Raw and Ready

“There are two things we should always be 1. raw and 2. ready. When you are raw, you are always ready and when you are ready you usually realize that you are raw. Waiting for perfection is not an answer, one cannot say “I will be ready when I am perfect” because then you will never be ready, rather one must say “I am raw and I am ready just like this right now, how and who I am.”

(C. JoyBell C.)


Back in Mysore and so grateful to be here. Even with it being my 9th trip I am always filled with enthusiasm to have the opportunity to practice with my teacher. So much appreciation and love arises within me to stand before him and all that this practice and path represents. To also share it with others who understand and are inspired to live more deeply, more consciously, even in the mist of making our own mistakes and follies along the way. It's a part of living. What is important is that we try and put effort forth in the process. 

The first week always feels a bit magical. So maybe I am riding high on that feeling. Every trip has it's own energetic makeup. Some trips have been harder than others and no matter what arises it is always worth it. Growth is always happening. Sometimes there are cycles within cycles. We come full circle to start over again from another vantage point. I always like to have a sense of curiosity even in the repetition in the Ashtanga practice. Bringing new eyes to what I have done before. Everyday is different and no matter how much we try to control it, life is in a constant flow of change. 

This go around I traveled to Mysore from Goa so I didn't have that initial tiredness from travel when I landed. Coming from Goa was rather seamless. I already had my accommodations sorted and priority number one when I arrived was to register at KPJAYI. Still riding high on the incredible experience at Purple Valley I've been in a positive space and have the added gratification to have a month of simply being a student. In reality I am always a student no matter what role that I play but to have time set aside to only be a student and nothing else is rather priceless. 

When I leave Mysore I definitely look forward to being home but the funny thing is it doesn't take much time for the pull of India and the desire to practice at the source takes hold, as I count the days of my return. 

This is the Challange

Somnathpur, outside Mysore, India

“This is the challenge, to let your view get this vast, to let your view get so vast that your identity disappears. Then you realize that there is no other, and there is nothing personal going on. Contrary to the way the ego will view such a realization, it is in reality the birth of true love, a love which is free of all boundaries and fear. To the ego such uncontaminated love is unbearable in its intimacy. When there are no clear separating boundaries and nothing to gain the ego becomes disinterested, angry, or frightened. In a love where there is no other, there is nowhere to hide, no one to control, and nothing to gain. It is the coming together of appearances in the beautiful dance of the Self called love.

To the seeker who is sincere, an experiential glimpse of this possibility is not enough. If you are sincere, you will find it within yourself to go far beyond any glimpse. You will find within your Self the courage to let go of the known and dive deeply into the Unknown heart of a mystery that calls you only to itself.”

(Adyashanti)

The Growth Process

“Quite simply, every growth process unfolds according to a natural rhythm, just like the growing seasons of a tree, or the life cycle of a flower. Think of yourself like one of those plants. If, for example, you considered the fruit the “ultimate” life stage of a plant — and therefore looked upon new shoots and buds and flowers as failures, as signs of incompletion — you’d be mistaken.

All stages are necessary, whole, and perfect within themselves. Just because you don’t see the fruit right now, it does not mean that the plant is doing a bad job.

Or that you are.”

(Laura Rosell)

This Moment

“There is a very simple secret to being happy. Just let go of your demand on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. Your demands keep you chained to the dream state of conditioned mind. The problem is that when there is a demand, you completely miss what is now. Letting go applies to the highest sacred demand, and even to the demand for love. If you demand in some subtle way to be loved, even if you get love, it is never enough. In the next moment, the demand reasserts itself, and you need to be loved again. But as soon as you let go, there is knowing in that instant that there is love here already. The mind is afraid to let go of its demand because the mind thinks that if it lets go, it is not going to get what it wants - as if demanding works. This is not the way things work. Stop chasing peace and stop chasing love, and your heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person, and you are a better person. Stop trying to forgive, and forgiveness happens. Stop and be still.” 

(Adyashanti)

Monday Inspiration: Go All The Way

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.” 

(Charles Bukowski)

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)

Monday Inspiration: Let Life Drive You

Stockholm

“When you get out of the driver’s seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver’s seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.” 

(Adyashanti)

Friday Quote: This Stranger

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our ‘biography,’ our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are? 

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own? 

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?” 

(Sogyal Rinpoche)

Truth

“In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and life upside-down. For one who is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.” 

(Adyashanti)

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) 

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)

Dear Human

"Dear Human,
You’ve got it all wrong.  You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.  That is where you came from and that is where you’ll return.  You came here to learn personal love.  Universal love.  Messy love.   Sweaty love.  Crazy love.  Broken love.  Whole love.  Infused with divinity.  Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of messing up.  Often.  You didn’t come here to be perfect.  You already are.  You came here to be gorgeously human.  Flawed and fabulous.  And then to rise again into remembering.  But unconditional love?  Stop telling that story.  Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives.  It doesn’t require modifiers.  It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.  It only asks that you show up.  And do your best.  That you stay present and feel fully.  That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.  It’s enough.  It’s plenty.” 

(Courtney A. Walsh)

Thank you, Joanie! xo 

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)

Freedom

"Freedom is not necessarily exciting; it’s just free. Very peaceful and quiet, so very quiet. Of course, it is also filled with joy and wonder, but it is not what you imagine. It is much, much less. Many mistake the intoxicating power of otherworldly charisma for enlightenment. More often than not it is simply otherworldly, and not necessarily free or enlightened. In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one’s deepest integrity."

 (Adyashanti)

Sincerity

"To have genuine sincerity is absolutely necessary in the spiritual life. Sincerity encompasses the qualities of honesty, genuineness, and integrity. To be sincere does not mean to be perfect. In fact, the very effort to be perfect is itself insincere, because it is a way of avoiding seeing yourself as you are right now. To be able and willing to see yourself as you are, with all of your imperfections and illusions, requires genuine sincerity and courage. If we are constantly trying to hide from ourselves, we will never be able to awaken from our illusion of self." 

(Adyashanti)

Patience

“Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not a waiting passivity until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.” 

(Henri  Nouwen)

Love in Transformation

“You don’t measure love in time. You measure love in transformation. Sometimes the longest connections yield very little growth, while the briefest of encounters change everything. The heart doesn’t wear a watch - it’s timeless. It doesn’t care how long you know someone. It doesn’t care if you had a 40 year anniversary if there is no juice in the connection. What the heart cares about is resonance. Resonance that opens it, resonance that enlivens it, resonance that calls it home. And when it finds it, the transformation begins…” 

(Jeff Brown)

There is Nothing Wrong

“There is nothing wrong. Sadness is not wrong. Fear is not wrong. Confusion is not wrong. Our pain is not wrong. Resisting our pain is what makes everything seem wrong. And yet here is a deeper truth, for those who are open: even our resistance of pain is not wrong. If that’s what’s happening, it cannot be wrong. It is a valid expression of life in the moment. Beyond ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. This love even embraces resistance. This Now is vast, and forgiving. Yet even ‘resistance’ is just another concept. Another judgement. Another way to make ourselves wrong. “Resistance bad”. “Acceptance good.” That’s what we learn. It’s not that we “resist” our pain. We just never learned how to be with it. How to sit with it. Stay with it. Have a cup of tea with it. See it as a beloved friend, at home in the vastness. Our ignorance is our innocence. We just never learned. Our pain is not wrong. It is an invitation. An ancient teaching. Universal. Free. Life invites us to come closer Falling through imagined layers Into great mystery.” 

(Jeff Foster)