by Jeff Foster
Instead of trying to skip to tomorrow’s certainty, trust the uncertainty of today. Instead of rushing towards an answer in the next scene, trust this creative scene of ‘no answers yet’. Instead of trying to run towards joy or bliss in the future, trust this present moment of sorrow or doubt, or whatever shape the cosmic intelligence is taking. Certainty may or may not come in time, answers may arrive, joy may burst forth or not, thrilling moments may present themselves sooner or later, but don’t skip over the treasures of this moment.
If answers come, they will emerge from the fertiliser of not knowing, the rich soil of doubt. If joy shows her face, she will emerge from pain that has been touched deeply. If a new life grows, it will grow in the only birthplace there is: Now.
This moment is the access point, the portal, the gateway of grace to all that you have ever longed for. Don’t skip over it in pursuit of tomorrow’s imagined glories.
I AM…
Be mindful about what you say after you say “I Am…” Those two tiny words contain powerful magic.
Language tries to fix you in time and space. It is an attempt to press pause on the ever-changing dance that you naturally are. In reality, what you truly are can’t be fixed or captured or even put into words, for you are alive and dynamic and naturally immune to all fixed definitions.
For example: “I am sorrow”? “I am a sorrowful person”? “Sorrow defines me” “I am a victim of sorrow”? No. A wave of sorrow is arising in the vast ocean that you are, an ocean that cannot be defined by either ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ or anything in-between, but allows all those feelings to come and go.
You are not sorrow – sorrow comes and goes in you. You’ll find no sorrowful person, no sorrowful entity, no sorrowful ‘thing’, no sorrowful ‘me’ here, only the energy of sorrow arising presently, energy that will dissipate as it is allowed to move. You are not sorrowful – you are the home for sorrow in this moment. You are not angry – you are the capacity for anger right now. You are not enlightened, ignorant, successful, a failure or a waste of space – you are all of this, and none of it. You are infinite potential, a sentence that never needs to be completed.
Use your magic wisely. Fall in love with being an ever-deepening mystery to yourself. Don’t attempt to turn yourself into stone.
NOTHING IS WAITING
Today is not some insignificant stepping stone towards a glorious future performance on the stage. This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained.
No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life. Not nearly life, not almost life, not conceptual life learned through repetition, but raw life living itself, exploding in fullness, radically present, dripping from every nook and cranny, bursting forth in motion and in rest – life, life, life! And it is yours to be tasted now, now, now!
Life is no trailer, no preview, no coming attraction. What you long for has already arrived, and it announces itself in and as every sensation, every thought, every image, every moment of pain, boredom or bliss. It’s there even in the longing for it – that’s how intimate it is.
You stand on holy ground now, your birthplace, your resting place, your womb, your tomb. The show has already begun, and the spotlight is illuminating all.
There is no time for ‘one day’ when you are truly alive, and today is the only day you’ll ever truly live, if you are to live another day.
AN INVITATION
I don’t want to hear what you believe
I’m not at all interested in your certainty
I couldn’t care less about your unexcelled perfection
Share with me your doubts
Open up your tender heart
Let me in to your struggles
I’ll meet you in that place
Where your spiritual conclusions
Are starting to crack open
That’s where the creativity lies
That’s where the newness shines
That’s where we can truly meet:
Beyond the image
Your imperfections
Are so perfect
In this light
I don’t want you to be perfect
I want you to be real
THE PATH
There is no fixed path to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a destination, a goal, the final resting place at the end of a long journey – that’s the mind’s version of enlightenment. Enlightenment is infinitely closer than anything you could imagine.
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.
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 this, intimate with all this, present to all this.
Be the light of awareness that you naturally are, enlightening 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.
Shine your light on all that arises. Come out of the story of time and space and progression towards a future goal, and trust a sacred moment. Take any moment. Any moment at all, for any moment is the access point. There are never any blocks – only portals.
You are not some separate entity on a long journey towards a future completion.
You are pure poetry.
IN SAFE HANDS
You get tired of half-truths, don’t you?
You get tired of pretending
You get tired of the world’s promises
You get tired of... waiting.
You even get tired of getting tired.
You get tired of ‘you’ –
The one who ‘gets tired of’.
A divine disillusionment
And a great paradox –
For who gets tired of whom?
And in the midst of despair
You find yourself staring life in the face
Naked and unprotected in front of its sacredness.
And for the first time
(For whatever reason)
You do not turn away.
It breaks you open
It shatters your dreams
It burns up your certainty.
Even your dreams of enlightenment
do not stand a chance.
You tremble with fear
You cry out for help
(Why has it forsaken you?)
And then
For the first time
You feel deeply alive
Undivided from the sacredness
Resting in the arms of the One you always sought
Unprotected yet utterly safe
Free at last
Free at last.
It destroys the one you thought you were
But it never touches the One you are.
This is the road less travelled.
A road leading not to the future
Not to the Promised Land
But to the one reading these words now
To the one who knew all along
That all along this road’s ancient edges
Lie the shed skins of lost identities and unkept promises.
Clean yourself up, my friend
You were always in safe hands.
THE PRESENT MOMENT
I
love being in the present moment. It is my true Home.
Now is the only place where I ever am. I always find myself Here, never coming, never going.
Yes, I have known the passing of thought and emotion, the arising and dissolving of states and experiences both ecstatic and mundane, but I have never known the passing of myself, That which never passes as everything passes. And so anywhere other than Now feels like homesickness and disconnection, death and decay. “Anywhere else” is a fantasy, anyway, for I cannot split myself from myself, look at myself from a distance and say “there I am!”.
Any thought, sensation, feeling, image, memory, dream, vision, has always appeared right here, where I am, where you are, the only place we truly ‘meet’. But we are not two, and so we cannot ‘meet’ – we can only recognise our original intimacy prior to time and all ideas of ‘meeting’.
Beyond our stories, beyond our histories and future plans, this is the One place where we can never be apart. Here and Now.
SACRED DIS-ILLUSIONMENT
There are two core fears: losing what you have, and not getting what you want.
There is one solution: Falling in love with where you are.
We eventually realise that our partners, jobs, religions, possessions, trophies, bank balances, the fancy certificates on our walls, even our perfect bodies, won’t make us happy. Not permanently or completely happy anyway, not the kind of ever-present happiness we truly seek and know is possible.
This realisation is dis-illusion-ment, the breaking-up of illusions, the falling away of childhood dreams, and it often manifests as depression, anxiety, existential nausea, despair, mid-life crises and addictions.
But disillusionment can be a wonderful thing. For contained within its sacred core is an invitation to go beyond all those worldly comforts and pleasures that never really delivered what they promised, and rediscover That which never changes – our true nature, our true content-ment prior to the ever-changing external content of our lives, prior to the bodymind.
When you realise that nothing, no external “thing” – no person, no object, no substance, no circumstance, no revelation, no single experience – ever has the power to make you permanently happy, you discover a deeper invitation: to realise that nothing, the no-thing that you are, is the source of true happiness, and that every experience holds the key.
Nothing can make you happy, therefore happiness lies within, and that is a reason for great joy.
LIFE IS AN ALTAR
You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will diminish. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is in truth impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes.
But right now, in this very moment, you stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this simple thing is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. Everything is present.
The universal law of impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heart-breaking gratitude.
Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.
THE DANCE
We never rehearsed this
We are a mess
We tremble and perspire
We step on each other’s toes
Sometimes we go out of tune
And forget our lines
But at least this is real
At least we are not half-alive
Buried under the weight of some image
We never believed in anyway
I will always take this imperfect dance
Over no dance at all
FEBRUARY
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on this earth.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
THE 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.
In this moment, 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. Even the rain is not rushing towards the ground.
The choices that will be made will be made, and you’ve no choice about that right now. The decisions that will happen will happen, events will unfold in time, 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, where you are.
And so, instead of trying to ‘fix’ our lives, instead of trying to neatly resolve the unresolvable and quickly complete the epic story of a fictitious ‘me’, we simply relax into utter not knowing, allowing everything to be ‘out of control’, trusting the order within the wild chaos, unravelling in the warm embrace of mystery, sinking deeply into the moment, savouring 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.
Why run towards answers, when the questions themselves are such miracles?
GET OUT OF THE WAY
One thing we all eventually learn, the hard way:
Never try to help someone unless they are ready to be helped.
Until help is asked for, until there is that readiness to listen and let go of old patterns, your attempt to help will be felt as manipulation and control – your issue, your need, not theirs. Defences will go up, positions will become hardened, you will end up feeling frustrated or superior or powerless, and the mirrored roles of ‘victim’ and ‘saviour’ will make you feel more disconnected from each other than ever.
How to truly help? Meet them where they are right now. Let go of your dream of their immediate healing. Slow down. Validate their present experience. Don’t try to impose your own agenda or assume what is ‘best’ for them. Perhaps you don’t know what is ‘best’. Perhaps they are more hardy, intelligent, resourceful, and full of potential, than you ever thought possible.
Perhaps what is ‘best’ for them right now is not to want – or need – your help! Perhaps they actually need to suffer or struggle more. Perhaps they are aligning and healing in their own unique way. Perhaps what this moment requires is trust, and deep listening, and profound respect for where they are in their journey. Perhaps you are only trying to help yourself.
Perhaps real change comes not from trying to impose change on others, but from aligning with where they are right now, unlocking all the creative intelligence of the moment, honouring their unique path and their mysterious process of healing.
When you try to change someone, you are communicating to them that they are not okay as they are, that you reject and resist and dislike their present experience and want it to be different. You may even be communicating to them that you don’t love them. When you stop trying to change them, and meet them as they are, and align with life as it presents itself, great and unexpected change is then possible, for now you are a true friend and ally of the universe.
Stop trying to change others, and they change, or not, in their own way, in their own sweet time.
Perhaps you help the most when you get out of help’s way.
WHEN THE GROUND FALLS
What happens when the ground beneath your feet gives way?
A relationship ends unexpectedly, success turns to failure overnight, a loved one dies, you receive a diagnosis out of the blue, and you suddenly feel a profound groundlessnes
s, a deep uncertainty, the sense that your world is spinning out of control. Nothing feels real anymore. It feels like your life is no longer ‘your’ life, like you’re in some strange kind of impersonal movie, like you don’t know where to turn, or even stand. The future, which once seemed so solid and ‘real’, is now exposed for the lie and the fairy story that it was, and your dreams of ‘tomorrow’ crumble to dust. ‘Tomorrow’ was never going to happen, not in the way you had unconsciously planned, anyway. There are no answers that will satisfy now, no authorities to guide you, since nobody can experience your experience for you, and nobody has the answers you need, and you feel profoundly alone on a tiny planet spinning in vast and unfathomable space. You feel like crawling back into the womb, but the womb has disappeared.
Wonderful! Oh, wonderful! What an invitation this is! Life has not gone wrong, for life cannot go wrong, for all is life, and life is all. Only our dreams and plans ‘about’ life can crumble, but life itself cannot. This present experience, this confusion and cosmic doubt, this heartbreak, is not against life, this is life, raging life, vibrant life, the sacred life of the moment. This is not the ‘wrong’ scene in the movie, this is the movie, however hard that is to see right now.
There is a vast intelligence at work here, an intelligence that breathes us at night, and beats our heart, pumps blood around the body, and heals our wounds when ‘we’ are not even around to notice or care.
What happens, when, just for a moment, we stop trying to figure it all out, we stop clinging to the old dreams and stop mourning their loss, and we face the raw, broken-open reality of things as they are? What happens when, just for a moment, we actually take the radical and unexpected step of saying yes to the uncertainty, the doubt, the confusion, the pain, the heartbreak? What happens when we affirm the unsolved mystery instead of trying to escape it? What happens when we turn towards the devastation rather than away from it? What happens when we actually trust the broken-openness of things, and allow the deep intelligence of life to work its magic through the guise of devastation?
