Who or whatever created us

-- whether that’s God, the universe, or chance --

allows for all things.

​

I repeat: who or whatever created us allows for all things,

so we must allow for all things.

 

​

I have lived my entire life in a state of gracelessness.

​

It’s true. I have fought everything, convincing myself that it was coming from a place of love and that it was necessary. Never did I sit down and say, ‘okay – this is the way it is’. When I felt miserable, I either moved somewhere, looked for a new someone to be in my life, or did something else to escape sorrow. I have spent most of my years really lonely. Half the world is terrified to admit they are lonely, and the other half are terrified of being alone.

​

Time has worked its strange magic on the term ‘grace’.

​

Looking at the etymology, it goes back to the word Gratus in Latin, which means pleasing. Gratia followed, which meant a pleasing quality, thanks, or favour. And in Middle English, Grace became associated with Christianity – to be filled with God’s favour or help. Now, though, when we describe someone as graceful, we often imagine a woman elegantly drifting into a room while managing to keep herself upright in high heel shoes (or carrying a burden in style).

​

Grace is a very powerful word. In order to be understood, it must be felt as a presence within us.

​

Love cannot find gracelessness.

True beauty cannot find gracelessness.

​

When we are constantly fighting the world around us, we stop everything around us from moving freely. When we are keeping out a bad memory, a person, or a situation, we place a barricade up in front of us. We can’t see anything anymore – the good or the bad. Everything halts. This is what Taoists would describe as someone not being with nature or ‘The Way’.

​

We know that good and bad are still there, because the bad stuff sits patiently waiting for us to process it and we see the good stuff happening to other people. But we are lost to it all.

​

To be graceful is to allow everything as it is – but to TRULY allow everything as it is. Not to say, ‘oh, they can do what they want – they’ve already hurt me enough’, or ‘it’s fine that I just don’t have any luck’, but to find a way to be present with everything, no matter how much it hurts. To be present with every decision you made and every time you felt you were being controlled.

​

At some point, we have all decided that life is unfair. On a world scale, we have world hunger and domestic violence, and on a smaller scale we watch the bully at school coming into millions, living with a face full of spots, the kindest woman not being able to have children, and young children falling ill. For a long time now, we have been in the dark ages attempting to cope with reality, and more people than ever are committing suicide because they have been given reason to believe it is their only way out of suffering. A graceless world view has made them feel helpless. Mass homicides, assaults, burnings, decapitations… That’s been the last few thousand years and it is a reality we have been taught to know well. It is integrated within us, and we fear more of it.

​

Not only is it futile to point our finger at life itself and say ‘you are the problem’ – it is arrogant, tasteless, and naïve. Why? Because none of us have the foggiest idea.

​

The universe clearly works by its own (or God's) set of rules. We see this everywhere. Our world is a formation of patterns that roll outwards; from the minuscule helix of DNA to the spiral of the galaxy we sit in... There are trillions of things that could have cut humanity short, but look at us! We’re still here fighting. No one can know a fraction of what is really going on. The universe is just too vast, too intelligent, and too intricate. To fight it is to be vain – to be coming from a place of vanity.

 

What can we do?

Question the way in which we perceive our lives. By breaking down the conditioning we received as children, we begin to see from outside our scared little ego, and that blesses us with sanity in an insane world. It makes grace easier to attain. If we were to look at what society wants from us and then see our endless list of failures and bad decisions, facing it becomes unbearable. This is why it is so important to break that conditioning down first.

​

How can we break down conditioning?

By throwing everything upside down.

Give it a go today. Throw everything upside down. Imagine for a moment that the drunk man slumped by the park gates is there as a wise teacher, offering you the chance to show compassion and asking you not to judge. Imagine the person making you feel powerless is asking you to step up and show your inner strength. Imagine everything as an experience waiting to come in; there is nothing good or bad, happy or unhappy. Just a series of everythings. Step forward and embrace them as your moments to be the best version of yourself.

 

Until we can accept all that is taboo as a part of our world,

we will not be able to change it.

​

Even if you don’t think you are fighting, think of anything taboo right now, and see how you are always swerving anything that seems dark in a hope of avoiding it.

​

People use ‘the C word’ instead of cancer because they are afraid of ‘catching’ it, or try to block out heinous acts done to children and animals. This is the reason that there are industries thriving that are fuelled by peoples' fear. When darkness isn’t accepted or integrated into the self, the human mind has to find other outlets for it, and that person is no longer in control of themselves.

 

A great way to demonstrate this is through someone who suffers with an acute form of Tourette’s. For most of us, we can block something taboo before it comes out of our mouth and so it stays there as an unspoken demon in our heads. For some people, they are forced to live their lives while uncontrollably saying everything that is coming up in their psyche. Think of the vilest things you could possibly say right now and imagine having no choice but to shout them out. It’s terrifying.

​

​

Taboo In Organised Religion

​

Grace is a word associated with God. Most religions (particularly the Abrahamic ones) focus on good and evil.

​

There is something undeniably graceful about someone who dedicates themselves to a life of prayer, that much is true. And again, I cannot deny that I see humility in someone who acknowledges themselves as a sinner. But in a world where we have Christianity as the main religion, followed by Islam as a close second, there is very little grace to be found in our world; and grace is the word associated with God.

​

In religion, when Saints are forced to demonstrate love, grace, and forgiveness, they do so without fear. Why? They've done the shadow work. They have contemplated what it actually means to live with grace through complete acceptance of what is. The haven't shut themselves off to hell or the underworld. If they had, they wouldn't be calm. They have acknowledged their fears.

​

But for every handful of saints, we find millions of criminals.

​

As we know, in religion, the aim is to align with good; to live by a set of rules or to run into the arms of a saviour. But when an entire half of the psyche is left unexplored because it is ‘dangerous’ or ‘hellish’, that half will find its way out.

​

This leads to a situation where those in positions of authority commit dreadful crimes, and others are blindly spouting insults at homosexuals. And if we step outside religion, there are billions of others who believe nothing at all and are frantically trying to get what they want before they die. A high percentage of this world has not done the ‘shadow work’ – integrating the dark half of the psyche. Until we can accept that these taboos are a part of our world, we will not be able to change them.

 

​

Grace and Creation

​

We create ALL the time.

 

The creator is in its creation, because something can only be created from the very essence of that which created it. So if we believe in God, the essence of God is in us. If we are outside religion and believe that the universe and beyond is clearly very powerful, then that power resides in us, too, because it created us. Everything we do, and the way we do it, is our creation. By default, that makes us creators.

​

This thought of being a creator led me further into a state of gracelessness in the past, because I thought about how I should have felt powerful, but I didn't. I kept kicking glass ceilings and raising my voice, demanding to be heard. We are living with grace when we don't shout or scream or try to be heard, but we speak our truth in the centre of a storm -- we become the eye at its centre.

​

We are the spark of a much larger something, whether that be dust or divine.

​

To create from a place of grace is to embrace the different facets of our mind and the perceivable world, and that means stepping outside our ‘small’ self and accepting life is not all to be understood.

​

When our thoughts come from grace, so do our actions, and then we accept that who or whatever created us is intelligent enough to know ‘The Way’.

​

You only need to make one small change to get from scared to sacred. Have some faith.

​