Some Comments on Grace
Grace
Grace is a super important topic that is, of course, central to Christianity, and which in my experience is less discussed among spiritual seekers who are exploring Eastern traditions and who are often times more in touch with Karma than with its counterpart, Grace.
Grace is the only force I am aware of other than Compassion that is strong enough to transform and transcend karma. Grace is when we get something better than we deserve. It is when a powerful teacher, healer, family member or friend transforms our karma for us, “forgives our sins” for us.
And, it is also when we make a life-affirming choice for our self that is outside of the realm of possibilities for us based on our imprinted karmic patterns, and in making that choice we spontaneously transcend and transform our karma, spontaneously jump to a different timeline, an alternate reality where our long-held karma in a particular area of our life has much less or sometimes no influence over us and the circumstances of our life anymore. Grace is when our free will in the present is more powerful than the cumulative force of all of our past decisions and actions in this lifetime and in every other lifetime, i.e., when our free will is more powerful than our karma.
Grace is the great counterweight to the Law of Karma; it is when this ever-present rule is bent, or momentarily forgotten, as if Newton’s Laws and the force of gravity are temporarily suspended for our benefit.
Grace is the fact that progress and positive evolution are built into the fabric of life, that all of life – willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly – is on the path towards the bliss of full enlightenment. It is Grace that we learn from our mistakes, that we adapt in response to feeling the painful negative feedback from our past thoughts, words and actions that were not in alignment with our Highest Self, and in so doing we take another step towards fully embodying our Highest Self, our Future Fully Enlightened Self, in each and every moment.
Grace is when our karmic equations don’t balance, and as such it sits at the center of a great paradox. Is the universe governed by Karma or Grace? Are the Eastern karma-focused religions correct, or is Christianity, the most prominent grace-based religion correct? Of course, the answer is that they are both correct. More than one thing can be true. One of the great promises of modern spirituality and the global exchange of ideas occurring today is that we can move from embracing partial truth to knowing and living into Full Truth – in this case, experiencing the benefits of embracing a spiritual paradigm that has room for both Karma and Grace, self-responsibility and forgiveness.
