breathing with awareness is needful...

~)(~

"Sometimes, we just need
to hear ourselves breathe."
~ Jeff Foster

 ~)(~

 

Meditation Cushion. 

 Machine stitched reeds

~)(~

 "People think happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, 

"something complicated and hard to get. 

Yet, what little things can make it up; 

a place of shelter when it rains - 

a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; 

for a man, a cigarette for contentment; 

a book to read when you’re alone -

 just to be with someone you love. 

Those things make happiness."
~ Betty Smith
 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

~)(~

exchanging Love...that's what it's all about!

Jeff Foster Quotes

(via facebook)

"I remember, early one morning several years ago, while working as a home carer, I found myself washing feces off a man’s giant, swollen testicles. He was dying of cancer which had spread throughout his testicles and prostate, and in the night he had defecated himself 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 toileted and dressed and into his favourite chair. He didn’t live for long after that. But I will always remember him.

Even when covered in our own shit and without a tomorrow, we are nothing less than divine."

~ Jeff Foster

Jeff Foster

_/l\_ _/l\_ _/l\_

Oriental Scene Zipper Purse

 

 The blog is not a source of income for me. 

I make Zafu Meditation Cushions and Zipper Purses to sell on etsy.com

non-resistance and bipolar positive negative poles...

 The Negativity of Positive Thinking

"Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can’t persuade himself to believe are good.”
~ Oliver Burkeman

It's time for humanity to wake up from our positive-negative trance. Positive thinking is merely the psychological version of plastic surgery for the body. In the long term, it simply doesn't work, and only creates more suffering.

Positive thinking is actually thinking that is totally obsessed with negativity, focused on negativity, at war with negativity... which is all very negative when you think about it.

Positive thinking is the ultimate way to distract and disconnect ourselves from our perceived flaws, imperfections, quirks, uniquenesses, the secret darkness that we try so hard to hide. We strive to cover up the 'bad' aspects of our experience without actually dealing with them, facing them, embracing them, healing them, loving them. We stop seeing the beauty, and perhaps even the awesome potential, in the 'negativity'. Reject half of life, and we will surely always feel incomplete.

The 'negative' is just the aspect of ourselves in desperate need of love, not neglect or more suffocation. We may feel better temporarily by distracting ourselves from the 'negative', but there are no true external sources of happiness.

The whole thing hinges on a primal misunderstanding. The positive/negative divide is purely a creation of a dualistic mind. Thought divides light from dark, life from death, good from evil, the holy from the unholy, and then tries to heal these self-created wounds through more division, more war, more dualistic activity. But no matter how much mental or physical plastic surgery you undergo, you still end up feeling incomplete and far from Home. War cannot end war. Darkness cannot end darkness. Light is the only power.

What if you are not the mind at all? What if thought can never define you? What if both the positive and negative aspects of life are allowed to come and go in the vastness that you are, like clouds in the sky, like waves in the ocean? What if no amount of plastic surgery, no 'perfect body', nor 'perfect mind', could ever lead you to your true nature, which is already shining in the midst of the seeming imperfection, illuminating the good and the bad alike?

Positive thinking does not truly heal in the deeper sense of the word, but actually creates, and then opposes, negative thinking. That's the one thing you can be positive about.

~ Jeff Foster

 ~~~

"Once we develop compassion for ourselves, 

we start to realize the lack of distinction between self and other, 

which ultimately leads to wisdom 

and compassionate action."

~Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

true spirituality is a furnace...

"The heart will never be satisfied by mere logic, words, platitudes. 

True spirituality is not a comfort – it is a furnace,

 burning up your cherished hopes and dreams, 

your outdated beliefs about life, 

the universe and everything."

~ Jeff Foster

Jeff's latest book 'Falling in Love With Where You Are' is available to purchase now.

http://non-dualitypress.org/products/falling-in-love-with-where-you-are

we were always infinite, so we cannot die...

~0~
"When we die, we do not become infinite. 

We were always infinite, so we cannot die.
~0~
Sitting with the dying is such a privilege. 

In the absence of a tomorrow, 

in the face of absolute uncertainty and ungrounded-ness in terms of the story, 

total intimacy is all that is left, total presence, profound here-ness. 

Every moment is rendered absolutely sacred - as it always was. 

Every breath is precious. 

Every word is there to be deeply heard and savored, 

every touch reverberates throughout the ages, e

very look, every glance, all that is said and unsaid, 

all that is remembered and all that is lost to time, 

all is held in the vast embrace of Now, 

the only place we truly meet, the only place we have ever met. 

What happens ‘next’ is secondary in the face of this fire-like intimacy, 

untouched by death and dying and the dreams of tomorrow.
~0~
You cannot leave me, for we are each other, 

and where would we go? 

Come into my heart, 

where you always were, 

and I will take you with me."
~0~
~Jeff Foster~

crisis doesn't mean disaster but turning point...

 

Jeff Foster Quotes

(shared from facebook)

When you are young, it is tempting to think that you have all the answers.

Then you grow, and you suffer, and bit by bit, 

life chisels away at your defense mechanisms, 

and your certainties, 

and you start to doubt everything you once were sure of.

Faced with the impermanence of things, 

you may even reach a point of total disillusionment – 

with yourself, with the world, with your belief systems, 

with your relationships, with your career, 

with everything you once took for granted.

This dis-illusionment, this breaking down of illusions, 

can lead either to a lifetime of depression, fear and a bitter shutting-off from life, 

or – when listened to – it can become a portal to liberation, 

 to the letting go of the false, and the discovery of the truth of who we really are.

I love it when people come to me in “crisis”, totally dis-illusioned with their lives. 

I always see it as a new beginning for them, an invitation to a life beyond illusions, 

to a life of deep rest and true connection. I meet them exactly where they are.

The word “crisis” does not actually mean “disaster”, but “turning point”. 

 Let us turn towards disillusionment, and hear its deeper call.

~ Jeff Foster

when judgement falls away...

Jeff Foster Quotes

(via facebook)

Who we truly are is always deeply at peace, beyond conclusions, 

and always enjoying the play of humanity 

on its cosmic television screen – including the advertisements. 

Relatively, we may find ourselves judging others, 

comparing ourselves, thinking we are more ‘awake’ than others, 

judging our God or our Teaching or even ourselves as the One and Only, 

and relatively speaking, 

this may be something for us to look at, to be curious about, 

to explore, to be aware of, no matter how ‘awakened’ we think we are. 

How are we separating ourselves from ‘others’, even though there are no ‘others’? 

Yet ultimately, 

who we truly are allows all of it, holds all of it, 

the judgement and the lack of it in the moment, 

holds all of this astonishing human drama in the palm of its hand, 

wraps it in a forgiving embrace,

loves it to death, quite literally, 

and this is the wonderful paradox of existence, 

the ever changing and the never changing at all,

 the dance of the Beloved. 

And when even that judgement falls away…

 continued here...

our true worth...

Jeff Foster Quotes

"Each moment is sacred, because it contains no time.

Every breath is holy, because it is the only one.

Every feeling is worthy of your kind attention, because
it is a complete and unrepeatable expression of life itself.

Never forget your unlimited nature, your vastness, your true worth."

~ Jeff Foster