Through Fear to Grace

"Fear knocked at the door, faith answered, and no one was there." -- Old Irish Proverb

"The winds of Grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail." -- Ramakrishna

"Grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. By Grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for Grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains, that those whose minds are lighted by the gift of Grace can not believe the world of fear is real." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 169, 2:1-2

The Grace of God cannot be spoken or described. Like the wind, we can't see it, but we feel its presence and see its effects. I know all of us have had the experience of being faced with seemingly intolerable circumstances, full of fear and resistance... and then having a glimpse of reassurance, the knowing that none of it is what it appears to be, and that nothing has touched the Goodness at the heart of Life. This knowing is not in spite of appearances, but in the midst of them. Everything looks different when touched by Grace... and what is different is our perception. Where before we saw only limitation and separation, we now see only Oneness, and the Love of God as the Reality of All.

Fear is the temptation to believe there is somewhere God's Love is not. It is an attempt to negate the Allness of God, and to hide there, pretending we are little and separate. Why would we want to do this, you might ask? This is one of those non-questions of the ego, that is actually a statement of a point of view. It claims that we have done something that is impossible, and then asks why we did it. We have done nothing except close our minds and hearts to what IS. "Oneness is simply the idea God IS. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say "God IS," and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 169, 5:1-4)

We are told in Scripture that "perfect Love casts out fear." A Course in Miracles clarifies this when it says that "the opposite of Love is fear, but what is All-Encompassing can have no opposite." When we read in an earlier quote that Grace is the acceptance of the Love of God in a world of seeming hate and fear, the key word is acceptance. "Grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 169, 1:3)

How do we accept the Love of God? How do we prepare our minds to accept what it has thus far rejected... true acceptance of the Allness and Oneness of God that is always, effortlessly here? We are told repeatedly, in all scriptures everywhere, that love and forgiveness of each other and the world are necessary to clear the mind of its own defenses and projections. It is with these projected images, laden with guilt and fear, that we have obscured the Truth of Our Being, the Love and Grace of God. ACIM reminds us, again and again, that "forgiveness offers everything I want." What needs to be done in order to see what is already here? Only to let go of the illusions that are obscuring our awareness of what IS. And nothing more. If we try to do more, we perpetuate the illusion that there is something real other than the Love of God, and that we have to do something to fix it or get rid of it.

So fear is the fixation that there is something real other than the Love of God, and that we aren't or won't be safe and provided for in God's seeming absence. Grace is the All-Encompassing Awareness of Oneness with the Love of God, where everyone and everything and every imagined situation is momentarily held in the clear Light of Love. Our life is not as we imagine it. We are even in this moment Awakening, as we forgive and move through the imaginary clouds of fear, and find only the Illumined Holy Instant of Grace.

"God creates only Mind Awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thoughts of death and fear are not the opposites to Thoughts of Life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the Power to extend forever changelessly, but yet within Themselves, for They are Everywhere. What seems to be the opposite of Life is merely sleeping." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 167, 8:1-4, 9:1