Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

So waking up is a bit like what an alcoholic or a drug addict experiences when they are coming out of their addiction. Most addicts only let go of their addiction when they’ve really seen that there’s no possibility of being happy and being an addict. Up until that time, most addicts are in a constant process of negotiation with life. They think, “

To open ourselves to this grace, to this flow of truth, means that we have to step out of ourselves. We have to let go of the illusion that we are in control of our life. When we hand it over, we’ll find ourselves falling into grace, falling into this clarity and openness and love, falling right into the grace of awakening from separation, where we

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.

When we argue with what was, the only person who is going to suffer is us. It doesn’t matter why we’re arguing. It doesn’t matter how justified our resistance is. When we begin to look deeply at what our mind is doing, we’ll see that our conclusions and justifications for our own suffering are what allow the suffering to continue. It took me a whil

Our suffering consists of two components: a mental component and an emotional component. We usually think of these two aspects as separate, but in fact, when we’re in deep states of suffering, we’re usually so overwhelmed by the experience of emotion that we forget and become unconscious of the story in our minds that is creating and maintaining it

We’re not bringing struggle to an end. We’re not trying to not struggle anymore. We’re just noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isn’t struggling, isn’t resentful, isn’t trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body. You can’t think your way to not struggling. There isn’t a thr

combination of feeling and thought that had locked the story in his system, and when he could actually let both out, including the intellectual or thought-based part of the story, the emotion lifted, all by itself.

Once you begin to get a feeling for the many ways our thoughts and stories keep us in suffering, you’ve actually started to tap into something that has a much greater significance. It’s something you can use to widen your view of life. Any way that we make a construct out of life, any way that we come to conclusions in our mind about what is or wha

We welcome all our experience, both that which is happening on the inside as well as that on the outside. When you welcome all of experience into your awareness, a certain type of stillness starts to emerge organically. I’m pointing to a stillness that is directly related to this capacity to open to all experiences, not just those that are pleasant

Instead of being uncaring, we actually come into a deeper and more intimate relationship with what’s happening. We become very deeply connected. We find ourselves able, in the moment of someone’s actual pain or in the middle of our own suffering, to connect very intimately, very purely, without any resistance. This opens up a door within us for an