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#3515 - Monday, April
27, 2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
An interesting excerpt from
Jeff's new book, no release date as yet.
AN EXTRAORDINARY PRESENCE
Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life
[Release date TBA]
Jeff Foster
*
I am talking to a woman. She is telling me about a passion of
hers. Her dream is that one day she will run a small hotel, a bed
and breakfast by the sea. I notice that her eyes begin to well up
with tears as she relates her dream to me. And then I notice that
these eyes are starting to well up with tears too. It's like
what's happening there is being mirrored here. Because there is
nothing to get in the way, what is left here is just a total
openness to others, just an open space which welcomes everything
that appears. Her eyes well up, my eyes well up, what's the
difference?
When there is nobody here, there is nothing to block
"you" out. And then something strange happens: because
there is no "me", there is no "you" either.
There are just voices, faces, the welling up of eyes, or not.
Just what's happening. What's happening fills all space. As that
woman relates her story to me, I become that woman. I long to own
a bed and breakfast by the sea. It's my heart's true desire. I
feel it deep within my bones, and the tears come.
I'm watching television. It's a game show. A man has just won a
large sum of money which he is going to use to take his family on
holiday. They've never been on holiday before. The man laughs and
weeps with joy. This weeps and laughs with joy. There is nothing
to separate us. My family will be so happy when they find out!
Images on the TV of famine in Somalia. A child, skin and bones,
with hollowed out eyes, gazes into the camera. I am the child. I
am gazing at myself. There is nothing to block that poor child
out. She enters me, and everything heals itself.
I am on the train. A man starts to shout at me for no reason. I
think he is drunk. He shakes his fists at me. His face is red
with anger. I am the man. I feel the anger, the violence, and
underneath it, the anxiety, the fear, the contraction that goes
along with being a separate person. I know what that's like - I
once would drink and get angry for no reason and feel like I was
living in a prison. I have been this man. I am this man now. He
is myself, coming back to meet me.
And then the woman stops talking about her bed and breakfast
dreams, and the tears are wiped out. There is no memory of them.
Everything is wiped clean, and it begins again.
The game show ends, and I change channels on the television, and
it's now a shopping channel, and the laughter and joy and money
and family are wiped out, and now there is only fascination with
item number 176387, what beautiful colours! It becomes absorbed
in the shopping channel, and the game show vanishes without
trace. The game show might have happened a million years ago for
all I care: this replaces everything.
The doorbell rings and I walk away from the image of the starving
child. It's my friend at the door. The starving child is wiped
out, and my friend replaces her. The beauty of this is that it's
everything and it's nothing. It's no particular thing. One thing
replaces another, and there's no way of knowing what's coming
next. Friend replaces dying child, brother replaces friend,
shopkeeper replaces brother, cat replaces shopkeeper. It emerges
out of the Unknown, innocently, playfully, ceaselessly.
I walk away from the angry man. The anger disappears immediately.
It's like it never happened. Something else takes its place. And
then something else. And then something else. There's enough
space here for an entire world. Joy, anger, fear, sadness,
laughter, tears. Everything is welcome here. The only question
is: what's next?
I have no way of blocking life out anymore. Because there is
nobody here, there is only raw, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered
experience. And you can't even call it an experience: there's
nobody there to experience anything. There's just this, happening
to no-one. Nobody sheds tears, nobody senses anger, nobody
watches television.
But it's not an empty void. It's a space that's constantly filled
by life. By the woman who wants the bed and breakfast, by the
starving child, by my friend at the door. You provide the
solidity that I lack. The story of time and space is dead here,
but you keep it going for me. There's nobody here, but then you
enter the picture, and suddenly "there's nobody here"
is - like any concept - not true. This is the essence of
compassion: to disappear in favour of what's happening. To
dissolve into the vast open space in which a whole cosmos can
play itself out, a space which is not separate from that cosmos.
When you are not, what else is there to do, but to be all that
is?
When the witness collapses into everything that's witnessed, when
awareness collapses into its contents, all that remains is a deep
and total fascination with whatever is happening, and
unconditional love for all there is.
*
At the heart of the crucifix, there is eternal life.
At the heart of the most excruciating worldly suffering, in the
midst of broken bones and shredded skin, right there was
eternity. Jesus did not attempt to escape from the cross but
willingly went to his death, because he knew that all the
violence of the world could not destroy the Indestructible, could
not shake the Unshakeable, could not touch the unborn, undying
essence of Life itself.
*
You want awakening? First of all find out if there's anybody
sitting on this chair. When it's seen that nobody is sitting on
this chair, it's also seen in clarity that there is nobody there
who could ever become awakened.
*
So many spiritual teachings are about bringing your awareness
back to the present moment, paying attention to what is, allowing
everything to be, or attempting somehow to be at peace with
what's happening.
What I'm suggesting here is that there is only what's happening,
and nobody there who could pay attention, allow everything, or be
at peace with what's happening. That would suggest separation
from what's happening, and that is the primary illusion, which
falls away in liberation. No, there are only present sights,
sounds and smells, but nobody who can be present or not.
"I'm present with what is" is just another identity.
When there's nobody there to be present, the idea of being
present just becomes obsolete. And then there is only presence,
and nobody there to know that.
*
I'm not telling you to give up your spiritual practices; giving
up happens or it doesn't. Spiritual practices happen or they
don't.
And remember:
Giving up on spiritual practices just becomes another spiritual
practice.
The anti- spiritual practice ideology is just another ideology.
*
Nobody has ever died.
Right now, there is only presence. A few moments before what we
call death, there is only presence. Upon what we call death,
there is only presence. What falls away is the person. What falls
away is the person who splits life from death, the person who
loves one and fears the other. What falls away is everything that
can fall away. And what is left, there is no way of knowing.
Anything we say about that would be purely conceptual.
And so death is a plunge into the unknown, the unknowable, the
unborn, the undying. And even that is to say too much. Even that
is just the person talking. In the absence of the person, there
is nothing. No world. No birth. No death. No time. No space. No
world in which to die, and no person to do the dying. At the
moment of death, what falls away is the person who could die.
Nobody has ever experienced death. We only ever experience what
we know. Death is what we know about death. When nothing is
known, there can be no experience, and no death.
*
"You say there's nothing we can do to get this, and yet you
write books and give talks. Aren't you implying that there is
something we can do, namely read your books and go to your talks?
You say that we shouldn't listen to teachers, and yet you appear
to be a teacher yourself. If, as you say, this cannot be put into
words, why do you bother to talk and write books about it?
Perhaps you secretly believe that you can teach this to people?
Or perhaps you're just doing it for the money or the attention?
Either way, haven't you fallen into the guru trap?"
I get this all of the time. My response is usually this: that we
could find a million different reasons why we shouldn't even
speak about nonduality.
And yet, as I always say, why not. Why not. When the 'why' goes,
life is lived out of the 'why not'. Silence and noise become
equal. Not speaking about this and speaking about this become
equal. It speaks, or it doesn't. Often it keeps quiet about this.
When someone asks a question, sometimes it likes to offer a
reply. Sometimes it sits down at a computer and starts typing and
books start to take shape. Where the words come from, I don't
know.
From the moment I started writing and talking about nonduality, I
knew full well that I'd be accused of falling into the guru trap.
That my words would be completely misunderstood, that I'd be
accused of trying to sell shoddy goods, that I'd be labelled a
wannabe guru, that I'd be compared to the other teachers and
non-teachers out there. It was absolutely inevitable.
Look, I have never seen myself as a teacher. Could never see
myself as a teacher. I have always seen this as a sharing -
between friends - of something that's too intimate, too present,
too alive to talk about.
You know, for a long time I wasn't going to talk about this. I
was going to keep quiet about it for the rest of my life. What
had been seen here is that this is the miracle, that there is
nothing higher or more sacred than what's happening, nothing more
'spiritual' than this present appearance. What had been seen is
that there is an intimacy here that will never be communicated.
So, how to put this intimacy, this presence into words? Into the
words of the world? Into the words of duality? I knew that the
moment I uttered the first word about this, it wouldn't capture
it at all. I knew that anything I said about this would not be
true. The Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao. Words felt
so dead in comparison to this aliveness.
Besides, I had no interest in converting anyone, no interest in
helping anyone to see this, no interest in being someone special.
If I am not here, how could I possibly be special? How could I
ever separate myself from others and call myself special? But I
knew that the moment I started talking about this, it might make
me seem special.
And yet, what went right to the core of this seeing is that Jeff
was not special at all! No more special than the chair or the
carpet. It was all the divine expression! The moment Jeff opened
his mouth to talk about something called nonduality, it was
inevitable that others would make him into something special. Or
they would think that he was trying to make himself special, that
he had an agenda, or that he was doing it for the money, for the
attention, for the fame. That he wanted to be a guru. It was
inevitable that these projections would happen. I saw that from
the very beginning, and that's why I was never going to speak
about this.
And then, at some point, there was an invitation to talk, and the
mouth said "yes". Previously it had said
"no", and now it was saying "yes". No and yes
- totally equal in the seeing of this. So a while later, Jeff
found himself in front of a small group of people, and the words
started to come out. Still no sense that 'I' was speaking, still
no sense that there was anything to say. Still no agenda, still
just words happening or not. Whether 'other people' were
listening or not, the seeing was the same.
And although the crowds are a little bigger now, nothing has
really changed at all. It's still a sharing with friends, and
although at many of the meetings Jeff sits in front of an
audience and talks, and questions are asked and he appears to
reply, of course the secret is this: it's only Oneness meeting
itself, and no 'teaching' is happening at all.
But hey, the world will tell its stories. Until the seeker
dissolves, and along with it the contracted self-sense, there
will appear to be a world of teachers and teachings and gurus and
lineages, and those projections will continue to be made. The
seeker always sees a world of seeking. When all of that nonsense
falls away, what is seen in shocking clarity is that there cannot
be any gurus, teachers, or teachings, because there cannot be any
people at all. Wholeness is already here, and it has nothing to
do with a separate person. What's seen is that we are already
home, and the relief is absolute.
And so the world will think what it wants about Jeff. He's doing
it for the money? He's on an ego-trip? He's a nonduality
missionary? He secretly sees himself as a guru? I can't make any
of those stories mean anything anymore. I just go back to my very
ordinary life by the sea in Brighton, have a cup of tea, and
forget it all. I've always seen this as a sharing, between
friends - always have and always will. And the sharing will go on
until it doesn't. It's that simple.
A guru is someone who seriously believes that they can help you
in your search for enlightenment or awakening. How ridiculous.
The dream 'enlightenment' that the gurus promise is an experience
in time, and there is no time. It's a construct of the mind, and
there isn't one. It is an awakening for a person, and there is no
person. Because the guru still sees you as a person who needs
help (and still sees himself as a person who can give it) he
keeps you locked in the illusion that you really are a person,
and that there really is something called enlightenment. In his
innocence, he keeps you trapped in the world of time and space.
When all of that nonsense falls away, what is seen is that there
are no people to help, and no people who could ever awaken. In
that, the guru-disciple or student-teacher relationship is
obliterated. There were never any teachers, gurus, students or
disciples: there was only ever unconditional love.
So, do what you do, and let the world say what they want about
you. Let them crucify you if that makes them feel better about
themselves. They are only crucifying their story of you anyway,
in their dream world. They can destroy everything, literally
every thing that exists, but they will never touch this
aliveness, they will never taint this presence, they will never
make even a little dent on Life.
I have no interest in what the world calls me. And for the sheer
joy of it, I'll share this message until I don't. People will
listen, or they will walk away, and it's fine either way.
And right now, as I sip my cup of tea, and watch the seagulls on
Brighton Pier, none of it matters in the slightest. I laugh at
the idea that I'm a teacher or guru. I'm nothing. The tea and the
seagulls are everything. My nothing is the world's everything,
and it all ends here, in absolute simplicity, and there is only
gratitude for all of it.
Just this, just this, forever and always.
----------------------------------------------
Best Wishes,
Steve Summers