I found a new mentor today, while surfing the net for quotes about ease and grace. His name is Panache Desai. He wrote, “When you are in harmony with yourself, everything unfolds with ease and grace.”

And then…

“If you are living to be liked, you are suffering. It is painful to live a life where the best you can hope to be achieved is to be liked.”

This second quote really struck me deeply because I am someone who has lived on and off with the desire to be liked, and I have most definitely suffered. I have suffered, not because I wasn’t liked, not because I didn’t do what I wanted to do, but because I did it all, but carried the burden of not feeling liked. It took the deep joy I could have experienced out of life. A life lived to be liked is not a life lived with ease and grace.

The other day while I was reading the “Mental Equivalent,” which we will be exploring in a class at the end of the month, I was looking for what I could tell others about how to grow, change and live from a mental equivalent that will out picture as a life of ease, grace, abundance and love.

I began to monitor my own thoughts to see how I was spending my thinking time. I was really amazed. Now, when you are growing a Center like we are and you are dealing with a multitude of people and experiences every day, it is easy to fall into the people pleasing, I want to be liked mode. It is also easy to fall into the mode of not wanting to hurt others feelings, which is another way of saying “I want to be liked.”

I realized how much mind time I was spending in that arena. I realized how much interest I had in it, too. One of the things Emmet Fox writes in his book is how our mental equivalent is directly related to thought and interest.

This all came together for me this week and I really got a reality check. I don’t know about you, but I want a richer, more peaceful, more in-tuned with Spirit life. I want to live in God and as God in a greater way. I want to live in unison with my true self, regardless of what others think of me.

I’ll go back to Panache Desai’s original quote that I started with, ““When you are in harmony with yourself, everything unfolds with ease and grace.”

Fortunately it is never too late and we are never lost. That is where Grace comes in. I read something on the internet that said there were six myths to Grace. No there are six truths about Grace:

• Grace is Free – There is no payment plan or rules for getting Grace. It is free and given to all equally.
• Grace is unconditional – Yes, we don’t have to be a good person or do something really good to be in Grace.
• Grace excuses sin – There is no such thing as sin. Only mistakes that when recognized guide us back to our true selves.
• Everyone has grace – Yes, we all have it. Are we living in it?
• You cannot fall from grace – You can only fall into Grace. It happens when you recognize it as your state of being.
• You can receive more grace – We grow in Grace as our embodiment grows “Mental Equivalent.”

If we want to be in Grace, we have to be our true selves and we have to be our true selves fearlessly.

I read that there are two things that walk beside us in life. The first is Death, Death tells us there is little time to do all we want to do on this earth plane. With this as our companion, we are led in one of two directions: Despair or Destiny. I know people who live in Despair – they say things like who cares anyway. This is the way life is supposed to be. I can’t have what I want anyway.

The other companion, the one I prefer is Destiny? It’s continually asking me “Am I doing what I am born to do?” It’s the nudge, what Ernest Holmes would call “The Divine Urge.”

Even if there are those voices in our heads that say, I won’t be liked if I do that. Or I’m not enough. Or I’m too old, or I don’t have what it takes, Destiny will persist. It will keep knocking at our hearts.  If we want to start living in ease and grace again, take a step back, breathe and ask, “what is it I TRULY want? I think when people say they can’t get what they want it is because they won’t admit what they want.

I invite us all to live in ease and grace. It’s simply a matter of living in alignment with our true selves. We might want to tell ourselves, we don’t know what that is. But, we do. It’s JOY. It’s that simple.