Today’s contemplation question is this: Is there a fast track to grace, to God, or to happiness?  Is there really a direct route or method that can alleviate human suffering, madness and war?

Most of us are used to working hard for what we need. For example, we work hard for 40 or 50 years and then we retire. Jesus and other miracle workers taught us that our faith could set us free, and that we too could walk on water, but we doubted and continued to suffer and struggle.

Now, I have to say that I understand this, but only to a point.  I have mixed feelings. I am not a big fan of no pain no gain types of healing modalities.  I see people beat their bodies up in boot camp styles of exercise or yoga, or hot yoga, and I wonder why we do that.  On the other hand, we are a society that wants the quick fix, to pop a pill, get some surgery, or have a couple shots of tequila, end our pain or find something remotely resembling happiness quickly. 

The key is to choose healthy paths to peace. Author Eckhart Tolle says that presence is the cessation of thinking without loss of consciousness.  Many of the quick fixes we choose, whether it be food, or alcohol, or drugs, may finally stop the mind chatter, but at a loss of consciousness. We temporarily stop the pain, but we lose consciousness and therefore presence.

So I guess what I am saying is this.  On the one hand, while I am still not a big fan of no pain no gain strategies, these is clearly a place for stretching the comfort zone, facing our demons, perhaps getting therapy or attending a support group, or traveling or taking a new class. We need to do something different to shake up the old patterns and energies if we wish to heal and awaken.

But I now see that, with the changing energies and paradigm on Earth, healing and awakening are actually getting easier, very much within our reach.. There may indeed be quick fixes, if we see with eyes from beyond this world. We still need to feel fully, but there are now what I would call “fast tracks” to awakening which were certainly possible in the past, since our nature has always been to move towards awakening.  But the energy was simply not conducive for these fast tracks.  Now it is.

Now again, to balance this, we can ask, “What’s the hurry to awaken?” We are moving into a time of resurgent feminine divine energy, with an invitation to follow the Tao, not force anything.  So in truth, we can let go of striving and forcing, and trust and allow the changes that are happening regardless.

Still, if the Divine is offering us shift, healing and awakening on a silver platter, it takes little force and struggle to just say, “Yes!” We now have EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and countless other techniques for releasing trauma and accelerating our healing.  And if you really want to awaken, there are so many enlightened master teachers on the planet right now, such as Ammachi and Mother Meera (Amma coming to our area in May).  But in my opinion and experience, the most profound new tool for awakening is the Oneness Blessing, offered by yet other great teachers from India’s Oneness University:  a married couple named Amma and Bhagavan.

Many of you have heard me talk about the Oneness Blessing–and its variation–before, and I do not have enough time in this short commentary to review it here.  But just consider that this is a very special, very rare moment on Earth right now, an opening if you will, the peak of a new paradigm shift and we are being offered amazing new tools for transformation, if we are simply willing to suspend our old beliefs and limits and consider that we are truly miracle workers co-creating with the Divine a whole new Earth.  Just go to your heart, with pure intent, and ask that you be guided to one of these fast tracks, and pay attention to what comes.