A Walk in Grace Forest

Not for the first time and not for the last, I am feeling the painful repercussions of my past vibrate into the present. I am looking into a very deep, old wound that I've avoided forever. 

What is this pain? This wash of emotions?

I'm told it's grief, but that word feels like the scratchy, black-and-white version of the vibrant reality.

Yesterday, I told my therapist there was a hole inside me. "I think it's been there my entire life," I said, and it's true. It seems as if this emptiness has always been there. I've never dared to see it before, but now I'm teetering at it's bottomless brink. 

I asked her, "Is that how everyone is? Do we all have this... emptiness? Does it ever go away?"

She said, "In my knowing, that hole will be filled with grace."

Grace.
What does that even mean?
A tinge of hopelessness washed over me. How can I fill the emptiness with something I don't understand?

This morning, I need to know. I have to know what grace is and how, exactly, a vague religion-tinted concept can fill up the empty place inside me. 

I want more than a simple verbal definition, but I Google it, hoping for answers. 

According to Websters:

Grace
a :  unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification
b :  a virtue coming from God
c :  a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace

That third part leaves me with a furrowed brow. It’s hard to take seriously any definition that uses the subject word in the description of the word. I suppose “c” is saying that grace is not only the gift but also the state one enjoys upon receiving the gift... but what exactly is the gift?

b : a virtue coming from God

My mind cries, “Define virtue! Define God!” 

Then my more knowing, inner-self says, “Stop trying to describe wood and take a walk in a forest.”

So I close my eyes. I walk through that brief sentence with my soul open wide until the path takes a surprising turn.

What if grace isn’t a gift in the sense that something new is bestowed upon us? 
Maybe grace is the realization of something that’s always been there.
Yes, I think as I step more confidently onto the new path. Grace could be an awareness of the divine within. A knowing that everything is always okay because that which we most crave and need has always been there and can never be taken from us.

I little ripple of excitement washes over my skin. I'm on to something here. 

a : unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification

These ego-feeding, heady words fall flat in my brain. I return to the forest and continue my journey through the essence of grace, stumbling over that first word. Unmerited? That seems to indicate that there is some requirement that hasn’t been met, like a child who misbehaves but gets dessert anyway. It makes it seem as if grace is a gift given to the undeserving... but... aren't we all deserving, all the time?
Yes.
That's it!
We are each pieces of God and God is within each of us. 
God is love. Love is God. 
This is the image in which we were created. 
We can’t be given what we already have. 
We are made of love! 
We can’t earn it and we can’t lose it and we can’t ever be undeserving of it because it is what we are.
So... when they say divine assistance they're talking about... a reminder. 
Yes.
Grace is a gentle nudge and a finger pointing to the reality that we are love and love is all and nothing else matters.

It is that still, small voice that whispers, "This is who you are. You are love. You are always within me and I am always within you and it is only when you forget that you feel loss." 

So I come to see grace as a soft caress of the soul; a gentle rush of well-being; the sweetness, lightness, connection and wholeness that can fill the seemingly bottomless hole inside me and holds me together when it seems the world wants to tear me apart. 

No issue is too large or too small to be dazzled by the shining light of grace. Without our troubles we could never come to understand our own true nature. Thus, everyone and everything who has ever caused us pain brings us the gift of grace and is made of that same essence of love. 

And so, 

c :  a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace 

would be the state-of-being one has upon remembering. 

And in this moment, I remember. 

Unconditional Love

I’ve been reading “The Five Levels of Attachment,” by don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. At the same time, I’ve been working to understand the concept of “unconditional love”.

My understanding of the message from the book is that our attachments to our beliefs get in the way of our following our own, best path. The more strongly we are attached to a belief, the less likely we are to challenge it, even if it becomes almost impossible to make that belief work with what we see around us.

People kill and die because of their beliefs. That belief may be that only their religion is right, that their country is the best, or that their physical body’s shape, size, or color is somehow better than another.

The Dalai Lama, the well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher, explains the difference between attachment and unconditional love:  “Attachment and love are similar in that both of them draw us to the other person. But in fact, these two emotions are quite different. When we’re attached we’re drawn to someone because he or she meets our needs.[…] On the other hand, the love we’re generating on the Dharma path is unconditional. We simply want others to have happiness and the causes of happiness without any strings attached...” He neither accepts nor denies that unconditional love is possible, but he does explain it quite clearly.

People harm each other because of attachments to a belief that there is a limited way to love. I’d bet on the fact that you know someone who believes it is wrong to love outside of your race, your religion, or to love someone of the same gender. Those same people may tell you that God doesn’t want you to love in the ways they believe are wrong—and they may also tell you that God loves unconditionally. 

Perhaps they explain this as a paradox—that God loves unconditionally, but with a few conditions.

A Yoruba priest, Kalila Borhgini says, “God’s love is unconditional, but God also has expectations and requirements.” She accepts this and, a little later, calls it a paradox.

Baptist Rev. John Piper writes, “There is such a thing as unconditional love in God, but it’s not [...] for everybody. Else everybody would be saved, since they would not have to meet any conditions, not even faith.” What I get from this is that God loves us unconditionally, only if we have faith—which is of course, a condition.

I don’t believe in paradox. My feeling is that when we see something as paradox, it’s because we are seeing part of the equation incorrectly. 

2+3 will never equal 4. No matter how attached I am to the number three, as long as I hold it in that part of the equation, I am going to come up with a paradox because the only thing that logically fits, is another two.

Consider this statement: God is everywhere. 

At first, I took that to mean that God was here with us, all the time—that God was always present, right along with everything else. In time, I considered the possibility that God was neither another dimension superimposed over what we see and feel, nor a presence far away that was somehow aware of everything else.

Maybe God isn't here WITH everything, but AS everything. Maybe God’s presence “everywhere” really means that everything and everyone is God. 

Einstein and other physicists tell us that all matter is actually energy. Slow down energy's vibration and you get what we call matter. This means everything we see, feel, know or imagine is energy. Our thoughts and feelings, our movement through space, and even our bodies. 

Everything is energy. God is everything. Therefore God is energy. This equation makes sense to me. 

Perhaps God slowed down bits of that energy in order to experience what we think of as the physical realm. 

In the Law of Attraction teachings (also called the teachings of Abraham) it says, “Unconditional love is staying in the vibration of Source regardless of the condition.” To me, this says that we can only love unconditionally if we are in alignment with the vibration of the Universe (God). In a way, this is saying the same thing as the Baptist Reverend--that faith(or alignment with God) is a condition of unconditional love. 

One could look at it to mean that only God can love unconditionally, but if we did accept the premise that God is all, then God is us, and we are God and therefore, we should be able to achieve unconditional love.

I will make mistakes and you will make mistakes, yet God is perfect. If we are God, then mistakes do not take away from our perfection. How can that be? 

If I am God and you are God, then the concept of ‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’ has a different flavor. Thy neighbor IS thyself and both of us are God. We are meant to love ourselves and others and God constantly and equally, because they are one and the same and Divine—and therefore perfect. It’s like saying God has unconditional love for us because we are Divine and perfect aspects of God. That equation seems to ring as true as 2+2=4. Both sides are equal and the same. 

Catholic Fr. Vincent Serpa writes, “God does love us unconditionally in that he loves us even in our sins. But he cannot love our sins.” This is the “love the person not their actions” version of “unconditional” love. It represents an attachment to the “good and evil” concept. 

But maybe the way we choose to manipulate the energy around us (the way we choose to live our lives) is not good or bad. Maybe that judgment is irrelevant to God. Maybe God does not have any expectation of how we will use our time in this physical realm, but instead, has a knowledge that all aspects of God will always be aspects of God regardless of how we shift that energy—that no matter what we do, we are still perfect.

We would not put the three in the 2+3=5 equation unless we had a really good reason to believe that the three belonged there. If we were to accept that this paradox of expectations and unconditional love is a faulty equation, what attachment would have caused us to create it?

I think it’s an attachment to conditional love that moves me—and others—create the paradoxical equation. 

In my most rational moments, I don't actually believe God loves one person more than another. I accept that everyone and everything is an aspect of God, and that God loves all aspects of the Universe equally. Therefore, what I do here has nothing to do with how much God loves me.

The first time I considered that idea, I was surprised by a wave of fear. Why would that be a scary thought?

As a small child, I wanted to be loved unconditionally but I learned that love was conditional. I believed my parents were not capable of giving me unconditional love because I was not capable of being "good enough". If I believed unconditional love was possible, I also had to accept that my parents chose not to give it to me. This is harder to accept than to believe there’s an unknowable paradox—which would allow me to never have to look at the situation too closely.

In order to imagine this need for unconditional love being fulfilled, I personified God. I gave God the quality of requiring a condition for love, a quality that actually belonged to my parents. Like many (as my examples above display) I developed an attachment to the belief that "unconditional" love would be given to me if I followed a certain set of rules.

An attachment to this belief has several benefits.

For one thing, I can solve the greatest dilemma of my childhood. With God, I can finally be "good enough" to receive “unconditional” love. 

But also, by believing that God’s unconditional love actually has some conditions, it gives me an illusion of power. If I do “God’s will” then surely God will love me more. I will become one of the chosen, the beloved, the saved—whatever name you’d like—by fulfilling the conditions imposed by my belief system.

If I give up the attachment to the concept that I gain God’s love by following certain rules, does that mean I have to believe I can’t gain God’s love?

Yes. That's true. I can’t gain God’s love because I already have it. We can't ever lose it.

If we have to follow rules in order not to lose God’s love, we live fear-driven lives. There is constantly the possibility that I might lose the love I need, so my actions are driven by the set of imposed rules in my belief-system.

If I truly accept that God's love is unconditional, then I am no longer driven by fear of losing that love. It is that fear that seems to hold us to the rules of society—the things our society has decided are "moral” or “right”. Without that fear-driven base, It seems I would no longer be governed by the laws of man. I would be free to act exactly as I'm called to act. The moral "dilemma" would not exist. 

Our attachment to the concept of "good and evil" may be the hardest one to release. How many paradoxes would be wiped out of existence if we saw that this is really a societal concept, not an actual law of the universe? We would not have to hold ourselves (mankind) to a different standard as the rest of nature, for one. We would not have to judge ourselves or others harshly for "making mistakes", for another. We all know we are going to "make mistakes" yet we live in resentment, shame and guilt. 

If we were going to release our attachment to societal morals. We would have to raise our children in an entirely different way. When a toddler first experienced rage and struck out to show it, we would not tell him what he was doing was wrong. Instead, we would teach him that everything and everyone IS God, just as he is, and that when he strikes out against the world, he is striking out against himself. 

Of course he would not understand this as a toddler, but neither does a toddler understand “wrong”. We drive that into children until they believe it and then expect them to accept the "paradox" that God loves unconditionally—with some conditions.

Grace in My Garden

From people in the meetings, and in books on Co-Dependency, three terms seemed to be used as synonyms:
Acceptance,
Letting go,
and
Forgiveness.
When I first came to CoDA, I heard people speak these words and my heart would immediately close. I would hear that these things were things we needed to do.
It was explained that forgiveness was not for the person who had committed the offense.
Forgiveness was for the victim.
I’d think, “How is that possible? It makes no sense!”

Over time, I began to object to the way people used these terms interchangably.
Acceptance seemed like something I might be able to achieve. Letting go was still out of reach, but the idea that I could accept that my life was how it was and move forward from there was very different from forgiving those who I blamed for putting me on the course I'd been following. To me, it felt like forgiving was the same as saying what had happened to me was okay. It was like saying, “I’m not that important. It’s okay if you hurt me.”

I told my sponsor, last summer, that I would never forgive my father. A defiant child inside me screamed, “You can’t make me!”

In the garden of our lives, the wounds of the past are barren places. Many of us avoid looking into these dark deserts of despair. Fear of these bleak, infertile spaces haunts our thoughts, dreams, actions and aspirations. No one showed us how to care for our garden. We allow ourselves to be victimized and avoid the things we need most. As the sterile darkness spreads, we find ourselves in smaller and smaller cages of denial, but still we refuse to face that which is preventing us from becoming what we can be - what we are meant to be.
It feels hopeless.

In our hands, we hold the seeds to Acceptance, Letting Go, and Forgiveness, but until we take the time to step into the barren places, push the dirt aside, and place the seeds in the ground, there is no hope for them to grow.

For me, I believe I began to bury those seeds in March of last year.
If I had a bottom, that was it.

I recently heard this question asked at a CoDA meeting:
When does one hit bottom?
The answer: When one stops digging.

I looked at the holes I’d been burying myself in and decided, instead, to plant those seeds I’d been hanging onto. Continuing my Inner Child work in therapy has let sunlight in my garden. Working the steps in CoDA has been the much needed rain. In the last year, I believe the seeds have grown into something tangible, something I can almost taste, but still there is something missing.

Acceptance.
In my garden, acceptance is a tangy, not quite ripe orange. It is hard to peal, but I have been working at it for some time. The sections I have free are not as sweet as I would like, but I can get them down without too much discomfort.

Letting go.
With the first sections of orange inside me, the green limes of letting go have become thin-skinned and ripe. I can open them up and breathe in the citrus smell, but the tartness puckers my mouth before I can swallow a mouthful.

Forgiveness.
Yellow lemons grow in my garden. They are forgiveness; beautiful to look at, but impossible to digest. Just opening them makes my eyes water.

I am writing out my eighth step, this weekend. This step is:
“Made a list of all persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”

The timing on this seems perfect. My “Acceptance Ceremony” is only ten days away. What better time to begin to take responsibility for my part in it all?

I have not been perfect. As Melody Beattie says in “Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps”:

“It is hard to be nurturing, loving nonshaming and present to...if we have never been nurtured or if all we know is control and shame, and if we ourselves are doubled over in pain. Being without boundaries, not being able to set appropriate limits… is doing harm.”

I could continue to play the victim and relieve myself of all responsibility because of what has happened to me in the past, but does that really serve me? Even if it did, wouldn’t this kind of attitude mean that I also have to relieve those who have harmed me of responsibility? Surely their behavior has stemmed from unmet needs and abuse in their own lives….

As suggested in the Beattie book, I am taking breaks to “find peace” when it feels overwhelming. I wrote the first part of this blog post during the first break, and now I am coming back to finish it.

I think I understand what was once missing in my garden.

I believe there is more to creating life than sunlight, water and earth. For my seeds to grow into something I can ingest, something nourishing and sweet, I need divine intervention.

As I said, I have not been perfect. How unbelievably lucky I am that there is a thing called “unconditional love”. If there is anyone who can love unconditionally, it would have to be God. Since I feel the presence of God in my life anytime I sincerely look for it, and since I believe in unconditional love, I know that God loves me unconditionally.
I am not meant to live in shame, anger and fear.
I am not alone.
I have been forgiven.
This kind of presence, forgiveness and unconditional love has a name.
It’s called Grace.

Grace is the final ingredient I need to make my garden flourish. Grace is like sugar, sprinkled generously on the tart and tangy fruit I am finally harvesting. Sweetened, watered and warmed by the sun, what was once impossible to swallow is becoming something too sweet to resist.