I’ve done it
again! Decided to embark upon a 30 day meditation challenge. This one started
on the new moon of November 29th, my birthday! I remember this
blissful 30 days of feeling good during my pregnancy. The rest of the time was
hell (lol) or not. Memory is such a fickle faculty. Point being, meditation is
my medicine. My solace. My saviour, even. I know that and still, I sometimes
fall back into patterns of resistance.
Natalie
Rousseau has developed these 30 day Illumination Meditations. I love that she
asks only for a 5 minute commitment each day. And I love that the facebook group
provides excellent support, inspiration and daily reminders! Five minutes I can
do! I have a 6-month old baby this time so I have meditated in the car while he
sleeps, with him breastfeeding and even once while he played on the floor. So!
You have no excuse. You too can find five minutes. But this blog is not about
convincing you to meditate. It’s about: Grace.
Each 30 day
begins with energizing on and choosing a sankalpa
or an intention. What qualities do you want to manifest in your life? In
your heart and mind and soul. For me: Love, Ease and Grace. As I sat in
stillness gently repeating these words, filling my internal, eternal space with
the echoes of what they symbolize, I had to recalibrate to what “grace” means.
What does it mean to me? How do I embody the quality? Or, more bluntly: What
the fuck is Grace anyways?
A long
pause. As I write I try to recollect the understanding that came to me as I
meditated. Almost intangible. How to express in words? Saying “grace” before
eating, moving “gracefully,” the “grace” of God. Graçias. Graçias Madre. Graçias
por la vida. Thank you Mother for supporting, nourishing and giving Life. All
these “graces” evoke something but still…if I decided that I want to manifest
more “grace” in my life, I had better consider what that means to me.
As I sat in
meditation trying to integrate “grace” without really understanding what that
would even be, the over-standing began to unravel. Grace is greeting all that
comes into my life with acceptance and Faith. With a knowing that I can
surrender my ideals of believing I know what is best and simply trust in what
IS. Grace is non-resistance to what IS. And more than non-resistance, grace is
the embrace of all that is. Graçias. Thank you. Grace is being genuinely
thankful for the opportunity to grow and evolve. It joins hands with openness and
awareness and skips gleefully along the treed avenues while the Sun begins to
descend, creating that golden saturation that always jolts me into stillness as
my mind cries out: “Look at this Light!” Non-judgemental and complete
acceptance of that which is hurled your way by a sometimes seemingly vicious
Universe. No. Not vicious. I know that the Universe does have my back. And,
with grace, I give thanks for all that greets me. Meeting all that comes my way
with a gentle edge, absorbing the lessons, the love, the heartache, the pain,
the madness, the frailty, the joy. Thank you. Thank you for everything. I dance
the dance of Grace when I embrace this journey with my whole heart. And soul.
And mind. A deep inner mind that knows. All truly is exactly as it needs to be.
Grace then, grace can set us Free.
