21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

‘What is being said is that compassion — interdependence — already is the universe. We do not have to make it anew. Compassion, one might say, is a grace and not a work.’

Matthew Fox — Original Blessing.

Note that Fox says not that grace is in the universe, he says grace is the universe. There is something fundamentally different going on here. It is more about creating a space within ourselves to allow grace to flow, rather than my making grace, or being compassionate. We are the grace of the world. Within the context of the human economy — I am grace. Unless we allow ourselves to be the means of grace, there is no grace. This is the ‘economy of grace’. ‘Wrap it up in a person’ the opening quote of this chapter suggested; But the only people around to wrap grace up in is you and I.

Some final words from Brian Swimme sum up all that has been explored in this work:

‘…we awake to fascination and we strive to fascinate. We work to enchant others. We work to ignite life, to evoke presence, to enhance the unfolding of being. All of this is the actuality of love. We strive to fascinate so that we can bring forth what might otherwise disappear. But that is exactly what love does: Love is the activity of evoking being, enhancing life.’

He goes on:

…do I desire to become pleasure?’

‘…our own truest desire is to be and to live. We have ripened and matured when we realize that

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