Effort & Grace
Did you ever wake up in the middle of the night just wide awake and your mind is going over and over the recent days events and it is keeping you awake even though you don't want to be awake, your mind just keeps reliving it almost compulsively? It happens to me and it happened last night. I started remembering the mantra, Om Namah Shivaya, and I started being thank-ful for getting this dark quiet time to say the mantra and really it is the incredible special place to be. All I needed was a small effort and then I remembered to ask for grace. The 2 wings of the bird, effort and grace. Even in small mildly annoying times, effort and grace are available. There is a region of conciousness behind all thoughts which are like a battleground. The battleground of thoughts. Turning away habitual thoughts from the battleground to the mantra. The mantra can burn those thought like slips of paper. After the thoughts are burned there is the pervading universal conciousness. There really is only one great conciousness of this Universe and sometimes getting to it is a process of our minds play and our own remembering. Surrender to the mantra, it will not let you down. Have faith in it. Can I remember to identify with the mantra always? I hope so because my mind constantly forgets and remembers. I don't really trust my mind at all, how could I, but I trust the conciousness and the mantra. The mellowdramas have such an impact because after all, I am in the body. Surrender to the mantra and the power of god's grace. Surrende4r and Faith are misunderstood. You can surrender in a river of muck and be worse off for your surrendering or you can surrender into the supreme pulsation of universal conciousness. Pushing away the fear, sadness, and angst of all those thoughts is a really powerful and sometimes draining expereince. I liken it to finding the keys to the kingdom but being too tired to enjoy the castle.
