The Honeymoon
The phase that begins with the descent of grace, with its synchronicities and 'miraculous' realizations, is like falling in love and discovering that your beloved loves you too. It's often called the honeymoon phase of the inner life, and it can last for years. When you're in that honeymoon phase, it can feel as if all your struggles were at an end. Spiritual power runs through you—sometimes so strongly that others catch it. There can be a euphoria that comes from your sense of the presence of grace. For many people this may bring with it a subtle or not-so-subtle feeling of spiritual superiority, a feeling that you're being guided or shown the way, and a slight disdain for people (your girlfriend for instance, or your mother) who haven't yet gotten it. For yogis, this is often the moment when we decide to leave your old life behind and go off to India, or quit your day job and open a yoga studio. Sometimes this is the right decision. Sometimes, it isn't.
The danger of the honeymoon period is over-confidence. In the euphoria of your love affair with transformation, you can overstep boundaries, make the kind of professional mistakes that come from the belief that you can do no wrong, or from blindly following intuitive guidance without practicing discernment.
For this reason, almost inevitably, the Honeymoon of Grace will be followed by some kind of fall. Sometimes this takes the form of dryness, a feeling of being cut off from the flow that you'd experienced.
The Fall
In truth, however, the Fall is simply a sign that integration is needed. Often, our psychological vessel is not quite strong enough to hold the power of our spiritual insight. The energy running through us will then bring into awareness the blocks or psychological weaknesses that we may have not known were there, or may simply have been afraid to look at.
Next week, we'll examine that stage of the transformation process.
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