Ep 454: The Gift of Grace

In the School of Sacred Embodiment, we believe that the gift of grace is not only something we can muster but also, in its highest form, a divine force. Today, we explore grace as an unstoppable channel that, once accepted, will come through with every opportunity it can to provide closure, release, and healing wherever needed.

Throughout the episode, you will hear personal anecdotes and beautiful stories that demonstrate the active presence of grace in daily routines, from encountering Earth Angels to experiencing moments of profound healing. We also discuss various practices for cultivating grace, such as movement, being with nature, and embodying The Divine Mother archetype. If you have your own stories of being touched by grace, we invite you to share your experiences with us at hello@untameyourself.com.

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Stitcher

In episode 454 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

(5:00) What is the gift of grace?
(7:05) Two stories of Earth Angel encounters
(12:35) Embodying forgiveness and grace to let go of past traumas and harmful habits
(15:11) A real example of how grace can release a lifelong pattern of avoidance
(19:03) How grace cultivates, weaves, and heals throughout our lives
(23:16) The Divine Mother archetype in the context of the Wild Soul Archetypes
(26:46) A prayer for allowing The Divine Mother’s energy to be a channel for infinite and compassionate grace

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Work with me:

NEW! The Body Love + Reverence Course is available

Free resources:

Stay in touch:

Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

Grace is both something that we can muster as humans – we can give ourselves grace, we can extend grace to others – but in its highest form, grace is a divine force.

Grace is often the last little bit of oomph we need to see or heal or embrace a thing for real.

With grace, we’ll find a way. Grace will find a channel. Grace will find whatever opportunity is willing to be the thing that allows it to come through and touch what it is needing or wanting to touch.

Anything that helps you get out of your head and into your body, that helps create more room in your system for your soul to take up more space in your life is going to help you cultivate more grace in your life.

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 454 “The Gift of Grace“:

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:00

Grace opens doors grace cracks windows. Grace is the subtle hand guiding you throughout your life that whispers yes and no and I know it hurts, but you’re gonna get through this. And yes, it’s okay to have joy and delight.

Elizabeth DiAlto 00:21

Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number 454 of the Embodied podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth DiAlto. And today we’re talking about the gift of grace. Now, this past weekend, when I recorded the sermon, I was still a little bit under the weather. So I actually recorded an extended sermon, because those of you who come to our Wild Soul Sunday services know, we usually have a little sermon, we do a movement practice together. And I do not have the energy for the movement practice this past weekend. So I gave a little more on the sermon. So there’s not really much to add to today’s episode. By way of an opening or an intro, though, I really would love to invite you all. After you listen to this exploration of the gift of grace, and specifically how we explore this through The Divine Mother archetype. I would love to know how is grace working in your life lately. I love hearing people’s stories about grace. So if you want to email us at Hello at untamed yourself.com, you could just put grace in the subject line. share all your great stories with us, we’re not going to do anything with them, other than read them and be joyful, that grace is such an ever present ever pervading force in all of our lives. If only we will just pay attention for it. It’s always, always, always, always, always there. And as well, before we dive into the sermon today, I am so excited to announce if you’re listening to this today in real time, it is Monday, February 12. And two days from today, on Valentine’s Day 2020. For my first work of fiction, which is called Dark healing order of secret pieces, book one is available. It’s done. It’s on Amazon, you can get it on Kindle, you can order a print copy, and I’m super excited about this. I didn’t even start writing the damn book until November. And so to have a three month turnaround on my first little short work of fiction was filled. It was such a journey and such an adventure. I’ll record a podcast about that at some point, but I’m just so excited to start this new creative endeavor. I created this world of secret priestesses. I am obsessed with them. Basically, I wrote a world that I want to dive face first into and live in myself. So I hope you will all check it out. My pen name for the books is Marisol X Divina. Check that out. If you’re a fiction reader, if you love magical realism, women’s fiction, little bit of humor in there a little bit of erotica in there and not a lot. It’s not like entirely erotica, which originally when I set out to write the book, I thought it would be much more of that. But you know, being a mistake, that’s what happens things. Things evolve, and they turn out to be whatever they’re going to be. Alright everybody, hope you enjoy today’s episode about grace.

Elizabeth DiAlto 03:23

We are looking at the gift of grace. And we are looking at the gift of grace through the lens of The Divine Mother, which is another wild so archetype here, the wild, The Divine Mother is a loving archetype. For those of you who have been tuning in for all of these, the wild soul archetypes are broken up into the fierce ones, the mystical ones and the loving ones. And so the fierce ones are the sovereign Queen and the warrior goddess. The mystical ones are the medicine woman and the sacred Creatress and then the loving one to the erotic priestess and The Divine Mother. So something when I sat down to make my notes for today’s sermon, I’m noticing that the sermons unsurprisingly, are starting to build on and we’ve been with each other, which is cool. That’s also kind of how everything ultimately ends up working in the School of sacred embodiment. And now you can re listen on the podcast for older sermons if you want to, because we’ve started posting those on the podcasts in January. So you can also if you want to access all of them since way back in October, you can check out our new reweave membership. And that’s where all my teaching archives live from now on which is great and reweave has been available via an interest list at untie yourself.com forward slash interest stash reweave for the last month or so, but if you’re listening here in real time, here for the Sunday service on February 4 or later, when this podcast is airing, which will be February 12. I believe reweave should be live

Elizabeth DiAlto 04:59

So in our sermon about renewal, which was the sermon I did on New Year’s Eve, I mentioned that the hand of grace can help to renew things that need it. And we’ll revisit that a little bit later today. But anything really, that requires deep emotional or deep spiritual maturity, will also require grace. And in some cases, very, very large quantities of it. Depending on where you’re at with that particular thing, in your journey, how deeply it has its hooks in you, or you know, whatever the surrounding circumstances of it, right. Grace is both something that we can muster. As humans, we can give ourselves grace, we can extend grace to others. But in its highest form, grace is a divine force. And Grace opens doors, Grace cracks, windows, grace is the subtle hand guiding you throughout your life that whispers yes and no, and I know it hurts, but you’re gonna get through this. And yes, it’s okay to have joy and delight. And no, this is not the end of the world. It’s the Hand of The Divine Mother. It is compassion filled, it is unconditionally loving, we can call upon it, we can direct it, we can be the net, we can request to be flooded with it, we could send it when we know people could use some grace, we can pray on behalf of people who maybe aren’t praying for themselves, be concerned about grace. Grace is power. In our healing work, it’s what helps us really see and feel and face the things that we don’t want to the things that we resist or fear the most. Grace is the grace of God, the grace of the Divine, the grace of the Great Mother, the grace of whatever it is that you believe in and pray to miraculous grace, radiant grace, grace, and all. You can pair it with anything, and it only becomes more beautiful, and more phenomenal.

Elizabeth DiAlto 07:05

So I wanted to tell some stories of grace today. And the first thing I wrote down was Earth Angels. And I have two pretty cool stories about this. So back in at the end of 2012, when I was moving out to New York City, I had it was December 2012. It was a couple months after Hurricane Sandy. And I was getting ready to move to California. And I left Unfortunately, my building at the time, we didn’t even have our own dumpster, you just had to like leave your trash by the curb. And so one of the things I left it at the curb, which was which I would never do this again. But at the time, it just wasn’t thinking about it. I left like a stack of journals. I didn’t even put them in like a bin or a bag. It just left a stack of journals. And then months later, I had been living in California maybe for like three or four months. And I get a phone call, right? Because you know a lot of journals will have those lines in the front if lost contact. And I always felt that it. So I get a phone call this like mysterious voicemail. I didn’t answer it because I didn’t recognize the number. So I get this mysterious voicemail. And it’s a man’s voice. And it’s saying, Hi, I found your journals. And I just wanted to see if you wanted them returned to you. And it just had this feeling of this other worldly kind of interesting feeling. And I’m like found my journals. Someone must have picked up my journals at the curb. So I called the number and I said, Hey, what I didn’t want to do because you know, we live in a we live in a weird world, right? Where people are people scam folks, people try to manipulate people. And I remember thinking and also I’m a New Yorker, so my brain works this way. I’m like, is this guy going to try to get money out of me for my journals is he like, reading my secrets?

Elizabeth DiAlto 08:51

And there was nothing of the sort. He said, I found them on a bus stop on the Lower East Side. And I was like, what? How first of all did my journals get from my curb and the Financial District to a bus stop on the Lower East Side. But they did. And this man supposedly had my journals. And what I was wanting to do was act like it was no big deal that he had my journals and there was nothing of significance in my journals again, in case he was going to try to like make me give them money or something. So I was like, No, it’s cool. Like I threw those out. I threw those off for a reason I’m done with them. There’s nothing in those journals that I need anymore. And he said, Okay, well, I don’t remember the exact words he used anymore. But it was something like blessings on your journey forward. And it was just such an interesting experience. Because I really could feel it. So I knew I’m like this was an earth angel conversation. That was literally God showing up in some way to be like, Hey, are you really ready to move forward and let go of the past? And I loved that and that that was Grace. And I got to literally say because how often you know we do our rituals, we do our ceremonies, we say things like But how often do we get a little reverb a little something coming right back to us to be like, Hey, are you sure? And you get to be like, yeah, please go ahead, throw those out Birnam keep them if you want to whatever you want with them. But I’m done. It was very declarative statement and invitation for me to be able to do that. So that was my one Earth Angel story. I’ve had a lot of these. But that one, I’ll never forget that one because even like the cells of my body, the way I felt the sound of that person’s voice, I just, I knew I was talking to an Earth Angel.

Elizabeth DiAlto 10:31

And then the other one I want to tell you, it’s just a couple of weeks ago, some of you know that I have started my Can we call it Twilight, I’m only 40 years old, my twilight career as a fiction author. And my first book, which is called Dark healing is coming out February 14. And it’s available for pre order on Amazon. And there’ll be a paperback version too. It’s a little novella. It’s about 100 pages or so. So I was in Whole Foods. This is maybe two weeks ago now. And I walk past the lady. And she’s kind of looking at me funny. And I, you know, I take a second look to see, do I recognize her? Do I not recognize her? And I didn’t recognize her. So I kept walking and she didn’t say anything. But then I circled back and I passed her again. And she said excuse me. She said, You just You look so familiar to me. This was in the last like couple of days that I was wrapping up the manuscript to send it to like final revisions to the editor. And she said, Do you work at a bookstore? I said, No, I don’t work at a bookstore. I said, I love bookstores, though. She’s like, I just I feel like I’ve seen you at a bookstore before. I said, I don’t know, I hosted a book launch party for a friend a couple years ago, maybe? And she said, No, you just look like your face should be associated with books.

Elizabeth DiAlto 11:49

I was like, wow, well, thank you so much. It just felt like another one of those little moments of the divine being like, you’re on the right path, you’re doing the right thing. He keep going. And I’m sure some of you have your own stories of when some stranger was like tapped on the shoulder and selected by God to be just the communicator, the vessel that day, for the exact grace, the exact message you needed, you know, whatever it was, you know, sometimes when it’s people are in the right place at the right time, to give you directions or something like that, right. So those are my earth angel stories that I wanted to share related to grace.

Elizabeth DiAlto 12:34

Grace, is often the last little bit of oomph we need to see or heal or embrace a thing for real. And we see this with forgiveness, which is so hard for people. We can do all our forgiveness practices, all our forgiveness work. Forgiveness is something that happens in layers over time. I talk about forgiveness all the time for over a decade. Now. It’s something that is energy work, right? We’re taking our energy back from something that has happened in the past. So we’re not dragging the past, into our present and our future. It’s not justifying, it’s not saying that horrible things that have happened, we’re okay. But it’s just saying that how I’m engaging with this, I would like to change how I’m engaging with it. Because the way I’m allowing it to use my energy isn’t working for me, right. So we do our forgiveness work, to call our power back to call our energy back, to reorient ourselves around something that has already happened that we can’t change. But often, it’s that last little bit of forgiveness, when we truly for real at the roots are able to let something go, that requires grace, that requires the will of the Divine, not the will of us. Because we can only do so much with our own will and our own will is also a beautiful, miraculous force. And it’s very strong, but we need that miraculous divine force of grace sometimes to just get to. And some of you I bet have experienced this where you just held on to something for so long, until at some point you were just ready and you let it go. And maybe you didn’t even notice you let it go. Until at some point you went to pick it back up or get back into your, you know, habitual way of thinking about or talking about it and it just wasn’t there anymore. And you knew that Grace had done its job. Or maybe you weren’t thinking about grace in that way yet, but from now on, after listening this sermon, you’ll be like, Oh, Grace came in and did its job. It took the last little bit of deep cleaning, right? For those of us that are fortunate enough here and there are on a regular basis to hire people to help clean our homes. It is like the deep cleaning right? I personally don’t usually deep cleaning my house. I’m good for the like, normal clean but when it’s the deep clean I need to call like a specialist to come do that get up in the corners, nooks and crannies like really get up in everything. I’m so that’s what grace is by grace is the specialist getting up in the places and spaces that you might not have worst ways of grace that I want to share with you some witnessing

Elizabeth DiAlto 15:11

this past week, I was wrapping up our secret embodiment specialist training class of 2023. And I got to witness and I got to facilitate one of our graduates in an experience of releasing a lifelong pattern of avoidance. And it was cool, because I had been observing this and this person for a while, you know, we were doing an exercise, I don’t need to get into the details. Because I want to respect her privacy. And, and there was Grace, there was Grace was just in the room with her. Because she was ready, she was just so ready to be free of this thing and to move on to a different place in her life without this thing having such a hold on her. And again, I’m sure some of you listening can relate to those moments, when you’ve been chipping away at something, when you know, it’s there. When you’ve been doing your healing work, you’ve been, you know, circling, I like to call like that spiral staircase, right? Where sometimes you’ve been to in your healing work. And these things keep boomeranging back, right, they keep you’re like, I thought I healed that already. And then there it is, again, and just a different way in a different form. And that that’s always just so you could look at it from a different angle. And you could go a bit deeper, and you can get up in there a bit more thoroughly, right. And so Grace was present there. And I think about the year before, and the training, were one of our students sat down to teach her final exam, or class. And there was just something that I saw how she wasn’t really sitting fully in her power. She was trying to kind of hide behind one of her own, like habitual hiding in plain sight kind of things. And I was like, hey, stop doing that thing, right. And it was, as a facilitator, and any of you who teach or do healing work or anything like that, as well who help others with anything, sometimes you feel the grace moving through you sometimes you know, when you get to be like the Earth Angel, where you get to say the thing or the deliver the message, where god or goddess or whomever is using your mouth and your lips and your words, to touch someone in the exact way that they needed to be touched by grace on that particular day. And so I got to look at this person and be like, hey, stop doing them. You don’t need to do that anymore. And she sat up straight. And she spoke clearly. And she was in her full power. And it was the freaking coolest thing to see. So these are just some examples, right of how Grace wants to come through grace, we’ll find a way grace will find a channel, Grace will find whatever opportunity is willing to be the thing that allows it to come through and touch what it is needing or wanting to touch. And as I was writing about those things, I was thinking about my untamed self healing weekends, that I used to run from 2015 to 2017. And so the route work that I’m offering now, which is untamed, yourself.com, forward slash route dash work, if you’re interested in seeing what that new one on one offering is, was partially forged in those weekends. And I see at least one person here who I know, attended one of those weekends back in the day, but we would just sit and people would share. And I would just see the patterns, almost like lifting up out of the person like a constellation around them connecting dots and be able to just like, ask a question or point to a thing or offer a practice or whatever. And we were able to clear out some incredible stuff in just two and a half days in those weekends. And that is I was thinking about that I was thinking about. And somehow I don’t know that I ever made this connection before.

Elizabeth DiAlto 19:03

But all of this and this is also a form of grace truly began for me. When I say the route work I’m offering now it was partially forged and those weekends, where the really was seated was 24. Reagan years ago, more than that, like 22 years ago, 2002 2003 when I was still in my muggle life, right. I was recruiting, training and managing a team of sales reps. And every week we’d sit down for PCs, personal consultations, where I’d have to sit down with the reps and pinpoint the root of any problems that they were having, getting leads or making sales. And that’s where I first started to use that gift of seeing like the patterns of things and being able to pull things apart. And the grace in that was that I went, Hey, this chick is going to be doing all kinds of things two decades from now. And we really need her to start practicing it immediately. And it gave me a way to start working on that. With that, through that, with that gift, long before I was ready to apply it in the way that ultimately it would be applied in my real career body of work here. And again, whenever I tell stories like this, in a sermon, or on the podcast, or if I’m teaching in the school, sacred embodiment, or workshop, whatever it is, it’s so that you might be able to recognize yourself, or see a thread in something I’ve shared, that could be something you tug on for your own self, in your own life, in your own context. So all these ways that grace wants to be woven through and throughout our lives, is just, it fills me with awe more than a lot of things to to come back to the untamed yourself weekends. This is one of the things I was thinking about.

Elizabeth DiAlto 21:06

People would sometimes come to these weekends with lifelong baggage things they were dying to let go of see or do differently. And in two and a half days, they could and in some cases, it was that simple. They would literally leave like, like, like you’ve heard the phrase like turn over a new leaf, some people had to leave with a plan for how to integrate and move forward. And for everyone things, things would always continue to integrate afterwards. But either way, Grace was always present in the acceptance of their healing. And I want to pause on that for a moment. Because when we heal, we have to accept that we’ve healed, people get very comfortable in their unhealed patterns and behaviors, because they’re familiar with things that are familiar things that are known to us feel comfortable, even when they’re really bad for us, are really unhealthy for us, or really unsustainable for us. And Grace is always present in the moments of surrender to moments of release, in our moments of being receptive and trusting and allowing that what’s new is here and ready to come through. And what’s old is can die and stay in the past where it belongs. So how do we cultivate more grace filled lives as humans, who want to be able to offer grace to ourselves and each other, and as people who want to be open and receptive to divine grace to the divine force of grace in our lives. And there are many, many ways in our world at the School of sacred embodiment. Of course, the one that I’ve seen work amazingly, over the years are wild. So movement practices, which those of you who are here live, have gotten to experience during our Sunday services. And so you know, how sometimes you show up with something that you didn’t even know was going on with you. And then by the end, you feel completely different, right, or just marginally different enough for something to have shifted for you, which is a beautiful thing. Anything that helps you get out of your head and into your body, that helps create more room in your system for your soul, to take up more space in your life is going to help you cultivate more grace in your life as well.

Elizabeth DiAlto 23:16

Another one of my favorite forms of grace for all the years that I’ve been teaching rod, some movement practices online. And I know some of you can relate to this because you’ve had this happen, or the way animals come to be near you on your mat while you’re practicing. Animals can see and sense grace and peace. They come closer when things feel safer, right? That’s why you’re a magnet for your pets when you practice wild soul movement. Or sometimes, the hand of grace moves through your animals and they come to comfort you, which is so beautiful, right? Like if you’ve ever been sick or if you’ve ever been grieving, if you’re ever having a release during a wild soul movement practice, sometimes your animals might come, they might sit on you bring their energy. But the way I really want to talk about today with Grace is working with The Divine Mother archetype. I cannot emphasize enough how archetypes can be so valuable to work with, because they illuminate for us our own unique textures and frequencies of embodying and expressing what they represent. They can help us call upon parts of ourselves both familiar and unfamiliar. And because in a sense, they allow us to depersonalized the expression of the energy, we can often bypass our insecurities, our hang ups or typical patterns by calling on an archetypal energy within us. So for example, someone who’s typically shy could call upon the warrior goddess when they need some fierceness. They might not see themselves as fierce, but they could see the warrior goddesses fierceness and acknowledge that they have a warrior goddess within them. This is something I love about The Divine Mother. As a woman who isn’t choosing to birth children in this lifetime, but who is a devotee of The Divine Mother, I get to access my mothering energy, often through The Divine Mother archetype. and I apply it in all kinds of ways that allow me to be mothering and allow me to mother without needing to have children. So archetypes really make it possible for us to embrace and embody and express all of our multifaceted parts, perhaps even see and understand aspects of ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise. So let me read you The Divine Mother description here. I let this just wash you over. So if you want to take a breath, feel your feet on the ground you route in your seats. Let your heart be open and receptive. And just notice which part or parts of this description really stand out to you. The Divine Mother is the mother of all soothing our hearts, easing our suffering, and reminding us that we’re inherently worthy of love, care and nourishment. She helps you release scarcity and fear while replenishing your faith in peace, inner wisdom and abundance. She is Generosity without sacrifice. And when I say sacrifice here, I mean self sacrifice. She connects you to the purest love and strength so that you can heal from every form of over functioning and overextending. She is the healing medicine helping you to release negative self talk perfectionism, people pleasing and low self esteem. The kind of devoted mother we all need. She is the embodiment of compassion, gentleness, and unconditional love. She is Grace personified, helping you to receive blessings and reciprocate as your heart desires, and creative and energetic capacity allows through her, we remember to honor the earth and all of its inhabitants, while respecting nature. As a wise teacher.

Elizabeth DiAlto 26:46

There’s so many ways to commune with The Divine Mother as an archetype from every goddess and deity that you could think of that resonates for you, or maybe in your ancestral lineage, to Mother Nature, to the elements. Earth water, the moon trees, flowers, animals. So with that, here’s The Divine Mother prayer. To my mother, Goddess, use me move me and make me a channel for infinite and compassionate grace. Please help me to remember every day that I am a beloved child of The Divine Mother. And that energy runs through me, as me, for me and with me, every single day. I am more nourished and supported by you than I could possibly imagine. And via the potent, loving, generous, gentle and compassionate energy of my own inner divine mother helped me to feel that to bathe in its stream, to know I am so loved and so held. And that anything that feels hard or scary or even impossible, can be dissolved in the love of The Divine Mother in a moment. Connect me to that benevolent force within me, helped me to make decisions through this lens as often as possible. But especially when I’m angry or afraid. Oh, it is good to feel this love and support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Amen. A man. All right, everyone. Thank you so, so much for listening to the sermon today about the gift of grace, and The Divine Mother archetype. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, if you want to email us at Hello at untamed yourself.com and share your stories about grace with us, we would absolutely be elated to read them. These types of things are not only fun to share, but as we share and as we witness each other and the magnificent workings of grace in our lives. Of course we amplify it. Of course we say yes to it, of course we show our gratitude and appreciation and invite so much more of it in. So go ahead and do that if you’re interested. And as always anything else we ever mentioned on the show. The simplest place to go look for it is at untamed self.com forward slash links. go to that link. If there’s anything I mentioned that you want to check out, including the dark healing novella, and we’ll be back next week.