By Elsa
Amazing grace
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
but now am found
was blind but now I see
Okay, fine - so that describes the experience.
And I've come to lots of other descriptions of the experience. Eckhart Tolle - a big name at present in the spirituality movement. He was depressed and suicidal for years - then presto, woke up one morning and it was gone, those feelings of depression and all the rest of it. Inner peace. Stillness. Joy.
Byron Katie. Depressed for decades. Drug-addicted. One night, sleeping on the floor of a recovery place - she didn't feel worthy enough to sleep on a mattress - she had a break-through experience. She was suddenly somewhere else. The addictions were gone. The depression was gone. She went on to a wonderful marriage - before there was, if I remember right, abuse in the first marriage, and then things again not right in the second.
I am sure there are millions of stories of sudden grace.
And then there's the Eastern route - meditation for, finally, enlightenment. It can take decades to reach enlightenment - or never happen.
So, grace - definition of grace, the meaning of grace: sudden removal of inner pain, sudden access to total inner peace, often associated with divine intervention. Grace: the sudden complete inner transformation from stuff like depression, misery, suicidal thoughts, a sense of meaninglessness, rage, hatred. It may also include a sense of being forgiven for wrongs committed - so the person who wrote Amazing Grace was a slave trader - and went on to be an anti-slavery minister.
**
But what good does a definition of grace do me?
I want a nice clear set of directions - a road map. Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie were totally down in the dumps. Is that needed, to open the self up to a kind of cosmic inner clearing?
It doesn't feel fair, if that's what's needed - but then, as it's been pointed out, life isn't fair.
**
Grace - I'd rather have that, it's my guess, than happiness - though best to have both, and joy ... and so many other things.
The right to the pursuit of happiness - that's part of the American bill of rights, unless I'm mis-remembering. (That bill of rights - the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to bear arms - 2 rights that have often worked against each other.)
Grace - I think we should add that in, in any worldwide bill of rights. The right to the pursuit of grace.
But that doesn't get us to come close to anything like directions.
**
So ... directions ...
I've done "work" to get toward grace..
I've gone the route of the West - personal growth through the talk approaches, such as therapy, Gestalt workshops, analysis, and more. Years ago, I got to what I felt was the end of that road. Way before that, Freud wrote about analysis terminable and interminable. I felt I had reached the interminable stage - knowing there was more to be done, but feeling I was on a road without any ending - and with a sense of things being just plain unchanging.
Years passed. This past year I've been doing body-centered approaches - meridian tapping, also called EFT (a kind of acupressure to release emotional blocks) - and also Taoist chi exercises (for more inner integration).
So, all that work - and I can feel changes, large inner shifts.
But no grace - not that state of inner peace I hear of from people like Eckhart Tolle.
Grace. How to get there? It isn't some temporary thing, like a high from a drug or alcohol. It isn't a numbing. Blocks disappear.
**
I remember I used to be so scared of dying. At some time in my late twenties, that evaporated. No near-death experience (or anyway, none that I remember) - though the most common route to fear of death vanishing is a near-death experience. I can still get scared of dying - but it's a much more distant fear.
But grace - so far that's eluded me.
**
There are 2 tools I've heard of that perhaps may help get one to grace. NLP - neuro linguistic programming - which, as far as I can make out, aims to reprogram the mind, away from destructive and limiting inner patterns.
Then there's something called karmic cleansing. That sounds like grace. A clearing of all the inner stuff - in this case, supposedly also from past lives upon past lives.
**
I'm still working on finding a road that pulls me.
There have been times when I've felt things come together - when I've been doing what I wanted to be doing, had a sense of getting somewhere. There have also been a couple of brushes with the in-love buzz. That felt a bit like grace, as if all that un-joy had melted away. But that wasnt grace, and didn't last like it doesn't for most people.
**
Some people turn their lives over to god - and for some it works, and for others, they spend decades tormented, say by longings of the flesh.
It doesn't feel right to me.
My road is somewhere else.
Okay, still no road map.
**
Suggestions welcome.
In the meantime, I have the sense I am nearing something essential.
Be inspired more http://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/meaning-of-grace.html
Amazing grace
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
but now am found
was blind but now I see
Okay, fine - so that describes the experience.
And I've come to lots of other descriptions of the experience. Eckhart Tolle - a big name at present in the spirituality movement. He was depressed and suicidal for years - then presto, woke up one morning and it was gone, those feelings of depression and all the rest of it. Inner peace. Stillness. Joy.
Byron Katie. Depressed for decades. Drug-addicted. One night, sleeping on the floor of a recovery place - she didn't feel worthy enough to sleep on a mattress - she had a break-through experience. She was suddenly somewhere else. The addictions were gone. The depression was gone. She went on to a wonderful marriage - before there was, if I remember right, abuse in the first marriage, and then things again not right in the second.
I am sure there are millions of stories of sudden grace.
And then there's the Eastern route - meditation for, finally, enlightenment. It can take decades to reach enlightenment - or never happen.
So, grace - definition of grace, the meaning of grace: sudden removal of inner pain, sudden access to total inner peace, often associated with divine intervention. Grace: the sudden complete inner transformation from stuff like depression, misery, suicidal thoughts, a sense of meaninglessness, rage, hatred. It may also include a sense of being forgiven for wrongs committed - so the person who wrote Amazing Grace was a slave trader - and went on to be an anti-slavery minister.
**
But what good does a definition of grace do me?
I want a nice clear set of directions - a road map. Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie were totally down in the dumps. Is that needed, to open the self up to a kind of cosmic inner clearing?
It doesn't feel fair, if that's what's needed - but then, as it's been pointed out, life isn't fair.
**
Grace - I'd rather have that, it's my guess, than happiness - though best to have both, and joy ... and so many other things.
The right to the pursuit of happiness - that's part of the American bill of rights, unless I'm mis-remembering. (That bill of rights - the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to bear arms - 2 rights that have often worked against each other.)
Grace - I think we should add that in, in any worldwide bill of rights. The right to the pursuit of grace.
But that doesn't get us to come close to anything like directions.
**
So ... directions ...
I've done "work" to get toward grace..
I've gone the route of the West - personal growth through the talk approaches, such as therapy, Gestalt workshops, analysis, and more. Years ago, I got to what I felt was the end of that road. Way before that, Freud wrote about analysis terminable and interminable. I felt I had reached the interminable stage - knowing there was more to be done, but feeling I was on a road without any ending - and with a sense of things being just plain unchanging.
Years passed. This past year I've been doing body-centered approaches - meridian tapping, also called EFT (a kind of acupressure to release emotional blocks) - and also Taoist chi exercises (for more inner integration).
So, all that work - and I can feel changes, large inner shifts.
But no grace - not that state of inner peace I hear of from people like Eckhart Tolle.
Grace. How to get there? It isn't some temporary thing, like a high from a drug or alcohol. It isn't a numbing. Blocks disappear.
**
I remember I used to be so scared of dying. At some time in my late twenties, that evaporated. No near-death experience (or anyway, none that I remember) - though the most common route to fear of death vanishing is a near-death experience. I can still get scared of dying - but it's a much more distant fear.
But grace - so far that's eluded me.
**
There are 2 tools I've heard of that perhaps may help get one to grace. NLP - neuro linguistic programming - which, as far as I can make out, aims to reprogram the mind, away from destructive and limiting inner patterns.
Then there's something called karmic cleansing. That sounds like grace. A clearing of all the inner stuff - in this case, supposedly also from past lives upon past lives.
**
I'm still working on finding a road that pulls me.
There have been times when I've felt things come together - when I've been doing what I wanted to be doing, had a sense of getting somewhere. There have also been a couple of brushes with the in-love buzz. That felt a bit like grace, as if all that un-joy had melted away. But that wasnt grace, and didn't last like it doesn't for most people.
**
Some people turn their lives over to god - and for some it works, and for others, they spend decades tormented, say by longings of the flesh.
It doesn't feel right to me.
My road is somewhere else.
Okay, still no road map.
**
Suggestions welcome.
In the meantime, I have the sense I am nearing something essential.
Be inspired more http://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/meaning-of-grace.html
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