9 Graces of Consciousness

Graces of Consciousness

1) Love, an obvious first, will always disengage ego. Judgment, guilt, control, etc., cannot exist when you are immersed in the energy of love. The reason the other below 8 ‘graces’ work also is because they are catalysts for an opening to love or help you let go of what is standing in the way of that love.

The answer is always love; love for yourself, others and the world.”

2) Gratitude opens your heart, raises your energy, and focuses your attention on what you love and appreciate in your life. This melts away ego perspectives and invites in love.

Gratitude is the sweet fragrance of an opening heart.”

3) Forgiveness of self and others (which are always related, and outer projected judgments can be your hidden denied self-judgments), will free you from darker emotions and thoughts such as many in the ego versus soul list below, and relinquishes ego agendas like judgment, blame, resentment, etc., returning you to love.

Forgiveness sets you free, and opens the door to love’s eternity.”

4) Joy is an instant and effortless energy up-lifter, brings you fully into the present, and connects you with the inherent goodness of you, others and life. The ego cannot exist in laughter, for example. It simply has no foothold in that space of high energy. Light-heartedness and seeing the funny side of life, people, situations and yourself can help to move from ego to your true joyful self. After a good laugh problems can disappear, you can wonder why certain things ever bothered you, and you are filled again with just how wonderful life is.

Today is always the best day for having fun!”

5) Meditation positively transforms your state of being and quells the ego through calming the ‘monkey mind’ and looping repetitive thoughts, and creating the space for higher energy and perspectives to dawn, your heart to open and your soul to connect more closely with you. It will literally alter your brain frequencies physiologically that enable deeper states which are more receptive and aligned to your Higher Self. There are a lot of different kinds of meditation practices, choose any you most enjoy or resonate with. Even just some moments in quiet stillness can be of help, perhaps slowing your breathing, listening to relaxing music, spending time in nature, etc.

When you feel the rapture of bliss, you are deeply connected to your highest self.”

6) Acceptance of self/others and life is like taking a huge releasing sigh, and a powerful step in letting go of any ego state and challenging life situations.

Take a moment to accept yourself, life and others, just as you/it/they are.”

7) Feeling your feelings helps you to release them and is a way of being honest, honouring and intimate with yourself. I’m not talking about wallowing or over-indulging in negative states (i.e. nip that pity in the bud), but more allowing your emotions to be felt and in that expressed, so they can move through rather than get repressed. The ego can use emotions like anger, pain, jealousy, hurt, to loop dark stories in your mind that keep you from the truth, feeding lies about yourself, others, and life in a way that keeps you from love. Constricting emotions can in themselves cloud and separate you from love’s presence.

Give yourself permission to feel, feelings are what make you real.”

8) Oneness perspectives and an awareness that at a fundamental level we are all connected/One can do wonders for helping us move from ego to love.

You are both the sky and the one who looks at the sky.”

9) Empathy and compassion, putting yourself in another’s shoes, engaging your care and seeking understanding help to move you from ego to your love in empowering ways, and dissolves traps like blame, judgment, fear, defensiveness, etc.

Behind everyone’s eyes there’s a child somewhere inside, always be kind.”

Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

“I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.” 

― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.” 
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.” 
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“I’ve met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I’m not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months’ time, I’ll be far away and he’ll be just a memory, but I couldn’t stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit…
Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meeting are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions.” 

― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

THE LOST RING - A NEW EARTH by ECKHART TOLLE

When I was seeing people as a counselor and spiritual teacher, I would visit a woman twice a week whose body was riddled with cancer.

She was a schoolteacher in her mid­forties and had been given no more than a few months to live by her doctors. Sometimes a few words were spoken during those visits, but mostly we would sit together in silence, and as we did, she had her first glimpses of the stillness within herself that she never knew existed during her busy life as a schoolteacher. 

One day, however, I arrived to find her in a state of great distress and anger. “What happened” I asked. Her diamond ring, of great monetary as well as sentimental value, had disappeared, and she said she was sure it had been stolen by the woman who came to look after her for a few hours every day. She said she didn’t understand how anybody could be so callous and heartless as to do this to her. She asked me whether she should confront the woman or whether it would be better to call the police immediately.

I said I couldn’t tell her what to do, but asked her to find out how important a rig or anything else was at this point in hr life. “You don’t understand,” she said. “This was my grandmother’s ring. I used to wear it every day until I got ill and my hands became too swollen. It’s more than just a ring to me. How can I not b upset?” The quickness of her response and the anger and defensiveness in her voice were indications that she had not yet become present enough to look within and to disentangle her reaction from the event and observe them both. Her anger and defensiveness were signs that the ego was still speaking through her.

I said, “I am going to ask you a few questions, but instead of answering them now, see if you can find the answers within you. I will pause briefly after each question. When an answer comes, it may not necessarily come in the form of words.” She said she was ready to listen. I asked:

“Do you realize that you will have to let go of the ring at some point, perhaps quite soon?

How much more time do you need before you will be ready to let go of it?

Will you become less when you let go of it? Has who you are become diminished by the loss?”

There were a few minutes of silence after the last question. When she started speaking again, there was a smile on her face, and she seemed at peace. “The last question made me realize something important.

First I went to my mind for an answer and my mind said, ‘Yes, of course you have been diminished.’ Then I asked myself the question again, ‘Has who I am become diminished?’ This time I tried to feel rather than think the answer. And suddenly I could feel my I Am­ness. I have never felt that before. If I can feel the I Am so strongly, then who I am hasn’t been diminished at all.

I can still feel it now, something peaceful but very alive.” “That is the joy of Being,” I said. “You can only feel it when you get out of your head. Being must be felt. It can’t be thought. The ego doesn’t know about it because thought is what it consists of. The ring was really in your head as a thought that you confused with the sense of I Am. You thought the I Am or a part of it was in the ring.

“Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to them, you will know it’s the ego. And you are never really attached to a thing but to a thought that has ‘I,’ ‘me,’ or ‘mine’ in it. Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego, and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges.” She said, “Now I understand something Jesus said that never made much sense to me before: ‘If someone takes your shirt, let him have your coat as well.’” “That’s right,” I said. “It doesn’t mean you should never lock your door.

 All it means is that sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” In the last few weeks of her life as her body became weaker, she became more and more radiant, as if light were shining through her.

She gave many of her possessions away, some to the woman she thought had stolen the ring, and with each thing she gave away, her joy deepened. When her mother called me to let me know she had passed away, she also mentioned that after her death they found her ring in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

Did the woman return the ring, or had it been there all the time? Nobody will ever know. One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you now this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Is it wrong then to be proud of one’s possessions or to feel resentful toward people to have more than you? Not at all. That sense of pride, of needing to stand out, the apparent enhancement of one’s self through “more than” and diminishment through “less than” is neither right nor wrong – it is the ego. The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh.

 How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego.

How to avoid negativity

Try This

• Whenever you feel negativity arising within you, whether caused by an external factor, a thought or even nothing in particular that you are aware of, look on it as a voice saying, "Attention. Here and now. Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present."

• Feel yourself becoming transparent, without the solidity of a material body. Now allow whatever you are reacting negatively to—the noise of the car alarm, the dog barking, the traffic jam—to pass right through you. It is no longer hitting a solid "wall" inside you.

• Become like a deep lake. The outer situation of your life, whatever happens there is like the surface of the lake—sometimes calm, sometimes windy and rough. Deep down, however, the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the surface. Practice being in touch with your own depth, which remains absolutely still.

Awakening Exercise for Free Yourself from Your Mind

• Every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work pay close attention to every step, every movement...even your breathing. Be totally present.

• When you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sensory perceptions associated with the activity: the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap and so on.

• When you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence.

A few times a day, listen quietly for the voice in your head, the stream of continuous self-talk. Then ponder the following questions. Just be with the questions. Don't necessarily try to answer them

• Am I the thoughts that are going through my head?
• Or, am I the one who is aware that these thoughts are going through my head?
• Pay attention to the gap between your thoughts—when one thought subsides and before another arises. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. When these gaps occur, you disidentify from your mind and feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the essence of meditation and the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment.

Be patient. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into the world.

Become aware of your breathing. Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy field. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life—as opposed to imaginary mind projections—is this moment. Ask yourself what "problem" you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?

Give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting...snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So, next time somebody says, "Sorry to have kept you waiting." You can reply: "That's all right, I wasn't waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself."