Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Miranda Macpherson. Miranda is a spiritual teacher who shares an integrated, feminine approach to spiritual awakening. She’s the founder of OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in London, where she trained and ordained over 600 ministers. Today, she leads the Living Grace community in Northern California, and leads retreats internationally. With Sounds True, Miranda has created the audio series, Meditations on Boundless Love, and she’s written a new book called The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation, where she takes the reader on the journey to the heart of spiritual surrender.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Miranda and I spoke about how she begins all of her teaching sessions with her students by creating an atmosphere of unconditional love—and how this atmosphere accepts whatever difficulty or challenge we are experiencing so that it can be lovingly met and experienced as a gateway to deeper surrender. We also talked about how she learned ego relaxation through a profoundly transformative experience—she calls it a “seismic” experience—that she had while she was meditating in Ramana Maharshi’s cave in India. After this experience, her whole life became reorganized, and she was asked to adapt to a new level of vulnerability that she describes as “living without an outer skin.” We also talked about the central role of trust in the awakening process—what it means to be a receiver and channel of grace. And finally, Miranda led us in a guided experience of what it means to feel ourselves as a mountain of presence. Here’s my conversation with Miranda Macpherson.
Miranda, I want to begin by talking about the subtitle of your new book, The Way of Grace, which is: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation. I notice when I hear that term, “ego relaxation,” I relax a little bit. I love it. Tell me how you came to that phrase.
Miranda Macpherson: Well, I don’t know about you, Tami, but for myself, I was always . . . As soon as I really got cracking on the spiritual path and really went to work on my own ego, it was a very humbling experience, because I could see, “Oh my goodness, here’s fear, here’s insecurity, here’s control, here are defenses, here’s reactivity, here’s envy, here’s pride.” And it was really hard to honestly meet those parts of myself that, at that time, I was relating to as things that shouldn’t be there. As things that I had to somehow try to amputate, or get rid of, or push past. Over the years, I started to see that that was a particular view that had sort of trickled down through spiritual traditions that have largely come through the masculine lens—up until very recently—that can sometimes lend themselves to a bit of an aggressive, or macho approach—hacking away at our ego as if it shouldn’t be there, as if we should try and push past it.
Then I started to see, in light of my own awakening process, that that wasn’t the most attractive way of dealing with it. Just like trying to get rid of anything is what causes it to persist, I saw that it wasn’t so much of an ego annihilation that was needed, but of letting those parts of myself relax. It felt like letting a hard block of ice, which is our ego fixation, be touched by the warmth of the sun. So, when you think about it, just putting a hard block of ice out in the warmth of the sun, you know you don’t need the hacks or the chainsaw to break that ice down. The warmth of the sun actually transforms the hardness, melts it. And that’s how a true surrender felt to me. It was a process of melting, of contacting with loving awareness these parts of ourselves.
It’s certainly problematic if they’re not addressed. They’re more effectively dealt with through love and presence, rather than pushing, and forcing, and aggressing upon ourselves in the name of awakening.
TS: Now, just to be clear here in the beginning, what do you mean by the term “ego” when you talk about “our ego can be invited to relax”?
MM: Yes. I’m really talking about absence of being a separate someone bound in history, bound in defenses, bound in commentary and fear and judgment and control. Of course, when you really look at that classically, most spiritual traditions bring that back to a sense of being a separate somebody, and paradoxically we are unique, individual human beings. I don’t think that’s necessarily ego. So when I say “ego,” I’m really talking about our self-construct that’s historically based and bound in emotive spasms and fear and hurt—that is not really seeing reality for what it is. And it’s therefore not fluid and free, and not open to the grace and the fullness of who we really are.
TS: And when you talk about this as perhaps a more “feminine approach” than a sort of soldiering type of muscular, “we’re going to do something to get rid of our attachment to being separate.” Tell me more about when you’re working with your students, and you’re helping them with this feminine approach, what that actually looks and feels like?
MM: Well the first thing is that our work always begins in a palpable atmosphere, an explicit atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance. When people sit with me, I don’t view them as wrong or bad or that they shouldn’t have the difficulties that they have. We can’t help the way our ego is shaped and formed into its differences. You or I can’t. It was laid down through our early childhood, and the way we had to adapt to survive that. I think when we at first begin with just this deep compassionate understanding that all human beings have an ego, and that really it’s a call for love and understanding—if we have that as our platform—then it’s so much easier just to take a look at what’s going on and why that’s going on. Why that difference is there. Why we circle back into that particular fear. Why it’s hard to let go of that position, or attachment. What are our controls really about?
Usually, what we see when we open it up in that atmosphere of unconditional love, is that there’s some suffering there, some felt experience of separation from our natural ground of being. And the quality of our being is that it requires contact and requires love and requires us just being there, not doing a single thing. So, that’s what ego relaxation actually comes down to, really, is being deeply present with love and ceasing and desisting any kind of manipulation or judgment. So, we’re just present and deeply undefended with what’s so. What happens when we’re just undefended in the present with what’s so—not conceptually, but thematically in our hearts—then what happens is some kind of grace comes online, and it will be completely fresh in each moment with each person.
What blows me away every time is that what that person actually needs most comes alive for them, whether that’s some feeling of wholeness, or some essential quality like boundless love or clarity, or pure awareness of some understanding or insight comes forward, or some wisdom arrives that gives that person exactly what they need to go further and deeper, and flourish on the path, and in their human life.
TS: Now Miranda, the moment that you said, “We begin in,” and you were describing your teaching environment, “this atmosphere of unconditional love.” I noticed that everything in me, in this conversation for the first time, suddenly started melting like the way you described when the sun comes out; and the block of ice that we are can melt. And, I thought, “Wow! That’s so beautiful. What a beautiful way to start.” Why don’t we all just go there more quickly? It’s right there.
MM: Well, sometimes we don’t see the obvious. I personally just feel very blessed that my own spiritual path began when I was a young person. I was 13, and I was clinically depressed, and I was hospitalized in an adult psych unit for that depression. One of the things that did for me that was really foundational was it helped me see what we all need more than anything—in order to find our own answers, to connect to what we need, to move forward—we need love. And that needs to be primary. We need to be seen and contacted with love for who we are. When that happens, whatever other work has to happen, happens so much more easily, because it deals with the resistance and it allows space for a soul to come forward in the way that it needs to. So, I just feel very grateful that I saw that very young. It’s been very predominant in all the work I’ve been doing with people for coming up on three decades now in different themes.
TS: Now Miranda, how did you discover that as a young person in a psych ward?
MM: Well, it’s a long story, but essentially I was suffering deeply myself, which is why I was there. But, I remember looking around and seeing, and don’t ask me how I could see this, but I just did, that we were all really suffering from the same thing. Everyone was experiencing a deep disconnection from what they truly needed in life. And that took many different shapes and forms, but the most fundamental disconnection that everyone seemed to have in common was a disconnection from what was real, and what love was. And I don’t necessarily think those are two things—they’re really part of the same. I was suffering from that too. In my darkest moment, I was really found by a grace that I really can’t lay any personal claim to. It came to me as a state of boundless love, and I shared about this in the audio book, Meditations on Boundless Love. What it plugged me into was a felt sense of the infinity of love that is the ground of being, the ground of your being and my being and all being. That it’s fundamentally beneficent. That, when we’re open to that which is an experience of grace, then we have what we need to move forward in our life.
I just saw that has to be the platform. The work of transformation has to happen in an atmosphere that is unconditionally accepting and unconditionally loving. And then, all the murky stuff can come out of the closet, and it’s just fine. We can see it, we can understand it—with even things like hate and envy, stuff that most people I know have a lot of shame about having and don’t want to have. But, if you just look at our world right now, it’s pretty obvious those things are big problems on our planet. So, they have to be addressed. We have to be able to look at this murky stuff—the really knotted-up parts of ourselves—kindly, compassionately, with discrimination, and really see what they’re about.
And, it’s by bringing all that to the light that the mystery of grace, the living presence, can transform us and bring us deeper into wisdom and clarity about how to be a real human being in our world, which surely needs us to be a bit more loving and a bit more real.
TS: Now, in your book, The Way of Grace, you have a beautiful section called “The Problem Is the Gate.” And as you’re talking, you’re describing some experience somebody might have, like feeling tremendously envious of someone—you use that as an example. How can we take that and see it and experience it as a gateway? Can you take us through that?
MM: Yes. Sure. It requires first the platform that I’ve been talking about. So much of the work is helping people just to be present in their body, to relax the commentating mind, to let go of comparative judgment, to be kind to whatever they find in themselves—all of that—to trust enough to have enough humility. All these things that all classical spiritual paths acknowledge as important. But once those things are there, then we can take a deeper dive. I encourage my students to really explore something in their life that is really difficult that reoccurs as some pattern of suffering, which despite their best efforts is still here. Now, for most people that I know, that ultimately comes down to a felt sense of feeling somehow bad or not good enough, as if something’s fundamentally flawed, or missing. This is usually what causes things like envy and hatred. But when we go to the actual direct experience of feeling disconnected—that there’s something in us that is lacking, insufficient, or wrong or bad or not right—that’s one of the hardest gates to open. Because, everything in us says, “This is a terrible problem. I have to fix it. I have to get over it.”
For myself personally, I spent years spiritually and psychologically trying to get past this big problem, as it felt in me. My version of that is, “I’m nothing.” I experienced it in some kind of deficient, not good enough sort of way. And I realize now, from where I stood, I was looking at that as something that shouldn’t be there, I was trying to annihilate it through spiritual means. But what was really amazing to discover was one day when I was visiting the ashram of Sri Ramana Maharshi in South India, I was sitting in a cave that had been where he’d lived for 15 years, and I was just meditating. I wasn’t looking for anything special. I wasn’t trying to get anywhere special in my meditation practice that day. I was just sitting and quieting down, and a whole other world of silence from what I had known, opened up. It really was this profound moment of—I can’t even put accurate words to it—but it’s where the transmission of ego relaxation first came online. I heard “Be nothing, do nothing, get nothing, become nothing, seek for nothing, relinquish nothing. Be as you are. Rest in God.”
I didn’t really understand with my mind, that transmission, because it silenced my mind. I was in the effect of it for quite a long time. But in the years it’s taken to really digest and integrate what that meant and why it was so seismic—why it was so powerful in shifting my own experience to a whole other level—was realizing the irony that all the years prior, I was trying to get rid of or fix this felt sense of being nothing, as if that was a problem. Really it was the gate. In that moment, I was just relaxing into being absolutely nothing. It wasn’t what I thought, so I’ve been guiding my students over the years to really get intimate with “What is that place in them?” that feels like the biggest problem. It feels like that thing that shouldn’t be there—that thing that you try to work around or compensate for or try to improve. What if you surrender into that spot itself? And if you can, then usually what opens up isn’t what you think. And the self-image of the deficient somebody—a wrong or bad, not-worthy, not-good-enough somebody—gives way to infinite space and a deeper direct felt experience of the luminosity of being.
It’s hard to describe this, but most of my work is about taking people by the hand and guiding them there, and inviting them to explore what they find in that space.
TS: Now Miranda, you say that in the cave, when you were in Ramana Maharshi’s cave in India, not trying to achieve any particular state, you received this quote/unquote transmission. And that’s when you heard these words. Why are you calling it a transmission? Where did this quote/unquote come from?
MM: Well, it’s hard to describe, but the word transmission to me just is a sharing of something—but it’s not conceptual, that affects you energetically, emotionally, psychologically. I can describe it more as how it felt, it just felt like everything that was familiar in terms of my sense of orientation to what I was, what God was, what the world was, what everyone was, was just changed. It was as if a gong went off inside, but it wasn’t a sound. So, I describe it really as like a thunderous presence of absolute silence, but it came with that knowing ness. And, I kept hearing this transmission, as if it was reverberating through me, like a gong might reverberate. So it reverberated for quite a while before I really could understand, “What does this mean?”
I was feeling the meaning, but it took years to recognize, “Oh, this is a transmission of ego relaxation that helps my whole construct of self and reality just dissolve into what is.” But it’s also how; it’s a practice as well. And that was an exquisite thing to really get. “Oh my God, this is actually a practical how of true surrender taking place.” It’s not what we think; it is just letting ourselves be very deeply in those moments when we come to our edges. Where we’re instinctively picking up an opinion rather than being really present and undefended and letting Reality with a capital R, teach us something new about life in each moment.
TS: Now, you also described this experience as “seismic.” How did your life change after this experience?
MM: Everything changed in me. I mean, prior to this it was like, I call it BC: before the cave, and AC: after the cave. It was as if I died, but I was still here. Many things that were holding my familiar way of orienting and knowing myself just started falling apart. My marriage, which had been a very good marriage of 12 years, all of a sudden, just felt completely energetically different, and it fell apart within six months of this experience. I, all of a sudden, felt done with the teaching that I had been doing—and I was the founder and spiritual director of a groundbreaking interfaith seminary that was wonderful work. But I remember coming back from that time in India and just feeling like I wanted to take the whole seminary training apart, given what I now understood. It was clear that wasn’t wanted, so it was time to let this go. And I was very attached—it was like my first baby.
I kept feeling, “Wow, this is no longer my country.” I’d been living in England for 15 years. Everything fell away, without me trying to reject anything or trying to change anything. It was just this profound momentum of change that took place. And I can honestly say that within nine months, everything that I thought was secure in my life, all of a sudden, wasn’t. And it was huge. I realized, in the midst of all of this feeling, that sense that felt like a giant hand was sweeping across the chess board of my life, knocking all the pieces to the floor and then tearing up the chess board. I knew that surrender into this—it was really edgy. I had to just engage all of the spiritual practice that had been built up for 15 years prior to this moment, to just let it happen and say yes. To go with what was happening. And I’m so grateful that I had that body of spiritual training to understand that you don’t say, “No,” in a moment like this. You say, “Yes.” You go with it. And it sounds easy, but we all know that it’s not easy when that’s us in a moment like that.
So, it took a lot of spiritual resolve to accept this, allow it, move with it with progression and proportion. And in the wake of that, I was just listening to what’s needed now. That was my moment-to-moment prayer, “What’s needed now?” So, I had to learn to live moment by moment out of that prayer, and to ask and listen for what was true and what action was needed, right down to very precise things about moving country, navigating the U.S. Immigration Department, getting legal in this country, coming to a whole new part of the world where I didn’t know anybody. Taking the practical steps that needed to be taken to walk forward into a new life, to commence courage.
TS: That’s a beautiful prayer, “What’s needed now?” That’s beautiful.
MM: Yes. I find it very useful.
TS: Yes, yes. Now Miranda, I’ve interviewed a lot of different people about spiritual awakening. And one of the things I’m curious about is, hearing the story you’ve just described, I’d love to know what your view is, why in some people’s lives, awakening seems to be a very, very slow dawning process? And other people, like yourself, seem to have pretty dramatic experiences over the course of a few weeks that they say are “seismic.” What’s your understanding of that?
MM: Well, two-fold for me. I think, firstly, it’s a mystery, is the most obvious answer to that question. I don’t think we get to choose the deck of cards we’re given in life, we just get to choose how we work with them. And yes, I feel that I have had even more than just this, but a few very big openings. And I think that’s, for want of a better term, just my karma. I’ve been aware that this is the particular reason that I’m here. It’s largely just to bring forth this possibility for others, and I’m very much signed up for that and have been for a very long time—all my adult life. And so, my primary focus in life and my prayer has been, “Take me, use me to be of benefit.” And I’ve been praying that prayer for decades now, and I mean it every time I pray it. And I think when you pray prayers like that, the mystery says, “OK, then,” and shows you what you need.
But at the same time, even though I describe a moment like being in Ramana’s cave as seismic, and it certainly was, I think it’s too glamorous just to go, “Oh, she had this great big spiritual orgasm, and then she’s done.” Because that’s not true, and I’m suspicious of anyone who presents awakening like that, because I feel that what that doesn’t include is all those years struggling on the meditation question at the therapist couch, praying deeply into those sort of naughty parts of myself. When you really look at someone’s spiritual trajectory, we usually see that. We usually see there has been some dedication, some inquiry, some sincere true desire and engagement, and that was certainly the case for me. And then also, it’s not just you have that big spiritual bang, and then that’s it. I don’t believe that awakening is a fixed thing. I know for myself I’m still evolving, there are plenty of mistakes I make. My own inner spiritual life keeps opening up, and I see more, and there’s more refinement, and more growth, and more things that open that I haven’t written about yet. I’ll probably get around to them when they’re more integrated. I take that view, too.
TS: Now, you said there was a certain type of resolve, I think is the word that you used. And there was an implication that there was a certain type of courage that was required on your part to say “yes” to the invitation that you were given to the transmission that you received. Tell me a little bit about that, what was required from you?
MM: Well, a totality of trust, most of all. Deep humility. Willingness to be stripped right back to the roots. And willingness to say yes to that—the willingness just to be deconstructed for a while. And once I saw the invitation of that, and I could see that was true and helpful, it really helped me to say yes. Because I realized that I had gotten a little trapped in a bit of an opaque membrane that I had unconsciously created for myself. I think we all do that. We get caught up in our roles, over-identified with our position in certain relationships, and that becomes integrated into our ego’s familiar way of orienting through life. Sometimes that’s beautiful, nothing wrong with it. But, sometimes it creates a barrier. So, I could see that I had become a little trapped in certain places. And I didn’t really know how to get myself out, so this was actually a gift. And that really helped me, gave me the courage to actually see that while this was very fierce, it was grace. And it was ultimately going to be very helpful, even though it was likely going to be edgy for a while.
So, seeing that was very helpful in, if you like, being courageous—although it wasn’t like I was trying to be courageous. I was just really trying to live into my spiritual practice with what was going on. To say yes to what was The Plan, rather than wail and rage and resist and try to hang on to my plan. I personally—and I wrote about this extensively in the book—so much of it is about surrendering the need for control. And you know, I speak about that because hey, that was the biggest part of my ego. That’s been the hardest feature that I’ve personally had to work with: my own willfulness. It helped me to really recognize that freedom and all the promises of the path really do come when we surrender “me and my” for “thy.” As we give ourselves back to the origin of our being, we say yes to what is the truth, even if we don’t fully understand it yet. Ultimately, we’re given back to what’s real, what’s beautiful—we’re given what we need. And I knew that already.
Hence, what I’m saying about those previous years of inner work, it all came to support me with this big leap that happened. And the need to integrate that and let it really trickle down through my bones and through every aspect of my life—it actually demanded for a deep deconstruction.
TS: There’s a quote from The Way of Grace that I pulled out because it was personally meaningful to me, and I want to talk to you about it, Miranda. Here’s the quote, after this experience that you had in Ramana’s cave, “I had to adapt to a level of vulnerability that felt like having no outer skin.” And here you are, you’re talking about this opacity that you felt previously that you had somehow been living with, you weren’t really aware of it, and then afterwards, “a level of vulnerability that felt like having no outer skin.” And I pulled this forward because I think that level of sensitivity is often quite difficult for people to become accustomed to, to live with in our world.
MM: Oh yes.
TS: Can you talk some about that? How have you managed to adapt to that level of vulnerability?
MM: Yes. Well, gosh, it’s a big question. One of the things that has helped me the most—and I know you talk about this a lot in your podcast, Tami, and I appreciate it—is just really coming into direct somatic experience. One of the things I realized about myself was that I’ve had, prior to the experience the cave, I’ve had what I call a very top-down awakening. I’ve always had a very deep relationship with all sorts of subtle dimensions of being, but I never really felt at ease in my body, or at home on earth. That was a very predominant experience I’d had. I realized that I was a little blocked from the ground up, and what seemed to really help me was—and you know, I’m saying this to my students all the time, it sounds really silly, but I’m saying, “Wiggle your toes, butterfly your knees a little bit, just shift your pelvis around, just actually recognize what you’re in and part of—what you’re held by.” Not just our physical earth, but if you open to where . . . What causes all the trees and the plants and the mountains and the oceans and your body and everything and everyone? What causes all of that? What opens and leaves us a felt sense of being grounded and supported by this mountainous presence.
It literally felt like I had a mountain that was universal, that was rising up, and was supporting me just to be here now. However, I was in that moment, whatever was going on, whether I was signing my divorce papers, which was obviously a pretty tough moment, or whether that was standing in line at John F. Kennedy Airport, not knowing whether I’m going to get through the immigration part. OK. Whether I’m looking for a place to rent, but I don’t yet have a social security number, so I keep getting turned back. Whether it was showing up to places where I don’t know anybody, and nobody knows me, and just showing up. That’s, by definition, formative stuff. But, what I really wanted in my heart was to really live this—really—in each moment of my life. I had no idea. So just coming back to sensing my feet, feeling my breath, feeling the truth of my longing, my prayers, and a genuineness of spirit that just really wanted to understand and live this in a way that was true, and in a way that brought blessings for others. I don’t know that I’ve answered your question, and I’ve gone on another tangent.
TS: No, it’s very interesting to me that that’s the direction you went in with my question, was to help people ground in this mountainous presence that you’re describing, that that’s been a method for you to be with your own vulnerability and sensitivity. That’s powerful and interesting to me.
MM: Yes. But in addition to that—and that’s a particular practice that I write about in the book, but it’s a foundational practice that I share with everybody, which is about . . . It’s a somatic-based practice of feeling that mountain of presence and opening to it. It’s a very real thing. It’s not just an image. But, when it opens up it really does feel like your whole lower body, your belly, pelvis, feet, legs, are in a part of something that has no circumference, and that is unlimited, and that offers total support for each and every one of us just to be as we are, and to relax into body right here and now. So, that provides the support we need to let the mind sphere relax, and let go. To let the grip of control—and it does feel like a tight grip on our body sometimes, as well as our minds and our hearts—to let go. To let the judgment go. These dense forces that everyone single one of us has to work with if we’re to gain traction. What I started to see was—this wasn’t just true in my experience—was that the more that mountain of presence opens up in people, the more capable they were of relaxing out of fear, control, and judgment in defense, and truly starting to cultivate the virtues that mature us.
One of the things that I saw when I was so raw, and just being very personal about this, I remember when I first got to California, I had to go a lot slower than I was accustomed to going, because I felt so raw, so skinless, so sensitive that just going into Whole Foods was a bit too stimulating for me. It was hard to have conversations for a while, and I had to just tolerate that. I had to just relax and let that be—just be patient with myself. But I started to see how all these virtues—that all of the classical spiritual traditions have mapped out—we need in order to let true surrender happen. Those being trust, love of the truth, and a deep honesty, a deep curiosity. We needed to really deal with the self-attack, to really relax out of super-ego judgment so we could be compassionate with ourselves. We need humility, we need willingness, and we need patience.
This whole map of “Oh, that’s what we can do.” Those are the things that make us spiritually robust. Those qualities, they will serve us to help us to genuinely be still, be undefended, be present, be open, relax into the unknown and allow grace deeper than our mind to have its way with us. To let that be, and to not be afraid. I saw that all these virtues—there are obstacles to each one of them that we have to deal with. And there are certain practices that support an inquiry. So, I developed all these inquiries that cultivate these virtues that appear in the book. And I found them to be really useful to other people in developing the kind of spiritual, psychological, and energetic musculature that really serves us to let our ego relax.
TS: Now, in terms of this “mountain of presence” that’s not just an idea, but something that we can all access, right here in this moment. I wonder if Miranda, you’d be willing to guide us, briefly. Maybe just take five, ten minutes, and take us into that experience?
MM: Sure. Well, wherever you’re listening to this, just see if you can position your body in a way where your feet are flat on the floor. Position in a way where you’re upright, but supported. And you’re really sitting on your sitz bones. Close your eyes, and just follow the gentle natural rise and fall of your own breath as if your own inhales are welcoming you—just as you are. Your own exhale is a natural melting. It’s feeling welcome with the in breath, and melting with the out breath. And your own melting out breath really says to you, you’re just sinking deeper in and down into the support that’s wrapping around your body, receiving it, noticing it. And even if there’s something very difficult going on in your life right now, there’s the support of the chair, there’s the support of the earth.
The feelings of melting into that support, it isn’t coming from your mind. It’s just here. Bring your awareness in and down, particularly to your feet. You want to feel that contact with the palms of your feet on the floor. Let yourself receive the floor, and receive the fact of the earth. Doesn’t require anything from you. Just provides support, shade, a home. Open up into the aliveness of the earth that produces trees, animals, so many life forms. Now under the earth’s crust, we know there are layers and minerals and rocks, liquids, a molten core. Open to the presence, the intelligence, the power that produces all of that. The same power that causes your own body to be here in the way that it is. Melt down into that. When you feel as if you are in and part of not only the ground of our earth, but the deeper ground. The ground that is alive, intelligent, infinitely creative, fundamentally loving, and immense.
What causes that? We can’t really say. So you may feel as if you are in and part of this infinite presence, like sitting in a mountain that has no circumference. Let that mountain take up residence not only in your feet, but in your whole lower body, as if the tip of that mountain comes to rest in your deep lower belly, your dan tien or hara area. Both of your legs, and hips, and pelvis, in and part of that mountainous presence that helps you rest in the ground of grace. It provides total support for you just to be here as you are. To help you recognize that you are always resting in and part of God.
TS: Very beautiful. Thank you.
MM: You’re welcome.
TS: One of the themes that relates to having just done this meditation, that I felt was laced throughout The Way of Grace, is how this transforming power of ego relaxation can actually be experienced in our physical body—that ego relaxation happens at the level of our physicality, and at the level of our subtle body. And there were various metaphors that you used for our subtle body experience that I just loved. At one point, you started referring to us as ego-relaxed human beings—this is my language, that part. But, you referred to us as human fountains.
MM: That’s right. Yes.
TS: Tell me a little bit about that image, I love it.
MM: Well, again, that’s how it feels when I’m deeply grounded in that infinite mountain, which is how the ground of grace feels in our bodies. We feel directly, we feel grounded. We’re capable of being present. The blessings of grace usually feel like this beautiful, sort of subtle nectar that uplifts and nourishes us, fills us the way we need with love and kindness and joy and goodness. The transforming power of grace has that feeling of a waterfall. But ultimately, all of that is so that you and I become more graceful human beings. And I’ve been saying for years that who you and I are, what our bodies are, what our hearts are, what our minds are—everything about us is really designed to extend and embody grace. To really let that nectar flow deeper into the world through the living of our ordinary lives.
And when that happens, it feels like a waterfall. We might feel . . . It feels like a waterfall with three primary spouts. We all know what a waterfall looks like, you know, the water comes up through the central channel, but it extends out. And in the process of extending out there’s a spiritual hydration that occurs in the land around us. That’s what wants to happen, in the way that we live our lives when we’re deeply grounded and our heart is open. We’re not dehydrated anymore, spiritually. We feel that fountain coming up through us, and it’s not blocked. It’s not just gurgling, it’s flowing. Then what happens is our gifts come back online, our talents, our capacities, our beautiful qualities that are so unique to each one of us, as well as universal. It just wants to be shared. And so that’s how it feels to me in my subtle body. It feels, you know, that it comes up through my belly, comes up through my heart, comes up through my throat, and my mind, hopefully my voice, everything.
That’s what supposed to happen for us all. We’re grace-delivery devices. That’s what human beings actually are designed to be. That’s what’s possible for everybody. And I think we’re living in a time when our world needs a lot more grace than we’ve been seeing.
TS: You, in the book, talk about how we can stay rooted in equanimity by being in our subtle bodies in a way that’s in deep and wide. Tell me about that: in deep and wide.
MM: Yes. Well, I spoke of it in what we’ve just spoken about with the mountain of presence. If it’s really deeply within ourselves, our bodies are relaxed but alert, awake. We’re grounded, we’re present. We’re not so much in commentating mind and thoughts of fear and defense. We’re actually present. So there’s a feeling of being very deep in ourselves, and we have access to what we’re really feeling, what’s happening moment to moment. It feels that there’s a sense of wit, because when the ordinary familiar patterned ego identity that usually fixates around some story of “I’m not enough,” or “I need to be this or that.” When that gives way to our true identity, which is literally boundless being, then there’s a sense of wit to our experience. Some teachers might call this non-dual, or non-localized awareness. Well, we’re here in this particular location, but we’re not bound by our history or our self-constructs or our thoughts or our opinions. We might even feel ourselves open to subtle dimensions that relate to the lineages that we have worked with on other things.
So there’s access to deeper intelligence and more subtle intelligence, more subtle wisdom, and that helps us to walk in two worlds simultaneously. To be in this physical, three-dimensional, relational world where there’s all this stuff happening, but at the same time to be deeply at rest in the transcendent, in the absolute level of our being. That helps us greatly to be responsive rather than reactive. I think that this is particularly important now. And I’ve been teaching this kind of a practice while people watch the news at night—how to sit in back and wide, centered, grounded, non-reactive, while we take in difficult things, things that are not so easy to bear. So that we can pray into “How do I show up today?” “What’s one action that I can take that would be useful, that would be helpful?” Or, that simple prayer that I was sharing earlier: “What’s needed now? What’s the best use of my life force today?”
TS: Now Miranda, I want to be sure that before we end our conversation, we address that person who has been listening, and is tracking with us, and is tracking with the experience you had in the cave—this deep, deep surrender, and saying “yes.” And that person who hits some type of fear skid of some kind. They notice themselves feeling partially in that surrender process, and partially pulling out and feeling fear for some reason or another. How can you help that person? What advice do you have for them?
MM: The most important thing is don’t judge yourself for where you are. You can’t force surrender. You can just show up for the practice of ego relaxation, which means just being here, where we are, ceasing and desisting the judgment and the manipulation—and even the subtle manipulation that can be hard to spot sometimes of trying to get to some spiritual high. It’s so subtle. The further we go along the path, the more those things start to emerge. You and I can’t make it happen, that’s not our job. But what we can do is show up in this moment with sincerity, with trust, with willingness. We can learn to be present to our direct experience, and to become more receptive to grace. You can’t make grace happen. So, ego relaxation is what we can do, to enter into the receptive condition and to let grace be the teacher and the leader, which is really what it’s all about anyway, and what it’s always been about anyway.
This life that we have really is a gift, it’s not for us to direct. It’s a gift to be lived, and so much of it really keeps coming back to trust—trusting where you are—but also to listening to where you are. And recognizing that right where you are is the map. It will reveal its wisdom if we listen.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Miranda Macpherson. She’s the author of a new book called The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation. And I certainly hope that this program has generated a level of ego relaxation for you, like it has for me. Miranda, thank you so much.
MM: Thank you, Tami. Thank you so much.
TS: With Sounds True, Miranda has also created the audio series, Meditations on Boundless Love. And just to end, Miranda, once again, bring us into that space of the sun shining, your own trusting field of unconditional love. I think it would be a great note to end on.
MM: Yes. Just come back to being here now where you are. And just find the breaths, noticing how each inhale welcomes you completely. Each exhale invites some kind of melting. But you don’t do the melting. As you just let yourself be here, noticing tension patterns. Perhaps, noticing your heart’s yearning. Perhaps, just being with the important feelings and questions of your life. Notice how each inhale welcomes you, right here where you are. Each exhale just invites a melting just as effortlessly as the warmth of the sun will bring the melting about. Feel your contact with wherever you are, and your just letting that be is that which allows the melting. Be as you are. Rest in God.
TS: Miranda Macpherson, her new book, The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world. Thanks, everyone, for listening.
