Jeff Foster Quotes

This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained. No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life.

The word “depressed” is spoken phonetically as “deep rest”. We can view depression not as a mental illness, but on a deeper level, as a profound, and very misunderstood, state of deep rest, entered into when we are completely exhausted by the weight of our own identity.

Stop thinking your way through life, always trying to work it out before living it. Life is to be lived, not analyzed to death. Feel

Since everything is only an illusion, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one might as well burst out laughing! – Longchenpa

Perhaps our dreams are there to be broken, and our plans are there to crumble, and our tomorrows are there to dissolve into todays, and perhaps all of this is all a giant invitation to wake up from the dream of separation, to awaken from the mirage of control, and embrace whole-heartedly what is present. Perhaps it is all a call to compassion, to a deep embrace of this universe in all its bliss and pain and bitter-sweet glory. Perhaps we were never really in control of our lives, and perhaps we are constantly invited to remember this, since we constantly forget it. Perhaps suffering is not the enemy at all, and at its core, there is a first-hand, real-time lesson we must all learn, if we are to be truly human, and truly divine. Perhaps breakdown always contains breakthrough. Perhaps suffering is simply a right of passage, not a test or a punishment, nor a signpost to something in the future or past, but a direct pointer to the mystery of existence itself, here and now. Perhaps life cannot go 'wrong' at all.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on this earth. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Love says “I am everything”. Wisdom says “I am nothing”. Between the two, my life flows. - Nisargadatta Maharaj

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. MARCEL PROUST

Let life kick you off your pedestal time and time again, until you lose all interest in being on pedestals.

It’s delicious, ingenious, perfect, intelligent that you never felt like you fit in. It means that you were always alive, and therefore unique and irreplaceable, designed to resist any kind of labeling whatsoever, unable to be pinned down or reduced to a category.

TO YOUR KNEES Life will eventually bring you to your knees. Either you’ll be on your knees cursing the universe and begging for a different life, or you’ll be brought to your knees by gratitude and awe, deeply embracing the life that you have, too overwhelmed by the beauty of it all to stand or even speak. Either way, they’re the same knees.

If somebody treats you with unkindness, if they judge or criticize you, it’s likely they have endured similar treatment from others in the past, and they are only repeating unconscious patterns in search of a love they cannot find.

AN INVITATION I don’t want to hear what you believe I’m not at all interested in your certainty I couldn’t care less about your unexcelled perfection Share with me your doubts Open up your tender heart Let me in to your struggles I’ll meet you in that place Where your spiritual conclusions Are starting to crack open That’s where the creativity lies That’s where the newness shines That’s where we can truly meet: Beyond the image Your imperfections Are so perfect In this light I don’t want you to be perfect I want you to be real

Friend, I love your rebellious heart.

Oh, sweet little boy, beloved little girl, you are so overwhelmed by life sometimes, I know, by the enormity of it all, by the vastness of the possibilities, by the myriad of perspectives available to you. You feel so pressed down sometimes, by all the unresolved questions, by all the information you are supposed to process and hold, by the urgency of things. You are overcome by powerful emotions, trying to make it all "work out" somehow, trying to get everything done "on time," trying to resolve things so fast, even trying not to try at all. You are exhausted, sweet one, exhausted from all the trying and the not trying, and you are struggling to trust life again. It's all too much for the poor organism, isn't it? You are exhausted; you long to rest. And that is not a failing of yours, not a horrible mistake, but something wonderful to embrace!

What you really long for is a deep intimacy with your own experience—the deepest acceptance of every thought, every sensation, every feeling. And that cannot come from outside of yourself.

There is nothing to figure out, and nothing to understand. You are not a person. There is not such thing as a person. The so-called person is merely a thought in the mind of God. In truth, it’s even not that. There is only pure Awareness, Consciousness - formless, unborn and undying, and that is who you are. How can the apparent mind possibly comprehend this? It is not possible. The finite can never understand the infinite. The mind does not exist. Seek the Source of the mind, the Source of the ‘I-thought’, by constant, patient Self-enquiry. When the mind is quiet, You shine in all your glory. Be Yourself, and be happy.

Admit is a beautiful word—it means both “tell the truth” and “allow in.” To admit present experience—to tell the truth about what is actually present—is to recognize that what’s present has already been admitted into life. The waves appearing at present have already been admitted into the ocean, and admitting that they exist is at the absolute core of this teaching. Waking up is all about admitting who you really are!

Why does it often take extreme life situations to bring back an awareness of the magic and mystery of life? Why do we often wait until we’re about to die before discovering a deep gratitude for life as it is? Why do we exhaust ourselves seeking love, acceptance, fame, success, or spiritual enlightenment in the future? Why do we work or meditate ourselves into the grave? Why do we postpone life? Why do we hold back from it? What are we looking for exactly? What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Will the life we long for really come in the future? Or is it always closer than that?

How To Love Yourself When you change your focus what is absent to what is present, what is missing to what has been given, what you are not towards what you are, the ravages of linear time to the immediacy of Now you're reconnecting with love, truth and beauty, and abundance is yours, effortlessly. For truly, nothing is missing here, where you are, nothing is missing in this present scene in the movie of your life, and are forever busy, and at a point of completeness. The only reason why you can not find the Unit it is because it never came out. The day is waiting to be lived. So breathe life friend, Breathe life.

A CELEBRATION OF WEIRD Don’t become a spiritual zombie, devoid of passion and deep human feeling. Let spirituality become a celebration of your uniqueness rather than a repression of it. Never lose your quirkiness, your strangeness, your weirdness – your unique and irreplaceable flavour. Don’t try or pretend to be ‘no-one’ or ‘nothing’ or some transcendent and impersonal non-entity with ‘no self’ or ‘no ego’, ‘beyond the human’ – that’s just another conceptual fixation and nobody’s buying it any more. Be a celebration of what your unique expression is and stop apologising. Fall in love with this perfectly divine, very human mess that you are. There is no authority here, and no way to get life wrong. So get it all wrong. Fail, gloriously.

All human suffering is a variation on this theme—trying to control the waves, trying to control our present-moment experience so it conforms to our ideas and concepts of how it should be. If you want to suffer, compare this moment with your image of how it should be! I

Let them laugh and point. You are a yogi of traffic jams and discarded apple cores, aloneness and impossibly blue winter skies, a yogi of broken dreams, mad with truth and devotion and inexplicable joy, and you cannot be saved now.

Stop trying to heal yourself, fix yourself, even awaken yourself. Let go of letting go. Stop trying to fast-forward the movie of your life, chasing futures that never seem to arrive. Instead, bow deeply to yourself as you actually are. Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your deepest longing, your fearful thoughts...are not mistakes, and they aren't asking to be healing. They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly, in the loving arms of present awareness.

Oh yes, for sure, there will be heartbreak! And you will learn to get out of your head and into your immediate embodied experience, coming out of mental stories and conclusions, and contacting the raw energy of the here and now, directly feeling the devastation of your dreams rather than intellectualizing everything away, letting the grief, anger, and sorrow of millennia surge through your pores, rather than dismissing it all as an “illusion,” or distracting yourself with fresh dreams. All

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Tomorrow's integration is not my job. The story of yesterday's awakening is irrelevant. Here and now is where life is. And there is only here and now.

to allow our hearts to break, to soften them, to sink deeply into the knowing that everything will fall, everything will pass, everything will crumble, can be the great portal to awakening. We simply stop taking everything for granted. We stop living in “tomorrow” and turn toward the living day. We stop seeking our happiness in the future, clinging to the promises of others, and begin to break open into a bigger happiness that is rooted in presence, and truth, that allows for the coming but also the going of things, that accepts the little deaths as they happen each day, the disappointments, the losses, the shattered expectations, the good-byes. The Unexpected becomes our friend, a constant companion. We break open into bitter-sweetness, into fragility and utter vulnerability, into the gift of every moment, of every encounter with a friend, a lover, a stranger.

Don’t try to trust; simply trust that you cannot trust right now or don’t know how. Don’t force gratitude; just be grateful that you aren’t grateful, love that the demand for gratitude is unnecessary. Love your inability to love fully, accept your non-acceptance, surrender to your absolute failure to surrender today. This is freedom, right where you are—the freedom to feel unfree, to taste life totally at the point of creation, to be exactly what you are, no matter what you are. Whatever arises, however unwanted, however disappointing, however ephemeral, say, “You are none other than life itself! I bow to you!

You are a complete mess, friend, unable to be mended. The time for solutions has passed. Yet stay close. Breathe. This is not the end. Come out of all your futures; no time for futures now. Look: you are an embraceable mess. A mess that is holy to its very core. You could never be what they wanted you to be. You were always too alive, too inquisitive, born with a heart broken open to life. They tried to close it, but it would never close. You wouldn’t fit in. You couldn’t conform. You could never squeeze yourself into their ideal of “perfection.” The perfect thoughts and feelings, the “right” way to be, the dance they told you to dance—your heart was always too big. Let everything flood in now. Give up. Fall apart. Break down. Let the old dreams of yourself die a beautiful death. Let all the lost fragments find safety in your loving arms. And in your falling, find yourself. And in your breaking, breathe. And all the creatures in all the forgotten Kingdoms are bowing to you now. Their savior. Their love.

noticed,

Your margin is my opportunity.

The life you are trying to understand is identical with the ‘you’ that is trying to understand it.

the one who wrote this book is the one who is reading it

Reach out for the light, yes, but love your shadows too.

Abundance is not the money you have in your bank account, the trophies on your shelf, the letters after your name, the list of goals reached, the number of people you know, your perfect, healthy body, your adoring fans. Abundance is your connection to each breath, how sensitive you are to every flicker of sensation and emotion in the body. It is the delight with which you savor each unique moment, the joy with which you greet each new day. It is knowing yourself as presence, the power that creates and moves worlds. It is your open heart, how deeply moved you are by love every day, your willingness to embrace, to hold what needs to be held. It is the freshness of each morning unencumbered by memory or false hope. Abundance is the feeling of the afternoon breeze on your cheeks, the sun warming your face. It is meeting others in the field of honesty and vulnerability, connecting beyond the story, sharing what is alive. It is your rootedness in the present moment, knowing that you are always Home, no matter what happens, no matter what is gained or lost. It is touching life at the point of creation, never looking back, feeling the belly rise and fall, thanking each breath, giving praise to each breath. It is falling to your knees in awe, laughing at the stories they tell about you, sinking more deeply into rest. Abundance is simplicity. It is kindness. It is you, before every sunrise: fresh, open, and awake. You are rich, friend! You are rich!

For so long there had been a deadness. For so long I’d sat back and watched the world go by without me. The world had become the enemy, because it wasn’t essentially real. Everyday human

Shaw resented being questioned by the Temple Planning Commission. It felt especially offensive because, besides her constant responsibilities as a foster parent, she had a day job as well, contributing her entire salary to the Temple.

Feelings that have been pushed away do not actually disappear; they live on in the darkness of the Unconscious, pulling the strings in our relationships, our work, self-expression, causing us to become reactive, compulsive, obsessive, depressed, anxious, and deteriorate our physical health until one day, we remember, all feelings have a right to exist in us. So, we stop numbing ourselves, and feed them love, attention, curiosity and Presence. Now, they can finally come to rest.

Trust the unpredictable intelligence of healing, and know that their “symptoms” may get worse before they get better; energy may become more intense before it dies down. What appears now as chaos and disintegration may in fact be a necessary release and an intelligent reorganization of blocked systems.

We are all ruled by emotions. One of the most powerful is a state called enmity, which I spoke of earlier. It is irrational, deeply rooted, and can endure generations. It is fostered by a lack of trust in anyone outside our own culture. When there is enmity, we tend to see only the faults in others, and our own virtues.

And how easy this mechanism is to see in others! Can we see it in ourselves? That is the question. Who are your scapegoats? What do you reject in others that you secretly reject in yourself? Weakness? Failure? Fear? Homosexuality? Violence? What thoughts and feelings do you not admit in yourself, in order to hold up to the world an image of who you are?

Once you see what’s going on in your experience, once you see the seeking that’s happening and are honest with yourself about it, communication becomes effortless. There is no longer any need to work out how to communicate. Communicating becomes a matter of simply saying what you see. It is telling the truth about what’s really going on for you, in your experience—without expectation. What could be simpler than that? Clear and honest communication flows naturally from the realization of deep acceptance of present experience.

Knowing yourself as the presence, the power that creates and moves worlds - This is Abundance. It exists in your open heart, your willingness to hold a space, to allow everything to unfold, to be. It feels like freshness of a morning and of the afternoon breeze. Like the sun warming your face. Abundance is meeting others in the sunny field of honesty and vulnerability. It is feeling like you are always Home - in yourself - no matter what happens. Abundance is simplicity. It is kindness. It is you, before every sunrise: fresh, open, and awake. You are rich, friend! You are rich!

Yet, I also began to have the sense, fostered in part by the cross-contamination of research, that around the world enclaves that never knew one another—writers who could not have read each other—still had communicated across decades and across vast distances, had stared up at the same shared unfamiliar constellations in the night sky, heard the same unearthly music: a gorgeous choir of unique yet interlocking imaginations and visions and phantoms. At such times, you wonder as both a writer and an editor if you are creating narrative or merely serving as a conduit for what was already there.

To be honest means “to tell the truth without expectation,” without aiming for a particular result, without trying to hurt or manipulate the other person in any way. Honesty means telling the truth and being willing to experience everything that follows. It means telling the truth not with the aim of changing or fixing the other person, but simply because the truth is what I long for the most. What I long for the most is to let go of the burden of trying to hold up a false image of myself in your presence. In the end, we don’t need a reason to tell to the truth, to admit what is. Truth is its own reward.

Learn to hold your own feelings like beloved children, however intensely they burn and scream for attention. Celebrate the aliveness in your hurt, the vibrancy of your disappointment, the electricity of your sadness. Kneel before the power in your anger; honor its fiery creativity. From this place of deep acceptance, you do not become weak and passive. Quite the opposite. You simply enter the world from a place of non-violence, and therefore immense creative power, and you are open to the possibility of deep listening, honest dialogue, and unexpected change. In suffering, you become small. In love, anything is possible.

I had always followed the careful rules laid down by Harry, my cop foster father, who taught me how to be what I am with modesty and exactness.

Knowing yourself as the Presence - the Power which moves and creates worlds - this is ABUNDANCE. It is that which exists in your open heart. Your willingness to hold a space, to allow everything to unfold, to be. It is that which feels like freshness of a morning and of the afternoon breeze. Like the sun warming your face. Abundance is meeting others in the sunny field of honesty and vulnerability. It is feeling like you are always Home - in yourself - no matter what happens. Abundance is simplicity. It is kindness. It feels like a sunrise - fresh, open, awake. You are rich, my friend! You are rich!

Feelings that have been pushed away do not actually disappear; they live on in the darkness of the Unconscious, pulling the strings in our relationships, our work, self-expression, causing us to become reactive, compulsive, obsessive, depressed, anxious, and deteriorate our physical health until one day, we remember, all feelings have a right to exist in us. So, we stop numbing ourselves, and feed them love, attention, curiosity and Presence. Now, they can finally come to rest.

Rickman heard the plaintive note in Foster’s voice, and they exchanged a quick, amused glance. Foster misunderstood. ‘Him?’ he exclaimed. ‘The rugged Roman profile was all very well in Gladiator, but we’re in the twenty-first century now, love.’ ‘Funny,’ she shot back, ‘I keep getting a whiff of caveman. Just so you know — the

As spiritual teacher Jeff Foster puts it: “Don’t judge your sadness, your depression, your feelings of unworthiness so quickly, and don’t judge the sorrows of another, for you really don’t know what’s best for anyone, for you really don’t know more than life itself. That which you reject (in another or in yourself) may actually be much-needed medicine, a misunderstood teacher, inviting you to a self-love deeper than you ever thought possible. It may be a threshold guardian, a gatekeeper of a forgotten kingdom!

The junior executives recommended a variety of different techniques to foster cross-group dialogue and afterward seemed proud of their own ingenuity. Then Jeff Bezos, his face red and the blood vessel in his forehead pulsing, spoke up. “I understand what you’re saying, but you are completely wrong,” he said. “Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren’t working together in a close, organic way. We should be trying to figure out a way for teams to communicate less with each other, not more.” That confrontation was widely remembered. “Jeff has these aha moments,” says David Risher. “All the blood in his entire body goes to his face. He’s incredibly passionate. If he was a table pounder, he would be pounding the table.

And what is that truth? NAFTA created the largest free trade zone in the world, with an economic output of $20 trillion. It quadrupled trade between the three countries, quadrupled American exports to Canada and Mexico, eliminated tariffs that had increased the cost of doing business, and reduced prices for consumers. NAFTA also reduced American dependence on Middle Eastern oil, created many more jobs than it eliminated, and fostered new markets for investment by American companies.

The habits of the heart that we foster in this space—our responses and reactions—will determine whether the Land Between results in spiritual life or spiritual death. We choose.

Love is the answer. The question is unimportant.

hay prisa. La vida no tiene prisa. Sé como las estaciones. El invierno no intenta ser el verano. La primavera no corre hacia el otoño. La hierba crece a su ritmo. La lluvia tampoco se apresura para llegar antes al suelo. Las elecciones que se llevarán a cabo serán llevadas a cabo, y no tienes elección al respecto en este momento. Las decisiones que se tomen se tomarán, los acontecimientos se desplegarán en el tiempo, pero justo ahora tal vez no necesitas saber las soluciones o los resultados, o cómo es mejor proceder. Tal vez el no saber es un invitado bienvenido al banquete de la vida. Tal vez la apertura a la posibilidad es una querida amiga. Acaso incluso la confusión puede venir a descansar aquí, donde tú estás. Así pues, en vez de intentar «arreglar» nuestras vidas, en vez de intentar resolver totalmente lo que no puede ser resuelto y completar con rapidez la historia épica de un «yo» ficticio, sencillamente relajémonos en un profundo no saber y permitamos que todo esté «fuera de control», confiando en el orden que hay dentro del caos salvaje, desempeñándonos dentro del cálido abrazo del misterio, sumergiéndonos profundamente en el momento, saboreándolo plenamente, en toda su singularidad y maravilla.

Gentleness is the only answer.

What you were always longing for is already staring you in the face and doesn't look anything like you expected it to.

And you look down, and you find yourself perched on a chair. and there is the sense that the chair doesn't have to be there, but it is anyway. and there is only gratitude for it all. you look down, and my goodness, there is a chair there, offering itself, supporting you unconditionally, asking nothing of you. what grace! the chair doesn't care who you are. who you think you are. it doesn't care what you've done or haven't done. it doesn't care what you've achieved, or haven't achieved. what you believe or don't believe. it doesn't care if you're a success or failure. if you've reached your goals, or not. it doesn't care whether or not you think you're enlightened. it doesn't care what you look like, what clothes you are wearing. it doesn't care whether you are sick or healthy, whether you are a buddhist or a jew, or a christian. whether you are young, or old. whether you understand or don't understand. it only offers itself, unconditionally. this message isn't complicated. it's there in something as simple and common place as a chair. and not just the chair, but all things. all things offer themselves unconditionally. the secret is this: life is not life at all. it is an offering. and right now, it offers THIS, the present moment.

True healing is not the fixing of the broken but the rediscovery of the unbroken

The future of desegregation was not just about reaching mere numerical diversity. It was about fostering radical diversity, the wild protean sort. It was about what might flower when people could really meet across the lines. The cover of the fifth volume of the Yardbird Reader, rendered in day-bright Oakland A’s yellow and green, featured the collective caught as they laughed at someone’s wisecrack. They looked simultaneously hip and welcoming. In this colorized vision of American renewal, everyone could share in the joy.

Your pain, your sorrow, your desperate seeking, it is energy, only energy. Sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, sometimes even volcanic, but energy nonetheless. Strip away the secondhand words and concepts—fear, anger, depression, loneliness—and contact what is wordlessly alive in your body, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now. Feel “sadness” before it is named. Feel the tightness in the chest, the tension in the throat. Feel “anger” before it is defined. Feel the burning in the belly, the pounding of the passionate heart. Feel the throb and pull of life, the vibration of it. Make space for all bodily sensations, the raw energy, the power, the electricity, the sound and the fury. It is life, only life, always life. Don’t judge the energy, or try to push it away, or ignore it, because then you split yourself into “good me” and “bad me,” “sick me” and “healthy me,” “spiritual me” and “ignorant me,” and the war begins. Go beyond the entire “me” story, and honor what is alive in your body, here and now, even if what is alive is intense, uncomfortable, or simply too unfamiliar to be named. Let the intensity of bodily sensation focus you. Let attention drop into the moment. Non-resistance to life, the absolute surrender to the living moment, no matter how much the moment deviates from our “perfect” image—this is the beginning of true healing. Divorce the dream and marry reality.

As the author Jeff Foster says, “Breakdown can always point to the break-through of a deeper truth, since only that which is false in you can break down. Truth does not break. Some call this recognition ‘waking up,’ some call it ‘self-realization.’”2

or like Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.

and that this is still Day 1 in such a big way. Jeff Bezos Amazon’s internal customs are deeply idiosyncratic. PowerPoint decks or slide presentations are never used in meetings. Instead, employees are required to write six-page narratives laying out their points in prose, because Bezos believes doing so fosters critical thinking. For each new product, they craft their documents in the style of a press release. The goal is to frame a proposed initiative in the way a customer might hear about it for the first time. Each meeting begins with everyone silently reading the document, and discussion commences afterward—just like the productive-thinking exercise in the principal’s office at River Oaks Elementary. For my initial meeting with Bezos to discuss this project, I decided to observe Amazon’s customs and prepare my own Amazon-style narrative, a fictional press release on behalf of the book. Bezos met me in an eighth-floor conference room and we sat down at a large table made of half a dozen door-desks, the same kind of blond wood that Bezos used twenty years ago when he was building Amazon from scratch in his garage. The door-desks are often held up as a symbol of the company’s enduring frugality. When I first interviewed Bezos, back in 2000, a few years of unrelenting international travel had taken their toll