Jeff foster biography nonduality jokes

The wave is in appearance only. It is a temporary appearance of the ocean. Now, some nonduality teachings make it sound like the appearance of the separate person is a problem and we should get rid of it. But who is going to get rid of the wave in the ocean? The wave? How can the wave get rid of itself? They think that they need to get rid of the wave in order to reach the ocean, and there seem to be a lot of spiritual teachers and gurus out there who believe the same thing.

The point is, the wave is already fully ocean. Any attempt to get rid of the wave is the wave attempting to get rid of itself. Years ago, when I was a very serious and intense spiritual seeker, I tried desperately to get rid of Jeff, the character, the person. I was fighting an illusion, and when you fight an illusion, you are assuming that the illusion is real.

InFoster wrote an article explaining why he no longer considered himself to be an "Advaita teacher" or "nonduality teacher," pointing out problems with the one-sidedness of contemporary "radical Advaita" teachings. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects.

Wikidata item. English writer. For other uses, see Jeff Foster disambiguation. This article has multiple issues. The individual is a seeker. But it was at that point that spiritual seeking began. I just found myself doing it. Once that fire had been lit, there was no way back. And I moved back to Manchester to stay with my parents whilst I recovered from my illness, and I shut myself off in my room for about a year.

Jeff: I was a very extreme person [laughs]! I'd been educated at Cambridge University. I was very clever, and so once I got my hands on something I had to tear it apart. I had to go right into it; that was my nature. I started with basic books on Buddhism, Christianity, basic books on meditation, self-enquiry, and then, oh, everything, I mean everything!

I tried everything! And there were times of great despair too. Seeing the impermanence of everything. Seeing that the whole search might, in fact, be futile. It was a very dramatic time. At the start it was all very exciting, but it got pretty nasty towards the end.

Jeff foster biography nonduality jokes: Nonduality is toxic when

The seeking became so intense. I knew that. Iain: When you say intense, do you mean you would do more extreme things? You would meditate for longer and longer periods? From ordinary human relationships. From the simple things. So much happened, so much fell away.

Jeff foster biography nonduality jokes: “I'm nondual, you're dual”. “I'm nobody,

I became a militant vegan at one point I think! I was just exploring everything, looking for the answers. It was a clear seeing of that. It reached a point of such intensity that my whole identity was consumed by the fact that I was a spiritual seeker. That was me. It was something else to cling to. Jeff: The spiritual seeking had opened so much up.

But there was still a sense of being a separate individual. In a way I think that sense was stronger than ever at that point. Jeff: Very.

Jeff foster biography nonduality jokes: Nonduality is toxic when it loses

I asked every question known to man and I never found the answers. Well, I did. I found plenty of answers… and then the seeking would start up again. There seemed to be this incessant movement into a future. Getting rid of the self at the root of it all. Such vicious circles of thought! And those circles became more and more subtle.

The seeking went on in more and more subtle ways. As the seeking was seen through in one way, it changed form and carried on in a more subtle way. And all I can say is that somehow, in the midst of all that, the whole thing fell away. What was seen so clearly was that it was already here, already complete. The awakening, Oneness, whatever you want to call it, was already here.

And your unhappiness, your depression, dropped away, for whatever reason. Jeff: But you see, the beauty of this, is that it was seen right in the midst of that despair. Iain: Yes, I get that. Jeff: I thought I had to overcome despair before I could awaken. And yet this whole seeking and suffering game had played itself out perfectly.

The seeking had exhausted itself when it was ready. When it was ready. And it had nothing to do with me. I remember when I first saw it in a chair. Something for me. Something so much more than the chair. Always in the future. And something funny happened. It was like the chair revealed its secrets. In the falling away of the seeking, the chair revealed its secrets.

It was Oneness disguised as a chair! It is what it is. Everything becomes very alive. And yet we can still call it a chair. We can still use ordinary language. We can still function as if we were leading a very ordinary life.

Jeff foster biography nonduality jokes: HEALING WHAT HURTS BY HOLDING IT

This is too alive to ever be captured, to ever be known. Iain: And you had a few of these… experiences. You mentioned in your book Beyond Awakening that you were walking through the rain in Oxford one day, and realised that you were everything and that you were home. Did these situations arise more frequently and get stronger? Jeff: When this was first seen, it was all very dramatic.

It was shocking, to see that the secret had been here from the beginning, right at the heart of a very ordinary life. That the extraordinary had always been hidden in the ordinary, in the most ordinary of things. And when that was first seen there was a great excitement, there was a drama about it. At the time, there were all sorts of experiences.

Walking in the rain that day in Oxford, there was just love. That was all there was. Everything was a manifestation of that, and nothing was separate from what I took to be myself. And at the time that was very new and very dramatic. And then the mind can come back in. That happened to me. It tries to create structure there, so it can feel secure.

Iain: The reason I ask, is that I read this book a few years ago, Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne Segal, and she had, it would appear, a similar experience. But she also had tremendous anxiety. Presumably the anxiety is something to do with the mind? It uses the fear tactic. Just fear arising. Jeff: Anything can arise here.

Fear and anxiety, no, not really anymore. But the point is that everything is allowed in this. Anger, fear, joy, sadness… everything is allowed. It can all come. Say, if your mother died, there might be sadness there. Oneness allows everything. How could it not? It is everything! So sadness can be there. And when sadness is there, there is sadness!

But there is nobody there trying to do anything with sadness. And then a funny thing happens: the sadness lives its own little life, and burns itself up, in its own time. And in that, sadness can be fully sad! In the midst of sadness, it can be seen that there is sadness there and yet there is no sadness there. This is a place the mind could never go.

Even to call it sadness, there already has to be a person there calling it something, labelling it. That there is sadness there, and no sadness there, at the same time. Jeff: Everything is being registered.