Late Night Chat with Jeff Wolverton: E&G: What is Grace? Aug 17, 2025, on Baba Zoom

The topic: Grace, What Is It?

Dear folks of Baba,

In his book, Effort and Grace, Darwin Shaw refers again and again to the importance and presence of Baba’s grace in our awakening to Divine Love. Several of you have expressed the wish to explore more in depth what he means by grace. Here is my own winding journey in trying to describe it:

In the 1970s, I had been working inwardly for years in trying to more clearly understand the nature of the deeper feelings in my heart. They seemed so various and unique and indefinable, and it was critical to me that they definitely needed to be distinguished from the ongoing happenings in my mind and the superficial emotions of my heart. My deeper feelings all seemed like individual planets, each bringing different and specific sensations into particular locations in my heart space. Was there one sun that these unique planets, my deeper feelings, all revolved around?

One day in the old Pilgrim Center in Meherabad, Baba flashed before my inner vision an image that was immensely helpful to me in this, that of sunlight passing through a prism and reflecting a whole varied rainbow of colors. The colors all have the same origin, the sun whose light is refracted through the prism to form the rainbow that we see. Baba once said that these colors are identical with the light itself. So, in this vision that He flashed to me, He conveyed that when the light of Divine Love which is always within us passes through the innermost depths of our heart, it is refracted, so to speak, into our deeper feelings, our better angels. These deeper feelings are actually not feelings, but divine love, the attributes of Baba Himself, manifesting in our deeper heart. Among these attributes are empathy, forgiveness, generosity, enthusiasm, purity, joy, creativity, compassion, patience, humor and courage. What Baba conveyed through the rainbow example is that it is the same One Love that manifests in the various situations in our life, which changes in color, so to speak, depending on which attrubutes of love are being called for. For example, in speaking truth to power, courage, empathy and often a sense of humor may be needed. In responding to a child who is lonely and wants someone to play with, fun-lovingness, creativity and patience might be what is required. I had initially thought that the deeper feelings were all somehow different in origin, located in separate places, but now Baba, through the image of a rainbow, integrated them all more clearly in my awareness.

Because of the Baba’s metaphor about our deeper feelings, I am inclined to view His grace and His other divine attributes as coming from One Source. For this reason, I have never really tried to define His grace. I am always disposed to favor simplicity when I think of how Baba manifests in my life—it is His One Love flowing into me and into this world. If His love flowing into my life moves me to make efforts to be more loving, I call it His inspiration. If His love flowing into my life helps me in making the difficult decisions in my life, I call it His guidance. If it flows into my heart’s longing for closeness, I call it His companionship. If it flows into my life causing me to expand in being, I call it His unlimitedness. If it flows into my restless spirit causing me to move toward peace and harmony, I call it His Being. If it flows into my depleted body and mind, awakening my vitality and lifting my spirits, I call it His power. If it flows into my depressed and despairing heart, the dark periods of my life, I call it His light. If it flows into me, causing me to make an extra effort to express love beyond my normal capacity, I call it His grace. Yet to me, it is all His same never-failing love flowing into me, and it only seems different depending on which situation in my life it manifests. If I were to choose an expression to encompass all the above manifestations of Baba in my life, I would simply call it His loving grace.

What is Baba’s grace for you and how do you experience it in your life?

Baba has said that His grace “is flowing sufficiently all the time to fill one and all receptacles everywhere,” but “there is rarely a vessel which is not filled with other things. A vessel must first be emptied before it can be filled by the flow of my grace. It is also my grace which helps a vessel to become completely emptied in the first place.” And He added, “The flow of my grace to you depends upon the intensity of your love, for it is love which attracts my grace to you.”

In His love, Jeff

PS. We continue from page 18

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