Three calla lily photos layered to create an abstract image of grace and gratitude
I’ve had a quiet week, taking it easy after cataract surgery on Monday. And today I’m feeling a sense of
Grace and Gratitude
for life just as it is and for me, just as I am, in all my perfect imperfection.
I read an article this morning that suggests that we relax our ego and let go of trying, instead living in a place of acceptance and loving kindness towards ourselves and others. The relaxation of the ego is a kind of loving acceptance of what is. It was just what I needed today — to stop trying and simply accept and love what is.
Just like trying to get rid of anything is what causes it to persist, I saw that it wasn’t so much of an ego annihilation that was needed, but of letting those parts of myself relax. It felt like letting a hard block of ice, which is our ego fixation, be touched by the warmth of the sun. So, when you think about it, just putting a hard block of ice out in the warmth of the sun, you know you don’t need the hacks or the chainsaw to break that ice down. The warmth of the sun actually transforms the hardness, melts it. And that’s how a true surrender felt to me. It was a process of melting, of contacting with loving awareness these parts of ourselves.
— Miranda Macpherson, Sounds True Interview
We humans are often filled with hubris, thinking that we have control over and understand far more than we actually do. My hubris is always trying to figure out, fix, and control things. For me, this trying to control, fix, or figure out causes anxiety that often results in negative health impacts.
But if I can relax and open my awareness, exploring with curiosity and loving kindness what is here in the present moment it’s like letting the sunshine warm me from within, dissolving anxiety and worry, relaxing into grace and gratitude.
We can’t help the way our ego is shaped and formed into its differences. You or I can’t. It was laid down through our early childhood, and the way we had to adapt to survive that. I think when we at first begin with just this deep compassionate understanding that all human beings have an ego, and that really it’s a call for love and understanding—if we have that as our platform—then it’s so much easier just to take a look at what’s going on and why that’s going on. Why that difference is there. Why we circle back into that particular fear. Why it’s hard to let go of that position, or attachment. What are our controls really about?
Usually, what we see when we open it up in that atmosphere of unconditional love, is that there’s some suffering there, some felt experience of separation from our natural ground of being. And the quality of our being is that it requires contact and requires love and requires us just being there, not doing a single thing. So, that’s what ego relaxation actually comes down to, really, is being deeply present with love and ceasing and desisting any kind of manipulation or judgment. So, we’re just present and deeply undefended with what’s so. What happens when we’re just undefended in the present with what’s so— not conceptually, but thematically in our hearts—then what happens is some kind of grace comes online, and it will be completely fresh in each moment with each person.
— Miranda Macpherson, Sounds True Interview
So today, I encourage you to let go of your need to figure out, fix, or control whatever is going on in your life and instead, meet yourself in the open field of loving acceptance and curiosity.
May you walk in beauty.
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