Grace in Motion # 67

Grace in Motion.                          
The joy of being present to a dancer’s grace or an athlete’s performance is both universal and personal.  Witnessing the act together in the audience and sharing in the amazing feat performed is a universal experience, but the way it touches our hearts and leads to transcendence is very personal.

There is a feeling of transcendence, how is that possible?  And also a beautiful trick of experience in that it looks so graceful so effortless that surely, given enough time, I too could move like that.  Leaving talent out of the picture for a moment, this is the gift of the performers practice.  Daily every day for probably more that Malcom Gladwell’s requisite 10,000 hours, they practice.  And that practice refines and hones the body-mind permitting grace to flow through effortlessly and their gifts to be revealed in the highest light.

I long to be that graceful in my life.  I wish to move through my day fully present permitting grace to flow though me so that my actions may also bring joy.  I realize that my stage is small but my heart is big and it yearns to express the joys and challenges of life both large and small.  Not just during the big moments but all moments.  I want to move with grace.  I yearn to be grace in motion.  

This, this is why I have spent the past 10 years cultivating a deep meditation practice. It is why I study and give my mind something to hold onto as the more full experience of practice comes into being.  It is the effortless practice of Neelakantha Meditation that has made me aware of the grace I naturally possess and revealed to me the many ways grace is present in my life.  Even in challenge, there is grace that rises to support and reveal. 

There is text of the Śaiva Tantra that speaks to this.  It is devoted entirely to Consciousness, to our own true vibratory nature, The Śiva Sūtras. 

It is a text that is initiatory, in that it is meant at the highest to reveal this nature known more and more as practice permits deeper access to that knowing.

As Paul Muller-Ortega says, “it may be informational and even academic in nature but fundamentally it is the text where the highest nature of self crystallizes in the heart and we must learn for ourselves to access this.”

It is practice that permits one to gain the capacity to “read the text of the heart itself” in the turya state of deep meditation.

It is not meant to be merely read but taken up and contemplated in the deepest space of the heart again and again and then insight is brought up to and shaped in the mind.

Sutra16 of the third opening:
āsana-sthaḥ sukhaṃ hrade nimajjati
Established in this pose, the yogin plunges easefully into the lake. Standing or seated, it is the Yogin's deepest awareness that must always abide firmly, constantly, and in subtle and perfect alignment with the Supreme Śakti. This state of being constantly seated in the Supreme Consciousness is such that a Yogin easefully, spontaneously, and without effort steeps, is immersed into, and deeply plunges into the great Ocean of Consciousness, the great Lake of the Immortal Consciousness.
This subtle focused practice of abiding in this pose allows the Yogin to leave behind superficial or gross efforts to control the mind, to the concentrate the mind, or to meditate in a directed or harshly limited way. Instead, by means of this alignment with the Supreme Śakti, the Yogin is easefully steeped in the great Consciousness. In this process, all limited identifications with the body, with the limited individuality, with the external objectivity of the world, all such are transcended.      Translation and commentary, Paul Muller-Ortega

It is the effortless practice that leads to the natural flow of grace and then grace is more and more available to the practitioner in life.  I have glimpses of grace in motion in my “ordinary life”.  These glimpses are coming more and more frequently.  More and more space opens to permit me to act with as much grace as I can muster.  More and more I am able to call upon grace because she is more and more present to me.  The choice is not easy but it is becoming more natural and in that there is grace in motion.