Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.
Grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available, when we become openhearted and open-minded, and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not know what we think we know.
When someone tells you, 'I love you,' and then you feel, 'Oh, I must be worthy after all,' that's an illusion. That's not true. Or someone says, 'I hate you,' and you think, 'Oh, God, I knew it; I'm not very worthy,' that's not true either. Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, 'I love you,' he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, 'I hate you,' she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.
At any moment, we are either giving humanity the gift of our clarity or our confusion. And that clarity or confusion is affecting the humanity around us, the world around us. It is manifesting. It is taking form.
Thoughts are just moving through consciousness. They have no power. Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief.
The biggest embrace of love you'll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you'll realize you've just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.
Now don't think that awakening is the end. Awakening is the end of seeking, the end of the seeker, but it is the beginning of a life lived from your true nature.
The realization of Truth and Reality can never be created by the mind ... it always comes as a gift of grace. Inquiry clears away misperceptions and illusions, making one available to the movements of grace.
Our own intuition of what we're called to is reality speaking to us individually and perfectly. We have to listen to how the Infinite talks to us and leads us. Reality, Life the Infinite, God, has a way of leading us in just the perfect way, if we will only just listen to it.
Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it.