Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to talk about what it means to be in a state of grace. I'd like to share a quote by spiritual teacher Eckhart,Tolle to begin. He says, "To offer know resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness." So I'd like to unpack and explore what he's talking about here. First of all, what would he mean by resistance to life? Well, there's a very persistent idea in the mind that the present moment should be other than it is, should be different than it is.

Often, we simply dislike a part of what's showing up. So we resist it. Or we might have an idea of how we want the moment to be better. You know, there's this feeling that the moment is not good enough. We don't want it as it is.

That's resistance. It's a basic nonacceptance of what is, and because of resistance, we suffer. By learning to accept life as it is, we let go of resistance and we can enter what Eckhart's talking about here, this state of grace. A state, basically of just being at peace with what's happening, befriending it and being fully open to it. Now, this is quite a tricky topic to talk about in one regard, because when we talk about acceptance, often people immediately start to think, well, if I just accept things as they are in the moment, I'll just be everybody's doormat and I'll lose my sense of purpose and direction in life.

But that's not what I'm talking about here, because from the state of grace, you absolutely can take action to change things where that's possible or needed. And you can do that from a peaceful, clear, and calm state of being. In fact, you can take more effective action to change things when you're not caught up in emotional reactivity and negativity that often comes along with resistance. In short, you can accept what is, and then act. And of course there's many things in life that we tend to resist wish were different or better, but actually we have no control over them at all.

And a lot of the mental and emotional tension that's caused by resisting those things just causes a lot of stress and sometimes actually very deep suffering and exhaustion in the body and mind. If we're able to practice noticing when we're resisting something in the present moment, we can acknowledge that resistance and learn to let it go. We can practice accepting and befriending the moment as it is, and entering that state of grace. And in that state of grace, we have a clear mind, a centered awareness and so from there, you know, we can take action to change things if we need to, or we can be at peace with those things, we cannot. And in this way, we flow with the current of life instead of wasting energy struggling against it.

Then we can carry peace of mind with us wherever we go. So as always, thank you for your practice and for your presence here with us. And let's settle in now for today's meditation.