Photo by James Marvin Phelps
Written by Raymond Salas
Is the power of grace real?
What role does grace play in healing?
What would it be like if you knew how to access the power of grace and utilize it in your everyday life?
In her book, Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason, best-selling author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss, answers these questions and more by exploring the power of grace and its impact in our daily life experiences.
"Grace is not just a vague divine substance or some poetic ideal that mad mystics came up with in an altered state. Grace is a subtle force beyond the grasp of reason. It is a divine power, a force that the laws of nature are often subject to rather than the other way around, as in the matter of miracles. Grace is what heals." - Caroline Myss
The Truths of The Soul: Keys to Healing
In her over twenty-five years as a medical intuitive and teacher, Caroline has observed what she calls the five essential "truths of the soul" which are the keys to healing and accessing the power of grace.
The five truths of the soul are:
- You can't reason with illness, crisis, or God.
She shares that "the people who have described their healing process...have many beliefs and attitudes in common. First and perhaps most elemental among them is the realization that it was essential to give up the need to know why things happened as they did. Until you surrender the need to know why things happened to you as they did, you will hold on to your wounds with intense emotional fire."
- Connect with meaning and purpose.
She explains that "the quest for meaning and purpose...is an inherent yearning to become a whole person, liberated from the fears that pervade the heart and mind and take control of one's life force. It is a rare person who can pierce the veil between ordinary life, consumed with matters of physical survival, and pursuit of the empowered path of purpose and meaning unless he or she is motivated by a crisis."
- Courageously navigate the dark night of the soul.
Caroline discovered that no matter how much we think we understand all that we must do to heal, there is always something in us that fights the healing process.
It is here, we encounter the seven "dark" passions of pride, avarice (greed), luxury (self-entitlement), wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth (laziness).
She notes that it is only through facing our dark passions that we can defeat them. From the darkness will come the seven "gifts of the spirit," which are the illuminated graces that naturally heal disease and pain.
- Rely on the power of your graces.
"You cannot be a fully healed, or even slightly healthy, person without your graces flowing. To know grace fully and directly, you must turn inward. Grace makes itself known to you through prayer." - Caroline Myss
And so, it is through the power of prayer that we invoke the power of grace in all of its expressions. Caroline defines these expressions as the seven graces of reverence, piety, understanding, fortitude (courage), counsel, knowledge, and wisdom.
She offers specific prayers to invoke and access the power of each of these seven graces. Her insights penetrate to the core of each grace and how they relate to our daily life. As a result, she has created a template and model for healing ourselves, not just physically, mentally, and emotionally, but also on a soul level.
- Defy gravity and learn to reason like a mystic.
The key to "defying gravity" (i.e., operating outside the realm of reason and logic) is by learning to think and perceive the world as a mystic does, beyond the limitations of conventional fears, social beliefs, and programming.
How do we develop this type of mystical consciousness?
By being in alignment with what she calls the "five mystical laws," which are:
- There is only now.
- The necessity of forgiveness.
- All is illusion.
- Trust in divine paradox, irony, and synchronicity.
- Maintain spiritual congruency.
Here, Caroline describes each of these mystical laws and offers specific ways for "falling into harmony" with them.
I found her insights to be thought-provoking and helpful.
Here are some of my favorite ones:
"How do (you) let go of the past? It's simple, but not easy. You have to give up the need to punish the people who hurt you.""Without forgiveness, you remain anchored in your past, forever in emotional debt.""The ability or inability to forgive affects the outcome of serious illness.""The mystical truth is that forgiveness has nothing to do with the person you are forgiving; it is a self-initiated act of transformation in which you release yourself.""Why events happen as they do in your life, from the grandest or most devastating to the most seemingly insignificant, is beyond your ability to know. The deeper truth is that there is not one reason why a particular thing happens as it does.""(The ego) bases every decision on either what it already knows and is familiar with or what it views as safe, all of which Buddha identified as pure illusion.""People who look to their past will not do well, because the past is no longer relevant.""Learn to endure. Remember that no plan unfolds in an afternoon. Have no expectations of anything. Let everything be a surprise.""Be outrageously bold in your belief that you will be guided but do not have expectation of how that guidance will unfold."
How to Access the Power of Grace
Caroline reminds us that "learning to defy gravity in your world -- to think, perceive, and act at the mystical level of consciousness -- is the greatest gift you can give yourself, because it is the gift of truth. And as we are bound to learn again and again in this life, the truth does indeed set us free."
So, how do we access the power of grace?
She encourages each of us to:
- Live as if you were liberated from ordinary thought, beyond the boundaries of logic and reason.
- Be bold in your decisions and creative and imaginative in your thoughts.
- Think and live with the soul of a mystic, seeing the world as a field of grace in which you walk around as a channel of light.
"Live these truths. Become these truths. This is your highest potential. Live as though you have the power to change the world -- because you do." - Caroline Myss
To learn more about healing and living in a field of grace, please check out Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason by Caroline Myss.