Jeff Foster Quotes

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.

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.

"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!"

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.

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.

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

Friend, I love your rebellious heart.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Gentleness is the only answer.

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

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