Falling in Love with Where You Are

by Jeff Foster

  To find yourself, take any breath, and ask “Who is breathing”? Is someone from the past breathing? Is your image of yourself breathing? Is your name breathing? Is a story breathing? Is a thought breathing? Is the sentence “I am breathing”, breathing? Is your dream of yourself breathing? Or is there simply breathing, held in You?

  THE BAROMETER

  We tend to see our present experience as some kind of cosmic barometer for how far we have progressed down the path, how far away we are our from our goals. If there is pain, or fear, or doubt, or sadness, moving in present experience, we conclude that we must be doing badly. “Bad me”, we say. “Wrong experience!”

  If there is bliss and joy right now, we judge that we must be doing really well, approaching the perfect moment in the future. “Good me”, we say. “Right experience!”

  But the gauge is the lie. There is no gauge in reality, for there is no authority on correct experiences. There is no fixed destination that we are moving towards, no final resting place. Present experience is never a sign of something else, nor a stepping stone towards it. It is never a barometer of our success or failure, nor a warning of our proximity to, or distance from, home. It is Home itself, no matter what is happening.

  SUPPORTED

  Love will nibble and gnaw at your bones

  Until your knees buckle

  And you will collapse to the ground

  Where love will whisper in your ear

  “See, you cannot hold yourself up”

  “Then what holds me up?” you will ask.

  And your eyes will meet hers

  And you will know

  SEPTEMBER

  Surrender to grace.

  The ocean cares for each wave until it reaches the shore.

  You are given more help than you will ever know.

  – Rumi

  ON BEAUTY

  We are brainwashed into believing that sunsets, oceans, flowers, happy smiles, butterflies in springtime and supermodels in magazines are beautiful, but deformations, disfigurements, immense sadness, broken glass and broken hearts and broken dreams, circus freaks and dog poop are not and never will be. The Elephant Man we called ugly. Marilyn Monroe we called beautiful. We separated the positive from the negative, beauty from ugliness, even life from death, and this was the origin of all violence – the conceptual splitting up of life into fragments, dividing the great Undivided, and then believing in that division, taking that division as the reality. We have children now growing up feeling ugly, we have children desperate to be beautiful, trying to imitate the image of beauty we have spoon-fed to them. We cake ourselves in makeup, poke and tweak and mask ourselves, cover our beautiful imperfections, and often end up feeling less beautiful than ever, more alone than ever, more fake than ever, always striving for that elusive perfection, or at least that elusive “fitting in”.

  Screw brainwashing and the living of a second-hand life, forever seeking the approval or even acknowledgement of others! It’s all beautiful, all of it! Or, at least, it’s all a call to that underlying universal beauty that knows no opposite or bounds, the beauty of existence, of life itself, and everything, everything, is the invitation to this. The face of the homeless guy in the street, the stench of rotting things, the blood and the mucus and the sweat, it’s all life, it’s all holy, and though we might prefer some of this ‘holiness’ to holy itself away, still, despite our best efforts, it remains, to prod and poke and remind us to wake up to the vastness of things.

  Every single one of your ‘imperfections’, every flaw, every crack and spot and line, every secretion, every smell that you try so hard to mask and hide, is a little invitation to remember your mortality, your underlying humility, your secret gratitude for things as they are, and your unfathomable and immense power as a unique expression of Life itself.

  Be what you are. They have always said it, and it has always been true.

  Don’t let anyone tell you who or what is beautiful.

  A LOVE THAT CANNOT FADE

  If our love is dependent on looks, when looks fade, our love fades. If our love relies on feelings, when feelings weaken, our love is threatened. If our love is attached to stories, when stories cannot be remembered, our love is forgotten. If love clings to form, then when form dies, as it must, love dies too.

  Is there a love that is not dependent on form or feeling? Is there a love with no conditions? Is there a love untouched by disease and death?

  Of course there is. It is this loving presence that welcomes every thought, every sensation, every sound as its very own child, clinging to nothing, resisting nothing, saying, “I am what you are, so we cannot be divided.”

  And so, dear friend, I do not love you, I am you, beyond hope, beyond fear, beyond all conceptions of love and death…

  VOICES OF ADDICTION AND FREEDOM

  The voice of addiction: “I have forgotten who I am. I feel lack and incompleteness in the moment. I need X to give me back my fullness, my own presence, to remind me again of who I am. X will bring presence in the future. Presence is outside of me now. I am dependent on X. I need X.”

  The voice of freedom: “I know that nothing and nobody can take away this presence that I am. I feel the urge, the desire, the want for X. I acknowledge it, I even allow it – the sensations of the body, the pictures of the mind – but I know that X fundamentally cannot and will not give me anything that isn’t already here. X will not bring presence, my true peace. Presence is Now. It is not outside of me, or contained in objects or people or substances – it is what I am in the deepest sense. The urge, the contraction, the sense of limitation, is not an enemy, but is actually reminding me of what I am – naturally vast and spacious, an unlimited, unchanging and ever-present room radically open to all of its changing contents. It is my inherent limitlessness that allows this sense of limitation. It is my natural relaxation that allow this sense of contraction. I am not dependent on X for present-moment peace. I do not need X. I am already whole, even without it. I am already whole, now.”

  AS IT IS

  Trying to allow this moment? Trying to escape this moment? Trying to surrender to it? You’re already too late!

  Present thoughts, sensations, sounds and feelings, are already here. The floodgates of this moment are already wide open, and cannot be closed. Present thoughts, sensations, sounds and feelings are already flooding in. In other words, “you” have already failed to block this moment out! There is simply nobody here in charge of the floodgates, nobody separate from life, nobody who can stem this wild flow of energy. What you are is helplessly, choicelessly, effortlessly, allowing this moment to be.

  It is recognising the “already as it is” nature of experience that is the key to boundless freedom and unlimited creative expression, and even compassionate, intelligent action, however contradictory that sounds to the rational mind, which believes that change can only come from the story, that deep rest is merely stagnation and passivity, and that effortlessness can only come from effort.

  Forget trying to allow or resist this moment, and forget trying to control life or to surrender that control, and recognise that on a deeper level, beyond understanding, this moment has already been completely allowed, and what you are feeling and sensing and smelling and tasting right now is only the result of total acceptance, prior to the upsurge of the image of “you” as the one who accepts or does not accept.

  What you are, beyond the story, has already said yes to this moment in its totality.

  STOP MAKING SENSE

  Can it be okay, right now – and there is only now – for nothing to make sense anymore?

  Sometimes it seems like everything in your world is in dis-array. Everything that you thought was solid, certain, predictable, reliable, turns out to be paper-thin and subject to the laws of impermanence. The support and foundations of your life have crumbled away, or so it seems. There is a strange, empty feeling inside. The ground underneath you has dissolved, everything is spinning out of control, and you’re li
ving in a strange and even unfriendly universe. The past suddenly feels so unreal – like you’ve been living a lie all this time. Did it ever happen? And the future seems so uncertain and even scary – like it’s made of glass and basically cannot be trusted. What is real? What can you hold on to?

  Perhaps there has been no disaster, no great calamity, and the present whirlwind is only another giant invitation to be here. To live in this moment, the only moment there is. To actually turn towards this empty and ungrounded feeling, to deeply honour it, to allow it in. To say yes to life in all its myriad present appearances, yes to everything being uncertain right now, yes to everything spinning out of control, yes to none of it making sense, yes to your whole identity being a giant question mark. To take the focus off the story of time and space, and to bring loving focus back to the place you actually are, and will always be – here and now, your true home. To let go of the dreams, and sink into the sacred mystery of it all.

  Perhaps then, in the midst of breakdown, the seeds of breakthrough can take root – planted with wisdom, watered with love, held in the warmth of your timeless presence.

  THIS STRANGE PLACE

  Can we meet beyond the story of us,

  in the place beyond expectations,

  and hold each other there?

  Can we meet beyond the dream of tomorrow,

  and rediscover what is here today,

  so that today becomes tomorrow, effortlessly?

  Haven’t we always been meeting like this,

  here at the edge of the world,

  where everything is possible?

  This strange place seems so familiar.

  AWAKENING IS JUST THE BEGINNING

  I have never met anyone who simply “woke up” one day, and never suffered again – however much we love to believe that story, about ourselves and others. I have never met anyone – teacher or student – who “discovered who they really were” and never, ever forgot it again, even in the midst of physical pain or the beautiful mess of intimate human relationship.

  I spent years after my so-called ‘awakening’, meeting all of the unmet human conditioning, the childhood pain, the pain of all humanity, the unloved waves in the ocean of life, the feelings of failure and doubt and self-importance and arrogance and impotence and the need-to-be-perfect and the need-to-be-right, the forms that had been repressed or ignored or buried for at least a quarter of a century. Finally, in the absence of the urge to escape life, in the recognition that all was ultimately allowed in what I am, the human stuff was allowed to breathe and express and sing and dissolve in its own time. The personal purged itself in the impersonal fire of life, in the furnace of not-knowing, until it became absurd to even speak of the impersonal as distinct from the personal... or to even speak of ‘my awakening’ at all!

  Liberation may be the end of a belief in a separate ‘I’, but really, my friends, this is just the beginning of the adventure, however much we want to think of it as some kind of ‘end point’. It takes tremendous courage to drop the story of your own awakening, to be a child of life again, to admit that you really do not know a damn thing, and never did.

  THIS MOMENT HAS NO OPPOSITE

  This moment, whatever shape it takes, has no opposite. Investigate this very deeply, for this insight is the key to unimaginable peace:

  Opposites only exist in thought. Past/future, right/wrong, beautiful/ugly, enlightened/unenlightened, life/death, all divisions made by thought. Can you find these divisions, these gaps, these clefts in reality, in direct experience?

  Feeling has no opposite. Sensation has no opposite. Sound has no opposite. A bird singing in this moment has no opposite, only in the imagination (“bird singing” / “bird not singing”). That ineffable “Tweet! Tweet” has no opposite, though. This intense energy in the chest or stomach has no opposite. The raw feeling of life has no opposite, only in thought, only in images, only in the dream of time and space.

  When you realise that in actuality this moment has no opposite, you stop trying to escape it. Since this moment has no opposite, it is not opposed by any other moment. It has no opposition, no enemy. It is a true original, unique in all of time and space, free to be itself, never at war.

  Start an unexpected revolution. Realise deeply that this moment is all there is, and that it has no opposite, except as a picture in your head of how it ‘should’ be or ‘could’ have been. And realise that even that picture cannot oppose this moment. All is allowed.

  FIRST CONTACT

  Just one instant of naked contact

  Changes everything

  Just one instant of touching directly

  your fear, anger, sadness, doubt, boredom, loneliness

  Meeting the raw energy of life itself

  Behind the labels and concepts

  Prior to the words

  Meeting ‘what is’ without expectation, without trying to escape,

  without turning away, without protection

  Forever changes your relationship to it

  Now, you know each other directly, beyond theory

  You have penetrated each other’s defences

  You have seen through the façade

  You have truly made contact

  And nothing will ever be the same

  Now, however far you travel from each other

  However much you try to push each other away

  However desperately you try to forget each other

  You will never truly forget

  That you once met so deeply

  That you have touched each other

  And been touched in return

  That you have held each other in the palms of your hands

  And seen yourself reflected

  And forgotten division

  And the separation of things

  Now, when fear appears again

  Or when sadness returns in waves

  Or when anger bursts forth from the creative void

  Or a thought floats by

  You will know

  It is only a familiar friend

  Come to visit

  It is only the one you love

  Brilliantly disguised

  Just a moment of real contact

  Is all it takes

  And then there is no turning back

  For you cannot truly forget

  the one you love

  your own child

  your own flesh and blood

  No matter how their appearance changes

  No matter how far they roam

  THE DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT

  Humans have always thought in terms of abstract, conceptual opposites. God and the devil, life and death, pleasure and pain, good and evil, yin and yang, duality and nonduality.

  Some people see life as a never-ending battle between darkness and light. Some hope that the light will win. Some take the side of the darkness. But is there really a war? Shadows only appear because there’s a source of light. Shadows have no separate existence from light, no true power of their own. Shadows cannot truly oppose light, for without light they are nothing at all. They receive all their power from light. They are utterly dependent.

  Light never needs to fear the shadows or long for their death or destruction. True light knows no opposite, no opposition, no mortal enemy. We pay so much attention to the darkness, to the ‘negative’ aspect, to the shadows, to what we see as the ‘absence of light’, not realising that the only reason we can recognise the darkness is because the light is still very much switched on. No light, no darkness. And we are that light, the timeless light of consciousness itself.

  Don’t fight the darkness. Use the appearance of darkness to remind you of the ever-present Light Source that you are. Don’t oppose the shadows you see in the world, but know yourself as that timeless and limitless light of consciousness with ever more conviction, and you will come to realise that darkness was never ‘against’ you at all – it was only a reminder to never forget who you are, to see through the illusory di
vision in yourself.

  The war between darkness and light can never be won, for it never began.

  MOMENT BY MOMENT

  Suddenly, at home, at work or at play, a crisis happens. Something unexpectedly goes wrong. Something cherished is lost. Something familiar collapses. You feel misunderstood, abused, hurt, shocked, lost. Old, familiar friends now come to visit: That sinking feeling in the stomach. That shortness of breath. That tightness in the chest. That primal sense of disorientation. Who are you? What can be trusted? What will happen next? A dream of how life “was going to be” is dead and dying. An old identity is melting away. An old future has voided itself.

  The invitation? Stay with this death. Breathe through it, breathe into it. Rest and stay present in the midst of the sudden movement. Ground yourself as the old ground falls away – it was never the true ground anyway. Know that only the false is crumbling, and the real cannot crumble. Remember, who you truly are cannot perish, only your plans can crumble and die. “My life” is always changing, that is its nature, so let the change be natural, and let the false crumble into the Life that you are. Let living truth reveal itself, moment by moment, without rewinding or fast-forwarding the movie. Lean into the seeming mess, relax into the present scene. See the aliveness and creativity in the cyclone – you are only witnessing the death of dreams. Who you are has known the passing of many storms. Know yourself as the deep and unshakeable calm at the storm’s timeless eye. Crisis is not disaster, it is unexpected birth. This is your constant invitation.

  OCTOBER

  My sense of God is not a deity,

  but a profound sense of wonder.