Ease and Grace in times of turmoil- pt 1

Ease and Grace in Times of Turmoil

Wouldn’t you be pleased if there was more Ease and Grace in your life? If there were fewer struggles and less stress in your day to day experience wouldn’t then there be ample room for more bliss and tenderness? How would you like it if your life got easier? These are the questions many people seek answers to in times of turmoil.

Ease and Grace are usually the resultant experiences we have when we are in the Divine Flow. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is available from within, and to my way of understanding the Kingdom of Heaven feels just like Ease and Grace. So, if we want Ease and Grace, if we seek the Kingdom of Heaven then we just need to find the Divine Flow.

The Divine Flow is an energetic field that is systematically and intelligently organized to bring us our good. In order to tap into the Divine Flow we first need to deeply understand the concept of “our good.” Our highest good always includes the highest good of all concerned. Whenever we operate from the fear that there is some sort of competition for our good or think that someone else’s gain is our loss, or that someone or something is against us, then we have utterly crimped our ability to experience life as Ease and Grace. Jealously, envy or trying to show up someone else are sure signs that we are in the struggle rather than in the Flow.

Another challenge is that some of us have been conditioned to think that the Universal Flow of our good always feels good. This is manifestly inaccurate and resisting this Truth often inhibits the flow of good into our lives. The Universe is always aiming at our highest and best long term good and when we want to settle for mediocre short term good we experience conflict, fear and discord. In the face of the Universe bringing to us our highest good we need to surrender deeply our judgment of how it should feel.

Flow means Flow, which means that we must let go to be in the flow of Divine Good. When we latch on to something that we think is our good, and want to hold on to it because we are sure it is our good, it is likely that we are inviting suffering into our lives. All things must pass, they come and go, and to the extent we get overly attached to things we create an environment that leads to suffering. This is the great teaching of the Buddha.

Thus, Ease and Grace requires a subtle surrender and detachment from all things that are not permanent. In our culture we tend to attach meaning to things that are not intrinsically valuable. Our jobs, our money and cars and homes and vacation time shares should be held very lightly if we want to live in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The other aspect about the Divine Flow feeling good is that our highest good is often about our Soul’s evolution. Our Ego self wants to be secure and safe, to be right and to look good. About the time that our Ego thinks we have it made, our Soul is looking out for a new experience and if we hold on to the present and resist our destiny (dharma is a better word for this) then we are signing up for pain and suffering. In order to remain in the Divine Flow then a good practice is to remain very humble and open to loving what is unfolding in our lives.

The Universe is organized to bring us our good. It is amazingly responsive to our yearnings. For example, just about everything that we have now did not exist 100 years ago. Think of all the women washing dishes by the sink who were yearning for a machine to automatically clean the dishes. That yearning led to the manifestation of the Divine Idea of a dishwasher, which is now commonplace in every new home and apartment built.

Unfortunately for those of us that want to live in Ease and Grace, Madison Avenue discovered this correlation between our yearnings and our sense of well-being and has been manipulating us ever since. For example, people wanted personal credit (which did not exist 50 years ago) so they could have things now and pay for them later. Consequently, credit cards were invented. The problem is however, that our personal consciousness does not always evolve at the same rate as our social technology and so we get into a jam when we want things and more things and then more things on top of that. This confusion about what is truly ours to have vs. the things that we stubbornly demand is born out of a materialist mind set promulgated by Madison Avenue marketers to sell their products. Expecting the Universe to meet our every demand on this basis is childish.

To enter the Kingdom of Heaven then we need enough spiritual maturity to discern the difference between a need and an obsession. What is something that serves life and allows us more freedom to do what we are called to this planet to accomplish then that which we are yearning for might show up as a need. (Needs in this context are not just bare survival needs). If the product or service that we are wanting is motivated by a desire to look good, to be right or to please another person, then it is more likely than not laced with materialistic values rather than life enhancing wonderment. When we are striving to acquire things that do not truly enhance our life we end up depleted or in debt.

Many spiritual traditions of both the East and the West renounce possessions to avoid this very trap. Unfortunately, possessions are not the barrier to a life of Ease and Grace. In New Thought we have no resistance to Truth Students seeking nice things, so long as they are aware of the risk of excessive attachment to them and the impact that attachment will have on our entering the Kingdom of Heaven.