On-Common-Ground.com

Written by Roldan F. Smith

 

                                                     ”Peace Dove in the Clouds” photo by By dlco4

 

Grace…  What is  Grace?  Seeing?  Calling?  Answering?  Seeking?  Finding?  Not seeking?  Accepting?  Awareness?  Surrender?  Allowing?  Compassion?

 

The best answer is simply “Yes”.  Grace is all this and yet so much more.  It is the place in the experience by which all things occur.  When it all happens absolutely, unequivocally, perfectly, purely without thought to “what if” it happened differently.  It IS acceptance of that all is absolutely as it should be.  It is perfection.  It is without argument.

 

So, this is the way I’ve been feeling as of late.  Well, more consistently within the last 4-6 months with greater realizations of other moments having occurred over the last 10-15 years.  HOWEVER, it has not come to me without a fair share of experiencing quite the opposite of what has been stated in the opening of this writing just now.  The Journey has been a long and arduous one (forgive me the cliche, but it is so True).   And I trust that many of you lead to this particular reading could say much the same.  I would say that Grace is, in fact, what has drawn us here together in this space.

 

The climb up the inner mountain of my own Soul’s journey has been wrought with anger, self-doubt, doubts around God, confusion, angst, impatience, personal loathing and a myriad of many more things.

 

The gritty layers that covered up the Essence of my Soul were thickly mixed with the fluid “stuff” of egoic causes and ideas that I so easily accepted as formal truths from the many spiritual partners I had agreed to come into this form and function with…  my mother who in her own right holds a sense of the mystical in many ways; my biological father whom I have not physically known in this lifetime to date, but who would sow one half of the zygotic seed that was required for me portal through;  my adoptive father who contracted to step into the lives of me and my mother within those first two years of life to fill yet another contract agreement; my brothers;  extended family members; numerous physical and non-physical teachers and mentors; countless number of friends, life-long and otherwise; former life-partners/lovers… the list goes on and on, of course.

 

Many of whom, minus the family members and a hand full of life-long friends, have and will only serve me for a very short period of time, relatively speaking, in the overall grand scheme of things.  Two years here.  Three or four there.  Growing up as a child in the confines of a career military family provided me much practice to remain relatively unattached to my general surroundings. 

 

What I gained was the ability to relate and adapt to so many situations and people along the journey in ways that I simply could not have done otherwise.   And yet, my Essence remained committed to understanding the ineffable connectivity to the more esoteric elements of Life around me.  And more importantly, for me anyway, to the one great question ringing in my Soul…

 

“God, why am I here?”  I can still here the eight year old child asking that seemingly illusory question. 

“What am I here to do?” propounded the ten year old.

“God, why have you abandoned me?”  cried the the fifteen year old caught in the cross roads between boy and manhood who eventually made an attempt on his own Life because the silence felt so excruciatingly unbearable.

 

Over and over again, layer after layer, saturated with fear and doubt, laid down over the Spirit of I AM.  And as the layers deepened and grew heavier, the fluid and the mundane elements of Life compressed more tightly coiled upon one another… fire, water, air, earth… light, dark, love, hate… loss, longing, joy, appreciation… doubt… questioning… purpose… pain.

 

Mixed with the elements of place and time, an alchemical process occurred deep within the layers. Until one day, the reversal would begin, and with deliberate steps I would begin to pull back the layers which for so long buried and yet, in truth, protected me… until I was ready to wake up.

 

“I love you and wish I could have protected you more.” said the twenty-six year old to the five year old child-self meeting in a dimension inside-out of this world.

“I love you and it was I who protected you,” responded the child-self to the elder. 

The twenty-six year old cried and let go of the pain.  “Let me go.  I’m okay, and I want you to also be okay.  I believe in you.  I always have.  Go and do what we came here to do,”  affirmed the child to the adult me.  I collapsed.  I received.  I released.

 

That moment stayed with me like the stars fixed in position in a transatory night sky.  And as the years rotated in and out, the Knowing of that moment would launch me into new spaces of expansion.   But the journey was and is not linear.  Moments of quiet, sometimes for what felt like small eternities, would be punctuated with an event, a person, a book, a song, a trip, a dream, a vision, a conversation… something that I could neither explain or deny, but truly felt predestined.  Events which would once again slide back the thin veil, if only slightly, allowing me to peer into the deep and seemingly caverness, beautiful abyss within. 

 

And within that space I would be introduced to a something greater beyond my current knowing or understanding prior to that moment.  I would “wake up” to something new, transforming probability and improbability into possibility.  Small yet profound possibilities with soft confirmations.  So soft that, if I had not been so keenly aware of the questions behind the asking I would have missed them completely as my mind raced to conquer the physical world that so loudly played out around me.

 

These experiences would be the Grace that came to me as perfect markers on my journey through this mortal plain.  This Earth school.   And like a dove, each one would nestle sweetly into the bosom of my Being as if coming home to rest from a very long journey through the cosmos.  And I could feel a part of me coming home.

 

In these moments, my Heart would swell with a Love and a Joy beyond anything that I had yet to discover up to that very moment.   But it would also be mixed with the deep pain of the World around me.  Like a double edged sword, I could literally feel the pain of a World undulating to and fro like the deep sea tides.  I could not deny it, nor take it on as my own.  At first I would resist it, but eventually realized that it was the working and releasing of my own pain and attachments I had developed to form and function.  I had to surrender to experiencing and knowing this firsthand for myself before I could even come close to understanding and accepting It for others. 

 

The Kingdom of God is within you…  You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others.” -Jesus of Nazareth

 

And my greatest want in that moment was for each Universal  Being on this planet to know what I was knowing in that moment… that the pain is real but only for as long as we are willing to hold onto it and give it life.   And too, it was right and perfect on the journey for which we have each individually come to experience.  Its purpose… Growth.  And on the other side of that pain was pure and perfect Love.  The purist form of Love… complete acceptance, appreciation, surrender, growth… and above all this, Compassion.

 

As the thick layers were slowly removed, what became revealed was a beautiful element of my Purist Self.  The diamond in the rough, some might say.  The jewel within the lotus, as the wise Buddha would tell his students.  The kingdom of Heaven within that Jesus so postulated to his followers.   The Essence of the Authentic Self, purified through that process of spiritual compression.  The God within me that needed to be alchemized into something even stronger and more pure than when it first came into this World. 

 

And with this new Knowing I am able to see the bigger picture of this Journey to Me.  To that greater I AM.  To the creative self-expression of Source in the World today.  And I know this new reality is perfect and possible for all.  I am no more or no less than you.  In Truth, we are the same.

“He who experiences the unity of Life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.”    -The Buddha

 

 ”How shall I be of service?” says the 36 year old man on the pages of this writing. 

“With complete Love and Compassion in all ways of the World,”  responds Source, “Go into the dark places and shine your Light so that others may also see.  We will be there with you in ways known and not known, felt and unfelt, in flesh and in non-flesh.  But you will know We are there and the work will be done, for there are many who are in the asking.”

 

I smile at the beautiful perfection of it all, and I raise my head and heart to the sky and send the Dove back out into the World again to join in flight with other points of Light.  I reside in the Beauty of its parting, the Grace of its return, and the Growth we both share by sharing this cross road of our respective journeys. 

 

In the spirit of the holiday season marked by so many wonderful traditions of peace, love, joy and gratitude I thank you for joining me here, inspiring me with your presence, comments and questions as much as I hope I am able to Inspire you to experience your own moments of Grace, Growth and increasing Compassion for each other in this particular moment of shared space and time.  

 

“Tien ann shieh deh” … an ancient Doaist phrase meaning ”by the Grace of God and the wisdom of the Teachers/Saints/Buddhas who have come before us” … I bid you Peace, Love & Happiness until we meet again.

 

Defenseless under the night, our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere, ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same negation and despair,
Show an Affirming Flame.”     – W. H. Auden

 

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  Roldan F. Smith is a writer, speaker, teacher and Life Coach and utilizes meditation in its various forms as an integral part of his own spiritual fitness program.  You can also find him leading others through the gift and practice of meditation at Soul Circle Healing Meditation Group, sharing thoughts and discussion on personal and spiritual consciousness at A New Earth Atlanta Meetup and teaching the Power of Awareness (POA) workshops at the Center for Awareness in Atlanta, GA.  He thanks you for visiting this site, welcomes your comments and questions, and hopes you will tell your friends and visit us here again soon.