Grace Is Not Enough

1 0 grace is not enough Q Andrew, you’ve spoken passionately about the power of the intention to be free, but isn’t there another important aspect of all this, one that has nothing to do with choice, that some people call “grace”? A Yes. Grace is the spontaneous experience of aprofound presence, in which there is no time but the consciousness of eternity, that is empty of self and full of ecstasy. And it is very important. But if we truly want to be free, the experience of grace is usually not enough. Over the years that I’ve been teaching. I’ve seen people become so completely over¬ whelmed by the descent of grace that they could barely contain the intensity of their joy and wonder and yet, in the end, it still wasn’t enough to liberate them. The simple truth is that ecstasy and joy, awe and wonder are not, in and of themselves, enough to free any but the rarest of individuals from their own deeply conditioned minds. And it is because the conscious experience of divine presence usually grants us only atemporary respite from the ego’s endless needs and concerns that that kind of experience, as inspiring as it may be, is just not enough to set us free. grace is not enough 59 If the experience of grace is usually only atemporary phenom¬ enon, what can we do to make it more permanent? That’s simple. Ideally, when the miraculous presence of grace unexpectedly emerges from within and without—sweeping us off our feet, overwhelming us with ecstasy and afearless confidence in our own true nature—we let go completely then and there, while we have the conviction to do so. That’s the moment to surrender all the petty fears and desires of the ego once and for all—and never look back. But Isaid “ideally,” and in the real world, most of us just aren’t ready to surrender unconditionally even then. Therefore, to ensure that we succeed in this all-important endeavor, we have to become so doubtless about our own intention that our success or failure no longer depends upon the quality or the content of our experience. That simply means we stop wait¬ ing for anything at all to change before we will be finally ready to let go. You see, there are many things that we have no control over and the descent of grace is one of them. And because there is nothing we can do about it, we don’t need to worry about it. If grace is going to descend upon us, it will. And if grace is not going to descend upon us, it won’t. But our liberation need not depend on it. All we have to do is be will¬ ing to do everything that we possibly can to be free right now without holding back even alittle. Then we are going to know what it means to go all the way and we are not going to have to wait for grace or anything else to pay us avisit. Of course, if it does, we’ll be ready. But if not, we won’t be waiting around. 60 living enlightenment The whole point is that if we truly want to be free here and now, we have to be willing to destroy the “meantime.” The meantime is that eternity between now and that point in the future when we think we will be fully prepared to surrender unconditionally, finally ready to declare, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” If we are serious, the meantime is the most dangerous place to be because literally anything can happen in the meantime, including all kinds of wrong choices. If we allow ourselves to wait around for grace to descend, we will probably die in the meantime, not having made it. We will know that we are beginning to awaken for real when we recognize that there’s absolutely nothing to w a i t f o r. grace is not enough 61 J