grace and grit

How does one open to supra-sensory awareness? The simple answer is by grace and grit. Grace means this awareness is given to us. Grit means we must have the stamina to allow ourselves to open to it.

What? The stamina to open? Isn't opening easy? No. We humans like to remain closed, protected, secure. Do you know how to get fit physically and mentally? Join the Marine Corps and go through their boot camp. One is thrust into an entirely new world of awareness. What you thought was awareness before was cushy goo.

Opening to supra-sensory awareness is not for the faint of heart. It is joining a Spiritual Marine Corps. It is a lot easier in many ways to coast along in the world of appearances and never open beyond the physical senses that are given you for a short while.

Let me switch metaphors. Let us say you are sitting in a chair and over there is a door. The chair in which you sit is the world as it appears to your physical senses and nothing beyond that. You sit in the seat of sensory awareness. You may even found a religion and say there is nothing but sensory awareness -- the Religion of One's Extended Butt. That is a very popular religion these days and you will find many in your congregation.

As long as you think the chair is all there is, you will never leave it. You will live your life in the butt-sprung seat of sensory awareness and that's that. And I'm sure you can come up with many fine reasons as to why that is a wonderful thing to do.

If you have even a hint though that you are sitting in a chair and there is more to life than that chair, and you seem to be getting glimpses of a door, you will no longer be satisfied with Ass Extension as a philosophy of life.

You are going to want to get up and walk (a spiritual practice not as easy as it sounds) over to that door. The surprise is going to be that you were never in a chair and there is no floor, no room, and no door. You've been out here with all that gives birth to the world of appearances the whole time.

Grace means we always already exist in the realm of supra-sensory awareness. We are also prone to believe we are separate chunks of matter and appearance is all that matters, and it takes some grit, some stamina and practice to open beyond that proneness.

Does the universe exist in a grain of sand (the one grit that you think you are)? Yes.

The best answer I can give as to how to know that is an ancient one: Knock and it shall be opened. Have the grit to keep at it. Grace will come.