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Thank you for all your beautiful, touching feedback about my new book. It’s out now in paperback AND Kindle editions 🙂 amzn.to/2Xm6I9u
A SACRED RESTLESSNESS
“Keep questioning, my love. That is how you stay young, vibrant, alive.
Keep questioning everything you believe. Question your concepts. Question your religions. Question everything your parents taught you. Your gurus. Your leaders. Everything you learned in books and on TV. Everything the media tried to shove down your throat. Everything sacred and holy and unquestionable. Question it all. Do not be afraid to lose all your beliefs, all your prior reference points, all your unshakable certainties.
I will be here to hold you.
With enough questioning, you may begin to question yourself, the one who questions. Everything you take yourself to be.
And then you will question the act of questioning itself.
Until there are no more questions. No more answers.
Just silence. Stillness. A wide open space of Now. Full of potential.
You will be left naked, open, raw, trembling, utterly vulnerable to the sunset, penetrated by every sensation, shaken by the way the light moves over the rooftops, the way sound enters you, the colour of a friend’s eyes, the space and the contraction of things, you will be one with it all, it will be your home and your salvation, it will all break you and make you whole in every instant.
You will have questioned yourself back into wonder, found your true home in the fleeting world, followed your sacred restlessness back into the deepest kind of peace imaginable.”
- Jeff Foster
Fredrik Swahn made a sweet song out of one of my FB posts. Thanks brother! 👏👏👏
“Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days. I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart...” 🙏🏻🙏🏻😍😍Music/Lyrics Fredrik Swahn/Jeff Foster - Full lyrics further down... open.spotify.com/album/3kjC9MWBlzoP346CmXOg32?si=YM1ED-HhSk-a0JMKdKn1OQ A Poem o...
HONESTY...
...doesn’t mean simply vomiting out your “uncensored truth” to anyone who will listen.
“Sharing your feelings” is NOT actually always the kindest or most conscious thing to do.
Yes, let’s be “real” with each other. Let’s come out of hiding and reveal our authenticity. Let's break the spell of shame in relationship.
But – and this is crucial - let’s also develop discernment.
Sensitivity to what we need, yes - but also a great and powerful sensitivity to where the other person is, a profound care about THEIR inner life.
Otherwise “I’m only sharing MY raw truth!”
is simply narcissism in disguise.
It’s not always loving to “share” your deepest feelings – your grief, your anger, your fear, your pain, your profound realizations – with someone who hasn’t signed up to receive, or isn’t able to receive, or, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to receive, or doesn’t have the capacity to receive.
We need to be very respectful and aware of other people’s boundaries, feelings and needs. THEIR willingness to receive our truth. Their ability to listen. How they manage their time. What they can handle on any given day. Their own pain and trauma. The demons they are secretly fighting (the ones we may never know about). Who they feel close to, and safe with.
We need to learn to ASK before we mindlessly splurge our stories, share our private inner lives, speak our deepest traumas, express our “raw and uncensored truth” to another.
Otherwise we are just dumping our sacred inner world on them, using them as a receptacle for our pain, our fear, our loneliness and the unmetabolized regions of our psyche. This is not kind, for the other person, and ultimately for ourselves.
Because our holy innards deserve a safe and committed holding environment.
And we can never demand that someone else “listens” to us.
We have to ask. Out loud. And be willing to hear the response.
Yes, let’s be “honest and real” with each other. Let’s tell our unvarnished truth… to those who are open and willing and ready and able to listen, to those who have signed up for this sacred work. A therapist. A good friend. A partner. A family member. Someone who has explicitly committed to offering their time and listening to us in this way.
Yes, let’s “speak our truth”. But let’s also learn when to stop talking. And breathe. And listen. And open our awareness in a different way. Ask about the other person. Find out what they want, and need, and are able to offer. Get deliciously curious about their world.
Do not assume anything! Unspoken assumptions and expectations destroy relationship. Ask. Ask if they are willing to hear OUR cry. And be open to their response, which may be disappointing.
Be willing to be disappointed, too.
Disappointment itself can be a pathway to love.
It’s NOT always about "speaking our feelings". There is a time for speaking, and a time for silence. A time for sharing our deepest inner life, and a time for listening too. A time for being together, and a time for being alone.
A time for coming closer, and a time for giving each other space.
A time for "telling our raw truth", and a time for.... well, not telling it at all. Sometimes THAT is the kindest thing.
Here is the dance and mystery of relationship, and we are all invited.
- Jeff Foster
Thanks Jay Shetty for sharing my little quote ❤️ (starts 2.15 in video)
“The word 'depressed' can be spoken as DEEP REST.
We can choose to view depression not as a mental illness but as a state of Deep Rest, a spiritual exhaustion that we enter into when we are de-pressed (pressed down) by the weight of the false self, the mask, the mind-made story of “me”.
We long to stop pretending, and express our raw truth! To give voice to our secret loneliness, our shame, our broken hearts, boredom and brilliant rage! Depression's call to truth needs to be listened to and understood, not analysed or medicated away.
There is no shame in your exhaustion.
We are all exhausted, my love.
Slow down today. Allow yourself to rest, deeply.
And weep. And breathe. And begin again. Now.
I say, our depression is holy.
It contains the seeds
of new life.”
- Jeff Foster
Jay Shetty
Every thought can be a battle, every thought can be a war, but you don't have to do that anymore.
AWAKENING (YOUR FAILURE IS YOUR VICTORY)
Destroy who you were. Become all that you are.
I’ll tell you what awakening is:
The disappearance of your interest in maintaining a consistent image of 'me'.
An image can never, ever be who you really are, and every image gets incinerated in the furnace of presence:
"The nice one".
"The spiritual one".
"The awakened one".
"The perfect one".
"The unworthy one".
"The failed one".
"The guilty one".
All illusions. All deeply, deeply unsatisfying.
You are not an image! You are awake. You are alive. You are undefinable. You are Life Itself. Nothing else matters but this:
You are no longer afraid to speak your truth. You speak your truth not to hurt or offend or to prove yourself 'right', but because living a life of lies and pretence was crushing your spirit and making you so unhappy.
Lies make you sick; only truth enlivens.
Now, let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.
(Your "I don't know" is sacred, too.)
Loved ones may feel disappointed, hurt, sad, angry. They may want the 'old you' back. They may call you deluded, crazy, out of touch, selfish, a liar. They may stop talking to you.
It's all ok. They are on their journey, and you are on yours. Feel your feelings; allow your own sorrows and joys.
Breathe into your loneliness, hold it close.
Let your thoughts arise and dissolve like clouds in the sky.
You were never in this for the popularity. You were never in this to be liked, admired, accepted.
Nobody has to walk with you.
You will discover your true family, your true source of support, even if you have to walk away from your birth family for a while or forever. Old friends may fall away too. Forgive them; their unhappiness is not your business. And your happiness is not their responsibility.
This will take courage and the ability to be present. To breathe. To feel your feet on the ground. To know you had no choice but to live.
You are breaking free from generations upon generations of guilt and blame.
You could never be what they wanted you to be.
Your failure was your victory.
You may be scared, the future may seem uncertain now, but you have never felt so alive, so wild and free, so pregnant with potential.
- Jeff Foster
A PRAYER
Sadness and anger, please forgive me.
I used to run from you.
I imagined that you were 'bad'.
Or 'unhealthy'. Or 'unspiritual'.
Or a sign of weakness.
Or a fault of 'ego' or the 'separate self'.
Or shameful.
No. No. I was wrong. You are life itself.
You belong.
I bow to you now.
I breathe into you.
I give you my breath.
Sadness, you help keep my heart open.
You remind me to let go, in each moment.
You are a beautiful release.
You help me befriend death and impermanence.
Anger, you remind me of my power.
You rise spontaneously to protect the organism.
You help me speak up without fear.
Speak truth. Speak out against falsehood.
Walk this path with courage.
Protect those I love.
Sadness and anger, please forgive me.
You are inseparable from the sacredness.
You are deeply accepted now.
In my vastness.
- Jeff Foster
Enrollment closes TODAY for ‘Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times’. We will begin the program together tomorrow with a LIVE meditation. Hope you can join us! Sign up today: www.befriendingyourself.com 😍
Member Offer - Befriending Yourself
befriendingyourself.com
Jeff Foster and Matt Licata's Befriending Yourself is an online community for healing, self-compassion & inner transformation. It includes monthly dialogues, meditations, teachings and practices with a Spiritual Teacher & a Depth PsychotherapistI LONG TO DIE, I LONG TO LIVE (I AM THE ONE WHO HOLDS ALL LONGINGS)
It is so important that we talk openly about suicide, depression, and the urge to die. That we break the spell of shame and fear around it all, and make it safer for people of all ages to express their deepest darkest thoughts and feelings to us. To receive their pain and shame with understanding, compassion, empathy. To listen to them. To take them seriously. And to help them get help if they want it.
I have spoken to so many people across the world who think sometimes – or often - about ending their lives. The urge to die, the longing for the rest of death - the ancient pull of Thanatos - is an urge as old as existence itself. I know that urge intimately. I spent much of my life longing for death. I always felt there was something horribly wrong with me. I felt so ashamed of this human form. I felt so sick, so lonely in my pain. I thought I was the only one suffering so deeply.
I didn’t want anyone to see the darkness inside me. I kept it all hidden.
But my pain was not a sign of my sickness. It was a part of me simply longing for love, understanding, kind attention. My deepest feelings of unworthiness, my darkest terrors, my frustrations and anxieties – who would listen to them? Who would embrace my unworthy one? Who would shower my unloveable one with curiosity? Put their arms around my failed one? Hold me like a baby, let me weep and rage and come to rest?
When we push away our inner child, with their sweet tears and rage, deeper and deeper into the darkness of the unconscious, life becomes more and more unliveable. It doesn’t matter how ‘perfect’ our lives seem on the surface. It doesn’t matter how successful we are, how much money we have, how much recognition we get, how many people adore us. In the end, what we deny in ourselves will kill us – through addiction, through suicide, or simply through stress, exhaustion and boredom. That is a kind of death, too: a long, slow, giving-up on life. Living, half-alive.
Look beyond the surface – we all have an inner child that longs to be met.
I re-dedicate myself today to speaking up about depression and suicide, to bringing consciousness into the darkest places, to breaking taboos around shame, loneliness and the death urge, and to bringing a little more love, light, and laughter into this crazy world.
- Jeff Foster
TAKE THE RISK OF BEING LOVED!
It’s one thing when somebody says, “I love you”.
It’s another thing when they witness the parts of you that you think are 'unlovable', and yet they still love you.
When you drop the front, the facade, the mask, and they love you even more.
It’s one thing to be loved. It’s another thing entirely to be loved for Who You Truly Are, not just an image, an idea or expectation of you.
When you feel seen, exposed in the light of love, and their love remains constant and safe. When you feel like you don’t have to hide the ‘dirty’, ‘shameful’, ‘sick’, or ‘unworthy’ parts of yourself, in order to keep them close. When you can fully relax, breathe, let your guard down, and be your authentic, wild, weird human self with them, no fear of rejection or punishment. When you feel whole in their warm presence, no concern that you will be shamed, ridiculed, judged or abandoned for exposing your authenticity.
It’s not just love we long for, it’s this fierce unconditional love that truly sees us as we are - imperfections, deformities, flaws, vulnerabilities and all.
It sees our darkness, it sees our terrors, and it still says YES.
Take the risk of being seen.
Take the risk of being known.
Take the risk of being loved.
- Jeff Foster
Friends, just to let you know, enrollment for my new online program Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times will end on Wednesday. If you'd like to join us: www.befriendingyourself.com. My first teaching video with Matt is already loaded into the site, and my first LIVE meditation for the community is on Thursday 13th. 😉 If you've already registered and need support or help with accessing course material, you can always email support@befriendingyourself.com. Hope to see you there <3
Member Offer - Befriending Yourself
befriendingyourself.com
Jeff Foster and Matt Licata's Befriending Yourself is an online community for healing, self-compassion & inner transformation. It includes monthly dialogues, meditations, teachings and practices with a Spiritual Teacher & a Depth PsychotherapistI am divinity and I am a fucking mess. I am God and I am a weird, original, flawed, unfinished painting of a “human being”. I have no limits, and so I limit myself in ingenious ways. I play with boundaries and edges, multiplicity and Oneness, form and the formless. I love dancing in the in-between, bridging gaps, holding on and letting go, grabbing and releasing, coming closer and moving away, only to come closer again. All movements are dear to me. I have no bias, no prejudice. I love the opening and the closing too, the space and the darkness. I am perfection, and I love making the most ridiculous mistakes. I learn from it all, delight in it all. I am complete and I love the erotic ache of the unfinished and the unresolved too. You will never capture me, yet I am always present; I dance peacefully, restlessly, on the edge where the world comes into form. Will you join me here, my love?
- Jeff Foster
THE MESS-IAH
"Fall in love with the mess of your life -
the shattered dreams, the broken promises,
the unexpected sorrows and joys, all those
hoped-for tomorrows that never arrived, all
those beautiful plans that never came to fruition.
Sanctify the mess of your life, this wild,
uncontrollable, unplanned, unexpected moment
of existence. Dignify it with your loving attention,
your gratitude. Because if you love the
mess enough, you will become a mess-iah."
- Jeff Foster
“Befriending” is not as much about “healing” as it is “holding.”
In true befriending, we do not have a heavy agenda to change, shift, fix, cure, transform, or, surprisingly, even “heal” this energy.
From this perspective, we are never “unhealed” or “untransformed”, really. We are not a project to be improved, but a mystery coming into form, moment by moment.
We are always whole, even in moments of intensity and discomfort.
We were never not whole (healed).
READ ON >> bit.ly/2MzxBCz
✏️ Matt Licata | Jeff Foster
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