Let Yourself Rest - By Jeff Foster

[Candy]

ON ABUSE AND "SPIRITUALITY"

"You attracted it because you desired it".
"If you think there's a problem with another's words or actions,
YOU are the one who's confused".
"Everything is just your projection. Everything is in your mind".
"Clear up your vibration and you'll stop attracting bad things to yourself".
"You are too attached to the body. Go beyond the body. It's not who you are."
"If you have doubts, fears, resistance, pain, anger, then you must be in your ego and totally unenlightened".
"The past is an illusion. Let it go right now!".

Ugh. I'm so tired of all this New Age spiritual bullshit.
I'm tired of ANY spirituality that doesn't fully honour
our messy, unresolvable, first-hand, real-time, embodied human experience.
That doesn't bow deeply to the struggle of our raw and tender hearts.
That guilt-trips us for our imperfections and shames our limitations.

No, it's not always your projection.
Yes, sometimes other people really ARE abusive and need to be stopped.

No, everything isn't always "in your mind".
Yes, your body matters. Your feelings too.

No, your doubts and fears are not 'wrong' or 'bad' or 'unevolved'.
No, you do not 'attract' abuse through a faulty 'vibrational frequency'.
No, you do not deserve to be violated in any way, in the name of Truth, in the name of God, in the name of Love, or IN ANY OTHER NAME.

Yes, your boundaries deserve to be respected, your 'yes' AND your 'no' too.

No, it's not okay for spiritual teachers to abuse people "for their own good"
- to shock them into awakening, to enlighten them, to help them drop their "ego".
Teachers that use abuse as a tool are simply abusers, not teachers.

I reject any spirituality that dismisses our tender, vulnerable, fragile humanity.
I reject any spirituality that shames us for our precious human thoughts and feelings.
I reject any spirituality that begins any sentence with "If you were enlightened..."
I reject any spirituality that divides self from no self, divine from human, sacred from profane, absolute from relative, heaven from earth, duality from nonduality, material from spiritual.

I once saw a popular spiritual teacher addressing a recently bereaved woman.
He said, "Your heartbreak is illusory and only the activity of the separate self.
One day the separate self will vanish, along with all suffering".

And in that moment, I saw a deep, deep sickness and inhumanity at the heart of contemporary spirituality. The invalidation of trauma, the false promises, the power games, the suppression of the feminine.

And I vowed to bow to that fucking broken heart as if it were God Herself.

Until the end of time.

- Jeff Foster

[Li****]

Thank you for sharing @Candy - Abuse is always horrific and inexcusable, and when connected to spirituality it's so exploitative of a vulnerable state of mind. It's scary to see how often it has been used by spiritual leaders as a way to take advantage and exercise power over people who put their trust in them.

A really powerful message! 

[Te****]

Thanks for sharing this i am really touched because many at time i fall a victim to this and its indeed a negative energy

[Candy]

YOU ARE THE ONE

Do not seek love. Do not leave yourself for love, and search for love in the other. Love is not an object, it cannot be given nor taken away. It cannot be found nor lost. Love is not a feeling, a state, or a peak experience, but what you are, presence itself.

Do not confuse love with attraction. Attraction comes and goes, can fade over time. Do not confuse love with longing. Longing is impermanent, transitory. Do not confuse love with feelings of bliss, pleasure, an excited nervous system. These passing states cannot last; it is not in their nature. Even promises, given with such certainty today, with the best of intentions, can fade tomorrow, or be broken.

Love, however, does not fade. Love cannot diminish over time. Love is not a commodity, a shifting form. Love is a field, a field within and without us, a field in which thoughts, feelings, even the most seemingly solid plans for the future, can appear and disappear. Love holds hope as much as loss, excitement as much as boredom, crushing disappointment as much as bliss. Love is the field for the shifting forms, the ground that holds us as we walk, sit, talk or do not, feel what we feel in each other's presence, go about the business of our day, plan, eat, hope, say goodbye, try to love. Love is greater than us. We do not generate it with words and deeds, or even intentions, but we are continually embraced by it, held in its vastness, no matter what we do, or do not. We are married, we divorce; we are friends, we are lovers; we break up, we break together; we are born, we die; the field endures.

Nobody has ever given us love; that is the great illusion. We have simply remembered the field in each other's presence, sometimes, recognised eternity in the midst of the everyday, then credited another. Love never came from outside of us; we simply touched our own presence, fell into the love that we are, and cannot not be. And nobody ever took love away from us; we simply forgot the field, and 'blamed' the other, and looked for love again, feeling its absence, lost in a narrative of 'lost love'. Yet love was there, even in its apparent absence; it was present, even in the loss. It cannot be broken; a wave cannot crush the Ocean.

Do not seek love, do not look for the light, but be it, offer it; the joy of loving another is infinitely greater than the joy of fearfully clinging to another's love, for deep down you know it is only an illusion that what you have always longed for could ever have come from outside of you. You are the One; you have always been the One.

The search ends exactly where it began - in presence.

You realise you are love itself, and this changes everything; love is yours, forever, even when it's not.

- Jeff Foster

[Ma****]

ohh, this is soo beautiful and so true !!! this everybody should read, thank you for posting and for oppotunity that we all can read it! Love

[Sw****]

Beautiful and touched so many bases

[Candy]

LET YOURSELF REST

If you’re exhausted, rest.

If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.

If you don’t feel the urge to make something new,

just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.

If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.

If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off.

If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.

If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today.

Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.

Time does not always need to be filled.

You are enough, simply in your being.

- Jeff Foster

[Sa****]

I love this!!!

[Calvin77]

Need to remember this sometimes :)

[bd****]

Thanks for this Candy! I needed this today :-)