Jeff Foster‘s ‘Welcome Home’ non-duality essay.
No teachers, no students. No awakened beings, no unawakened beings.
No path nor absence of a path. No gurus, no disciples. Simply life making love to itself, dancing as all of this, appearing as something we call ‘world’, as all that you see and all that you cannot see, arising and falling back into the barest emptiness, timelessly and forever…
And the emptiness is not a cold, dark, empty emptiness – but a rich, full, alive emptiness, pregnant with infinite possibility, saturated with this… incomprehensible intimacy that should, by all accounts, be impossible –
and yet, undeniably, is.
Nothing is not nothing , not the absence of all things, but also the presence of them, so that nothing is really everything…. and so it all ends not in nihilism, but in wonder, in fascination, in the kind of gratitude that breaks your heart.
Yes, all that is left is a radical simplicity that cannot be taught, cannot be formulated, reified, systematized, and ultimately cannot even be named – but still, it is all there is, and all there has ever been, and all there needs to be, because only a separate mind would ever want more.
It’s right here and right now. It’s there in and as the cup of coffee on the table in front of you, in each and every breath, in the wrinkles on your father’s face, in the feeling of the wind on your cheeks as you walk to the supermarket, in the pain in the chest as the body dies – and you’ve been seeking it your entire life without knowing it.
It’s beyond ‘awareness’ and ‘contents of awareness’ – it’s not pure consciousness (a blank space devoid of the personal) because blankness needs content to be known and experienced as blankness, just as emptiness needs form to be known and experienced as emptiness and vice versa – it’s not the witness behind the world because it’s also the world in its entirety which nothing can separate itself from in the first place and call itself a ‘witness’ –
it’s not Absolute as opposed to relative or vice versa because that very division never existed in the first place – it’s not ‘nobody here’ or ‘there is no person’, although those very personal viewpoints are allowed to arise and fall away naturally – it’s not ‘advaita’ as opposed to ‘neo-advaita’ or ‘neo-advaita’ as opposed to ‘advaita’ but it allows these man-made, mind-made divisions to play themselves out –
it’s not opposed to anything because it is everything including all opposition, even opposition to opposition –
it’s not mine or yours but it does not deny the possibility of mine and yours and relationship between them –
it’s not pure absence as opposed to presence or vice versa, but those concepts are allowed to arise too –
it’s not a teaching, but perhaps, and only perhaps, it can formulate itself as a self-destructing teaching, a kind of teaching which annihilates itself in the end, a temporary language which has no authority but that which you give it, and in the end (and there is no end), has no authority at all.
Because in the end, which is also the beginning, life is the only authority, and all the teachings of the world burn up in the fire of this unbounded freedom…
When you try to put this into words, you always fail.
Thank goodness it doesn’t need to be put into words.
And so, once again, beyond words or lack of them, welcome Home to what you really are.
(Jeff Foster)
(Photo: ‘Butterfly on Pink-Violet Flower’ by h.r.fox @ ultrafeel.tv)
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Jeff Foster is a young advaita (non-duality) 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. |
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Most wonderful, thanks Jeff!