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)