Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

You can feel it. You’ve felt it your whole life. You’ve always known there’s something inside of you that’s sought to be born, fresh and real. You know there’s something inside you, far beyond your imagination, that’s been trying to break out and be. Everyone feels this inside. But to allow life to express itself in that way, with that much abandon

The great sages of our collective history have all told us that what they realized is meant for each one of us, that it’s not unique to them. It’s not something they own. It’s something they realize is inherent within everything and everybody, because really, it’s not you or I who wake up. It’s life that wakes up. Your life becomes an expression of

As I often tell my students, the person you’ll have the hardest time opening to and truly loving without reserve is yourself. Once you can do that, you can love the whole universe unconditionally. But it all starts with you.

These stories of virgin birth refer to the birth of that which is born without the coming together of opposites. Our human birth is the birth of opposites. It’s the coming together of male and female, and that produces a human being.

What is this world that Nisargadatta said he’s not in, and that Jesus was referring to when he said, “I’m in it, but not of it?”

At the moment of awakening, it literally feels like we’re being born again, or like something completely new and unexpected has shown up in our consciousness. It literally is a virgin birth—a birth not of duality, but a birth of nonduality, a birth of that which is far beyond all dualities.

I was contemplating my spiritual life, and I suddenly had the impulse to pray. At that time, praying wasn’t something that I did very often, but somehow, I felt this impulse. I said to the universe, “Give me whatever is necessary for me to awaken. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if the rest of my life is one of ease, and I don’t care if th

We’ve all felt moments of feeling pushed down or oppressed, but the kind of defeat that I’m talking about is a true surrender, a true opening, where we know that we don’t know where to go. In that sense, it’s a true prayer, and a true prayer is a very powerful thing. I often tell people, “When you speak a true prayer, you’d better watch out, becaus

When we begin to surrender our demand that life change, that life alter itself to suit our ideas, then everything opens. We begin to awaken from this dream of separateness and struggle, and we realize that the grace we were always seeking is actually right there at the center of our own existence. This is the heart of spiritual awakening: to realiz