Grace is not a thing, it is not something you can get and take home with you.
Grace is the spontaneous and utterly natural experience of a relational participation with reality.
When we feel grace, we feel effortless, potent, balanced and intelligent. We feel intimate with everything and utterly present.
Grace brings a dignity, a sense of belonging. We feel at home, we feel like ourselves.
When we are in right relationship to the moment a living intelligence emerges, we instinctively know what to do. This knowing is not mediated through the mind but is direct and effortless, we "know ourselves by being ourselves."
Grace renders the mind utterly open and exquisitely receptive. In zen it is called mu shin, No mind or Beginners mind. We enter our practice with an innocence, utterly available.
When grace becomes the guiding intelligence of our practice we gradually learn to surrender to the irresistible and perpetually unfolding intelligence of life.
All practice is is deepening our relationship with reality, not what we think reality is but the living fire itself. So with grace as the guiding intelligence of practice we learn to do nothing, but give everything. Paul Wooden c. October 2013
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