by Jeff Foster
A PASSIONATE PARADOX
The essential understanding at the heart of all the world’s religious and spiritual traditions: We are all absolutely, radically One, and we are all totally unique expressions of that One.
In our essence we are all the same ocean – consciousness itself – but each of us is a totally unique and never-to-be-repeated wave of that ocean, an original expression of this unspeakable life force.
We are individuals but indivisible, we are one but we are not the same, and to fall too deeply into either polarity of that universal balance leads to suffering, either in the form of depression and neurosis (getting bogged down in our personal story with all its fears, and exhausting ourselves with our never-ending quest to improve and perfect and save ourselves in the future) or, on the other side, in the form of spiritual bypassing and premature transcendence (detaching from the body, repressing or even denying our humanness, losing our humour and humility, pretending to be ‘above’ mortal concerns, floating away into blissfully painful ungrounded transcendent states and even psychosis, and losing our lifeblood, that essential love and compassion for ourselves and all humanity).
To live passionately with the paradox of the absolute and the relative, of nothing and everything, of personal and impersonal, of being the ocean and, at exactly the same time, being a unique and never-to-be-repeated wave of that ocean, to see the mystery and even the joke and the joy in this paradox, to dance with it without trying to ‘solve’ it or come to mental conclusions about it, is the beating heart of this creative adventure that we call life.
The Absolute is not absolute, it relativises itself absolutely, and that is love.
DREAMS
To dream, yes, to dream! And yet, to hold those dreams in a sweet, feather-light embrace, knowing they are loved even when they cannot sustain themselves, even when they crumble and turn to dust.
To dream, yes, to dream! But to recognise yourself as the silent, restful background of dreams and their failure, to know yourself as the awakeness that loves to dream even though it is always awake.
So dream, hope, change and seek change, fight for those who do not have a voice! And yet know that you are Home, always, and that even in the midst of the rubble of dashed hopes and plans and failed dreams, in the lostness you have always feared, in the absence of a future, I will call your name, I will find you in the darkness, I will take your hand, I will show you a love the likes of which you never could have dreamed.
Friend, you are doing better than you could ever imagine.
MOVING, UNMOVING
The sun rises and sets in the sky that it never calls ‘sky’. What never changes?
The universe expands and contracts and expands again. What never changes?
Organisms are born and soon pass away into deep rest. What never changes?
The breath goes in and out, in and out. What never changes?
Seasons transform in the blink of an eye. What never changes?
You taste it all: Laughter and tears, bliss and boredom, the slings and arrows of existence. What never changes?
What never changes is the constancy of change. Change is absolutely trustworthy!
And in the midst of inevitable change, what never changes? That which recognises change as change. That which sees change and says ‘change’. That which sees change doesn’t change with change, otherwise there could be no recognition of change. The recognition, because of the contrast, is an expression of infinite intelligence.
You are present, changeless and unmoving, ageless, never changing with change but standing in fascination and awe and wonder at the ever-changing display of life itself. You naturally embrace change but never yourself change. This is why, deep down, you have always felt like you haven’t aged, even though your body has aged. Change is never your enemy but your most loyal ally and partner. It is the reason manifestation can be experienced at all.
Thoughts, sensations, feelings. Galaxies moving in the morning darkness, planets whirling around their familiar orbits, the birds chirping spontaneous songs of joy in springtime, your grandfather’s ashes scattered by the river in which he splashed gleefully as a child, never knowing what was to come. All of this spilled out of your ancient heart. You couldn’t withhold all of that creativity.
THE FORM AND THE EMPTINESS
Scientists now know what mystics realised long ago: Energy is matter, matter is energy, and all is One, and One is for All, not merely a select or lucky few. The material is spiritual; there is no division.
Abstract human thought, in its quest for fixed and unchanging meaning in a groundless universe, divided an indivisible reality into isolated fragments, objects, things, which it then took to be the true reality. Out of the vast and incomprehensible ocean of Being, we said ‘I’ and ‘world’, dividing ourselves out as a separate entity, plunging ourselves into a lifelong search for the Home-world we never left. We worshipped false idols, the idols of thought, living as a ‘self’ in a separate ‘world’, forgetful of our true nature as life itself, longing for rest.
But no matter. For matter is energy, and energy is matter, and in this moment, it really doesn’t matter that we ever dreamed of leaving Home. Wake up, Dorothy. For we are still Here, and it is still Now, and Oneness never changes in the midst of unending change. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and so all is well, child, all is well.
That look in your father’s eyes as he passes into infinity says it all. Love can only recycle itself.
A trillion light-years away, comets shoot through the darkness in silence.
SEASONS OF AWAKENING
Spiritual awakening is not a linear path towards some fixed goal, nor is it the total absence of a path, for who could deny the appearance of change, evolution and deepening insight?
It is a circular path, a path of poetry and song, always returning to where it began, always pointing us back to where we already are. Its origin is its destination, and its destination its origin, just as spring gives way to summer, then autumn and winter, but always returns to spring, the same spring, the same freshness, essentially unchanged by the passing of a year, but still, never the same at all.
Awakening is neither a path nor pathless, it is like the seasons, ever changing and yet always the same, timelessly stable yet radically open to impermanence, naked in the face of the bitter-sweet disappearance of things.
REST
A sip of tea. The gentle, last touch of a loved one’s hand. A flurry of tingling sensation surging through the body. A stranger turning into a long-lost friend overnight. The incessant beeping of an IV machine. The sting of a needle that won’t enter its vein. The bittersweet chirp of a morning bird. An afternoon breeze, gentle on your cheek. This, the first and last day of your life. Ecstasy, and laundry. Love, and pain. This stunning ordinariness, rich with miracle, overflowing with grace beyond our conception of it. The completion of life within its very appearance. So rest, weary seeker. Rest in this. Always.
THE IRRESISTABLE MOMENT
Admit it. You’ve already completely failed to resist this moment. This moment is totally irresistible to you! These thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds, are already here. They are already freely arising and dissolving in what you are. Nothing has been able to block them out. There is simply no ‘you’ getting in the way of life. No boundaries. No barriers. The floodgates are already open, and life is pouring in. Utter nakedness.
Raise the white flag, soldier!
RELATIONSHIP YOGA
The healthiest relationships are not necessarily the ones that look ‘happiest’ to the naked eye. They aren’t necessarily the ones where two people are always seen holding hands, giggling, dancing and singing with the butterflies, where nothing ever ‘goes wrong’ and life is always perfect. External perfection can easily mask internal devastation, disconnection and a quiet, unspoken desperation to be free, or at least alone.
The healthiest relationships are the honest ones, the ones that might not always look ‘happy’
or ‘carefree’ from the outside. The ones that might not fit society’s image of what a relationship ‘should’ or ‘must’ look or feel like. Where two people tell the truth about today, and continually let go of all their preconceived ideas about each other. Where the relationship is forever renewed in the furnace of honesty. Where there may be ruptures, misunderstandings, even intense feelings of doubt and disconnection, but there is a mutual willingness to face this seeming mess head-on! To look – with open eyes – at the present rupture, and not turn away or cling to the past. To sit together in the midst of mutual shattered dreams and expectations, and work to find a place of reconnection, here, now, today. Where relationship is seen as the ultimate yoga – an ongoing and deepening adventure and rediscovery of each other, a constant meeting, not a future destination, fixed conclusion, point of arrival, or a convenient story to tell others during polite conversation.
As Eckhart Tolle reminds us, relationships aren’t here to make us happy (for true happiness lies within) – they’re here to make us profoundly conscious.
ALONE IN THE RAIN
Walking alone in the rain, bathed in consciousness, soaked in consciousness, consciousness as the raindrops, as the body they fall upon, as the splish-splash on the sidewalk, as the incomprehensible intelligence that opens the umbrella exactly on cue, making a mockery of the concept of the existence or non-existence of a separate ‘I’. And the raindrops whisper that the enlightenment we seek is not cold detachment, or unfeeling world-denial, or transcendence of the so-called ‘material’ world – no, it’s this unspeakable intimacy with the appearance of form, with this ever-changing watercolour scenery of life, its colours forever running into the gutters of emptiness. “Love us”, the raindrops whisper. “That’s all”.
And I smile to myself at the seriousness and the mad, cosmic innocence of the spiritual search, the search for something more than this. For who could want or seek anything more than what is already given? Still, the raindrops keep falling, and I walk on, embraced by a love with no name.
DECEMBER
It not a cry that you hear at night,
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light,
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.
– Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
THE VAULT
There is a locked vault containing everything you’ve ever longed for – all the riches of the universe.
You spend your life trying to open the vault – through struggling, striving, meditating, transcending, guru-worshipping, believing, rejecting, accepting, praying, self-inquiring, yoga-ing, and so on and so forth. Finally, exhausted, you give up trying to open the vault... and that’s when the vault opens by itself. It was never locked in the first place.
What’s inside the vault? This moment, exactly as it is.
You always knew.
THE DEATH OF TOMORROW
While working as a home carer, one morning I found myself washing faeces off a man’s giant, swollen testicles. He was dying of a cancer which had spread throughout his testicles and prostate, and in the night he had defecated and rolled all around in the mess. We laughed a lot together and we chatted about football and the latest news stories as I cleaned him up. He could barely move, he was so sore and swollen everywhere. He was myself in disguise.
He had a few weeks to live, but he was so alive, so in the here-and-now, without a trace of self-pity. There was no loss of dignity there – there was just what was happening in the moment. He had somehow found a way to deeply accept his circumstances, even though his life had not turned out the way he had dreamed when he was younger and he had time to dream. It took over two hours to get him ready for his day, to hoist him out of his dirty bed, to get him washed and dressed and into his favourite chair. He didn’t live for long after that. But I will always remember him.
Even when tomorrow never comes, we are nothing less than divine.
UNFORGETTABLE
Love, knowing that the one you love may not be here tomorrow, knowing that today may be your last day to truly meet, knowing that you cannot know how the story ends. For what is left in this life when you have nothing to lose?
Care, care deeply, care until it hurts, care in spite of what people say, care in spite of ridicule and rejection and misunderstandings, care so much that you no longer care what happens to you.
Sink, sink willingly, into the bitter-sweet mystery of love, never knowing what love is and loving anyway, like a fool, like a fascinated child, like a madman, like one who has forgotten how to be cynical, or how to be right.
Love until your voice trembles, and your heart pounds, and your legs shake, and your philosophies crumble to dust, and your cleverness bows its head in shame and in reverence.
And you will be taken to the darkest places, and your heart will be set on fire by the ones to whom you were never able to open your heart, and you will be reminded of what you have always, secretly, known:
In time, you will forget everything, except how to die, and how to love.
A MEDITATION BELL
So much of our suffering comes down to fear of loss of control, a resistance to chaos, a frantic search for some kind of order in the midst of a passing storm.
But chaos can actually be a great healer. Sometimes the storm needs to blow, the tempest needs to rage. Sometimes strong energies need to move and be felt fully. Sometimes feelings need to become more intense before they can dissipate. Sometimes hearts need to break wide open. Sometimes archaic dreams and plans need to fall away to make way for the new and the unexpected. Sometimes relationships need to change form, an old sense of self needs to die, familiar structures need to crumble, even though the mind wants them to stay the same.
We are plunged into the chaos and disorder of not knowing who or what or why-the-hell we are anymore, desperately seeking something to cling to – we feel homeless and we seek home. But the storm contains a powerful invitation to presence, your true home beyond your worldly home. The chaos invites us to remember the true source of unshakeable power and order – ourselves.
DO NOT SEEK OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF FOR HAPPINESS, the storm bellows. You will suffer until you realise this, and then you will suffer every time you forget it, and so suffering is not an enemy but a meditation bell in a storm, part of life’s ingenious invitation.
MEET A FEELING WITHOUT HISTORY
Next time a wave of sadness, or anger, or doubt, or fear, or some kind of nameless despair, appears in the present moment, ask yourself: Can this movement of life simply be allowed right now? Don’t try to find its cause or its solution; don’t try to analyse it or work out the answers right now. The answers may come in time. The solutions may appear. But right now is the invitation to know yourself in the midst of the mess as the wide open space for all that appears, the capacity for it, the home for it, not its victim or slave. Let all feelings be embraced in the loving arms of your presence, just for a moment. Even if thought tries to push ‘what is’ away, or judge it, or spins off into planning and regret, notice that even thought-movements are allowed in the spacious awareness that you are. Notice how there is always enough space here, even for feelings of limitation and lack.
Nothing can distract you from meditation, when everything becomes part of meditation. This is meditation without a path, without a goal, without a script. It is meeting everything within you as a good friend.
A HOME FOR THOUGHTS
Natural peace and contentment means knowing yourself as the wide open space in which thoughts come and go, rather than the separate “thinker” or “controller” of those thoughts. You don’t have thoughts – you naturally provide the space, the home, the resting place, for them. Thoughts are your children, too, and they deserve a home.
Since you can notice thoughts, be aware of them, recognise them as thoughts, it’s clear that thoughts cannot define, limit or contain you. If they could, you’d never be able to say “that’s a thought”.
Just behind, around the edges, and infusing every t
hought, the unspeakable vastness of you.
NEVER TURN AWAY
And so we make this radical commitment to never turn away. Grounded in an unshakeable knowing – that has nothing to do with the mind’s limited idea of certainty – that every sensation, every sound, every smell, every thought, every image, every possible feeling, is already deeply allowed to move and express in us, and recognising ourselves as the warm oceanic embrace of these beloved children, we simply cease to doubt our boundless ability to face life.
And if doubt does appear, and if a sense of ‘my inability to face life’ is what we’re facing right now, we simply notice that even these waves are allowed in – already, timelessly allowed in the boundless capacity that we are.
And what are we left with? Only unspeakable gratitude for the tiniest and most ‘insignificant’ of things. A breath. The taste of an orange. This untameable and unnameable aliveness we call the body. The wild mystery of the eyes. Live, dear friend, live this day, this ordinary day, this sacred day, this one and only day, knowing that in some incomprehensible way it has already fulfilled your heart’s true desire.
The heart shatters into a million pieces in ecstasy, because finally you have remembered to never abandon yourself.
SPLISH SPLASH
The rain does not fall all at once. It hits the ground, not as some entity called ‘rain’, but drop by drop, moment by precious moment, impersonal and free. ‘Rain’ is only a metaphor. Splish splash.