Grace is direct experience of Divine Presence coming alive within your direct experience. It re-connects you to the source of real love, joy, clarity and peace. Grace resolves the sense of separation by returning you to the felt experience of what you are always in and part of. This brings you back into a state of fluidity, wholeness and natural freedom.

Grace helps you settle and turn more substantially within. This helps you inquire into the roots of your ego obstacles, address your fears, connect with innate wisdom and find peace independent of outer circumstances. You grow kinder, more patient and forgiving with your own humanity and that of others. It helps you engage spiritual practices that transform your suffering into wisdom. Grace helps you greet challenges we face both personally and collectively and be grown into a more mature human being.

Grace also represents the love and support we need to walk our spiritual path with more depth and substance.

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There are four ways that Grace comes alive:

1. The unchanging GROUND of our being.
2. The LOVE and BLESSINGS that end the spiritual poverty of lack.
3. The TRANSFORMING POWER that lifts your veils.
4. A radiant, spiritually elegant WAY to walk in this world from a consciousness beyond it.

Relaxing into all four of these dimensions of Grace ends unnecessary struggle by bringing real love, peace, clarity, joy, pure awareness, wisdom and all the noble qualities of your true nature back online. This helps us to flourish inwardly, retrieve the insight we need, and become a more graceful human being in daily life, whether or not you have “faith” in anything particular.

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Ego is our sense of separation (from the Divine, our True Nature and one another) formed into a network of adaptive defense mechanisms of fear, control and judgment. It blinds us to the luminous truth and beauty that we all inherently are, and keeps us re-cycling limiting patterns of unnecessary suffering…

It’s the human condition asleep to its deeper nature.

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Ego relaxation is not to be confused with being passive or resigned, or neglecting your ordinary responsibilities in life.

It’s simply an invitation for the “me” who feels separate, feels insecure and afraid, and thus reverts to historical patterns of control to get things done to relax. While this separate self feels like “me,” it is really a network of adaptive defenses, beliefs and learned strategies laid down between the age of 0-5 that you have come to think of as “me.”

Why put a 5 year old in charge of your life? This ego self is not wrong or bad, but it only knows how to repeat the past onto the future — thus recycling your stress and contracted perspective on life.

Ego Relaxation invites you to compassionately recognize these stress patterns for what they are, and let your identification with this structure relax. This is how you get out of your own way, genuinely enter the present moment and find a more fluid, mature response to the situations you face.

Here is an example of how that might look: Perhaps you recognize that while responding to emails you are getting triggered into a stress pattern, you could:

1. Just stop for a few minutes and be nothing, do nothing, get nothing…relax the attempts to fix, change or control your state. See if you can allow everything be as it is. You do not need to follow your judgmental thoughts about who you are because this is happening. Just be here, feel everything, do nothing.
2. When you feel present, open and undefended, ask “what’s needed now”? Just let those three words ripple through you without grasping for a response.
3. Then return to your activity, you will likely notice that there is more flow, more ease. It is often a delightful surprise to discover that your functioning is cleaner and more efficient when it is not directed by a “self” that believes it is all alone and must figure out how to handle everything on its own.

Meditation has a powerful role in bringing Grace alive within our daily lives.

In fact, there is a particular meditation emphasis for each of the four dimensions of Grace, but the foundational for them all is what I call simply “Melting into Being”, where we focus on the in breath as an unconditional “welcome” to just be here, in your direct experience, exactly as it is, and your own out breath as some form of “melting”, seeing what can naturally let go. It is very similar to progressive muscle relaxation, except for body, heart and mind. From this foundation, there are specific meditation practices that help you deepen, expand and stabilize.

Click here to access downloadable guided meditations which I have created for you.

Click here to read more on this subject.

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Inquiry has been used as a method for realizing our true nature in many traditions. My approach to self inquiry is holistic, in that it includes our psychological, emotional and energetic experience. Inquire by diving in and through the layers of our experience – opening, softening and allowing our experience to unfold itself. Often, I give specific sequences of questions that point attention towards and through obstacles, so you can access to luminous dimensions of being.

The point is not really to “answer” the questions. Rather, to let the questions take you on an inner journey – rippling through your body, noticing the sensations and energy, your heart noticing the feelings that arise, and also the insights that come. Inquiry is juicy, fun and powerfully transformative.

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True identity is “I” prior to “me.”

To access this, we must first see, understand and compassionately contact the layers of our core ego identity (familiar sense of self) and then learn to practice ego relaxation with these layers. We must turn our loving heart towards the very feelings and sensations we have likely been spending a lifetime trying to avoid, transcend or circumvent.

It’s like uncovering a diamond underneath all the layers of mud, and we recognize that the light and luminosity and beauty is what we truly are, but it is not to our personal credit. It is just the pure truth of who and what we all truly are.

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Everyone feels that nagging insecurity of “I’m not enough” because at the core of every ego is the sense of being separate, whether we feel that as separation from love, peace, joy, meaning, inherent value or power. This often translates into a limiting script that drives the repeating stories of our life. It feels like a problem that we need to resolve, but really, it is one of the most important gates of the spiritual path.

Ego Relaxation invites you towards this that most of us spend our whole lives not to feel. Learn how to stay present with this feeling – just being here and doing nothing.

Then, drop in and through these foundations of our mind, meeting the history, the emotions. A wonderful surprise awaits — you get to see the layers of your history and the conclusions arrived at from your body of experience, starting to dissolve. You recognize them as just layers…of “nothing.” Instead of this feeling deficient in a bad way, it opens inner space from which the luminous truth of “I AM” finds us.

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Authentic freedom from the felt sense of separation happens when you meet the identification with “I’m…(fill in the blank)” all the way.

This will mean compassionately seeing how you arrived at that conclusion, how you got separated from the love, peace, clarity, and joy that is your true nature, and opening your heart towards everything and everyone you find. In my book, I call this practice “dropping in and through” and it involves an inner journey to the very “basement” of our subconscious mind.

This practice, if engaged with sincerity, will start loosening and dissolving your identification with your story of “I’m (fill in the blank)” as reality. The suffering within it is liberated and it integrates into wisdom, and what remains is a blessing. This is like the seas of our consciousness parting so that we can be ushered to the promised land of freedom and infinite possibilities. This launches us into the possibility of authentic non-dual experience without the danger of bypassing our emotional suffering.

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There are many virtues that have appeared in all of the world’s great mystical traditions that have been time tested to make us more receptive to Grace. These virtues are trust, love of truth, curiosity, compassion, humility, willingness, patience, forgiveness.

These virtues will make you more spiritually mature, and support you becoming more truly present and open – both to our own inner experience and also to others and the world. These virtues will amplify any spiritual practice you engage, make you naturally more awake.

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Forgiveness is a time-tested spiritual technology for harnessing our relational difficulties as a vehicle for purification of heart and mind. Yet forgiveness is grossly misunderstood as “righting a wrong” or “rising above it.”

True forgiveness invites us to be honest about our shadow material, the mistakes we make when caught in our ignorance, and the raw emotions that can easily spill out of us sideways when caught in some impossible suffering.

Forgiveness is the grace that washes us clean of the past, and restores us all to our fundamental innocence, while helping us accept correction at the source. It enables us to hold the paradox of our inherent innocence while moving wisely with differences and conflict. The inquiry and meditation practice for forgiveness invites you to acknowledge the hurts we have both given and received, and all the impossible sufferings within ourselves and our world, and lay it all on the inner altar of Absolute Love. There, the mysterious presence of forgiveness finds us.

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In our increasingly technologically driven world, we need spiritual practice more than ever to help us stay centered inside, in touch with our deepest humanity, and respond, rather than react.

For most people, this will mean carving our time for some formal practices, or even simple rituals that bring us back to resting in the still waters within. Inquiry into our ego reactions and their driving forces helps to dissolve obstacles, access the clarity we need and help us relate compassionately to ourselves and others.

This is one of the primary reasons that taking regular retreats, or being part of an ongoing sangha is extremely beneficial. Unwinding of our ego obstacles happens more easily within a concentrated container and the support of others. So I encourage people to plan regular retreats wherever possible. It is encouraged to look honestly at how you engage IT and social media – and the effect this has on your quality of being.

Learning to be a more graceful human being as we walk through this increasingly intense and uncertain world is advanced spiritual practice. Taking regular “ego relaxation breaks” amidst the day is very important. Whenever you recognize you are reverting to fear and control to get things done, it is helpful to stop for a few minutes and remember that your historically based self is not the one who can figure out all of this complexity.

The grace that causes the mountains, oceans and all creatures is infinite intelligence itself. Relaxing back into this cause of our being, helps us let go of unnecessary struggle, and reconnect with the clarity and wisdom that is always available.

Then, we can prayerfully ask and listen, and be moved into wise and elegant action. It sounds mystical, but is powerfully practical. This serves us to flow with the invitations our life brings – whether they be presenting as an invitation to let go, or grow in some new way.

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This world and everything in it is inherently impermanent, and is always changing.

However, there is a luminous presence at our core that is never rocked and does not change. The more we learn to ground in this depth of our being, the more we can open our heart to all that arises, rather than contract against it. This gives us the capacity to embrace the grit we face – be that happening in our marriage, with our finances, with environmental challenges and all that life brings, and respond with wisdom.

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Our world at present seems to be predominated by too many people who do not know their deepest nature, and are acting out from a dense consciousness of fear which breeds polarization, aggression, hatred, conflict and injustice. We could view this as “our” collective suffering.

It is a great service to our planet when you do not give your life force to hating the hateful or judging the judgment. Instead, prioritize learning to stay present, receptive to the Grace that is your deepest being and the love that sustains you, and practice ego relaxation with it all.

Turning everything that we encounter into the path of awakening helps us to be with the paradoxes, and the questions for which we have no answer. The more you practice opening, softening, allowing, rather than contracting and closing, the more your very presence radiates peace, love and clarity. Your practice begins to liberate your talents and gifts and make you more interested to be of benefit in some way.

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This body of teachings and practices offers a deep and thorough excavation of the obstacles that bump the very best of us back to our patterns. For seasoned aspirants, the view that your obstacles are not evidence of spiritual failure but actually gateways to deeper realization is empowering.

The work on unwinding our core ego identity is game changing and unique to this work, and the invitation to explore your boundless nature as more than just awake awareness, but as having infinite possibilities for expression, invites your awakening to exponentiate. Most of all, it offers great support to journey deeper, further and with practical tools for embodying their blossoming realization further into ordinary life.

Lastly, the focus on opening to Grace in all of its four dimensions has a super-charging impact, ending any interior dryness and bringing alive precisely what we most need on our path.

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Since Grace is direct experience of the mystery coming alive within your direct experience, it does not require faith in anything particular. It just asks for sincerity to explore your direct experience using the practices of this approach, and see what happens. Grace is not something that our conceptual mind can fully understand, it can only be experienced and then its logic and flow teaches us from within. Ultimately Grace becomes the living teacher.

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Many people who are dedicated Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, or adherents to a classical tradition find this work substantially deepens their faith or practice. It tends to bring alive more of the mystical understandings that are at the core of the great teachings, but in a more intimate way. Many of the practices I share have their roots in extensive reflection upon the scriptures and writings of great saints and mystics from eastern and western traditions.

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Up until very recently, almost all spiritual teachings east and west have been given through male teachers and thus the masculine perspective only. This has often lent itself to an overemphasis on transcending relationship, fostering detachment and practices that emphasize will over nature. At worst, this has lent to aggressing on our ego in the name of awakening.

The feminine naturally emphasizes the importance of human relationship, our interconnectedness with one another, the earth and all beings, and the crucial importance of love in every aspect of life and practice.

I say it is a feminine approach to nondual realization, because it includes the transcendent truth that who we truly are is always pristine pure awareness, and also that our relative human experience with its sense of separation, is also Divine. Thus, it all wants to be met with love and compassion, and embraced as part of the whole.

Therefore, ego relaxation practices invite you towards your humanity, towards exploration of obstacles, towards your deepest yearnings and loftiest aspirations – everything. This is quite different from the hyper masculine style of negating the relative human aspects that have predominated in Advaita, some streams of Buddhism, and most traditions across the board.

This term literally means “one without the second.” It means that the separating boundaries of the mind have given way to unity in which it feels like “you are one with everything.”

Furthermore, nondual realization means not only experiencing unity, but knowing yourself as THE ONE who is experiencing everything. When this is authentic, there is a complete absence of aggrandizement or specialness about this experience. Most mystical traditions speak to this being our primordial condition. Ego Relaxation brings us to this depth.

Sri Ramana Maharshi is a beloved sage that lived in south India until 1950. He was famous for bringing everything back to the one perennial spiritual question “who am I”? inviting seekers to continually return to the Source of their true identity, and rest in the Grace that is always alive at the core of our being.

His radiant presence and wisdom has inspired millions of people, including Carl Jung and countless contemporary seekers both in India and in the west, both when he was in the body, and also after his death in 1950. Amongst Advaita masters, he is know for a depth of Heart, emanating a silent transmission is equally janna (rigorous inquiry) and bhakti (devotion).

Just as the company you keep has an effect on your quality of being, so sitting in the presence of an awakened being can serve to transmit awakened states of consciousness, much like music is transmitted through a radio station and signal.

However the true purpose of a guru, or awakened being, is to support the blossoming of another’s awakening. Do you NEED a guru to experience Grace? No, because Grace is always present and it is your own deepest nature. You are never out of its operation. Is opening to the transmission of an awakened being (either in person or inwardly) helpful? Very much…although it is not really something that we get to choose. When the student is ready, the guru or teacher appears.

Mt Arunachala, in the town of Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, South india. There are two “caves” that were the dwelling place of Ramana Maharshi in his lifetime. The cave that “be nothing, do nothing” emerged is called “Skanda Ashram.”

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This is the interfaith seminary training that I founded in 1996 in London. In 2006, I handed the organization over to the Board of Trustees and a capable teaching staff, and the training still exists today. The OneSpirit Interfaith Seminary in the USA was founded by Rev Diane Berke, and is based in New York City.

Sanskrit mantras are ancient formulas that have appeared in Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist traditions of fine-tuning our experience through sound and vibration. Sacred syllables have also appeared in Sufi, Christian and Jewish mystical practice, to bring us back into unitive experience.

Every mantra has a specific effect on our consciousness. Some have the effect of helping us dissolve obstacles, others bring us into alignment with luminous love, others with subtle states and the cessation of mind. All mantras serve to tune us into a higher vibration, and thus access states of Grace. Modern neuroscience shows that purely on a physiological level, mantra repetition reduces stress levels and promotes inner peace.

You only have to work with a mantra (even if you do not believe in it) to experience the positive effects. Mantra also helps lean in to streams of Grace our mind cannot understand, and let go into prayer beyond the sense of subject-object.

Download my mantra CD here.

When we do not include psychological unpacking of our history as part of our awakening, it is too easy to fall into what the late John Welwood named as “spiritual bypassing” — using spiritual perspectives and practices to avoid our emotional suffering. This takes us away from our deepest heart and makes us less than graceful human beings.

Ego Relaxation views our personal psychological material as part of the path, often revealing itself to be less of an obstacle to awakening, and more of a gate to deeper dimensions. Lastly, integrating our psychological material is imperative if we are to actualize our deepest experience in ordinary life in the world.

It is your direct experience itself – which is sensed and felt within your body. It is not a belief or an opinion. Learning to sense into your felt interior significantly expands your capacity to perceive what is, minus the usual commentary. It reveals your body as a sensitive portal of perception and communication from which to retrieve inner wisdom.

We discover that we are always in and part of the deepest love imaginable.

We are held and supported completely to be present where we are. We start to become aware of subtle gifts and blessings that arrive in our lives – such as meeting a new friend, unexpected synchronicity appears in ways that respond to our deepest needs.

We begin to recognize that something mysterious is pulsing in and through us all. Even though we might not have any formal name for that, we recognize it knows precisely what we need better than we do. The dense features of ego pride, the hurts from the past, old grievances and wounds start to dissolve. We feel lighter, happier, freer. We are settled and relaxed. We naturally feel loving and compassionate towards everything and everyone else. We feel connected and grateful for life, and able to remain calm inside, and are more flexible with the winds of change.

Find out more in The Way of Grace.