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Special preview of The Joy of True Meditation.

 Preview of

THE JOY OF
TRUE MEDITATION:
Words of Encouragement
For Tired Minds
and Wild Hearts
by Jeff Foster

Exclusively for subscribers of Jeff’s

ENDING THE INNER WAR
online class.

Please do not share. Thank you.

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These excerpts are taken from an unpublished manuscript
which has not yet been copyedited, so there may be minor
errors in the text.

The Joy of True Meditation will be published later in the

year by New Sarum Press (UK).

Dearest reader,

I hope you enjoy this special preview of my new

book.

From my heart to yours,

Jeff x

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Some say the world
is a vale of tears,
I say it is
a place of soul-making.
- John Keats

INTRODUCTION

THE DISCOVERY OF TRUE

MEDITATION

I’d like to share with you a little of my story. It is a story that

begins with death and ends with life and tells of the discovery of
true meditation: not through books, spiritual teachers or meditation
classes, but through death and rebirth, through venturing into the
darkness of myself, through coming a hair’s breadth from suicide
and self-destruction, through breaking through the veil of
dualistic mind to an inextinguishable inner Light. A Light that had
been there all along. The Light of meditation. The Light of
Oneness. The Light of my true self.

Mine is a story perhaps not dissimilar from your own. I believe

we are all ultimately on the same journey back home… to the
present moment. To the here and now.

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From as early as I can remember, I believed that there was
something profoundly wrong with me. I felt sick and broken and
ugly inside; unworthy of love, a mistake of a human being;
damaged beyond redemption, beyond hope. The terror of
abandonment, and with it the terror of death itself, lurked deep
within in my bones and made me afraid and ashamed to live. I
walked through the streets hunched over, hiding my face. I would
never make eye contact with anyone for more than an instant; I
was convinced they would flee in disgust if they saw into me.

I was exhausted all the time, profoundly tired on a very deep soul
level. Entire school holidays I would spend hiding in my
bedroom, numbing myself with computer games, movies and
food, and generally longing for a different life. I ached and had
tensions all over my body, which I saw as an enemy and was
repulsed by.

I had secret panic attacks but told no-one. I had few friends,
nobody to really talk to. I was bullied badly at school and hid in
the restrooms during break times. I would come home drenched
in sweat and stuff myself with chocolate and microwave
hamburgers to try and numb the pain. I wore extra layers of
clothing, even in the hottest days of summer, to soak up my
excessive anxious perspiration.

I had no idea if I was male or female, straight or gay, man or beast,

saint or murderer. Maybe there had been some huge mistake, and
I had been born at the wrong moment, on the wrong planet,
orbiting the wrong sun. Sometimes I didn’t even know whether I

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was alive or dead. My identity was a giant question mark to me,
and that disturbed me to my core.

As I got older, an urge to die grew within me. I fantasised often

about killing myself or destroying the world or both. An ancient
grief and rage boiled inside, yet I numbed it and put on a brave
face. I excelled academically and was often top of the class at
school. At eighteen, I was accepted into Cambridge University, a
great honour for the family. I pretended to be happy, fulfilled,
untroubled, easy-going, the archetypal “good boy”. I gave no
indication to the world as to the depths of my despair.

In my quiet moments during the day and in nightmares while

sleeping I heard monsters moaning from deep within, terrible
cries of forgotten selves I had buried in the blackness, abandoned
parts of the psyche calling for love and help and attention from
the Underworld.

I had given up on all my hopes and dreams. From an early age I

had wanted to tell stories, make movies, inspire people, maybe
even change the world, but I was petrified of failure and rejection,
and dreaded my shameful insides being seen, and so I blocked off
these risky creative passions. I lived outside of my body and
outside of the present moment and in the fantasy world of the
time-bound conceptual mind, in daydreams and nightmares, in
convoluted philosophies and distant worlds, in pasts and futures,
and always, always in regret and anticipation. I was homeless,
divided from my true sanctuary and place of refuge. I had become
separated from God, alienated from the Life Source, wrenched
from the Divine Mother.

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I ached with a cosmic loneliness I could not find a way to
extinguish.

Later in my life, I came to the point of suicide. It seemed like the

only solution to my impossible problem of living. I was exhausted
beyond my ability to tolerate and I’d had enough of pretending,
trying to 'fit in', living in a world that couldn’t see me or didn’t
want me as I was. Something in me just wanted to rest from the
exhausting project called “being a person in the world”.

Of course, I didn’t really want to die. Secretly, I wanted so badly to

live. I just didn't know how. Nobody had ever shown me.

I believed physical death was the only way forwards.

I fell into a great darkness.

And then, one ordinary day, all my defences against life, all my
resistance to being alive, all my conditioned protection against the
pain and pleasure of raw experience, started to break down.

All the repressed unconscious material, all the thoughts and

feelings and desires I had held down in order to appear ‘normal’
and ‘civilised’ started leaking, then pouring, then gushing into
conscious awareness. Pandora’s Box had broken open inside of

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me. I could no longer run from the darkness within, no longer
push life away and seek refuge in the conceptual mind; there was
no longer any safe haven to be found there. I was being called to
face life. The joy, the terror, the rage, searing feelings of
abandonment suppressed since childhood, waves of unspeakable
grief – I could no longer escape them now. Raw trauma had been
unleashed inside, everything held-back was now rushing into me,
like an unstoppable torrent of life! I thought I was going to die,
convinced that I would not be able to tolerate the intensity of it
all for another moment.

But I did not die. In fact, I was beginning to heal. The old,
unhappy ‘me’ was beginning to break down. My no to life was
burning up and my true self was coming alive. Something deep
inside me was starting to say yes – yes to being alive, yes to not
knowing, yes to the joy and the sorrow of existence, yes to the mess
of being an imperfect human being, yes to the darkness and the
light, yes to all of it!

Over the next weeks and months, I came out of my mind and
into the heart. I touched Presence, the Now, a profound Oneness
with all things. I breathed. I could feel my heart again. I could feel
the Sun on my face. Hear new sounds. Taste my food. See new
horizons, new possibilities. Feel new sensations stirring in my
body. I felt like a baby, experiencing the world for the first time.
This sense of being alive was so intense sometimes, I thought it
would kill or damage or at least overwhelm me, or perhaps send
me spiralling into a void I would never escape from.

But feelings are always safe. It is our defences that hurt so much.

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I will say that again. Our feelings are safe, no matter how intense they are.
It is our tensing-up around our human feelings, our rejection and
refusal of them, our unconscious efforts to destroy and annihilate
and purify them inside of us, our shaming of our vulnerable inner
life and the smothering of the inner child, which causes so much
pain and suffering. Not the feelings themselves.

Instinctively, I began to breathe through all my ‘unbearable’ feelings,

thoughts, desires. One moment at a time, I was able to bear these
‘monsters’, survive them, tolerate them, allow them, even make
friends with them. And when I couldn’t allow them, when the
resistance felt too huge, when the inner rage felt volcanic, when
grief came in waves and seemed like it could tear me apart, I felt
something bigger bearing these energies, holding them, allowing
them, something ancient and strong and infinite and eternal and
loving and wholly unknowable to the mind. Even when the
moment seemed unbearable, I could always bear it.
Something inside me was indestructible. It could not be
killed. It was soft, vulnerable, radically open and receptive,
but it was also stronger and harder and more valuable than
the most precious diamond, and brighter than a billion suns.
I was beginning to discover my true nature; who I really was,
before I had been taught to distrust myself, before the self-hatred
and fearful conditioning, before the Fall. I was discovering my
true identity as Presence-Awareness itself. As the Light that never
goes out. As the Love that never dies. The great inextinguishable
Fire within.

At the core of my separation-shame-abandonment-death wound,

new hope was born. At the heart of duality, nonduality. In the
midst of darkness, in the belly of the beast, new life. A
resurrection. A forgiveness, a second chance. A new beginning.

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Some days I quaked and convulsed with fear, all the fear I’d never
really let myself feel, I let it move through me finally, instead of
pushing it away. Some days I raged at the sky and the oceans and
mountains, spoke all the words of the inner child who’d never
had a voice before, words that weren’t “nice” or “spiritual” or
“kind”, but raw and feral and wild and authentic and thrilling to
speak. Oh, to hear myself speak my own, authentic words at last!
I wept every day for about a year, wept out all the tears I’d never
been able to weep as a child, all the tears I had stifled so as not to
upset or anger or alienate anyone around me. I laughed like a baby
sometimes, giggled until I could hardly breathe, often for no
reason at all. Some days I felt ecstatic joy and terrible despair in
the very same moment. I was a glorious mess! A wild, inconsistent,
unpredictable and uncontrollable mess! There was so much room
in me now. So much life. So much space. Sometimes I thought I
was going mad, with all this freed-up energy moving inside. Some
days I thought about checking myself into a mental hospital. But
maybe we have to go ‘insane’ to heal. Maybe ‘normality’ or
‘conformity’ was the disease I’d been suffering from my whole
life. Maybe the straight-jacket of ‘adaptation’ was finally burning
up in a fever of healing. And I was learning to trust myself again.
Learning to stay close to my own experience, without judging it,
without trying to fix it, without trying even to be free from it.

I was learning true meditation from the fiercest meditation teacher

of all. Life itself.

I survived the death-rebirth process, began to be able to tolerate

previously intolerable thoughts and feelings. And I gained new
strength, found new courage, touched inner resources I never
knew I had.

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I started to fall in love with life again on this strange planet called
Earth. All of life, the joy and the sorrow too, the boredom and
the confusion, the disappointment and the doubt and the longing
and the loneliness. All was sacred now. All was beloved and
fascinating to me, like it had been when I was very young. I no
longer wanted to be free from my feelings, I wanted to feel them all,
experience them all, taste them all. I was no longer afraid of my
thoughts, I wanted to think up entire universes, create entire galaxies of
imagination. I was an artist again, as I had been when I was very
young, in love with all of creation, seeing life through new eyes,
eyes full of innocence and wonder. I was a vast ocean of
Consciousness, learning to love all of the waves of thought,
feeling, sensation…

I wanted to be broken and whole at the same time. I wanted the

positive and the negative of existence too. I wanted the bliss but
also the heartache. I wanted the expansion but I also wanted the
contraction. I wanted the “up” but I also wanted the “down” of
life. I wanted desire and lack of desire. I wanted feeling and I
wanted to feel the absence of feeling too. I was hungry for all
polarities of being. The yin and the yang. The comedy and the
tragedy. The agony and the ecstasy. The storm and the sunshine.
The flaws and the imperfections and the unbearable perfection of
it all; I wanted all of myself, the mess and the miracle, the dirt and
the stars. I wanted wholeness. Yes, not happiness but wholeness, a
gift far greater than the mind’s limited notion of happiness.

Day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath, I began to

show myself to others. Let them see me. All of me.

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I started to speak my truth. Shaking, sweating, heart pounding,
dry mouth sometimes, nauseated sometimes, deeply embarrassed
and ashamed to speak my truth, but I spoke it. The raw, wild,
messy, inconvenient truth of myself.

Some 'friends' disappeared. Some stayed. New friends, new

family, arrived, a new tribe that wanted the new me in all of my
divine mess. They wanted me to say the wrong thing, make
mistakes, show awkward feelings, speak inconvenient words, and
they wanted to try and love me for it.

Somewhere along the line I found the courage to start writing

about my ‘awakening’. My dance with death and surrender to life
and loss of ‘the old me’. My pathless path to where I had always
been. Word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, I
started to tell my deepest spiritual truth. I felt fear and trembling
doing it at first – after all, I was not a writer, and often had no
idea what I was writing or how to put words to this pre-verbal
experience of love for all creation, but something deeper was
guiding me, some benevolent and ancient force, giving me
language, putting words to silence, pulling me onwards. A blog
was published, then a book, then one day I found myself in front
of a small group of people in someone’s living room, talking
about what I'd discovered: Presence. Deep Acceptance. This non-
dual reality, this loving field where every thought and feeling is no
less than divine. Where even our urge to die contains intelligence,
consciousness, life. Me, who’d been the most frightened person on Earth,
sharing with others from the depths of my heart! How unexpected! Soon I
was talking to thousands of people all over the world in meetings
and retreats, in one-to-ones and even online broadcasts, never
knowing what I’d say, but trusting this inner voice anyway; never
knowing what to teach or how to help, but allowing this ancient

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teaching to flow through the open and transparent channel of
myself. Without a plan, without a clue about what I was doing,
the path unfolded in front of me, step by step, moment by
moment, and the role of ‘teacher’ was born - although I have
never really seen myself as a teacher, more like a friend and ally.
Someone who’s not trying to fix or heal you. Someone who just
wants to meet you as you are. Someone who’s here to remind you
of something you’ve always known.

I find myself writing these words to you now, dear reader, a

transmission directly from my heart to yours. What an epic
journey it has been, back to the utter simplicity of this moment, back to
the Garden of Eden, to this unique instant of life, the place we
inhabited before we innocently stepped away into the sorrows of
time. Through the detritus of myself, through the sewage of the
Underworld, through the gateway of terror and ego-death, and
back into the eternal Now. The more I have learned to befriend,
embrace and soothe my own sorrow, bliss, loneliness, anger,
fears, my weird desires and wild uncontrollable urges, learned to
love all the crazy voices in my head (without confusing them with
reality), the more I have been able to accept and not fear them in
you (and therefore be able to be present with you, and not try to
fix you, but love you instead, exactly as you are). Your longings
are my own. Your terrors have moved through me too. Your bliss
and your despair move me deeply; they are so familiar here. Your
burning questions are so recognizable and honest. Your doubts
and uncertainties shine with life. I have found a great compassion for
humanity by meeting my own pain. I have found a great compassion for others
by first finding compassion for myself.

Throughout all of my struggles, I had never been alone, for a

single moment. There was never anything wrong with me, and
there is never anything wrong with you. We are not born into sin,

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only a forgetting. We are taught to hate ourselves. We can un-
learn this self-aggression. We can un-forget. We can remember
what we always knew. We can heal from the most profound self-
loathing and fear of living. We can recover from even the most
horrific depression. At the very heart of our hopelessness, there
is new hope, rooted not in the mind and its images but in the
reality of Presence itself.

The healing journey is not about “getting rid” of the unwanted

and “negative” material within us, purging it until we reached a
perfect and utopic “healed state”. No. That is the mind’s version
of healing. Healing is not a destination. True healing involves
drenching that very same ‘unwanted’ material within us with love, presence
and understanding. It involves penetrating our deepest shadows, our
physical and emotional pains, those regions we have withdrawn
from in fear and in loathing, with a merciful and compassionate
awareness. Re-inhabiting those disavowed, rejected, forgotten and
frightened regions, those abandoned realms of the body and
mind, with curious attention in the present moment. For what we
attend to, we can love.

What we see as ‘wrong’ within us, our fear, our doubt, our
loneliness, is just a part of us calling for our tender attention, like
a baby crying for her mother - then screaming, then wailing, until
she receives what she wants. Love. It is love – kind, mindful, non-
judgemental, warm and curious awareness - that truly heals even
our deepest wounds. Throughout this book I invite you in so
many ways, through words and through the silences between
them, back to this tenderness, back to this gentle and non-
shaming way of meeting ourselves, back to this radical self-love,
a self-love that is synonymous with meditation.

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If you already have a formal meditation practice, I hope the
reflections in the following pages inspire and help deepen your
practice, and perhaps help you to see some things you’ve been
missing. If you are new to meditation, if you have never meditated
before, wonderful! We are all new to meditation if truth be told,
because meditation just means looking with fresh eyes, being
aware and awake to what is, flushing our embodied experience
with attention, and this can only ever happen in the newness of the
present moment. You can drop into this space of meditation
wherever you are and whatever you are doing. On the bus or
train, or resting cross-legged and eyes-closed in your living room,
walking through the forest or through a shopping centre, or
sitting on a park bench or in a doctor’s waiting room. You can do
it alone or you can do it with others. Every moment of your life,
there is always the wonderful possibility to slow down, breathe
deeply, and get curious about where you are. To begin again, to see
life through the eyes of not knowing. To stop thinking about your
life in the abstract, to stop seeking some other state or experience
or feeling, to stop running towards another moment, and really
fully experience this unique instant of existence.

Let us journey together now, back into the richness of ordinary

life. Step by step, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat,
through our joy and our gladness, through our aches and pains,
depressions and longings and ecstasies, through our deepest
wounds, through the cracks in the heart, leaving behind all ideas
of how we ‘should’ be, letting go of other people’s guidebooks
and self-help books and holy books, incinerating our second-
hand, inherited maps of reality, and lovingly illuminating our own
first-hand, real-time, authentic experience in the fire of present
awareness.

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This is true meditation, the kind of meditation that can save your
life:

Pure fascination with this moment, exactly as it is.

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If we will be quiet and ready enough,
we shall find compensation
in every disappointment.
- Henry David Thoreau

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THE MIRACLE OF BREATHING

In any moment of our lives, we can become aware of our breath.

It is our most wonderful anchor to Now.

Wherever we are, whatever time it is, whatever is happening in

the external world, we can become curious about the breath’s
deep mystery, we can touch its life-giving rising and its falling too,
its ascent and its descent. We can come out of our minds, drop
out of the thought-constructed narrative of past and future, and
touch the freshness and creativity of a single breathing moment.

Just for a moment, be present with the breath as it rises and falls,
surges and descends at its own pace. As you read these words,
attend to the sensations in your belly and chest, without trying to
control or change them, and without trying to breathe in any kind
of special way. Notice the rising and falling sensations, that very
familiar wave-like ascent and descent of the chest and belly that
has been with you, so close and so familiar, since you were a child.
Where do you feel the rising and falling sensations the most
strongly? Can you spend a few precious moments following them
with your attention, up and down, up and down?

Let the breath be as it is. Rising and falling, rising and falling, like a
wave in the ocean. Don’t try to alter the breath. If the breath is
shallow, let it be shallow. If it is deep, let it be deep right now. If
it feels tight and restricted, or smooth and spacious, just be with
that too. Don’t try to make the breath into something that it’s not.

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Don’t compare today’s breath with yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. Be
with the breath as it is, in this moment, at this hour, on this day.

Just let the breath be natural. Let the body breathe itself. Soften
any sense of holding around the breath, let it rise and fall in its
own way, at its own pace.

See! For a moment, as you pay attention to what’s here (and don’t pay
attention to what’s not here) you are not caught up in the thought-
constructed story of your life! For a moment, you have dropped
out of the mind, the complex and dramatic narrative called 'me
and my life’, and into the living body. You have left the known
world of habit and conditioning, and descended into the
Unknown, into a great living Mystery.

And if you lose yourself again in the madness of the world, you
can always ask the breath for help.

You can invoke the great and timeless question, "Breathing, how
are you doing, right now?"

You can touch the mysterious ‘Breathing One' inside with the
greatest tenderness and fascination.

And notice, ultimately you are not doing the breathing. You are
being breathed.

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HOW TRUE HEALING HAPPENS

In childhood, many of us learned that certain feeling states,

sensations in the body, urges and impulses within us, thoughts,
desires and wants, were not okay to experience, let alone express.
We were taught to fear and reject parts of ourselves, see them as
‘dark’ or ‘negative’ or ‘dirty’ or ‘sick’ or even ‘sinful’. We were
taught to distrust ourselves, distrust the present moment. We were
made to believe that we were separate from all things, divided
from the Whole. We were made to eat from the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, digest dualistic conditioning from the world
around us, swallow second-hand ideas and concepts of how we
‘should’ be. This was our innocent Fall from Grace. It wasn’t our
fault. We didn’t know any better.

As young girls we may have be taught that our desires and our
anger, our frustration and resistance and defiance, our sexual
urges and fantasies were not okay - they were not natural, they
were bad, or sick, or sinful, or dangerous, or shameful, or "not
ladylike". As boys we may have be taught that it wasn't okay to be
sad, or express our vulnerability, fears and doubts and heartaches
and longings. That it wasn’t okay to ask for help or have a need
or express a boundary, share what felt okay for us and what didn’t.
That if we showed our authentic vulnerable selves, we would be
punished, or ridiculed, or compared with others, or neglected,
forgotten, laughed at, abandoned. We were taught to confuse our
vulnerability with weakness, and see our sensitivity as something
to be ashamed of.

Hiding our true feelings, repressing our authentic selves and

creating a conceptual ‘me’, an image, a persona (mask) or character
to win love and approval, and becoming something we were not
- this became a matter of necessity, survival. Yes, in order to survive,
in order to win love, we brilliantly and creatively did all we could to

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push down, suppress, numb or destroy the unwanted, 'dangerous,
threatening, unsafe’ energies inside us, de-pressing our true selves
and creating a role called “me” to please the world, to avoid
punishment or ridicule or neglect, to win attention and praise and
love, to keep our primary relationships intact. We became
performers, doing anything we could to distract others from our
'dark' insides. We pretended to be strong when we felt weak, up
when we felt down, confident when we felt scared, controlled and
cautious when we only longed to express our silliness and
spontaneity and creativity. To the extent that we suppressed our
true selves, we were all de-pressed, split and traumatised by our
childhoods.

We abandoned ourselves for love, in our innocence. And to this

day we may still feel like there is something wrong with us, deep down.
The 'unacceptable' and 'dark' and ‘shameful’ feelings, desires and
longings still fester inside of us, deep in the unconscious, draining
our life energy and spirit, making us feel tired, depressed,
lethargic, anxious and disconnected from life and each other.
Unfelt and suppressed energies can become destructive and
wreak havoc on our immune systems, feeding all manner of
diseases, mental and physical. We may simply feel "dead while
alive", and not know why. We may turn to addictions and
compulsive behaviours – alcohol, drugs, sex, internet, television,
shopping, overthinking, overworking - in order to find temporary
relief from ourselves.

As Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas:

“If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth
will destroy you”.

He was perfectly describing the experience of trauma.

Jesus also said:

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"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you”.

Through this ‘bringing forth’, flushing our wounds with loving

awareness, which is the essence of true meditation, even the
deepest inner pain and trauma can be transmuted into medicine.

In the presence of a safe friend, or therapist, or in the presence

of God, ourselves, the mountains, the vastness of the oceans, or
even a loving animal friend, we can find the courage to let our
persona 'break down', and reconnect with the unloved parts of
ourselves, ‘bringing forth’ those split-off shadowy energies into
the Light of Awareness. We can take the risk of feeling more
uncomfortable, more afraid, more unloved and unworthy and
angry and chaotic than ever. We can take the risk of seeing
ourselves, and being seen in return. Losing the image. Coming
out of hiding. The suppressed chaos, the mess, the 'victim' part
of us, the lost child, can now come back into the present moment,
and this time, instead of receiving shame and judgement and
ridicule and attack, that very same material receives love, and breath, and
understanding, and welcoming, and attention, and curiosity. All the life-
giving power trapped inside these suppressed emotions can pour
back into our bodies, all the creativity of the anger, the sorrow,
the guilt, the fear and the joy can now energize us, inspire us,
make us feel whole and powerful and alive again. The energies
that previously threatened to destroy us - our anger, our fear, our
grief, our deepest and strangest and most creative desires - can
now become our greatest teachers, friends and guides, and
sources of nourishment and inspiration.

As the re-integration of healing happens, we may no longer be

able live up to the image of the “cool, calm, collected spiritual
practitioner”! We may scream, shake, weep, sweat, speak new and
surprising words, or fall to the floor in exhaustion or in gratitude.
We may look messy and broken and wild and 'crazy'. We may feel
and think things that seem 'not like us at all'. We may feel we are
about to die, or go mad, or lose ourselves completely. People we

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imagined were our friends may run from our chaos, or shame it,
or try to 'save' us (to save themselves from their own discomfort).
Our external lives may fall apart. Relationships may break up. Old
reference points may disappear. New friends, new family, new
lovers may arrive to support us in our process, to stay present
with us as we fall apart and fall together and fall in love with our
wildness again. As we return to the Garden. As we discover who
we truly are, day by day, baby step by baby step.

In the midst of the crisis of healing, in any moment, we can leave

the story and return to simplicity, the ever-present field of
meditation. We can feel our feet on the ground. We can breathe.
We can let old and powerful energies move through us, like the
ancient sky allowing a storm. We can begin, moment by moment,
to trust the body and its mysteries. We can remember our Divine
Capacity - how much life we can hold, painful and pleasurable,
violent and gentle, positive and negative, sacred and profane. All
thoughts and feelings have a home in us. All parts of our
humanity are lovable, sacred, natural.

We can hold it all, from the greatest joy to the deepest despair.
Like a mother holding her new-born. Like the Earth, like the
ground, holding you now, as you read these very words in this
very ordinary book, on this very ordinary day, in this miraculous
Now, in this present scene of this precious, unique and
unrepeatable life you have been given.

Right now, what can you see? What can you hear? What can you
feel? Pay attention, just for a moment. Are you feeling peaceful?
Tense? Tired? Expansive? Don’t think. Look. Is there a sense of
struggle in you? Anticipation? Do you feel empty? Full? Is there
an excitement, a sadness, a sense of loneliness, anxiety, joy? Is
your mind calm or busy? What’s it like to sit on this chair, to lie
on this bed, to stand where you stand, to breathe as you breathe?
Is your breathing fast or slow, shallow or deep?

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Whatever is alive here, just for a moment, can you bless it with
your undivided attention? Can you be here with this anxiety,
without trying to fix it? Can you stay with this emptiness, without
trying to fill it? Can you flush this loneliness, this joy, this doubt
with non-judgemental attention? Can you behold this present
moment as an artist would behold his subject, as a lover would
behold her beloved? Not as something to change or mend, but as
something whole and fascinating in itself? And if you can’t be
here, if you can’t find a place of allowing, can you be with that
feeling - of restlessness or resistance or frustration or refusal - just
for a moment, without trying to fix it, or heal it, or transcend it,
or make it go away…?

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FROM DEPRESSED TO DEEP REST

Every human being on this planet, however happy they seem on

the outside, is to some extent depressed, pressed down (‘de-
pressed’) by the false self, exhausted on a deep soul level by their
frustrated attempts to hold up an image, to play a character that
isn't really who they are.

We simply long to stop performing and be authentic again. We

long to wake up from the performance of separation, take off our
costumes and make-up and tear up the script forced upon us by
our family and our culture and simply be. When we repress our
true feelings, desires, urges, longings, banishing them into the
unconscious, living as a mask in this world, playing a cartoon
version of ourselves, we become depressed, lethargic, numb and
even suicidal.

The experience of depression is not a mistake, then, but deeply

intelligent. It is a wake-up call. Depression is an ancient, yet highly
misunderstood, invitation back to deep rest, slowness, presence,
truth. It is a call to come out of the mind and its fears and anxieties
and resentments, and back into the living body and its senses and
its spontaneity. It is a call to 'kill' the false self, the character we’ve been
playing and be exactly what we are. To let go of the image. To stop
running from the living moment. To touch into our wounds and
traumas with great gentleness. To mindfully drench our intimate,
first-hand experience with loving attention. To awaken to our
brilliant rage, our awesome grief and our astonishing hidden
terrors. To walk our path, to forge ahead with courage. To speak
our unique truth out loud. To stop de-pressing the wildness and
creativity inside. To come out of hiding and allow ourselves to be
seen. To die to the false, and awaken to the real.

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My suicidal depression and existential despair ended up saving my
life a hundred times over, pushing me onto this healing path.
Depression was my unique call to discover the deepest kind of
cosmic rest within myself. I am eternally grateful to the gods of
the Underworld for making me so miserable that I started to
question who I’d taken myself to be, and started to fall in love
with the ground upon which I stood, the sacred ground of deep
rest.

I did not need to kill my body or destroy my mind. I needed to

kill my image of ‘self’, to stop confusing a picture of ‘me’ with
who I really was. I needed to commit the compassionate spiritual
‘suicide’ of falling in love with the present moment. This is the
great paradox of awakening. We must ‘die’ in order to really live.
We must ‘kill’ (let go of) everything we are not, in order to flourish
as who we really are. We must die to the false notion that we are
not One with the stars, the moon, the migrating swallows at
daybreak, the wild lavender and heather and rose of the
mountains.

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STOP WAITING FOR ABUNDANCE

When you were young, you loved to dream and let go of dreams.
You dwelled in the Now.

As you got older, you started to take your dreams, end-points and
goals way too seriously, and your happiness became bound up
with the future, and destinations became more important than the
journey itself.

You simply forgot how precious it was to be alive, each and every
moment.

Dream about what you want, of course. Have a vision for an

extraordinary future, of course. But learn to let your dreams go, too, let
them float off into the river of life, and then bring your attention
back to the place where all dreams begin and end, are born and
die: the present moment. Don't use a dream or a hope as an
excuse to disconnect from where you are, because where you are
is way too valuable.

Learn to love the place where you are. Lean into the in-between
moments. Embrace the ordinary steps on the path. The moments
of ‘nothing’. The seemingly inconsequential instants of life. The
uneventful moments, the ones where nothing seems to be
happening at all. Learn to love that nothing, the delicious sense
of waiting, yearning, longing, seeking and anticipating ‘the next
thing’. Learn to dance and breathe in the space between the
wanting and the getting, the dreaming and the fulfilment of
dreams. Learn to love not having what you want right now. Learn to

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appreciate the movie scenes in-between the dramatic ones. The
tremendous sense of potential there, the beauty and fullness of
the space, the delicious sense of absence, the pregnant and fertile
void, the something of the nothing.

Realise that 'lack' is only space, resisted. And even an 'incomplete'

feeling, a feeling of emptiness, is so complete, a welcome visitor
in the heart. Breathe into the belly, the chest, the tired head.
Drench a sense of ‘lack’ with curious awareness. Infuse the body
and its heaviness with light, saturate it with attention, fill it with
love. Feel the weight and fullness of the torso, the shoulders, the
neck, the legs, the entire body, abundant with sensation and the
stillness between sensation.

Even when you don't have what you want, you are invited to want
to be exactly where you are; to fall in love with the place where
you stand or sit, to want it; to contact the fertile ground as you
wait, or forget the waiting and simply savour the unique and
unrepeatable moments in the mysterious movie called “You”.

Open your arms in gratitude, ready to receive whatever comes,

ready to bless whatever leaves, this is the calling of true
meditation.

Because sometimes, even the 'not getting' can be so very full.

Behold, your abundant life.

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STOP TRYING TO FIX ME. LOVE ME INSTEAD.

“Please, don't try to fix me. I am not broken. I have not asked for
your solutions.

When you try to fix me, you unintentionally activate deep feelings
of unworthiness, shame, failure, even suicidal self-doubt within
me. I can't help it. I feel like I have to change to please you,
transform myself just to take away your anxiety, mend myself to
end your resistance to the way I am. And I know I can't do that,
not on your urgent timeline anyway. You put me in an impossible
bind when you try to fix me. I feel so powerless.

I know your intentions are loving! I know you really want to help.
You want to serve. You want to take away people's pain when
you see it. You want to uplift, awaken, caretake, educate, inspire.
You truly believe that you are a positive, compassionate,
unselfish, nice, good, kind, pure, spiritual person. But I want you
to know, honestly, friend, I actually feel deeply unloved when you
try to 'love' me in this old way. It feels like you're trying to relieve
your own tension when you attempt to fix me. I feel treated like
a broken object that needs mending.

Under the guise of you being 'kind' and 'helpful' and 'spiritual', I
feel suffocated, smothered, rejected, shamed, and completely
unloved when you try to fix me. I feel abandoned in your love.
Do you get that? I feel like you don't actually care about me, even
though on the surface it sure looks like you care. But deep down
it feels like you are holding an image of how I should be. Your image.
Not mine. It looks like your love but it feels like your violence. Do
you understand?

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As soon as you stop trying to 'help' me, you are of the greatest
help to me! I stop trying to change to please you! I feel safe,
respected, seen, honoured for what I am. I can fall back into my
own subjective power. I can trust myself again, the way you are
trusting me. I can relax deeply.

Without your pressure, your demand for me to abandon myself

and be different, healed, transformed, enlightened, awakened,
mended, 'better', I can better see myself. I can discover my own
inner resources. I can touch my own powerful presence. I feel
safe enough to allow and express my true feelings, thoughts,
desires, hold my own perceptions. I no longer feel smothered, a
victim, a little child to your expert adult. The courageous warrior
in me rises. I breathe more deeply. I feel my feet on the ground.
Loving attention drenches my experience, even the
uncomfortable parts. My senses feel less dull. Healing energies
emerge from deep within. I feel light, free, liberated from your
disapproval. I feel respected, not shamed. Seen as a living thing,
not able to be compared with an image.

You help me so much when you stop trying to help me, friend! I
need my own answers, my own truth, not yours. I want a friend,
present and real, someone to hold me as I break and heal, not an
expert or a saviour or someone trying to stop me going through
my process.

And do you see, when you are trying to save me, you are actually
abandoning yourself? You are running from your own
discomfort, your own unlived potential, and focussing on mine?

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I become your ultimate distraction. I don't want to be that for you
anymore…”

Let's stop trying to fix or save each other. Let's love each other instead. Bow
to each other. Bless each other. Hold each other. As we are. As we actually,
actually, actually are.

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IF YOU ARE FEELING SAD...

If you are feeling sad, you are not in a 'low vibration'. You are not
sick or broken or unenlightened or far from healing. You are not
'trapped in your ego' or stuck in the 'separate self'. You are not
being negative, and you don't need to be fixed, and sadness is not
a mistake, because it's life moving in you, and life can't be a
mistake, ever.

You are just feeling sad, that's all.

It's a feeling state playing out on the vibrantly alive movie screen
of presence, that's all.

It's not a problem that requires a solution or a Band-Aid. It's a

sacred and precious part of you longing for love, acceptance,
embrace, rest.

You've been blessed by sadness today; you've been chosen as her

home; don't run away from such a truly precious visitor.

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RELAX, YOU ARE NOT THE DOER

What is stress? Stress is the tension between this moment and

your mental image of how this moment should be. Stress is your
narrow focus on a mental list of 'future things to do', the
imaginary pressure of 'all the things that haven't been done yet',
‘all the other things I should be doing now’, ‘all the wonderful
things I’m missing out on’.

Stress always involves past-and-future-thinking, a forgetting of

your true Ground and your only place of power: This moment,
here, now, today.

When your focus shifts from what is not present, to what is

present, from 'lack' to what is abundantly here; when, instead of
trying to complete a list of ten thousand things, you simply do the
next thing, the one thing that presents itself now, this thing here, with
your full attention and passion and presence, lists get completed
effortlessly, and in some deeper sense, tasks do themselves.

Relax. You are not the doer.

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THE RUPTURE AND THE REPAIR

When our plans and dreams fall apart, what doesn’t fall apart?

First there is the rupture. The status quo is shattered. The old
safety is gone. Old wounds are triggered, the pain body resurfaces,
buried trauma erupts from the depths of the unconscious. You
feel disoriented, groundless, homeless, not knowing where to
turn. An old world has crumbled, a new world has not yet formed.

You encounter the strange space of Now, pure presence, raw,

unprotected by old dreams, nothing to cling to. Even your
outdated concepts of God crumble here.

And then you remember to breathe.

And you return to the safety of the present moment, and you feel
your feet on the ground again, and you feel the weight of the body
again, and you observe the madness of the mind rather than losing
yourself in it. You watch your thoughts spinning out of control,
but you, as awareness, are not spinning out of control with them.
The world may feel out of control but you are not. You are not
the ever-changing mind, but the unchanging observer of it,
and this realisation changes everything.

And you feel what you feel now. Afraid. Angry. Numb. Sad.
Lonely. Unsafe. Whatever. You commit to feeling it fully today,
to not running away. A feeling is just a feeling, a flowing energy

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and not a solid fact, and presence can hold it as it flows. You wail,
you weep, you scream, but you are repairing. You have broken to
heal, ruptured to mend. Old energies have emerged only to be
blessed with love, acceptance, tenderness, today; and there is only
today.

You only ever have to deal with life a moment at a time. Please do not forget
this.

You can't go back to the way things were. You can't un-see what
you have seen. But you can be present, right now. And you can
take each step consciously now, not automatically, habitually, but
mindfully, with care. Finding gratitude for each extra moment you
are alive. Thanking the air, the rain, the vastness of the sky.
Thanking the feet and the legs and the spine as they keep you
standing. Thanking the arms for all they hold and carry. Thanking
the heart for what it endures, day by day. Thanking the shoulders,
the brain, the lungs, the muscles, all the internal organs, full of
unspeakable mysteries.

Staying close to yourself now, as your old world falls apart,

walking this new and unknown path with trust and courage,
slowly, mindfully, with care. Stepping into your new life, one step
at a time, repairing your world with each step, becoming familiar
with the moments.

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EVEN WHEN WE CANNOT HOLD OURSELVES

I was speaking with a young man about letting go of his ideas

about the future, his images of how his life 'should' be, and
embracing himself as he actually was, feeling his pain instead of
running from it, living in the present, not in false hope.

He said, "Well Jeff, if there's only this moment, only now, and
that’s all there is… then I'm going to kill myself".

For a moment, he had lost all hope. Suicide seemed like the logical
solution.
I stayed present. Listened. Validated his pain. Entered his world.
Discovering presence can be a shock to the system, can begin to
reorganise the entire psyche, release deeply buried feelings, urges,
longings, fears. I understand that. I've been through it.

"Yes, it is scary to lose all your hope".

"I'm terrified".
"Where is that fear? Can you describe it to me? Can you feel it in
your body now?"
"Yes. It's burning... Fiery… Here… in my chest".
"Would you be willing to stay right there for a moment, feel that
power in your chest?".

Silence.

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"It’s hot… and I feel like... I feel like I want to kill someone. You
know, I feel so pissed at you now. You've taken away everything
from me, all my hope..."

I stayed present.

"I understand. Yes. So where do you feel that anger?"

"Here, in my belly, my throat, my chest..."
"What does it feel like, again?"
"It's like... Power. Like a volcano. Like... I could destroy the whole
Universe".
"Yes. Yes. It’s huge. You're feeling your own power. You don't
have to deny it any more, or act on it, just feel it now, for a
moment here; let’s let it burn, honour it together".
"Wow. It's a lot".
"It's yours. Just allow it. Allow those sensations in your belly,
heart, throat. Breathe into them, through them..."
"I want to scream”".
"Do it!"
"I.... I.... I hate life!”
"Louder!"
"I HATE LIFE! I HATE EVERYONE! I HATE MY
PARENTS!”
“Yes! What else do you hate?”

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“I HATE YOU, JEFF!”

Our eyes meet. A recognition. Love. Presence. Total acceptance.

He bursts into tears, slumps in his chair, his body relaxes, he
breathes deeply again.

His grief and rage had been met, for the first time ever I think,
with love, understanding, acceptance. Something had been
released, some tension, some trauma, something bound-up,
something old. Something seemingly unlovable had been loved
for the first time. Some new neural pathway had been forged.
Something unconscious had come into conscious awareness, this
open meditative space, and received kind attention and blessings.
The seeker had received what it had always been seeking.

"My God. My God. For the first time in my life, Jeff, honestly,
for the first time, I feel... alive. I feel like… myself".

It's amazing, the power of just staying present. Listening to what

emerges. Doing less and trusting more. Allowing the other person
to go through what they have to go through, without trying to fix or save
them. Making it safe for them to be fully themselves, fully alive
and fully messy, to express what they have to express, to feel as
bad or as good as they need to feel.

Through the hate, to the love. Through the grief, to the joy.
Taking away the false hope, and perhaps leaving them with the
dawn of a new hope. Trusting their individual process. Trusting
in their ability to withstand powerful thoughts and feelings.

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Trusting this vast field of meditation, the benevolent field that
holds us all, always, even when we cannot hold ourselves.

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This is the great paradox of healing:

You are always healing

(in time)
and
you are already healed
(in the timelessness of Now).

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All text © Jeff Foster 2019
THE JOY OF TRUE MEDITATION will be published later in
2019 by New Sarum Press.
Stay tuned to Jeff’s official website
www.lifewithoutacentre.com for more details.

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