Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

But as soon as we name it, we think we know what it is. We see “bird,” and we almost discount it. A “bird,” “cat,” “dog,” “human,” “cup,” “chair,” “house,” “forest”—all of these things have been given names, and all of these things lose some of their natural aliveness once we name them. Of course we need to learn these names and form concepts aroun

When it started, it was just a small point within this vast expanse of grief and sorrow. But as I kept crying, as I kept speaking the eulogy, this point of happiness began to expand. After a few minutes, this point of happiness had vastly grown and become absolutely immense, and there was this very strange, paradoxical experience. On one hand, I wa

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.

So what’s the way out? How do we avoid becoming lost in our own thoughts, projections, beliefs, and opinions? How do we begin to find our way out of this whole matrix of suffering? To begin with, we have to make a simple, yet very powerful observation: All thoughts—good thoughts, bad thoughts, lovely thoughts, evil thoughts—occur within something.

Essentially, we fall into grace. By that I mean that a certain mysterious quality reveals itself and cradles us within an intimacy with all of existence.

the true expression of our spiritual nature is love, and love isn’t what we think it is. Love is synonymous with this fierce embrace of life. Love is seeing yourself as everything and as everybody, and that seeing is not for your mind. It’s not meant for your ego. You can never see all as one with your ego. You can only see it from your essence.

Relaxing and letting go of struggle isn’t something that the ego does—yet we often get our egos involved in trying to make letting go happen. To even say, “Let go of struggle,” isn’t quite right. All that’s required is that you begin to notice that place within you that’s not struggling. To do this means there’s really no future for which to hope.

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

I received a letter from one person who had been lost in a deep depression for decades, until one day she decided to stop—to stop struggling, to stop trying to push it away, but also to stop indulging in it, to stop feeding it—just to simply stop. In the moment of stopping, something completely unexpected was born: the opposite showed up. As deep a