Field of Grace + Shifting from Condemnation to Blessing
The One Who Blesses: Module Two
This is Module Two of The One Who Blesses—a six-part series inside of The Reflection Work. Each written module is accompanied by an audio recording where I expand the work, explain the core concepts, and invite you into the deeper conversation beneath the chaos and chatter of our modern world.
In this module, we explore the Grace Field—and the shift from condemnation to blessing. We turn toward the stories we tell, and what happens when we begin to release them.
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Module Two: The Grace Field
Last week, in your sacred journal...
I asked you to think of something—or someone—from whom you’ve withheld your blessing. A situation. A person. A part of yourself you absolutely cannot accept and refuse to bless.
I asked you to consider:
What story am I telling myself about this person or situation?
What if it’s not true—or more complex than I perceived at the time?What might happen if I moved this from condemnation to blessing?
Did you do the exercise? If so, what happened?
If not, it’s never too late. Begin now.
Below you will find this week’s module and my recording, exploring and illuminating the teachings.
Moving from Condemnation to Blessing
When something difficult appears—a painful emotion, a political headline, a part of yourself you don’t quite love—your first instinct may not be blessing.
It may be condemnation.
Not necessarily the loud kind.
Often, it’s quiet. Inward. Automatic.
The body tightens. The breath shortens. A thought flickers:
I can’t believe this.
This again?
I should be past this by now.
They should be past this by now.
We’ve all been there.
We condemn what we don’t like. What we don’t understand. What feels like a threat.
We condemn what doesn’t fit the story we’ve inherited from our family and the culture. The story that tells us how life is supposed to go.
What to expect. What should and should not happen.
In this module, we begin to explore the possibility that the story we inherited from family and culture might not be entirely true.
Condemnation says:
This shouldn’t be here.
I need to fix it before I can rest.
I can’t be okay until this changes.
Blessing says:
This, too, belongs.
Even this is worthy of love.
There is room for this in the wholeness of the circle.
Blessing doesn’t mean approval.
It doesn’t mean passively accepting conditions that are hurting us.
It means presence to what is actually here -
asking to be witnessed, considered and included in the real.
In my last post, I keep forgetting that I am not broken, I told the story of (binge)watching—cringingly—the 2005 version of What Not To Wear and realizing: There is something here that i want. What is it?
I don’t need a new wardrobe or haircut.
There’s something else that’s caught my attention.
Made me envy the women on the screen.
Sitting with these questions - and writing my way through them - opened something for me. I realized:
It’s not a makeover I want.
It’s a blessing.
I wanted to be seen as beautiful - but it was more than that.
On that show - and in our culture - beauty was translating into inclusion.
Inclusion in what? Inclusion in the good.
All of this opens the deeper questions I want to discuss with you today. We begin with this one:
What do I mean when I talk about the good?
I don’t mean saintliness. Or good behavior.
I’m not talking about good girls and boys.
I’m not talking about the good things in life.
And I’m absolutely not talking about heaven—as in:
If you are good, you’ll go to heaven.
If you are bad, you’ll go to hell.
The good is not the opposite of the bad.
In fact, the good has no opposite.
It holds all that is inside of itself—even what we, with our conditioned thinking, might condemn.
Everything is included in the good
—even when it is behaving badly.
(We don’t turn on a loved one when they have a bad day.
We hold them in blessing—even as we set boundaries.)
The good condemns nothing. Exiles nothing.
No one is set outside the door.
Hmmm… the good sounds a lot like... well, God. Not the punitive, judmental god with a temper who watches our every move. The God who is described as love, as kindness, as inclusive.
That said, when I speak of the good, I am not necessarily speaking of God at all.
The good is…
A way of being.
A way of thinking about the world
A way of seeing things
The good is a state of being - that brings us to a place that we remember.
It’s our natural state of unconditioned blessing.
Openheartedness.
Openmindedness.
The good is a field of grace.
The Grace Field
The Grace Field is not a reward for being good.
It’s the fabric of reality itself.
The water we swim in.
The song that sings through our bones—
even when we are caught in the song of the man-made world.
We are not outside, trying to get in.
We are already inside—like the breath in a song.
Like a wave in the water.
As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves—we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting, or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, it also lives the life of water.
We are like a wave.
Individual, when we are “waving”—
and then, capable of sinking into what holds us.
What feeds us.
What makes us.
The wholeness.
The oceanic.
The Grace Field.
We remember that we are already water.
We are already love, flowing through a shape.
That we are already included.
That’s the deeper makeover.
Not a change of clothes—
But a change in how we see.
And when we change how we see, we feel different. And when we feel different, the whole world seems transformed.
We return (even if it’s only for a moment) to the Grace Field—
Where nothing needs to be fixed.
Where everything belongs.
A moment of wholeness.
A flash of inclusion.
A state of unconditional love.
We stand before the mirror, look into our own eyes, and say:
I am included.
I am welcome.
I am good—and I am standing in a world that is good.
And from this place, this state,
all that I look upon is good.
That is the nature of blessing.
And it is so simple.
And so close that we almost can’t believe it.
A Soul Conversation
Yesterday, I told a soul friend (my therapist):
“I am so close to the threshold.
So close to crossing into the world of love forever.
So close to living in blessing every moment.And yet... staying on the other side of that door, full-time, feels weirdly terrifying. Why?”
She said:
“Everyone says that. Because it is terrifying.
We have to leave our ‘small me’ stories behind.
And we need those to justify the compromises we make with our integrity.”
Then she added:
“Don’t try to cross.
Don’t make it a project.
Let it happen organically.
Let it have you.”
No effort.
No struggle.
(Because paradoxically, effort would not be the crossing.
It would be more argument with reality.
More: “I am here, but I wish I was there.”)
The crossing into blessing isn’t a goal.
It’s a shift behind your eyes.
A shift to seeing everything as it actually is (hard, imperfect) and also: shot through with golden threads of love, light, and the presence of God.
That is the world we came from.
That is the world we are still in—
even as we live in the world man has made so difficult.
Which is the challenge and the invitation that we are here to consider together.
We cannot hear the song of the Grace Field
when we are locked inside the song of the culture.
But how can we live in the culture
while remaining aware of the Grace Field?
How can we straddle this seeming divide?
By realization - it’s the same world.
Think of it this way:
The man-made world of struggle and judgment
rests inside the world of love.All that we do—all that we make—is held in the Grace Field.
Even our mistakes.
And all of it—every particle we play with, every choice we make—is blessed.
What’s needed to make the crossing
is nothing more (and nothing less) than faith.
Not faith in a God who will handle everything for us -
Faith in the world itself - the world of Love.
Faith that we will not lose everything we bargained to gain.
And that is a very big deal—because the trappings of the man-made world are also good. We deserve them. And we can have them.
But we’re not sure of that—and so the terror.
Let’s sit with that.
Let’s consider how it is.
Let’s set aside our striving.
Let’s not set a goal to solve this problem.
Let’s be here.
And let ourselves rest.
Held inside the Grace Field.
Now and forever.
A Blessing Practice
Take a deep breath.
Place your hands on your heart—or wherever they naturally land.
Close your eyes and bring to mind a person, a memory, a moment that feels hard to bless.
Let it rise.
Then say aloud or silently:
I bless this.
I do not have to understand it. I do not have to fix it.
I let that go.I bless myself.
I do not have to change.
I do not have to be better, nicer, more loving.
Still, I am good.I include myself in blessing.
I give all of this to Love.Let what needs to fall away, fall.
Let what needs to be remembered, rise.
Let it go.
Nothing else is required.
The Grace Field knows what to do.
Reflect with me
What happened when you let all of yourself come into blessing?
How did it feel in your body?
Imagine you are aware of a song—a new song—singing itself through you.
If you can, sing it out loud. If not, hum. Let it vibrate in your chest, your throat.
Then come to your journal.
What came to you?
What did you hear or feel?
Describe the experience of your song ringing in your body.
Write what comes.
No edits. No polish.
Let it be real.
And when you are ready, come to the comments and share what you saw, what you realized, what you already knew. Share your wisdom. Share your questions. I love hearing from you. We are walking this path together.
xxoo
Amy
I have a sacred ache towards goodness, to seeing it all as good. It feels right and true. In the beginning, God said it was good. Maybe part of my work of blessing today will be to say, "It is good" to whoever and whatever I see. Thanks for writing this.
I thought of a very hard situation of someone else's cruelty and felt comforted by affirming I don't have to understand it; I just have to let it go. A big part of me wants to understand why someone would be that way, but I recognize the distancing that that impulse brings. Still, I pictured myself sharing with this person how I am working on changing my own lack of empathy, trying to develop it by imagining how it would feel if someone was cruel to me. That's still a fixit mentality, I realize. But it's very hard to stifle the impulse to "teach" as a way of wanting to stop this person from causing such suffering.