Falling From Grace

Before the alarm even sounds, the percussion of raindrops on the roof awakens me. I stretch, listening intently, pleased. This is no paltry shower but a bonafide downpour. It's perfectly rainy. Soft and gray, ideal indoors weather, perfect for curling up with a book, it's the kind of morning I love. Maybe it's the Irish in me.

I hunker over a mug of steaming tea, my morning ritual, marveling from the window at the velocity, and satisfying splatter, of torrents that dash themselves from the roof to the stone patio below. And because I'm only half awake, and because the cascade lulls me into meditation, the raindrops on the roof begin to whisper, "shaktinipata-anusarena shishyo'nugraham arhati." And then I'm gone. Just like that. Lost in memory.

I think I've always been a seeker but it took me a while to hit my stride. When I was young I went to public school. My parents, whom I adore, sent me, with the very best intentions, every Wednesday for religious instruction. The instructor, let's call her Mrs. B, did not take lightly the precarious position of our immortal souls. She wore a helmet of perfectly shellacked hair, nary a one foolish enough to venture out of place, and two perfectly rouged circles on her cheeks. She had a penchant for blouses that tied in a prim bow at the neck. She invariably looked flushed, I'd guess now from hot flashes, but at the time it appeared she'd come fresh from battle with Satan himself.

How can I best express it? Mrs. B and I did not see eye to eye. She was uncomfortable with my questions, any questions, really, and wore her disapproval like a mantle. She was the immovable object to my unstoppable force. Simply put? I loathed her. I thus devoted the entirety of my not inconsiderable creative abilities to ensuring that she enjoyed our time together even less than I did. Looking back from the light of maturity, I can't say that I'm proud.

Ironically, Mrs. B ultimately became exactly what she set out to be, a formative figure in my spiritual evolution. Eventually, my petty personal dislike and adolescent petulance gave way to an authentic longing to find something that I could honestly turn toward. I went looking. Rather than reflexively turning away, which is what I'd been doing, I began to read voraciously. I didn't yet know how to be discriminating and some of what I got my hands on was pure drivel. But some of it? Some of it was magic. I devoured authors like Starhawk who opened my eyes to a concept of the sacred that could take all forms, the feminine included. I read Jung. I got my first taste of Eastern philosophy.

I did a lot of that early reading in the bathtub of the house where I grew up. I didn't understand all of what I read but I was deeply curious. On this particular occasion I'd been reading about non-dualism, which I didn't really get. It was about raindrops merging into the ocean, or something. The bathroom was steamy, my head was full and I set the book de jour aside and began to drift off. Head back I let my eyes rest, unfocused, on the tiled wall where clouds of steam condensed into individual droplets. Drowsy in the warm water, I watched the little drops grow bigger and heavier, then slip down the wall into the bathwater below. Drip. . . drip. . . drip.

The idea formed as slowly as the condensation before my eyes. It was all the same stuff, all water, the clouds of steam, the droplets and the bathwater. Both the beginning and ending were undifferentiated. In between was a single luminous drop. I saw myself. I saw it all. We're merged, we emerge and we merge again. We fall into form like rain, and then dissolve back into an ocean of formlessness. From formlessness to formlessness, with a human lifetime in between.

I don't know how long I soaked like that but well past prune territory. Perhaps it was not a particularly original revelation but it was my own. I've never forgotten it and find it beautiful to this day. I didn't know, then, that years later I would meet a teacher who would teach me that Grace pours down like rain. I didn't know I would meet someone who would teach me a verse from the Kularnava Tantra that means, "By entering the current of the Divine Shakti's descent into the heart, the true disciple becomes capable of receiving grace". I didn't know then, that I would come to teach yoga, and that Anusara Yoga, the kind of yoga I teach, would take its name from this verse.

I didn't know that I would meet someone who would tell me that I have, indeed, fallen from grace, but who would mean something entirely different by it. And so I have come to believe that we are, as my teacher says, book-ended by eternity and that, in between is this time spent in embodiment: ephemeral, luminous and perfect. I have come to believe that we fall from grace, to grace, as the very form of grace itself.

What teaching could be more joyful than this one that claims grace is your very own nature? It might seem easy to take to heart, and it is. It's as intuitive as breathing in and breathing out. But it's hard too. While most days I see grace falling all around me, I must confess that sometimes I take a hard look in the mirror and find it difficult to believe that grace looks like what I find staring back. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I need a reminder.

And then I smile, back in the present, as I lift my head and turn from morning tea toward the torrential downpour just outside my window.

Comments

[Lisa Sanfilippo]

Bernadette- How beautiful. Thank you for that. I had a similar experience in childhood- I was told (since I was raised Unitarian, and proclaimed myself atheist because there weren't any suitable answers that I could find) by my Catholic friend that her priest said she could not be truly friends with someone not 'of God'. Well, years later I have also been graced with answers of parsimonious beauty and found a comfortable and challenging place where the mind, the heart and soul can dwell. In the immortal words of Jerry Garcia: 'what a long, strange trip it's been.' Thanks for the reminder- gratitude pours in.
With love from London.
Lisa