Awakening to What Is

Sometimes messages hit you over the head. Hard.

Sometimes messages come from unexpected places - like "cyberspace" or the "cloud" - wherever that is!

Yesterday, I wrote about Adyashanti's book, Emptiness Dancing. And I included this quote toward the end of the entry:

"What is born in awakening -
is a love of what is."

I must have repeated this to myself dozens of times yesterday. Such a simple statement. And so hard to embody. It reminded me of Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is. This is truly a practice that demands everything - and one that cannot be simply "intellectualized," try as one might.

Today, I came across a couple of reminders of the role that grace plays in our life:

"You cannot be bitter and unforgiving
and be a conduit for grace."
~ Carolyn Myss

And then, in the new SoundsTrue catalogue I received last night, I read this excerpt from Adyanshanti's newest book, Falling into Grace:

"Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available - when we become open-hearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know. In this gap of not knowing, in the suspension of any conclusion, a whole other element of life and reality can rush in."

Am I getting the message now?

Because, if I am not fully grasping the importance of what is being disclosed, Pema Chodron's newsletter arrives, with this little nugget of wisdom, titled, "Open Up to Life as It Is":

"When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dying nature of your being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start doing things differently."

Did I get it yet? No? Because, here's one more message, arriving through a friend on Facebook, who sends me a link to a retreat being offered by Adyashanti, titled - are you ready for this one? "Fierce Grace!" And Adya says,

"There are many fierce moments in any one life span: times of turmoil, upheaval, challenge, and change. These fierce moments of grace are in many ways the most spiritually important moments of our lives, because they call to us to awaken from our old patterns of conditioned existence and embrace the insecurity of living life from a place beyond our habitual fears and conditioned responses.

Life calls each one of us to find a way, both personally and collectively, to allow life's fierce grace to open our hearts and minds to a new state of consciousness from which to act and relate to the world within us."

Someone definitely has my number somewhere. I've not only received an accurate description of my life's current situation - one characterized by transition and endings - that have not begun to yield into new beginnings. These messages tell me in a very simple manner, what to do and how to handle everything I am facing - situations, changes, and challenges...

Messages come in many ways - in unexpected places - from all sorts of connections - if we have the eyes to see - and ears to hear...

And as I quoted Adya recently:

"Let go. And then, let go of letting go."

And so, it is...What other choice is there?