The gateway of grace

Focusing on and intending grace means taking responsibility for your state of humanity.

by Rochelle Sparrow — 

Many people wonder how to let go of the past mistakes they feel they made in their lives. Some say they dwell on memories of these errors in an effort to continue punishing themselves with guilt. They have an intellectual understanding that these thoughts are unhealthy, but they find it difficult to change their intention and focus on self-forgiveness.

“How,” they ask, “am I supposed to let go of this dreadful thing I did? What about the effects on other people? What about my child? How can I let go and forgive myself and overlook what I did? Wouldn’t that be irresponsible? I could have done something differently.”

I remember seeing Maya Angelou last winter. She read a quote from a slave who had lived in antiquity. The quote went something like this: “All that I have felt or thought is no different than any other human being in the world. I have a right to choose freedom in my thoughts, regardless of the ways I have been taught to feel about myself due to slavery and I have a right to feel proud of who I am, and unashamed.”

To think of yourself as something other than human is, of course, a denial of your present condition. All of us would like to have a false sense of control, to believe we could make things right by punishing ourselves, bargaining away our past or denying the existence of our innate birthright to the state of grace. However, the truth of the matter is that none of these thought structures work; they actually keep us enslaved.

Focusing on and intending grace means taking responsibility for your state of humanity. It recognizes that we all, as humans, create human error. It is acknowledging that being human is not a completed process, but a process of learning who we are, of continuing to make the unconscious conscious and understanding more about our connection to ourselves.

If we are not self-accepting, we cannot learn about the connection to ourselves. We play out our lives in defenses that disconnect our authentic reality and keep us pointed in a direction that stabilizes itself within the mortar of guilt, shame and anxiety. We can wallow in those emotions and become paralyzed. We can become paralyzed without the recognition that freedom lies within the state of self-acceptance and the state of grace which commonly exists for all of humanity.

We forget our humanity in an effort to deny it, and therein lies our true responsibility. To know our existence and purpose is to connect to ourselves and others through our humanness, recognizing our ability to err and understanding our right to grace — and through this doorway, finding freedom.

Rochelle Sparrow, MSW, provides psychic trance channeled sessions for individuals, couples and groups, and is host of a radio show, The Rochelle Sparrow Connection. 602-430-6447, www.rochellesparrow.com or info@rochellesparrow.com.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 26, Number 2, April/May 2007.