You might have tasted luminous moments of freedom. Yet often the distance between what you have glimpsed and how you actually live can seem like an unbridgeable chasm. Perhaps you are weary of the dizzying pace of a culture that drives us ever further from our true nature. If you are disillusioned by the spiritual struggle to triumph over your ego, I have good news for you. There is another way: a Way of Grace. I wrote my book of that title as a hand of spiritual friendship to help you close the gap and come to abide in the living presence that you are and always were. At home within, you can find a radiant new way of being, extending love, clarity, and peace deeper into our troubled world. And on 17 February 2021 I am leading a 5 day virtual Home Retreat dedicated to Finding Freedom.
Reflecting back over my decades of spiritual practice, it is now clear that like so many sincere seekers, I was engaging in spiritual practices to offset, transcend, or fix the seeming problem of “me.” My version revolved around an inner identity of “I’m nothing,” backed by a long history of feeling unseen, unvalued, and unsupported. Energetically, it felt as if I had a giant hole inside that left me feeling deficient, insecure, and valueless, even though I knew intellectually this was not true. Still, it would gnaw away at me, inhibiting any sense of ease, driving me to prove myself valuable, worthwhile, and special. This lent itself to depressive tendencies and a great deal of overcompensation, including spiritual overcompensation.
I would never have guessed that the doorway to the freedom I had been seeking my entire life would come through softly relaxing into being “nothing.” By Grace, that day I sat on the dusty old cushion in Ramana Maharshi’s cave, I was not trying to fix myself. I was not seeking any bells or whistles. I was just happy to be quiet and sit. Now it seems like some great cosmic joke that the very thing I thought was my biggest problem turned out to be the gate.
It was miraculous to open to the truth of “I’m nothing” and let all of my ego compensations go, to just be here, not trying to be special, different, or better. By Grace, I dropped through my own self-image, and with the disappearance of “me” and “story” came the disappearance of a fearful world. I now understand why this had such power to shift my center of gravity so substantially. It can for us all.
Grace does not stop at placating your troubles; it wants to dissolve your barriers and bring you all the way home into the full embodiment of who you really are. As you deepen into the practice of ego relaxation, Grace goes to work on you, flushing out to the light of awareness whatever might be limiting your full freedom. And this will be our diving in point for our Finding Freedom Home Retreat from 17-21 February 2021. Find out more about the retreat here or click here to find a free downloadable guided meditation called I AM FREEDOM which was created to help you experience more true freedom regardless of the external circumstances of your life.
