Aloneness and Loneliness

“Isn’t it time  

to turn your heart  

into a temple of fire?” 

- Rumi

There is an aloneness that is not loneliness, and not despair, and western medicine hasn’t got a clue. It is something like a profound closeness with your own being, an intimacy with the quiet passing of things, friendship with the broken and the transient within and without. While you quietly grieve over yesterday’s dreams of tomorrows that never came, you hold today so close in your arms. You are the mother of today.

There is a fragility that is not weakness. An exquisite sensitivity to the sad majesty of this ordinary world, a vulnerable openness that has nothing to do with how much money you have made, how you have succeeded or failed in your quest for perfection, or how beautiful or immune to infection your body is, but something to do with the tenderness with which you are willing to touch the broken parts of the world, the depths of aloneness to which you are willing to plunge.

There is an exquisite melancholy that is not depression, contains no pathology, for it contains no self at all. It is as if the heart is broken open and cannot be closed again, ever. Like everything is made of the finest crystal and could shatter at any moment. The sun could burn up without warning, the breath could seize up, a loved one could pass away quietly in your arms. That tiny bird on the tree over there is made of finely woven thread. The neglected pool of water by the supermarket door has infinite depths but no surface, no surface. The moon takes on the quality of a reflection of a reflection in a dream, and everything is so close. You can touch the horizon, whisper to galaxies.

This melancholy, sometimes it arrives unexpectedly in the middle of the night, when you cannot sleep and the moonlight is casting tender shadows on your forearm, or it comes sometimes as you walk through the forest with your dog (you love how he waddles now that he’s getting old, your little companion) and you remember what it is like to be free, or at least alive; or it comes unexpectedly at the dinner table with friends, with delight at … the salt, yes, delight that the salt could exist at all, that there is a world with salt and food and friends, and the possibility of meeting.

Do not medicate away this melancholy. Go deeper into it. It contains information, important information, and longs to release its healing energies. No, they won’t understand you, they will call you depressed, self-indulgent, mad, but you will smile, for you are like the daffodil, and you never wanted to be understood. Your being is too vast to be understood. You will take this imperfect life over no life at all, you will take this broken world blasted through with gratitude over a perfect world half-touched or half-remembered, and the judgements of others will be a small price to pay for never being able to turn away.

Running naked through the streets, throwing off the last of your clothes, you will laugh as they come to lock you up. You are free! You are free! And this beautiful melancholy will keep you from ever closing your heart!

- Jeff Foster

Friday Quote: Firethoughts

"You don’t think thoughts. You are not the ‘thinker’ of thoughts. You are the wide open space in which thoughts happen. 

Unexpectedly, a thought appears, out of nowhere. And it’s only another thought that would say, ‘I thought that’. And then, another layer: ‘I shouldn’t have thought that’. 

Be what you are: the open sky, the space for thoughts as they explode like fireworks." 

(Jeff Foster)

This Living Teaching

Nonduality is not ‘anti-duality’ – how dualistic that would be. It does not reject or deny the astonishing diversity of creation – it embraces totally those myriad appearances, just as the ocean does not reject its waves (how could it?) but loves them to death so they are no longer waves, so that in their infinite, beautiful, intimate, intricate manifestations, they are none other than itself. 

And so this awakening we speak of is not detached from the world, it is not some arrogant life-denying philosophy, no, it is fully engaged with the world, even if ultimately that ‘world’ is dream and appearance. But who cares, right? For, grounded in the deep knowing of who you really are, then, my friends, then you are free, finally free, to plunge fearlessly into this awake dream, this mysterious, transparent world, free-falling head-first into the dreamy realities of this life, this precious gift of a life – into rich, intimate relationships, into work, art, family, friendship, love, adventure, sacrifice, exploration, into the mysteries of the body, and the mysteries of death itself – until there is no longer any division between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, ‘world’ and ‘absence of world’, ‘person’ and ‘absence of person’, ‘duality’ and ‘nonduality’, even ‘life’ and ‘death’. Until there is only One, and Advaita is a living, breathing, thing, not an abstract philosophy or clever, comforting word-game for the already-comfortable. 

I know no other Advaita but an Advaita inseparable from the living of daily life, from the chopping of wood and the carrying of water. I know no other Advaita but the Advaita that holds my dear father’s trembling hand as he tries to cross an icy patch of road. It is contact. It is being here. It is open. Connected, always connected, forever connected. And ready. The nondual dogmatists retort “who is open? who is ready? whose father? what road? who cares?”, and miss the whole point.

(Jeff Foster) 

Book Recommendation: The Deepest Acceptance

I've been quoting Jeff Foster a lot lately and just wanted to share one of his books as well as his website that has many thought provoking and heart deepening quotes and writings. Check it out if you feel so inclined or inspired. He really brings it down to the basics. Down to what is essential. It doesn't have to come in heavy, over the top language that is hard access. This is simple stuff. Not always easy but nevertheless, simple.

The Deepest Acceptance website

Jeff Foster website


Sitting in Discomfort

The deepest part of realization comes not from trying to become realized – for who would want that, or do it? – but from just sitting with discomfort, sitting with everything you’ve been trying to escape, without expectation, without a goal in mind. 

For years, I would just sit for hours with grief, frustration, anger, fear, just resting in that bubbling, burning, melting pot mess of life, without trying to escape, without hope, until peace was discovered even in the midst of the storm – the peace that I am. 

So, instead of trying to escape discomfort, we let discomfort reveal its secrets. We sit with discomfort, and watch all boundaries between ‘me’ and ‘discomfort’ melt away, until it is no longer ‘me sitting with my discomfort’, and never was. We sit with frustration in the place where it has not yet coagulated into “I am frustrated”. We sit with fear prior to the resurrection of the image “I am a person who is afraid”. 

Yes, yes, don’t “rest in pure awareness”, my friend, rest in the mess of life! Rest in the shit! That’s true rest. Otherwise, the shit is always waiting there in the background, ready to pounce after the satsang love-fest is over, staining your so-called pure awareness. Awareness cannot really be stained, for it is the purity that loves impurity, and so it fearlessly welcomes all. 

You are vast enough to hold all of life, including the mess, for you are life, and this is true meditation. 

(Jeff Foster)

Be Passionately Alive

They used to say, “follow your dreams”, “fulfill your destiny”, “achieve your life’s purpose”, “listen to your heart’s true desire”, “follow your passion”, and I never knew what the hell they meant. 

So I compromised and settled for less than what was possible and worked in jobs where I felt half-alive and so, so far from the wonder of existence. Life and creativity and adventure and passion wanted to burst out of me, but I had no idea how to facilitate or release them, and besides, I was too terrified to unleash these energies lest they disrupt the status quo too much… or destroyed me completely. 

I said to myself, “a life of adventure is not possible for little old me. I’m too introverted, too afraid, too weak, too ugly, not intelligent enough, not brave enough…” 

I comforted myself with spiritual concepts like ‘there is no choice’, ‘all is One’, and ‘everything is predestined’ and lived each day waiting for the evenings, the ‘remains of the day’, when I could breathe again and be authentically myself for a few brief moments. 

What was my destiny? What did my heart really want? What was my life’s purpose? Where was my passion? I didn’t know where to begin. Everyone else seemed to have answers, and I had none. What was wrong with me? 

I felt numb and bored in my jobs, but at least I felt safe. I was hiding from possibility but at least money was coming in. I ‘fit in’, and I had a solid story about myself that I could regurgitate in polite conversation. But there was no risk in it. I was half dead, and only in my twenties. I often thought of suicide. At least then I’d feel alive, if only for a few moments. 

What to do with this one precious, fleeting gift of life? That is the question. To be, or not to be, or to be but only half-heatedly, living out of the ‘shoulds’ of others?And the answer is simple, because life is short. Do whatever makes you feel passionately alive. Find a way – however much you have to struggle at first – of making a living from truly living. Honor your unique talents and abilities. Do what moves you and connects you to the deepest truth of yourself. Trust prosperity and passion over profit and comfort and the approval of others, because all the approval in the world is empty if it is for something your heart was never really in. 

Breaking out of the known can be terrifying, and you may lose what you thought was yours, and your trusted images of yourself may melt in the fire of newness, and you may face fear and trembling, uncertainty and doubt, rejection and even ridicule. You may have to learn the hard way to open yourself up to more pain and life may become more uncomfortable than ever… that is, until you fall in love with the deep comfort of insecurity, and the security of doing what makes life worth living. 

You will be swimming in the unknown, but you will be vast and alive. You will feel life running through your veins once again – as it did when you were young and you hadn’t yet settled for a life of compromise and clock watching and justifications for your quiet desperation – and you will channel this aliveness back into creation, and the cycle of prosperity will keep flowing, and yes, you may even make a good living, better than expected. 

But however much money you make, or don’t make, you will be making a unique contribution to the world, doing something that nobody else can do, at least not in the same way as you, creating something original and fresh, giving something back to life, honoring your total uniqueness and your own talents, and so you won’t feel second hand, a slave to others, a piece of wood, and a deep trust of life may replace your fears of failure and poverty, and your cynicism and jealousy of others may die completely. 

Sometimes you will doubt what you are doing, and you may romanticize the old days when things were easier and more predictable, but then you will suddenly remember that the old way was false and never worked for you and that’s why everything had to change. 

Yes, it’s a risk to donate your life to what you love and what moves you and brings you joy, but I can only speak from experience and say that it’s absolutely worth it, because having a comfortable and predictable life pales in comparison to feeling deeply, passionately alive and meeting each new day with fresh eyes and an open heart. 

If, many years ago, someone had told me that one day I’d be traveling the world, holding meetings and retreats, speaking my intimate truth in front of people I’d never met before, having published several books which had been translated into several languages, I would have laughed out loud – perhaps in disbelief, or perhaps out of the fear of the overwhelming vastness of life’s possibilities. 

Honor this life that is trying to express itself in and as and through you. You are not nearly as limited as you may have been led to believe by those who have not yet come alive. 

(Jeff Foster)

You Are Not Broken

Friend, from the very beginning, you were not broken. 

You were not born into sin. You were not destined for the spiritual garbage heap. There was never anything fundamentally missing from your life. 

You just thought that there was. Others tried to convince you that you were not good enough, because they too felt not good enough. In your innocence, and with no evidence to the contrary, you believed them. So you spent all those years trying to fix, purify and perfect yourself. You sought power, wealth, fame and even enlightenment to prove your worth as a ‘me’. You compared yourself to other versions of ‘me’, and always felt inferior or superior, and it all became so exhausting, trying to reach those unreachable goals, trying to live up to some image that you didn’t even fully believe in anyway, and you longed for the deep rest of yourself.  

But you were always perfect, you see, from the very beginning. Perfect in your total imperfection. Your imperfections, your quirks, your flaws, your weirdnesses, your unique and irreplaceable flavours, were what made you so loveable, so human, so real, so relatable. Even in your imperfection, you were always a perfect expression of life, a beloved child of the universe, a complete work of art, unique in all the world and deserving of all the riches of life.  

It was never about being a perfect ‘me’. It was always about being perfectly Here, perfectly yourself, in all your divine strangeness.  

“Forget your perfect offering”, Leonard Cohen sings. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” 

(Jeff Foster)

Enlightenment Is Not A Destination

There is no fixed path to enlightenment. 

Enlightenment is not a goal, the resting place at the end of a long journey -that’s the mind’s version of enlightenment. 

Enlightenment is the lighting up of where you are right now.   

This is very good news. It means that nobody is the authority on your path – no teacher, no guru, no religious leader. It means that nobody can tell you the right ‘way’ for you. It means that you cannot go wrong, even if you think you’ve gone wrong. It means that nothing that happens can ever lead you off the path, for the path is whatever happens, without exception. Nothing can take you away from the miracle of life, or bring you closer to it for that matter, since the miracle is all around, already shining brightly, as every thought, sensation, image, feeling, smell, sound, and as the deeper miracle of the one who is aware of all of this.  

Be the awareness, shining on the moment, whatever its contents. Doubt, fear, sadness, anger, intense confusion – maybe, just maybe, these are neither enemies nor blocks to enlightenment, but expressions of a deeper intelligence, the same incomprehensibly vast and awake intelligence that gives birth to stars and moves the ocean tides and sends each and every living thing off on its paradoxical journey towards its own being.  

Come out of the story of time and space and progress towards a future goal, and trust a sacred moment. Take any moment. Any moment at all. This moment. For any moment is the access point.   

There are never any blocks – only access points. 

You are not some separate entity on a long journey towards a future completion.   

You are pure poetry. 

(Jeff Foster)

Invitation to Rest Deeply

 

Here’s some very good news. 

Right here, right now, in this moment, you don’t have to ‘figure out’ the rest of your life, no matter what anyone says. 

You don’t need all the answers. They will come, in time, or not, or perhaps the unnecessary questions will fall away. 

There is no rush. Life is not in a hurry. Be like the seasons. Winter is not trying to become summer. Spring does not rush towards autumn. The grass grows at its own pace. 

The choices that will be made will be made, and you’ve no choice about that. The decisions that will happen will happen, events will unfold, but right now perhaps you don’t need to know the solutions or the outcomes or how best to proceed. Perhaps not knowing is a welcome guest at life’s banquet. Perhaps openness to possibility is a beloved friend. Perhaps even confusion can come to rest here. 

And so, instead of trying to ‘fix’ our lives, instead of trying to neatly resolve the unresolveable and quickly complete the epic story of a fictitious ‘me’, we simply relax into utter not knowing, unravelling in the warm embrace of mystery, sinking deeply into the moment, savoring it fully, in all its uniqueness and wonder. 

And then, perhaps without any effort, without any struggle or stress, without ‘you’ being involved at all, the true answers will emerge in their own sweet time. 

(Jeff Foster)