Amazing Grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
 That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
 Was blind, but now I see.

Most of us are probably familiar with these words as being the start of the hymn, “Amazing Grace”, written by John Newton in the eighteenth century. A Christian hymn, no doubt, but it could have been written by any follower of a spiritual path - the sound that saves us spiritual seekers, the Shabd, that power of God that is within everything in the creation, both physical and spiritual. That sound that transforms us from lost to found, blind to seeing - and it is the Lord’s grace that brings us in touch with that sound, the Shabd.

We are lost; we are blind. We don’t know who we truly are or where we come from until the Master comes and reminds us of our soul and its divine origin. We look at the creation with our physical eyes and do not know that there is an inner eye, referred to as the third eye, that will ultimately allow us to see who we really are. It is the Master who begins the process of opening our spiritual eye - making the blind see - through his grace. It is the Master who draws us to him, initiates us and teaches us how to meditate, and it is the Master who pulls us to do our meditation.

In Die to Live, Maharaj Charan Singh says:

Well, from a higher point of view it is all the Lord’s grace that we are attending to meditation. But here, at this level, we feel as though we are putting in the effort to achieve our object. He’s the One who is pulling us from within. He’s the One who is creating that desire in us to meditate. He’s the One who is giving us that atmosphere and those circumstances and environments in which we can build our meditation.

Although we feel that we find the path and that we are changing our lifestyle to become more spiritually oriented, in fact, it is the Shabd, the Lord, and the spiritual form of the Master within us, that is creating all these changes.

Maharaj Charan Singh continues in the same answer:

So you can say, “i am doing the meditation”, provided you are doing it. But when you really do it, then you won’t say, “I am doing it.” “I” only comes when we don’t do it. When we truly meditate, then “I” just disappears. Then we realize his grace, that but for him how could we ever think or even attend to it. Then there is no “I”, there is nothing but gratefulness - everything in gratitude.

“I” , the ego, is what makes us believe that we are in control of what is happening in our lives. In reality, since our soul is part and parcel of the Lord, it is he who is doing everything. We are like holograms – we look real, but we are just an illusion; everyone around us thinks we are real too, but that is because they are also part of the illusion. It takes one who can see beyond the physical to the spiritual to realize the truth of who we are. That is the Master. He is trying to take us to that level where we can see the truth too. That is where our meditation comes in.

Maharaj Charan Singh says, again in Die to Live:

We owe everything to the immeasurable grace of the Master. He showers his blessings on us by joining us with the Shabd and Nam, removing all our doubts, and pulling us out of this quagmire of illusion. It is our Master who puts us on the right path and awakens in our mind abiding love and devotion for the Lord. Blessed with his infinite grace, through meditation, we seek the door, we find it, and we knock.

We seek the door - the eye centre. We knock, we do our simran. We listen to the sound, we see light, we become enlightened. We are saved.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
  That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
  Was blind, but now I see.

You have scattered your awareness in all directions
and your vanities are not worth a bite of cabbage….
Direct the water of God’s Bounty to spirit and insight,
not to the knotted and broken world outside.
_{Rumi, as quoted in The Rumi Daybook, translated by K. and C. Helminski}