You Are Not A Balloon (Advaita Story By Jeff Foster)

Imagine this: A balloon, filled with air, floats in an infinite sea of air.

And the balloon says to itself, "I’m an individual. I live in a world full of individuals. A world of me and mine: my thoughts, my memories, my beliefs, my achievements, my successes, my failures, my past, my future, my relationships. I own a little piece of the whole, a little piece of life. This is my little part of everything."

What the balloon fears most is its own popping – in other words, its own death – because it sees this as the ultimate loss of ‘me and mine’. In other words, death is the loss of ‘my little part of everything’. The end of ‘my life’.

What the balloon cannot see is that death is liberation. Upon death, ‘my little part of everything’ simply explodes back into everything. ‘My life’ dissolves back into life itself. And what is seen is that ‘my life’ was always an illusion, because there was never anyone there separate from everything! There was only ever everything! The balloon never ‘had’ anything to begin with, and so could never ‘lose’ anything. Upon death, nothing is lost.

And this seeing can happen upon what we call physical death, or it can happen now. Die before you die, and there is no death.

The mind will never be able to comprehend what I am talking about. But somewhere beyond the mind, somewhere beyond thought, somewhere beyond the stories we tell about life, there can be a recognition, a resonance, a knowing. And that’s what this message is really about: a recognition that’s totally beyond mind.

You are perfect as you are – even in your imperfection. Life is perfect as it is, even if you cannot see that yet.

This is a journey into your own absence, an absence which finally reveals itself as the perfect presence of everything, as the Home you’ve always been seeking, and what will be found is this: You wrote these words yourself, to remind yourself of what, deep down, you have always known.

Jeff Foster is a young advaita (non-dualtiy) teacher who lives in the UK. He attempts to articulate the timeless message of nonduality, something that is ultimately impossible to put into words, in a simple, human and down-to-earth way, avoiding as much as possible the arcane, heavy, outdated and often self-righteous spiritual language of the past. He believes that the truth – that which is present and alive – is absolutely free and cannot be captured by any religion, ideology, philosophy, belief system or person. Jeff presently conducts meetings and retreats in the UK and around the world. Lots of free information on advaita can be found on his website, including essays, talk transcripts, books, CDs and DVDs, audio and video: Lifewithoutacentre.com