The purpose of our life is to realize that our “I” is God’s consciousness, the true Self. For most of us, mistakenly, the ego makes us believe we are something other than what we really are. The ego identifies us as our body and thoughts. This is a misperception that God seeks to realign. God accomplishes this realignment by using circumstances. Circumstances take a form designed by our karma and can look like a wonderful boon or turmoil. While this form may be created by karma, God’s will, God’s purpose, is always our realization.

Because our ego attaches our identification to our body and thoughts, we become subtly attached to our circumstances and situations. This attachment causes us to become identified as the situation. Instead of witnessing, observing, and watching every circumstance, we become it, causing us to subtly become whatever is happening. Everything feels personal.

Every circumstance contains karma and grace. When God created the relative universe, karma became an automatic part of the laws of nature. Circumstances are formed by our karma. More importantly, grace permeates every aspect of all situations. Grace is God’s will for us to awaken, to realize our oneness with Him. It is His conscious Shakti propelling our realization of truth. Every situation we encounter is infused with divine grace. Grace is far more powerful than karma (grace being the fifth power of God) and He uses the situation created by karma as a vehicle to awaken us to higher consciousness. The grace in every situation is designed to release us from our ego which is causing our endless outer desires, our attachment to outcomes, our misidentifications with body and thoughts, and our resistance.

Krishna said. “To those who are constantly devoted and who worship Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.” This understanding, this wisdom, arises through God’s grace. This realignment, this intention, is the highest purpose of every situation. In every circumstance, we feel the resonance and dissonance, the Self vs the ego. In this way, God’s grace teaches and expands us through the contrast.

We all experience situations that cause a kind response or an unkind reaction in us. We can feel the contrast between the ego and the Self. Our ego is attempting to hold its dominant position. Grace, God’s power of revelation, is attempting to free us from ego. We experience this contrast as discomfort and uneasy feelings. The purpose of this contrast and discomfort is to awaken us.

We see karma as automatic action and reaction. We see grace as God’s power of realization. Yet from a higher perspective, they are one. Karma creates the exact circumstance designed by our mental impressions (samskaras) for grace to use to expand our consciousness. It’s all grace.

If the circumstance is uncomfortable, if there is turmoil, sometimes we resist the process of unfolding grace and suffer. Sometimes, in an atmosphere of non-resistance, we accept and understand what is really happening and we expand and gain realization. If we can feel the contrast and recognize the grace of revelation within that contrast, we gain wisdom. When we expand from ego to Self, our realization unfolds. With each circumstance, response and understanding, we take a step toward devotion and surrender to God. We step closer to Divine realization in that experience, discomfort, contrast and wisdom. This is part of our path of realization.

Grace is omnipresent. Every experience fully holds the grace of God. God is always, without exception, with us, as us. He experiences all that we experience because his awareness is our awareness – consciousness is One without a second. No matter how we are judging the circumstance, no matter how we are reacting to the situation, He is using every unfolding moment as a vehicle for our Self-realization.

Once the wisdom dawns from a situation, forget the past. Live in His ever-present grace that is His intention for our constant expansion. That expansion, that movement toward realization, is all that life is.

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

“Don’t be afraid of difficulties, they are meant to bring you closer to God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda

“Difficulties come not to obstruct, but to instruct.”

“You do not have to fear adversity when you know that God is with you.”

Ramana Maharshi

“There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality.”

“Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”

Blessings,