, yet without pandering to it. This means…

BE HERE AND BE STILL Ego relaxation is easier when you are in a good mood or on the meditation cushion. It is more challenging to stay present when allowing difficult emotions like hurt, sadness, and anger, or while watching the news. Ego relaxation shows us how…

Instead of thinking about your experience, you contact it, without any manipulation. You just see what can melt. Just as you cannot force muscle tension to release, you cannot wage war on the material you find challenging. Ego…

Ego relaxation offers unconditionally allowing arms to all parts of your being to just come home to the primordial condition. This is the ground in…

Ego Relaxation Is Not Passive Or…

It does not mean you collapse and do not pay your bills, or withdraw from tackling an important task or having that challenging conversation with your spouse. It is not to be misused as an excuse to avoid fulfilling your duties or behaving without integrity. Genuine ego relaxation will make you less egocentric, more real, and more capable of walking the path substantially, facing whatever arises within you and within life from a place of spiritual maturity. It does this by relaxing the cause of your stress, conflict, and tension. A new…

BEYOND TRYING, INTO GRACEFUL SURRENDER The greatest challenge to Grace is the tendency to reconstellate around the notion that “I have to do it.” The part of you that feels this inner pressure—including the pressure to understand ego relaxation—is the one who is asked to relax. We will unpack this more thoroughly in chapter 3, “Melting the Grip of Control.” For now, remember that the way of Grace is not…

The more you give up to Grace, the more you feel the loving support moving you to further surrender. Rumi describes it this way: “The ocean takes care of each wave until it reaches the shore.”2…

The more you practice ego relaxation, the more surrender just starts to take place. You naturally become more open and less defensive; your crunchy habits become less dense, or at the very least, you don’t take your personality so seriously. When true surrender actually happens, it feels very graceful. Like “you” are not “doing” anything. Ultimately, nobody really surrenders because there is no one to surrender. Surrender is really a bridge that helps make the transition from identifying as a separate someone to remembering you are in and part of the infinite ocean. The more you…

MEDITATION    Melting into Ego Relaxation     1.  Sit somewhere quiet and comfortable where you will not be disturbed.     2.  Turn your focus inward, to the natural rise and fall of your breath.     3.  Consider each inhale a “welcome.”

4.  Receive the molecules of the oxygen themselves as an unconditional gift from all plant life. Feel it welcoming you unconditionally to just be here however you are in this moment.     5.  Consider each exhale an invitation to let something melt.     6.  Without forcing anything away, see what can melt. Perhaps subtle tension in the muscles of your eyes, shoulders, neck, or belly. Perhaps the conversations you have had today can melt into the past. Perhaps the tasks, the shopping list, and the unread emails can melt away.     7.  In this moment, what if you could just “be nothing, do nothing, get nothing, become nothing, seek for nothing, relinquish nothing”?     8.  What’s it like if you just be here, as you are? What if right now, you are already resting in God? Let go into the ocean of infinite Grace. Just rest. Just be.     9.  If the grip of “I have to” arises, see who this “I” is. Greet it unconditionally, with the welcoming in-breath and the melting out-breath. No need to reject anything that arises.     10.  Yet see what else is here.     11.  See what can melt naturally with the compassionate allowing of your own breath. ~

INQUIRY    Ego Relaxation Practice Use this line of inquiry anytime you notice you are no longer present but caught in some struggle. What limits you from dropping deeper and letting yourself be? See what resistance arrives toward ego relaxation. Do not worry about where you should be but instead just see what actually limits you, without judgment. Whatever you find, remember you do not have to do anything about it. Just let it be met with unconditional allowing just as the sun warms whatever it contacts. Follow the thread of whatever you saw with the next question. What does this provide that you think you need? Any defense or resistance is held together by a presumption, fear, concern, or belief, whether conscious or unconscious. Again, see what wants to be brought to the light of unconditional awareness. Again, there’s nothing to do. Just meet it. Dig deep with the two questions above for at least ten minutes. Then take another ten minutes to journey further with the next question. What’s it like, in body, heart, and mind if you allow your direct experience to be exactly as it is? Having met your resistance in the prior questions, with this question, you are invited to explore how the practice of…

The more you learn to just be here, not in your thoughts about your experience but directly…

experience, the more you land deeper in Grace. Now you have a practice that can carry you through life’s peaks…

2 THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR I have no cause for anger or fear, for You surround me. And in every need that I perceive, Grace suffices. A…

Surrendering into the ground of Grace sounds heavenly. Yet until you discover how to open through the force of fear, you are bounced back into resistance, unable to let go into deeper states of Grace. Even after luminous moments, you can find yourself worshiping at the altar of familiar patterns, even when you know they cause you to suffer. What does it take to move beyond fear? Ego relaxation invites you toward your fear, to understand what it feeds on and to see who it protects. Surprisingly, when you…

At that time, I was fueled by so many everyday fears. Ploughing the contents of my mind, I found fear of abandonment, fear of failure, fear of weakness, fear of humiliation, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of being overwhelmed, fear of not getting what I wanted, fear of putting on weight, fear of aging, fear of death, and fear of the unknown. On top of that was the fear in the knowledge that all of these fears were sure to manifest!

UNDERSTAND THE FORCE OF FEAR Fear itself is not wrong. In its purity, it is a brilliant force of our survival instinct that will activate our body and mind into a state of high alert so we can respond in a split second to get out of harm’s way—whether that be to slam our foot on the brakes to avoid a head-on collision, sprint to catch our child from falling into a swimming pool, or remove ourselves from emotional violence. To walk the way of Grace, you must learn to discriminate between an authentic threat to your well-being and a perceived threat that contracts your mind into a consciousness of fear, distorting your perception of reality and blocking entry into refined states of Grace. Commonly, we are caught up in fearful patterns of mind, without even being fully aware of it.

Address The Fear Of Going…

Who doesn’t want entry into the bliss, beauty, and freedom that awakening promises? Yet gaining traction on the path invites the repressed feelings, forces, and impulses of your unconscious…

detoxification process is ultimately liberating, but it is not for sissies. The most common reason I hear for holding back from genuinely dropping deeper is fear of being overwhelmed by a Pandora’s box of memories and feelings that we might not be able to stuff back down. This holds most people back from looking within much at all. Remembering that we all exist within a ground of…

This mysterious, ever-present ground of Grace is here even when your beloved companion is dying, you have lost your job, or you…

You Are Already In The Ground…

Just bring your awareness into your feet and feel the ground underneath you right now. Receive the life-giving oxygen arriving naturally with each breath you automatically know how to take. Somehow, you…

I once received an email from a brave woman who admitted, “I am terrified of the depth of myself.” Our ego presumes there is something lurking in the basement of our being that is…

This is the primary reason most of us resist diving more substantially within—we are afraid that our carefully preserved self-image might crack. Yet spiritually, this is exactly what needs to happen. It is how we discover that we are far deeper, wiser, and more loving than…

Fear Arises From…

The degree to which we identify with being a separate someone determines the…

Then our mind gets busy, spinning strategies of defense that cost us contact with the peaceful present. We presume we must have done something wrong to be in this condition. A vague sense of shame…

Layer by layer, the mud of conditioning covers the luminous jewel of our being. We end up living on the surface of ourselves,…

PRACTICE EGO RELAXATION IN AND THROUGH YOUR FEAR To simply affirm “there is nothing to fear”…

Liberating Grace emerges when you meet the layers of feeling, memory, belief, assumption, and projection and practice ego relaxation—just being here, doing nothing, and…

If you do not penetrate into and through your fear, you can too easily live daily life trying not to feel deficient, trying to prove you are lovable, valuable, or good enough. This trying is the single greatest block to the experience of Grace. It turns your life into an endless self-improvement project centered in denial of a simple human fact: your ego actually is limited. All egos are fundamentally insecure because their nucleus is hollow, based in a sense of separation. When you recognize that this is not something to be afraid of, you will discover that what you thought was a big problem is the gate to a game-changing realization: You are more than this. You are the one who is looking at the layers of fear. You are the loving awareness that is contacting memories, feelings, beliefs, assumptions, projections, and layers of conditioning. As Saint Francis of Assisi is reported to…

deficient but Grace itself: infinite space, love without limit, joy without reason, and peace that surpasses all understanding. This Grace, which belongs to all of us, is not affected by our history and our personality, our mistakes and troubles,…

asked him, “How do you avoid dropping fully into your practice?” He shared all kinds of distracting habits you may recognize, such as watching too much TV late into the night, which sabotaged his getting up in the morning, as well as getting distracted by…

After reviewing each habit that kept him locked into patterns of avoidance, I asked, “What does this provide that you think you need?” Very quickly James encountered the fundamental fear that preserves all of our ego…

OUR CORE FEAR: “I” MIGHT DISAPPEAR Describing this primary fear, James said, “I see that my familiar ego game is very close to being up. Who I have spent a lifetime thinking was ‘me’ is really just a fictional character made up of layers of memories, perceptions, conclusions, and self-images. Right now all of this is transparent, like a ghost that does not fundamentally exist.” While James intellectually knew the concept of “no self,” actually experiencing his familiar identity disappearing into the void was…

WHO ARE YOU BEYOND “ME”? I encouraged James to just be still and allow the feelings of disorientation, to “sense” into the space at the “end of himself.” This can feel like floating or like looking through a porthole into the infinite space of the galaxy. Tears poured down his cheeks as he recognized that his fear existed only because he was identified with the “self” looking through the porthole… the vastness in which the whole galaxy appears looks from this vantage point like some annihilating “other.” I invited him to see if he could soften and open into this new space as his own being—both the one looking and the one being looked upon. The sense of a separate “me” and a separate vast “galaxy” disappeared, and there was simply infinite space, being, and peace. This more than resolved his fear. It fulfilled his deepest prayer.

Dancing close to the void always feels scary to our ego, but once we actually let go, it is quite the opposite. We discover that the one trying to keep fear at bay is not actually our true nature—but the “someone” of our history, clinging to what we know, even though we might be complaining loudly about our patterns and actively trying to change them. At the deepest level, our ego clings to what feels familiar in order to protect against the fundamental terror of dissolving. The more you can let go, the more you will understand that it is only your self-images that can dissolve, and this is always very good news. This kind of “death” resurrects who you truly are because it opens space inside from which Grace can come alive. Grace always brings forth what you most need. Each time you practice ego relaxation into and through fear, your essential qualities, such as boundless love, joy, strength, clarity, and peace, start to come back online. It will vary in flavor each time you let go. As Hafiz said, “Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job?”1

Even though you find yourself sabotaging what it is you say you most want, do not just marinate in your fear. Wherever you are right now—whether you find yourself anxious about life unfolding in the direction you hope or whether…

INQUIRY    Dissolving the…

If possible, do this with a friend you trust. Otherwise, journal into the following questions. What do you fear? Explore one fear at a time. Notice the details, such as how this fear feels in your body, in your heart, and simply as thoughts in the mind. Just let the phenomenon of each fear be contacted with compassionate allowing. If overwhelm arises, use these somatic cues: wiggle your toes, sense your feet on the ground, breathe into the belly, and remember that you cannot die from or be harmed by contacting whatever you find. Meet everything as layers of your mind and remember: there is nothing that you need to fix, get, or do about it. Once you have contacted a specific fear, then inquire into the identity of it. Who does this fear belong to? You might discover that your fear is a view you picked up from your mother, your father, your culture, your religion, or your schooling. It might not even be yours but something you absorbed along the way. You might notice that your fear belongs to a five-year-old inside who has concluded “I am all alone” as a result of a moment of overwhelm when the support you needed did not seem to be available. Ultimately, fear only persists in relation to a story of a separate someone. Keep cycling through these first two questions for ten minutes, naming fears and seeing who they belong to. Notice the energetic sensations in your body and the feelings, memories, and insights that come. When you have gone as deep as you can, spend another ten minutes exploring the next question. What’s alive in the space beyond you and the fear? Just keep opening, softening, and allowing your experience to unfold. You might…

3 MELTING THE GRIP OF CONTROL Gently I weep for my mind, caught in its illusion of ownership. Mind, you’re not who you think you are. You’re dancing over a pit. Soon you’ll fall through, and these things you’ve valued and collected will be left behind. My sweet dear, do you understand this, and if you do, how does your food taste? LALLA, Naked Song (translated by Coleman Barks)

The more you recognize what is alive in the space beyond your thoughts of fear, the more you experience Grace as the unchanging ground of your being. Ego relaxation helps you wake up out of the dream of exile to see that your nightmares have been happening within the deepest love imaginable. Not only is this a great relief, it resolves so much everyday stress and struggle. As the density of your fearful fixations starts to melt, you begin to feel more fluid. Ease, joy, and a natural connectedness to the universe return… but only if you are willing to surrender the reins of fear’s twin sibling—control.

Mt. Arunachala and begged him to return home with her. Ramana replied, “The Ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their destiny. Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

ALIGNING WITH DIVINE WILL Ramana was not advising his mother to be passive or not take appropriate actions in her life. He was challenging her emotional attachment. Inviting her to surrender the delusion of thinking it is our right to boss the universe around. To “remain silent” is to cease fighting against the mystery. It is to instead choose to give ourselves back to the origin of our being, bringing our personal will into harmony with the power and intelligence that pulses through our bodies, hearts, and lives with astonishing precision. Lao Tzu articulated this same principle of turning personal will into universal will in the sage advice, “Ride the horse in the direction the horse is going.”

UNDERSTANDING THE GRIP OF CONTROL In the same way that you need to meet the energy and the justifications behind your fear instead of trying to rationalize it away, surrendering deeper into the ground of Grace requires that you understand your mechanisms of control and what causes this grip to persist. Even if your personality is easygoing, every ego contains many layers of control.

The poet William Wordsworth wrote that we come “trailing clouds of glory,” and yet

We contract into the foundational presumption that drives all of our ego activity: “I am the do-er. It’s up to me.” “I AM THE DO-ER. IT’S UP TO ME.” Explore any pernicious stress in your life, and at the root you will find this presumption. This “I” is the identity of our ego, frozen in a moment in time. Thus it feels like a young self. Identifying with its own very limited resources, our young self believes it is the one who has to figure it out somehow and create the safety, get the support, and resolve the trouble. Except often, it cannot. Forgetting we are in and part of the Infinite—the spiritual sons and daughters of the Most High—what inevitably follows is an inner struggle. The best we can do in the first phase of our lives is suppress what feels like too much, grasp what we hope will resolve our fear, or leave our direct experience somehow.

We control others so that whatever good we receive from them keeps coming. It is a patch-up job at best. While our strategies of control help us survive a moment of disconnection, they cost us intimate contact with our own essence. It is important that we bow to the intelligence of our survival instinct, which drove us to adapt and survive our experience of separation. The ways we learned to control are not wrong, but they are very limiting. Nothing will cut us off from the experience of Grace more than exerting effort to control the show.

REFLECTION    Melting Your Grip of Control What has started to bubble up inside as you have been reading this chapter? Perhaps you realize that you learned to control others so they would treat you better by appearing not to need much or being pleasing, but at the expense of being authentically yourself. Perhaps your control was more explicit, and you exerted your will by being assertive, competitive, or quick to take the lead, but cut yourself off from the capacity to receive. Perhaps your control took the form of withdrawal, retreating into an inner world of thoughts and ideas, not really letting anyone penetrate your heart. Perhaps your control took the form of performing, trying to elicit positive feedback to feel…

How does the grip of control arise in you? Take some time to journey into this question for ten minutes or so, either with a friend or by journaling or meditating into the question. Begin by letting the question into your body, and notice your somatic and energetic response—how your body contracts into a grip. Notice the feelings that emerge in response to the question, perhaps anxiety or insecurity or anger, even if they do not seem rational. Notice if memories come or insights reveal themselves. Remember that in ego relaxation, all we need to do is meet the forces of our ego and be there. There…

Perhaps the voices of your ancestors, culture, religion, or schooling pipe up inside, objecting that letting go of control is stupid and will make you vulnerable to being taken advantage of or mistreated. Perhaps you presume surrendering control means that you will be enslaved by another’s dominating ego will, as might have happened in your past with a domineering parent or elder sibling. You are never asked to…

might collapse, be overtaken by another, or disappear into vapor. It only feels disconcerting on the way toward surrender. Once I have relaxed my identification with a structure of my mind that thinks it is in charge, there is no “I” nor “other,” only an endless sea of peace. If you find flavors of resistance arising as you read this chapter, it likely means that you are getting in touch with something important for you. Ultimately, all of our concerns about melting the grip of control belong to a young self inside who is presuming that Grace is something other than total and complete love. ~

CONTACT THE HELPLESSNESS WITHIN YOUR CONTROL Melting your grip of control ultimately means learning to stay present and feel the stress and helplessness of the little “me” who believes, I really am all alone here, and thinks it is the one who has to make everything happen.

Feeling overwhelmed with no sense of power over our situation is one of the hardest things for any human being to tolerate. It really is a powerful spiritual practice to learn to just stay there, not doing a single thing, even though it feels like an impossible quandary. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche spoke powerfully about how it can feel at this important juncture: “The bad news is that you’re falling through thin air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground.”2

THE GROUND OF GRACE OFFERS TOTAL SUPPORT Ultimately, control is an ego reaction to feeling disconnected from true ground. As children, we naturally look to others to transmit the support we need, without realizing that we are trying to get it from others’ egos, which likely do not have access to true support themselves. Your grip of control melts when you realize you exist within an unshakable presence. This true support is not coming from any personality, is not based in history, and is always here, even when very difficult things are happening. Control melts when you receive the support that has always been here. Even though early awakening experiences had blessed me with access to subtle states of Grace, until I addressed the roots of control, I rarely felt fully relaxed in my own skin, at home on Earth. I struggled with hypersensitivity, and most of my struggles revolved around issues to do with support. Hence my personality was a specialist in control. Looking back, it is now obvious I had a very “top down” awakening, but I was not yet awake from the ground up. This radically changed after I received and learned to engage regularly in a practice I call the “mountain of presence,” which I explain below.

The True Alternative To Collapse Or Control

kept hearing a soft inner voice that did not have a name or form, whispering, “Just keep opening, just keep softening, just keep allowing.” One time I said back to that voice, “How much more?” The reply came, “Until your surrender is total!” It reminded me of Daniel Ladinsky’s rendering of Hafiz:           What’s the difference between your experience of existence           and that of a saint?           The saint knows that the spiritual path           is a sublime chess game with God           And that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move           That the saint is now continually tripping over joy           And bursting out in laughter, and saying “I surrender!”           Whereas, my dear, I am afraid you still think           You have a thousand serious moves.

Relax Into Unshakable Presence

Once a young woman asked Hafiz, “What is the sign of someone knowing God?” Hafiz remained silent for a few moments and then looked deep into the young person’s eyes, then said, “Dear, they have dropped the knife. They have dropped the cruel knife most so often use upon their tender self and others.” HAFIZ, The Subject Tonight Is Love

HUMILITY Bowing to the Mystery Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is, All concepts you have learned about the world, All images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything you think is true or false, good or bad. Hold on to nothing. Do not cling to one belief you learned before about anything. Just come with wholly empty hands unto God. Adapted from A Course in Miracles: Workbook for Students, lesson 189

Lorin Roche’s translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra illustrates the idea of softening into “I don’t know” without shame, perfectly:           You are stunned, powerless.           You thought you knew           What was going on.           Now you realize you don’t have a clue.           You are stopped in your tracks.           Everything within your skin is shaking.           Enter this shaking.           Get curious.           Look around inside with wonder.           Unwind your mind.           All the walls have fallen down—           Go ahead and dissolve.           The One Who Has Always Been,           Who has seen much worse than this,           Is still here.           LORIN ROCHE, The Radiance Sutras2

Like a magnet will draw iron shavings toward itself, this draws you into right relationship with your Source and the rest of life. It purifies your consciousness, helping you be found, ever freshly, by a Grace deeper than your mind.

the silence of my meditation, I heard that same voice that emerged in the cave asking me, “Who are you without Miranda?” As I wrote into my journal this question to which I had no answer, the pen ran out as I came to the letter M of my name. The invitation to hold on to nothing was loud and clear.

During this passage of fierce Grace, I found great sustenance sitting with an extraordinary female saint in India. Siva Sakthi Amma would give twice daily silent darshan (transmission) in silence, in a simple hall down a noisy side street in Tiruvannamalai, not far from Ramana Maharshi’s ashram. Sitting with my eyes closed in meditation alongside up to forty others, I knew her serene presence had arrived into the room by the calm cool breeze beginning to pervade my consciousness. It let me settle deep into the still waters where nothing is ever rocked.

I wept and shook cathartically, completely awed by the blazing light and purity that was everything. “I” was nothing.

ESSENTIAL REGRET FOR HIDDEN ARROGANCE My weeping was not emotion, not sadness, but inwardly I heard something inside saying “I’m sorry.” It was not guilt, but a clean recognition of how blind I had been without even really knowing it. This essential regret that had me prostrating was so beautiful, and it naturally contained total forgiveness for my unconscious arrogant folly of thinking I had ever been the do-er, the owner of anything. In mystical openings since, I have come to see that we pass through a wave of cleansing regret for our ignorance each time we awaken into a new level of reality. With a micro movement of one of Siva Sakthi’s tiny fingers, my body sat bolt upright. Here, there was no personality, no story, no guru, just nakedly sitting with the true majesty that did not belong to anyone. In this angelic state of pristine purity way beyond “me” and “you,” I understood why my heart had always been so moved by that final line in the Lord’s prayer, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” The depth of our heart can only be truly satisfied by the real—that is our Beloved, and there is no substitute. It is so heavenly whenever we are pierced open to perceive truly the way things are, beyond any filter of “me” or “my.”

In the face of unarguable reality, your ego just settles back into its rightful place—the back seat of the car, beholding the majesty and gratefully enjoying the ride. The following inquiry practice can help you journey through and beyond the stress and struggle of trying to lead yourself across the bridge from ego to essence. This series of questions can help melt your subtle pride, encourage you to empty out presumption, and soften into the receptive, not-knowing space.

Ultimately, humility not only melts our pride and breaks down the ignorance that makes us dense to receiving, it also gives us back to the naked truth of what we are. Humbly bowing to the mystery brings us into right relationship with the Source of our being, even if we have no formal name or prayer for that. Beautifully, it also brings us into right relationship with one another, with nature, with life itself. We become soft, peaceful, and fulfilled in the recognition that we are at the inner fountain—and always invited to take a deep drink of Grace.

7 PATIENCE The Gentle Effort I wearied myself searching for the Friend with efforts beyond my strength. I came to the door and saw how powerfully the locks were bolted. And the longing in me became that strong, and then I saw that I was gazing from within the presence. With that waiting, and in giving up all trying, only then did Lalla flow out from where I knelt. LALLA, Naked Song (translated by Coleman Barks)

Yet without strengthening the muscle of patience, we remain like spiritual children, insisting Grace deliver on our schedule. It is ironic that it takes such dedication to get out of the way and be as we are.

“always being the Buddha, always becoming the Buddha.” This expresses the true vision of nonduality that includes the Absolute and the relative levels of reality as part of one integrated stream. On the Absolute level, there is no separation. You are always in and part of the Divine Being—meaning that all the Grace you could possibly need, all the love, peace, clarity, and joy is already yours. On this level your fears, concerns, and problems do not even exist, and nothing ever changes, even if you do not experience this as your emotional reality. Thus “be as you are” is an invitation to just accept the unchanging reality and recognize that you already rest in God. End of story.

So many people I meet in nonduality circles emphasize only the Absolute level, wanting to be past their “mom and dad” stuff. Yet there is a vast difference between conceptually knowing your true nature as that and truly living it. Until your mind is not referencing the past in any way; your heart is nonreactive, spontaneously loving to all beings; your body is relaxed, grounded, and settled; and you feel yourself abiding effortlessly and naturally at the inner fountain, given everything all the time, it is fair to say there is some becoming that wants to happen.

EGO EFFORT VS. GENTLE EFFORT Ramana Maharshi said, “There is a state beyond both effort and effortlessness: until it is realized, effort is required.”2 While it is ultimately Grace that brings back online the boundless love, clarity, peace, and joy of your true nature, it dances mysteriously with your gentle effort. This is a world away from your ego expending effort—from that pernicious tendency to push yourself into spiritual shape. Trying to push past your bad habits by grasping for some idealized state, rejecting how things are, creates a war inside that you cannot win.

In time, with patience and perseverance, my inner landscape began to refine. Although I could not point to when it happened, effortlessness emerged in my practice—I was not fighting off thoughts but letting them pass through without identifying with anything particular. The more I relaxed the race to get somewhere in particular in my meditation, the more nourishing and natural just sitting and being became. I started to look forward to formal practice, which I came to call my “morning gold.”

To just avoid doing these difficult poses does not offer any growth in your practice. To just engage the poses you are already strong in can cause an imbalance. A wise teacher encourages you to move into the difficult postures, going as far as your body will allow, and then to stay there and breathe.

When Papaji (H. W. L. Poonja), the root guru of many popular nondual teachers, was asked whether he still practiced vigilance, he responded “until my last breath.”

Perhaps you already have years of formal practice under your belt. If this is the case, perhaps you might inquire into the question, “What would be most spiritually nourishing now?” If you have had a silent sitting practice, perhaps prayer is calling to be included. Perhaps it is chanting as you drive to and from work or cook dinner. Perhaps for you, journaling or walking in nature, staying present with every breath, is the gentle effort you need now. Remember the importance of humbly sitting in the unknown and not trying to find the answers. Rather, journey into the questions. The blessings of Grace come when they come, with the insights, the synchronicity, the clarity, and the psychic nutrients we need.

INQUIRY    Beyond Spiritual Pushing Let these questions reverberate through your body,

What’s it like, right now, if you just be here, curious and patient with this? This question guides you to practice patience at your threshold. Perhaps insights come, revealing what practices, rhythms, and rituals want to be woven into the fabric of your day. A clue to this is feeling “I want to” rather than “I should” when contemplating a practice. If you listen, your true desire will help to ignite what Cabbalists call the “inner teacher”—the precise wisdom that can guide you into freedom and fulfillment. ~

Ask this Grace to bless and guide your practice. Do not hold back from sincerely asking for anything you need help with in your life. Just do not make demands. Vedic scholar Sally Kempton writes, “When we ask an awake being to be present in our meditation, what we are actually asking is that this being’s inner state of infinite clarity, luminous love and subtle awareness come alive in us.”6 You do not have to have “faith” in any particular religious view; although if you do, this can weave very naturally into this devotional aspect of practice.

Here is a simple way: Imagine you are hanging from a precarious branch at the edge of a steep ravine. There is no physical person around to help you. Recognizing this might be the end, who or what do you instinctively turn toward? Mahatma Gandhi uttered the name “Ram” as he was slipping from this world to the next. You might feel a special connection to a particular embodiment of the Divine, such as Christ or Mary, Tara or Maitreya. Perhaps uttering the holy name “God,” “Adonai,” “Hu,” or “Aum” brings an immediate feeling of the presence lighting up inside. It might be a mantra like Om Namah Shivaya or an ancient prayer like the Shema. It

8 ENTERING THE JOY OF BEING All things are born out of bliss. They live in bliss and dissolve into bliss. TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD

things. It certainly requires deep trust, humility, and patience to stay intimate with this underlying goodness in a world so full of strife. Yet if we inquire into the cause of the painful displays of violence, greed, and hatred that blight our world, we see human beings caught in the spiritual poverty of lack, disconnected from the natural joy of being. We can end this unnecessary deprivation by slowing down, deepening into our heart, and relishing the gift of life.

In a nondual state of boundless love, you not only feel that loving goodness pervading all things, you also recognize that you are this love. The more this opens, the more you recognize there is nothing outside of this love, this goodness—not even cancer. Our mind can only understand how this is possible once it has surrendered dominion and lets the heart itself lead. This is why Ramana Maharshi kept reminding his devotees to let the mind drop into the heart. It is through deepening in the heart that we feel the qualities we need to greet the inevitable complexities of life. This itself is cause for joy. It eradicates the root of depression by deeply connecting each of us to all that is truly meaningful. Ego relaxation, while deceptively simple, has the power to refine, uplift, and significantly expand your consciousness.

“You are truly happy only when you know you abide in God. That is the only environment in which you will not experience strain, because that is where you belong.”2

DISCRIMINATING THE TRIGGER FROM THE CAUSE We often confuse the arising of ananda with that which triggered it. For example, your joy might be triggered by the delight of playing with your grandchild, the sensual bliss of intimacy with your lover, or the warm companionship of a dear friend. Perhaps what pops your heart most is drinking in the scent of a blossoming rose, listening to some fabulous music, ecstatically letting go to the beat on the dance floor, feasting on art and beauty, or the rush of being at a sporting event. So many things can trigger deep joy within us, but the location of this joy itself is your own heart.

Rabbi Arika shared the Talmudic perspective: “We will have to account to God for all the good things our eyes beheld but which we refused to enjoy.”3 The Radiance Sutras, a Tantric text translated by Lorin Roche, expresses it beautifully:           Tasting dark chocolate,           A ripe apricot,           A luscious elixir—           Savor the expanding joy in your body.           Nature is offering herself to you.           How astonishing           To realize this world can taste so good.           When sipping some ambrosia,           Raise your glass,           Close your eyes,           Toast the universe.           The Sun and the Moon and the Earth           Danced together           To bring you this delight.           Receive the nectar on your tongue           As a kiss of the divine.

RADIANT JOY BEYOND SELF-CENTEREDNESS Contemporary spiritual master A. H. Almaas used the Sufi term ridhwan for the mystical school that he founded. It means “a soul that is satisfied.” Feeling settled and satisfied is evidence that you are growing more present, learning to trust, being humble in the face of the mystery, and being with the paradoxes of life patiently. Natural happiness comes online as you recognize and receive the blessings of Grace. The more contact you have with your true heart, the more the sense of lack and deprivation disappears. You start to perceive and feel your own good fortune. Your heart takes on abundant fullness, a natural gratitude that radiates outward. Not only does this make life so much sweeter, it also makes you less narcissistic.

PART III THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF GRACE Drink my wine and you will become me. And all that is hidden you will see With your own eyes. GOSPEL OF THOMAS

The waterfall does not struggle or push but uses the momentum of gravity to slide over the boulders, naturally yielding to flow with the least resistance. It pours into a vast expanse, bridging one platform of earth to another. In the process of its unfolding, everything the living water touches is transformed, either by becoming green and verdant or by being dissolved.

In Christian and Sufi mystical literature, “wine” is code for “living water,” the alchemical spiritual substance that transforms our consciousness to realms beyond the ordinary. Jesus’s first “miracle” is the turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana. Reflecting on this parable afresh, nowhere does it mention who is getting married. Perhaps it is not really an outer marriage of people, but a mystical inner marriage: the dissolving of inner masculine and inner feminine, the marriage of dual and nondual, inner and outer, physical and nonphysical, ego and essence. The transforming power of Grace not only sets us free from unnecessary polarity, it also wants to take us somewhere new if we will surrender to it.

Try as you might, you cannot force forgiveness. I was eighteen years old when a friend persuaded me to take the Forum, the latest version of Werner Erhard’s infamous Erhard Seminars Training. I was the youngest of sixty people locked in a room for two weekends, listening to a trainer confronting us on our “bullshit.” This macho approach to transformation was so energetically jarring I struggled to stay awake. However, I do remember the insistence that to attain inner freedom, you had to forgive your parents.

At that time, I had many complex feelings that I had no idea how to address. I learned at a young age that there is way more to forgiveness than glossing over a hurt and playing nice.

Neither is forgiveness righting a wrong. Liberation does not come by insisting another admit their “sin,” agreeing with your condemnation of them as “guilty” and submitting to some “penance” for their error. The late theological scholar Kenneth Wapnick called this vicious circle of sin-guilt-punishment the “unholy trinity of the ego.” Sadly, this punitive consciousness pervades our world’s justice system. Allegiance to this kind of thinking keeps us all enslaved in ego, the result of which is succinctly explained in the familiar aphorism often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

TRULY TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK The liberating breeze of forgiveness comes mysteriously by Grace, and it calls for a particular kind of surrender. It challenges us to “turn the other cheek,” which understood from a mystical lens is not being a martyr and letting an aggressor sock it to you once more; it is a turning away from the external orientation of ego that seeks to correct errors “out there” and instead taking the log out of your own eye first.

FORGIVENESS IS A PROCESS In my first book, Boundless Love, I wrote about the stages of forgiveness gleaned from working through a difficult dynamic with my father. It took great dedication to turn more substantially within and address my grievances. First, I had to harness all my strength to cease feeding any story of blame. Then, I had to stay present in my body and honestly meet the hurt and rage lodged deep in my cells, while sincerely wanting to find another way. This meant contacting the forces that kept me bound in such unworthiness, not bypassing the traumatic history with some spiritual platitude.

The day I was able to genuinely see my father minus the thick lens of blame was an inner revolution. My distorted projection gave way to clear undivided vision. It

THE FORGIVENESS PARADOX Forgiveness contains a curious paradox: that we are innocent in eternity but not in time. Thus to engage this transforming Grace, we need to approach it from an integrated nondual perspective. As we have seen, our true nature is not only changeless infinite consciousness, it is pristine, stainless, indestructible innocence. Who we truly are remains untarnished by any mistake and can never be violated. This is good news for us all, for it means we can thrive even after unspeakable injustice and cruelty. However, on the relative level, even when it is not our intention to stumble in ignorance, it happens all too easily. Mature spiritual practice requires that we acknowledge not just our good intentions but also our difficult impact on one another. At the same time, remember that none of us is defined by our mistakes. I do not believe that it is a matter of asking God for forgiveness, since there is no condemnation possible in the mind of infinite love and unity.

ADDRESSING THE FEARS OF FORGIVENESS We all long for liberation, but forgiveness can feel so outrageous in the face of the tough terrain we all traverse at times: a rupturing divorce, a betrayal of a best friend, a crushing conflict with our parent or child. Whenever we perceive ourselves to be unfairly treated, it can feel like an impossible task to join in that deeper ground where we are not our mistakes. When caught in deep hurt, our ego will counsel that forgiveness is just not smart. Perhaps you fear that forgiveness will make you into a passive doormat, allowing no protection for your vulnerable heart. Perhaps you fear that forgiveness means you cannot say no when something does not feel respectful, either for yourself or for another.

However, there is a vast difference between taking time out to cool down so you can inquire into the roots of your own reactivity and icing someone out of your heart. Whenever you condemn another, write them off, or annihilate them with your mind, you are caught in the grip of hatred. It is for this reason that forgiveness is the great need of our world.

Understanding Our Taboo Emotions

In essence, he says that hatred is our ego’s reaction to an untenable heartbreak and feeling oppressed and powerless in our situation. I am sure you know all too well the searing pain when another’s behavior feels too violating to bear. It can feel like the only solution is to cut yourself off, harden your heart, or strike back in revenge. Energetically in our body, hatred feels icy, cold, and hard, like we don’t care. While hate is our ego’s attempt to deal with an untenable hurt, cutting anyone out of your heart will disconnect you from your loving heart. We see this in the heartless behavior of so many tyrants on our world stage.

Hatred is a distortion of our true essential power. Rage is an instinctive reaction to feeling disrespected, mistreated, or neglected. The turn of phrase, “He made my blood boil,” expresses how hot, fiery, and explosive rage feels. Perhaps you recall a moment when another’s actions felt so outrageous and so violating that you had to “go big” energetically, attempting to push the seeming source of the offense out or attack back to let them know how much they have hurt you. Again, rage is not wrong, but it is a distortion of our true strength, which guides us to instead clearly but calmly draw a boundary, speak up, or take a different action where necessary. Envy

When we are “green with envy,” it usually feels very shameful. Secretly hating another for daring to have what we believe we cannot is the root cause of theft, rampant materialism, and unhealthy competition.

Yet it can be hard—when you feel so mistreated or slighted, and things feel so unfair—not to give in to the dark side.

Internally, we learn to separate out the “bad” unfulfilling aspects to protect the “good” satisfying parts of our primary caregivers. We project this splitting mechanism onto everything and everyone—rejecting the bad in others and in ourselves to protect the good. This is how duality starts to feel normal.

While this might sound abstract, recall the last argument you had with your spouse or someone you truly love. It is humbling to find how deeply entrenched we can get in the belief that our position is the good one, the right one. Most writings on forgiveness focus on getting past the sense of being violated in some way by another. Reflecting on the most challenging heartbreaks of my own life, the nucleus of the transformation has always involved taking back my projection of the other as “all bad” and forgiving myself for the undigested divisions within my own consciousness.

The word atonement, truly understood, captures the very essence of forgiveness. It is a purification that corrects our distortion at the root and at the same time brings us into “at-one-ment,” the unified condition. Forgiveness thus bridges the relative and the absolute levels of our being, lifting us to a whole new ground where we gain liberation and objective clarity. This gives us true discrimination to see through the eyes of love, while simultaneously recognizing where someone is in their consciousness and acting appropriately given the situation.

Yet guilt, blame, and the need for any kind of punishment or revenge are completely removed. Since the word sin literally means “missed the mark,” there need not be any heavy condemnation to seeing our own distortions and receiving correction. Only we must remember that it is not our role to lead the correction. Grace is the purifier.

THE HEART-CAVE OF ABSOLUTE LOVE True forgiveness happens in what Ramana Maharshi called the “interior of the heart-cave, where the one reality shines as I-I.”1 If you do not limit your heart to merely being the seat of emotions but journey deeper and further back into the cavity in your chest, at some point you will begin to feel a vast, loving space that has no beginning or end. It can feel as if your heart opens to the infinite galaxy. Some report experiencing it as being within an infinite field of dark velvety presence or pervaded by luminous light. While the way it comes alive for each of us is very personal, we recognize this as the holy of holies—the inner sanctuary deeper

than “your” heart or “mine.” Here, we breathe the clean air of our shared identity, the affect of which is Absolute Love.

12.  Be open to any additional insight that comes, and then when you are ready, return to the inquiry with the following question for ten minutes or more: What’s it like in the heart-cave of Absolute Love? ~ In the depth of the heart, all duality falls away. All distortion falls away. The need to reject anything falls away.

10 COMPASSION Loving Your Suffering You know quite well, deep within you, There is only a single magic, a single power, A single salvation—and that is called loving. Very well then: love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else. Often attributed to HERMAN HESSE

As Pema Chödrön said, “[Pain and pleasure] are ordinary. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.”1 Nevertheless, we must meet the unavoidable sufferings of life with kindness and wisdom. Yet so much unnecessary suffering, with its roots in ignorance of our true nature, pervades our world. The Buddha named this dukka, which loosely translates as “suffering” but more precisely means “being out of joint with your Self.”

Any unresolved pattern of ignorance will cause you to relate and behave with unconscious self-centeredness. This will inevitably cause difficulties for others even when you are not intending it. Sometimes, even when you are aware of the impact of your unresolved suffering on others, you just cannot seem to stop.

Compassion For Your Ego

Yet she could not seem to stop this pushing, unkind way of treating herself that was now causing problems with her physical health. That day, as she was lying on the mat, practicing ego relaxation in combination with breath work, an unmistakable healing breeze blew through her soul. I invited Claire to just be there, not rejecting the frustration, the hardness, the pushing, or

felt in her shoulders, neck, jaw, and mind. I suggested that she not try to get past this but rather turn toward it all with Absolute Love. When you truly meet your most pernicious patterns all the way, you begin to see that you had no choice in how your ego defenses evolved. The fall from Grace we all go through in the first stage of life demands that we find a way to survive. Self-compassion can arise when you understand that the patterns you…

COMPASSION IS MEETING RATHER THAN FIXING It is natural to do whatever you practically can to make conditions kinder, yet often there are limitations to what you can do. Our ego tends to limit compassion to taking the pain away and fixing it as quickly as possible. The main problem with this surface view on compassion is that it gets in the way of letting the deeper transformational waters flow. The…

This is way more than a concept of kindness. Rather, it is a living presence that brings a soothing balm into our heart and onto the scene, like cooling aloe vera on sunburned skin. Healing arrives from realms beyond our mind, and in the process, it deepens our heart. Often it moves us to a greater understanding and…

Meeting suffering is usually not that dramatic. Mostly, it is a soft, tender yielding to what is, with acceptance. Truly loving your suffering means to stop defending against your own pain and even your own point of view. This is the surrender of the heart. It is what opens up the vast heart. Take a moment to reflect on an area in your life where there is some active suffering that confronts you personally. Perhaps it is some limitation that, despite years of practice, is…

OBSTACLES TO LOVING YOUR SUFFERING Typically, we meet three primary reactions when we turn toward our suffering. The most prevalent obstacle that arises is concern that if we contact suffering, we might be overwhelmed by the pain and collapse, unable to cope. Sometimes we fear it will pull us down into some dark, depressing pit from which there is no escape. Sadly, this is usually why many people stay away when someone they love is dying and why we might bury our heads in the…

Compassion is a manifestation of Grace, and Grace always comes forward when you surrender, relax, and just be here—with nothing to fix or get or do. Your part is refusing to vacate the premises of your own heart. Feel your feet on the earth and your body held by the chair as you meet any concerns of overwhelm. Another common concern is that if you contact the pain, you will get stuck. Since our ego believes it is the one that must make transformation happen, it can seem that if we do not actively resist or try to change the suffering, no transformation will take place.…

your aversion that creates stuck-ness. If relaxing your rejection feels like a big risk, remember what causes you…

Part of popular spiritual teacher Byron Katie’s “the Work” is asking the question, “Who would you be without this?” If you discover attachment to your suffering, just include…

Accepting The Unacceptable: Transforming…

At the most basic level, pain is information. It asks us to listen, not just with our minds but with our senses, to what is truly needed. If we refuse to listen, we have no basis for wise responsiveness. Yet if you open toward physical pain, which can feel so unacceptable at first, and practice ego relaxation with it, you begin to hear the invitations within the pain. Perhaps it nudges you to sit differently, stretch more, back off that inflammatory food, rest when you are exhausted, or seek a different approach.

LOVING ONE ANOTHER THROUGH SUFFERING Mysteriously, as I was writing this chapter, my beloved husband was suddenly struck down by a serious spinal infection. My normally robust, vital man was rendered unable to walk, think straight, or do anything much for himself. In the blink of an eye, I became a full-time caregiver, doing everything I could to get his untenable pain under control and navigate through a complex medical journey. He would wake in the early hours of the night in agony, helpless and afraid. I did everything I possibly could to help him. However, often nothing seemed to help.

When someone you love is suffering, and you cannot ease it, there is a mystical power that comes if you can just be there, doing what you can, even when it does not seem to change the situation much. This demands that you learn to stay present and open through your own limitations. If you can feel but not react against helplessness, the transforming power of Grace can emerge through you, bringing a new synthesis of love and healing power.

Witnessing this transformation in group consciousness made me hopeful that the evolution our world so needs will likely bypass our politicians, emerging instead from the ground up, from ordinary human beings able to stay present, meet pain, and let loving, wise response come.

When we finally just accept our situation, see our limitations and patterns honestly, and meet the various layers of pain—with and from love—the gates open. Grace brings forth the healing qualities, or some wisdom that supports healing, and all of a sudden, we are underneath the unnecessary suffering of “I and mine.”

Freed from clinging and avoiding, you can stay present and meet everything with love as your mind dissolves back into God. This readies you for a powerful dive through and beyond the construct of your primary ego identity.

11 UNWINDING YOUR CORE EGO IDENTITY Your true nature is that of infinite spirit. The feeling of limitation is the work of the mind. When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, It transpires that there is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all. SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI, Be as You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (edited by David Godman)

it is humbling how easy it is to loop back into the painful pit you might recognize as some variation of “I’m not enough.”

Just as the force of water will eventually smooth out the rough edges of a rock, your personality becomes more transparent to its true nature, less crudely “egocentric,” from ongoing engagement in practices like those in this book. The goal is not to stamp out the personality and become some depersonalized, disassociated “nobody.” Rather, the goal is to loosen the fixations of your personality to relax the Mini-Me in your mind that is the root cause of unhappiness.

Neither are you your gender, opinions, political affiliation, job, or role in life. Authentically shifting your center of gravity requires first recognizing that your familiar way of knowing yourself is not ontologically real. The central character in your movie is a self-image: a structure made of memories, conclusions, preferred emotional states, and attachments that you call “me.”

Instead, bring all of your perceived problems to the one true solution—unwinding the script upon which your story of “me” is written.

TAKING OFF THE CRACKED GLASSES Imagine that you were wearing a pair of cracked glasses, only you did not know you had them on. Everything you saw would be distorted. You would react emotionally and even physically to all kinds of things that are not ultimately real, frightening yourself and causing all manner of unnecessary strife. Yet the trouble originates from the fact that you do not realize you are looking through a cracked lens. Ramana Maharshi said, “Just as the spider emits the thread (of its web) out of itself and then withdraws it, so you emit a world out of your mind.”

However, she struggled to get past the need to seek evidence that she was unsafe and uncared for. Her mind was tenaciously attached to its version of reality, centered in the script “I’m unlovable,” which drove a cluster of tricky defense strategies.

“What’s it like to feel this all-pervasive love? Where does it seem to begin and end? Who is this one sensing this love? How does the world appear from here?”

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a poison arrow seemed to shoot through Sandy’s mind, closing the curtains on the boundless love she had been in and part of. Her breath tightened; her face pinched into tense lines and furrows. The muscles of her neck, arms, and mouth contracted. I was witnessing the reconstellation of an ego identity in slow motion.

Sandy’s script of “I’m unlovable” came back online. Anxiety arrived, along with anger and blame. Familiar defenses clicked into full gear, haranguing the nurses with agitated words: “I need this, I want that, don’t do that, you’re not doing it right,” presuming they were as incompetent or uncaring as her mother had been.

Driving home that night, I found it resoundingly clear that a process like this occurs within each of us every morning as we supposedly “wake up.” However, really it is the opposite. While our body is coming out of the sleep state, our familiar identity is reifying itself—pulling together the threads of its web on which we live our life. We call it “reality,” but often it is the wild projections—the cracked glasses—of our mind, recycling needless stories of suffering.

WHAT’S YOUR BRAND? Ego identification is the end result of a process of falling from Grace into the state of separation. This happens to us all in the first stage of our life.

This forms the scaffolding of our personality structure and creates our unconscious ego activity. Until we see these layers fully for what they are and get to know our Self deeper than our personality, they become the patterns that shape our lives. Consider some pattern that, despite your best efforts, you have not been able to get past. Perhaps it is a repeating cycle of disappointment in your intimate relationships, a struggle with kindly caring for your body, a holding back from expressing yourself authentically, a pattern of conflict avoidance, a difficulty navigating finances and practical details, or a challenge of being consistent and following through. Take a moment to reflect on what limiting pattern is knocking on your inner door. Be with it compassionately as you read on. Being caught in any limiting pattern feels painful and frustrating. You feel deficient and lacking, like a small insecure child. Forgetting that your personal stream of experience is happening within God, you seem disconnected from the love, peace, joy, clarity, strength, value, and meaning—the very qualities of your true nature. It is no joke.

Discriminating Your Experience Of Separation

You are compelled then to do something—anything—to get love and affirmation of your value from the outside. However, whatever strategy you reach for never quite does the job because it is a compensatory work-around of a young child.

Covering up our ego deficiency produces arrogance, insatiable greed, addictions, and most forms of burnout, not to mention depression. Take a few minutes to just breathe, sense your body, and vow not to leave yourself right here and now. The real problem is that we identify with our brand of “I’m (fill in the blank)” as a fact rather than recognizing it as the conclusions of a young child who did not have the full picture.

Feeding what Buddhism calls the “hungry ghost of craving and aversion” sends you spinning deeper into your story and then frantically trying to fix it. This is akin to sitting in a movie theater and shouting directions at actors on the screen.

Identity Drives Your Automatic Defenses

13 CULTIVATING EQUANIMITY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES If you don’t realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kind-hearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. LAO TZU, Tao Te Ching (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Our ego mind struggles to reconcile doing with being, superficially confusing ego relaxation with behaving like a couch potato. While awakening into a state of Grace can happen in a split second, actualizing the wisdom all the way through the way you relate, think, and act is a much longer, nuanced process.

Then, actually stop and allow Grace to reset you. Perhaps lie on the floor and take some deep breaths: Just be nothing, do nothing, get nothing, become nothing, seek for nothing, relinquish nothing. Be as you are. Rest in God. (You can even download a recording of a free guided reset, and many other tools, from the sanctuary within my website at

Despite the luminosity my meditation would reveal, it was humbling how often I would just muscle through my to-do list in that clunky old way. After the cave awakening, the sense of “me” asking a Supreme Being for guidance felt redundant. Settling into the landscape beyond subject-object, asking morphed into these questions: “What wants to be received? Known? Released? Done?” In recent years, it has become even simpler, just praying: “What’s needed now?” and listening to what comes.

A former air force commander and deeply masculine being, Peter embodied the principle that “work is love in action.” He had a great talent for galvanizing everyone into high gear.

Author Neal Rogin calls it “opinion management.” It can swallow our life force into endless rounds of hot air through some of the lowest forms of social media. Bow to this false idol, and it will devour meaningful relating and block the flow of Grace in your life.

EPILOGUE Yes… and Thank You

I do not claim to know the mystery of Grace: only that it meets us where we are, and does not leave us where it found us. ANNE LAMOTT, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith