IT'S ALWAYS HERE!

My previous very bad week steered me on Monday morning toward a Sedona Method support group. I got involved with “the Method” last summer and have continued to use many of the techniques I learned, but it had been some months since I had been to a group. I felt a bit like an alcoholic who has been skipping meetings.

I was happy to see Elizabeth was facilitating the meeting, having met her some months before. And when the only other person to show up was my friend Debi, I felt very safe and at home. When it was my turn to be taken through a release, I presented a condensed version of the external challenges I had been facing. But the part that was most on my mind was a profound feeling of sadness that I surmised to be some deep wound that I could not exactly name.

Even though I did not present that piece at that time, it is exactly what came up for me during the question and response cycle. Elizabeth kept asking me questions and I kept saying yes. I said yes to allowing the hurt to enter my awareness, and I said yes to letting it leave. I felt what I would call a nice normal release, and then she asked me what I was feeling now.

I said I was feeling calmness. Then she asked me if the calmness had just arrived, or if it had been there all along. I answered without thinking. “It’s always here.” I could not get all the syllables out without choking up. This emotionality was completely unexpected and the tears rolled out of my eyes though I was not sobbing.

I don’t know how long it lasted. It might have been just a flash, but for that instant I was not separate in any way from the others in the room, or any others anywhere for that matter. It was a glimpse of Oneness, and when Elizabeth asked me now what I was feeling – the only word that came to me was “gratitude.”

It is easy for me to understand the presence of God, intellectually. And I embrace the suggested solution to suffering of just stepping into the One Presence; the true self. But the honest experience of this awareness cannot be achieved through effort. This one came as a great gift when it was completely unexpected and there was no effort on my part to get it. It was grace.

Now this is a good example of non-abiding awakening, because I could not maintain this level of awareness indefinitely. But the experience buoyed me for days because of my understanding that peace is at hand and available. And this knowledge still lifts me, even though I have returned to a comparatively mundane existence.

Let me recap. It was difficulty that brought me to this point. And it was absolute surrender that opened me. It helps that I was guided by a conscious gentle being. And I was ready. It was a prophet who once said, “You don’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” Join with me this week in opening to the welcoming of grace in our lives – undefined and unrestricted.  It’s always here!