Benefits of Grace

http://www.artofgrace.org

Although traditionally thought of as a religious concept with benefits only for believers in God, the experience of grace is available to and benefits all people, whether you are religious, spiritual, agnostic or atheist. Grace is a state of awakening to the gifts of existence, life and love. Because of this awakening, when you are in a state of grace, your mind is liberated from mental slavery and you enjoy happiness, a relaxed mind, and boundless energy. Grace is the antidote to spiritual dis-ease, to anxiety, to paranoia, and to depression. In a state of grace, you know your purpose and you effortlessly succeed in creating a life that benefits not only you, but an ever growing circle of those around you. Because grace helps you and others thrive and survive, in grace lies the salvation of the world.

Grace Awakens

Awareness is the beginning of liberation, abundance, and kindness because, when you know better, you do better. In a state of Grace, you are in an ongoing state of ever greater awakening to the many gifts of existence. When you are in a state of grace, you see events from many points of view.

Emotional Alchemy: Grace Transforms Pain into Joy

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things. ~ Bono

The fires of suffering become the light of consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. ~ anonymous

Life puts us into endless awkward positions. Fully embraced, these become emblematic postures of dignity and grace. ~ Sky

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. ~ Kahlil Gibran

One of the great paradoxes of life is that the pursuit of happiness often leads to suffering. So often, when we pursue happiness, we are running from pain. Often, the pain catches up. It is only by being with the pain, by acknowledging it, that the pain is transformed into joy. Pain is one of our greatest teachers, and we run from the sensation of pain, but not the source of the pain. So, paradoxically, sometimes the most direct path to happiness is to acknowledge our pain and to know that it is universal. Happiness is conditional. Grace accepts it all.

Grace Guides Purpose

"Let the beauty we love be what we do." ~ Rumi

Your purpose in life is created by your priorities. If you are unaware of your priorities, you will be unaware of your purpose and your life will feel meaningless. When you awaken to grace, you automatically become aware of what you love, and your love becomes your priority and hence your purpose. Living your highest purpose will infuse each action with meaning and your life will flow effortlessly.

One of the main benefits of grace is the guidance that leads you to live in joy, with abundance and on purpose. When your body, mind and spirit are fully integrated with others and with Creative Source, you will know what to do from moment to moment. When you are in a state of grace, you are guided to live your best life and to serve others with ease and joy.

Grace Stirs Compassion

"Once you experience the divine love of grace, you will be giving others the gift of communion in unconditional love. ~Skye

Those who experience grace are automatically channels of kindness and compassion. People who are happy radiate happiness and their enthusiasm, optimism and joy spread to others.

Grace Frees Your Mind

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds." ~ Bob Marley

Awareness is the key to liberation from mental slavery. One of the greatest blessings of grace is freedom from slavery to emotions. Sometimes, it feels as if we are slaves to anxiety, cravings, desire, sadness, frustration, anger, helplessness and depression. When we feel these emotions, we often feel compelled to act on them. Without the highest perspective of grace, humans are motivated by emotions, which in turn are created by our genetic and cultural programming. At times, these emotions serve us well, by helping us to run from and survive the attack of a tiger, to avoid social disgrace that might leave us abandoned by our group, and to create desire so that we may eat, drink and reproduce. Emotions are excellent servants, informing us about situations in our lives. But when a person reacts to emotional demands without conscious awareness as to source of these emotions and the consequence of these actions, then he or she becomes an emotional slave.

Grace transforms emotions from tyrants that enslave you to servants that inform you. Through awareness and understanding, grace liberates you from the emotions that enslave you. With the wisdom and compassion of grace, you are able to listen to your emotions rather than unconsciously acting upon them.

The Buddha said taht desire is the root of all suffering. What he meant was slavery to your desires is the root of all suffering. One particular powerfully enslaving emotion is desire. Being in grace does not mean that you no longer have desires. Instead, when living in a state of grace, you are free to listen to your desire or not, choosing whatever brings more love and clarity into the world. Rather than being a slave to your desires, with grace, you are a master of your desires.

Grace Give You a Larger Perspective

Grace makes beauty out of ugly things. ~ Bono

When you are living in a state of grace, you can see that Everything is Perfect, that the Universe is developing on schedule.

Unconditional Love

Grace is the experience the of unconditional love. Because of your awareness that the the powers that create the universe supports you, you realize that you are loved unconditionally. From this awareness, you accept yourself and you can see others as worthy of unconditional love and so, you can in turn love them unconditionally.

Grace Relaxes the Body and Mind

Awareness that the universe loves you, that you are the beloved creation of an ever-creative Creator, brings a state of relaxation. Scans of the brain shows that this relaxation allows blood to flow to all parts of the brain, giving mental clarity and provoding creative thought. . This clarity reduces confusion and helps one focus on priorities, rather than things that are of secondary importance. With clarity, one's mind begins to get quiet, and with a relaxed mind, the body relaxes. Grace promotes a feeling of harmony and gentleness which in turn relaxes the mind and body.

Grace Feels Good

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive". ~ Howard Thurman

Everyone wants to be happy. Of the many paths to happiness, grace is the path that is available no matter what your circumstance. Grace feels good, even when circumstances are not ideal. Grace is the kind of happiness that accepts everything, while accepting that situations can be even better.

Grace Increases Energy

With a relaxed mind and body, a person allows the energy of the universe (chi, prana, life force) to flow to through him. If one is aligned with the divine, with a larger purpose, with clarity, one becomes a larger channel of divine energy.

Grace Gives Courage

Sometimes you may feel afraid, seeing only heartache and disaster from all sides. Yet with grace, you know that even though you can't see a way to prevail, you know that love will prevail. Even though you may feel afraid, there is so much love in your heart that you know you will not give up. Grace is the warmth in your heart that gives you courage.

Grace Allows the Flow of Effortless Success

Because grace is living in harmony with the powers that create each moment and the universe, aligning with these powers allows for effortless success. When you harmonize with the nature of nature, you are in flow. This is like the ease with which a person can float down a river to get to their destination in contrast to the struggle of rowing upstream. Effortless success means paying attention to what you love and loving what you do. In this way, you have the energy to flow effortlessly to achieve your dreams and your purpose. Paradoxically, an outside observer might say that a person works really hard to accomplish their goals, putting in 80 hours a week. But this is like saying that a child is struggling when she plays for hours with friends.

Grace is Awakening to Abundance

Grace is that state of awareness that sees that there is more than enough. Each day, the sun gives us far more energy than we can ever use. Likewise, each day, life gives us an abundance of blessings too numerous to count: new blood cells to carry oxygen, new synapses to appreciate the world.

Grace is the Antidote to Spiritual Dis-Ease

Among the problems facing humanity, including environmental disaster, terrorism, poverty and infectious disease, one of the most widespread is spiritual dis-ease. This dis-ease is often characterized as some form of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, fear, loneliness or anger. Spiritual dis-ease lies at the heart of many other problems, including clinical depression, one of the most common illnesses in the United States and the developed world. The result of unmanaged depression is suicide, the number one killer of young men in the U.S. Over 25% of all prescriptions written are to treat this debilitating disease. Many other drugs, including alcohol and illicit drugs, are consumed to ward off the blues.

Spiritual dis-ease may also take the form of "consumptivitis," the uncontrolled urge to consume stuff to fill an emotional need. While consuming stuff may lead to momentary relief, excessive consumption leads to overeating, clutter, disorganization, stress, waste and exhaustion. This waste can be either of personal wealth or the wasting of natural resources and our environment.

The antidote to spiritual dis-ease is grace. Grace goes by many names and may be attained in many ways. The aim of this site is to help you understand grace so that you might tap into its power.

Grace Allows Flexibility

"Life puts us into endless awkward positions. Fully embraced, these become emblematic postures of Dignity and Grace." ~ Sky

Hope, Faith and Perseverance

Grace gives one hope which in turn gives one the ability to persevere in even the most challenging of conditions. "This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well." ~ Mihaly Csikzentmihaly

Faith is certainty of grace despite uncertainty of circumstance. We cannot know what will happen in the future, but by cultivating grace, we can be certain that loving kindness will prevail.

Grace and Oneness

Grace is awareness of Oneness, the realization that your happiness is interdependent with the happiness of others. From this sense of Oneness, a curiosity opens a person's awareness to know more and more about widening circles of awareness.

Grace Nurtures Creativity

Awareness of the loving power that creates the universe allows you to become a co-creator with this power. It has been said that anything you can do when you are unhappy, you can do better happy. By allowing grace into your life, your creativity will flow.

In Grace Lies the Salvation of the World

Grace is the spiritual awakening that is essential for the survival of each person's soul.

Today, grace may even be essential for the survival of humanity. Because people around the world are becoming more interdependent on one another, grace may be essential for for the survival of sentient life on planet Earth. So long as people's souls are suffering, fear, depression and anger will inevitably lead to stress, over consumption, greed, hatred, terrorism and war. In contrast, when people experience the awareness, bliss and compassion of grace, they are able to think more clearly, to see problems as opportunities, to live more abundantly with fewer resources and to have the enthusiasm and energy to bring more love and joy into the world. When people experience the idea that they are co-creators with the Divine Process, that theirs are the hands and feet of the Creative Power, then they may live in ways to promote the continued expansion of consciousness, cooperation and compassion.