An interesting coincidence occurred the other day as a result of my writing a comment on this blog. At the time I pointed it out in the comments but I keep remembering that it happened so I’m going to elevate the matter to a full post.<\/p>\n
I was replying to a comment by Rico Rico. I won’t summarize it for fear of misrepresenting what he wrote but I’ll link to it below. My reply to Rico was pretty bad. I didn’t address his main points and instead wrote about a different one.<\/p>\n
Suddenly I went into one of my old “bhava” moods. Cold blue energy flowed through my body, and a feeling or belief arose that what I was writing was inspired. This used to happen frequently during my peak mystical years from about 2015 to 2018, and a lot of my old blog posts from that period were written in that state, but it doesn’t happen very often anymore.<\/p>\n
You may be able to identify those posts by how pretentious and pompous they were.<\/p>\n
I’m making fun of myself but actually I take that blue cold energy as a sign that what I’m writing is probably true even if I’m not sure it’s true. <\/p>\n
While the energy flowed and I shivered, here’s what I wrote:<\/p>\n
The most import<\/strong>ant form of grace, in my opinion, is having the desire to make the effort. The desire for God is God, as God once told me. In my opinion, to get what Ramana had, considerable effort is required.
\n<\/a>
\nThat desire and effort are neither me alone nor me not-alone. They may appear to belong to the ego but they do not. They are the wormhole between the ego and Reality. They cannot reinforce the ego. On the contrary, that desire and effort are the ego\u2019s autodestruct mechanism, put there by God for our liberation.<\/p>\nThe Guru is within us. In a sense we are the Guru. That doesn\u2019t mean the Guru is ego.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I hit send, forgot the comment thread, and turned my attention to writing a blog post about Ramana’s metaphor of the dog following its master’s scent. To find the exact quote I entered something like “Ramana dog master’s scent” into Google. I’m telling you this detail because I didn’t ask Google to look for “grace” or the question of whether our own actions can be grace.<\/p>\n
The first result on Google’s response page showed the following sentence quoted from the link:<\/p>\n
It is by the grace of God that you come to desire to know yourself. This desire…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The link went to a conversation with Ramana on David Godman’s blog. Here’s the relevant section of that conversation:<\/p>\n
Question:<\/b> From this I understand that one can reach the source by one\u2019s own effort.<\/p>\n
Bhagavan:<\/b> It is by the grace of God that you come to desire to know yourself. This desire to know yourself is itself a clear sign of the Atman\u2019s grace. So, there is grace already working as the source of your effort. Grace is not an external quality of the Self but its very nature. It abides in your Heart, pulling you inward into itself. The only task you must do is turn your attention inward and search the source of \u2018I\u2019. This is the only personal effort we have to put in. That is why [one can say that] where there is no grace, there is no desire at all for the quest for the Self.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Links<\/h2>\n
Rico Rico’s Comment<\/a><\/p>\n
The Ramana inteview on David Godman’s site<\/a>
\nThis is what Google showed me<\/p>\n