Grace or Effort?

So, one time I said to Siddhi Maa… I said, Maa, Maharajji said he has the keys to the mind. So, to me that means that I am where he has placed me – where he wants me to be. So, is it all his doing? Is it all Grace or is my effort required?

I mean everybody asks this question: Grace or Effort?

She gave the best answer in the world. She looked at me and said, “Krishna Das, it’s all Grace but you have to act like it isn’t . We don’t know that it’s all Grace. We hope it is, we’d like to believe it is, but we don’t experience that directly. So, because you think you’re you and I think I’m me, we have effort to make until such time as those thoughts don’t arise.”

Beautiful answer!

– Krishna Das, Interview on Neem Karoli Baba

Jim Carrey – On depression and how suffering leads to salvation

And ultimately, I believe that suffering leads to salvation. In fact, it’s the only way…that we have to, somehow, accept, not deny, but feel our suffering and feel our losses. And then, we make one of two decisions. We either decide to go through the gate of resentment, which leads to vengeance, which leads to self-harm, which leads to harm to others. Or, we go through the gate of forgiveness, which leads to grace.

[Y]our being here is an indication that…You’ve made the decision to walk through the gate of forgiveness to grace, just as Christ did on the cross.

He suffered terribly and He was broken by it, to the point of doubt and a feeling of absolutely abandonment, which all of you have felt. Then there was a decision to be made. And the decision was to look upon the people who were causing that suffering with compassion and with forgiveness, and that’s what opens the gates of heaven for all of us. I wish that for all of you. I wish that for myself.

Jim Carrey – message for a group of former gang members and prisoners at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles.

We can’t comprehend with our human mind the…

We can’t comprehend with our human mind the wisdom of God. Somehow, He can plan out generations, take mistakes, failures, betrayals, closed doors and somehow weave them all together and cause them to work for our good. Only God, in His wisdom, can figure out how to take a mistake from one generation and use it to be a blessing in another generation.

-Joel Osteen