“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.”
Gravity and Grace
“When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal. And when God’s infinitely disinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place. And that is the life called sanctifying grace. The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.“
-Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
“Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave until it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”
–Jallaludin Rumi
Grace can be defined as help that is given to us which we may not deserve. Grace is a natural outpouring of the very existence of Being into creation. We may forget this when we are suffering, unhappy, and losing motivation and faith. Allowing for grace in the gnostic work is a humbling admission that we cannot “do” this work ourselves.
Discovering more and more our interior darkness in the forms of ego and attachment, and yet needing to allow for grace can be difficult and very humbling. We may ask ourselves if we deserve grace, mercy, or forgiveness. Or we may be secretly demanding it based on what we perceive to be hard work or righteous deeds. Grace is not capricious but it is mysterious. Grace holds us, catches us, offers glimmers of light. It is of a higher order than cause and effect.
Grace can engender hope and faith in times of deep uncertainty and questioning. If we are really applying the work than we have to confront serious doubts and troubles. Our typical ways of pushing through may no longer bring the psychological or spiritual outcome that we had in the past. Prolonged doubt can turn into skepticism and even cynicism, closing the door to faith. And yet credulity can turn into dogmatism and intolerance.
Pray for grace, allow for grace, accept it when it comes.