Addiction - There is a way out

The alcoholic wants another beer, but what he really wants is love. He feels uncomfortable in his present experience—unloved in every thought, sensation, and feeling—and seeks a way out, and the only thing that seems to alleviate that discomfort is beer. Beer, for a while, seems to remove the not okay and bring the okay. Beer, for a while, seems to bring the womb. Even the serial killer, the rapist, the murderer are all looking for the womb, in their different ways. We are all womb-seekers on legs.

On some level, the addiction object enables us to satisfy the deepest longing that every human has—to disappear, to be absorbed into life, to die into this moment, to come home, to return to the womb, to be relieved of the heavy  burden of the  separate self, to dissolve back into the ocean, and to rest, finally rest.

You see, we aren’t really addicted to cigarettes; we’re addicted to the apparent release, the absorption into life, the temporary reprieve from lack that the cigarette seems to bring. We aren’t really addicted to sex; we’re addicted to the release it apparently gives, the falling away of the burden of “me.” We aren’t really addicted to gambling; it’s just that gambling takes us out of ourselves for a few precious minutes, hours, days. We aren’t really addicted to objects or people; we’re addicted to the release they seem to bring.

The seeker is addicted to release. It’s the wave seeking the ocean again. What a relief it is, for a moment, to think you’ve found what you’re looking for! What a relief to be the ocean, if only for a few perfect moments! And what hell it is to lose that relief and be dragged back into the world of human problems so quickly!

Alcohol addiction; substance addiction; gambling addiction; sexual addiction; addictions to people, to gurus, to money, to fame—it seems as though there are many different kinds of addiction. In fact, there is only one addiction: the seeker’s addiction to release. And when you understand this, what the addiction object actually is becomes less important. Often, in trying to cure ourselves of addictions, we focus way too much on the details of the addiction object and on the story of our addiction, and not on the root mechanism that is fueling the need for the object. I may be healed from my cigarette addiction, but if I don’t face the underlying lack, the addiction will pop up in some other area of my life. I have known people who quit smoking after twenty years and then immediately started overeating. People who are addicted to relationships break up from their current relationship and immediately get into drugs. People who have an addiction to shopping suddenly drop that addiction and become addicted to a spiritual guru. Any addiction cure or remedy or therapy that focuses on the addiction object rather than the seeking in the addict will not truly resolve addiction. It may help, but it won’t heal, in the true sense of the word.

Whether it’s a cigarette, a bottle of beer, or the thrill of the promise of winning a million on roulette, every addiction object serves the same purpose: it seems to take away the discomfort of this moment as it is. It promises release, and it seems to deliver that release for a while. But it doesn’t really provide what we truly long for.

Often addicts talk about “getting their fix.” What are they trying to fix? Deep down, although they probably don’t know it, they are trying to fix a primal sense of separation, trying to fix incompleteness. As we have seen time and time again in this book, nothing and nobody can fix separation and incompleteness; no external object or person can do this. The only fix for incompleteness is a radical and total embrace of that very incompleteness—the embrace that you are in your essence. That’s what we really long for, deep down—intimacy with ourselves.

Of course, we don’t pick up a cigarette or a painkiller or a bottle of beer because we think, “I’m feeling incomplete, and this will complete me.” No, we simply feel an urge, a craving. We feel strangely drawn to our object of addiction, almost against our will. “If I had the choice,” I say to myself, “I wouldn’t be doing this.” But it feels like I have no choice. The cigarette seems to have a strange power over me. Gambling, sex, money—they seem to have a strange power over me, a mysterious power that drags me in, no matter how much I protest. The chocolate—it just sits there in the cupboard, calling to me. Eat me. Eat me. I will make you feel better. The beer sits there, like the devil tempting me, promising release. Go on. Just a little sip …

It’s not an intellectual thing; you don’t consciously realize you’re seeking. You just find yourself picking up a cigarette. You find yourself downing another vodka. You find yourself stuffing your face with chocolate. And it feels like you can’t do anything about it. It feels like you are somehow being controlled by the object of addiction and it’s all out of your hands. Yes, that’s how it feels— like we are victims of addiction. That something called “addiction” is happening to someone called “me.”

This power that we seem to feel emanating from the object of addiction is the same power I have been talking about throughout this book. When we believe that an object, substance, or person is able to complete us in some way, we project a kind of mysterious power onto it. Whether it’s food, a spiritual guru, a lover, a celebrity, a political or religious leader, a bottle of whisky, or a cigarette, it can really feel like it has power over you, like it has some kind of aura, a kind of compelling, magnetic energy emanating from it. It appears to radiate power.

But this isn’t real power. Nothing and no one has that kind of power—the power to complete you. No wave possesses any more power than any other wave; every wave is equally ocean. Power is never external, in that sense. What you experience as power “out there” in the world is simply your own power, projected. It is life power projected outward and focused on another object or person. The power isn’t really in the object or person, although that’s what it seems like, that’s what it feels like, that’s what it tastes and smells like. Power doesn’t belong to anyone or anything, for life itself is the only power.

Since the dawn of humanity, we have been projecting power “out there”—onto the sun, onto the stars, onto animals, onto nature, onto inanimate objects, onto other people. Humans have always had gods. Even atheists are deeply religious in this sense.

The seeker of release projects the power of release onto an object, in the same way that the seeker of enlightenment projects that very enlightenment onto a person, and the seeker of love focuses their longing onto a person, giving that object the apparent power to complete them. The upshot is that it feels like you really need the object. It feels like you need your fix. It feels like you need sex, you need chocolate, you need a drink, you need a cigarette, you need to go to another satsang or retreat, you need to hang around your guru or love object, in order to be whole again.

It’s an astonishingly creative mechanism that seems to keep you from an awareness of who you really are. It’s when we don’t see this mechanism for what it is, when we get caught up in seeking, rather than seeing the seeking and recognizing ourselves as the wide-open space of awareness in which seeking happens, that we suffer, and we reach out to escape our suffering.

There is nothing wrong with eating chocolate, in itself. That’s part of life too. It’s when the chocolate is being used to provide release—that’s when the problem begins. It’s the seeking through chocolate that’s the problem. Chocolate + seeking = addiction.

In the same way, alcohol, in itself, is not wrong or evil or bad, but part of life. Alcohol is a neutral substance that we don’t need to use in the way we do. It’s when we use alcohol to distract ourselves from what’s really going on, to take away discomfort, to provide completeness, to escape from this moment as it is—that’s when the trouble begins. Alcohol + seeking = addiction.

You get the picture. Substances and activities—sex, drinking, eating chocolate, waging bets at the casino or on the stock market—in themselves, are not problems. These can all be fun, enjoyable, innocent parts of life. It’s when the seeker starts to use these activities to get something that the problems start.

When you’re seeking something through a cigarette, you’re not really smoking a cigarette anymore. You barely even notice the actual moment-by-moment experience of smoking the cigarette. You’re not really present with the experience, because you’re anticipating the high too much. You’re not really smoking the cigarette—you’re trying to smoke wholeness.

The cigarette is not the enemy. When you see—really see—this seeking mechanism at work, and in your pursuit of release, you used it and then forgot why you were using it (if you ever knew in the first place).

Not all wants are expressions of lack. When we express a genuine, healthy want, we are saying something like this: “I want this. I would like to experience this. But whether or not I get  what I want, I’m still absolutely okay. Not getting what I want isn’t going to detract one iota from this present okayness.”


There’s a difference between wanting a cigarette and wanting a cigarette to complete you, which a cigarette cannot do. Wanting a cigarette is not a problem, until you want a cigarette in order to take away discomfort. Then you have a want that stems from seeking, a want that is an expression of lack, and that is a want that will lead directly to suffering and more lack. You are saying, “I want this, and if I don’t get it, I won’t be okay. Only getting what I want can make things okay.” That’s a want based on the illusion of lack, the illusion that there is something missing, and the illusion that only a cigarette can fill the void. Now we’re no longer seeing reality as it is; we’ve moved into seeking. We move into a dream and, therefore, suffering.

What we really mean by “I need a cigarette” is “I am unwilling to experience the discomfort of not having the cigarette.” And there it is: I don’t want to experience the discomfort— the incompleteness, the pain, the hurt, the not-okayness—of not getting what I want. I don’t want those waves to come. I eel like I’ll drown in them. I feel like I’ll be overwhelmed by them. I won’t be able to handle them. I feel like I’ll die without my addiction object, without my escape route, without anything to subdue the pain of existence.

When the hope of completion is stripped away from the seeker, what’s left? When time is stripped away, when all hope of getting what you want and being complete disappears, what are you left with?

You’re left with what is. You’re left with your discomfort, your incompleteness, everything you were running away from, without any hope of escaping it. You’re left facing life as it is—facing those rejected waves, the thoughts and feelings you’ve been running away from, perhaps all your life. You’re left facing your pain, your sadness, your guilt, your regret, your loneliness, your worst fears. You’re left here, now, in this moment, facing what is.

To a separate person, being faced with all of these things is a major problem. But in the open space that you are, there is no problem—every wave can simply be there. The extreme discomfort. A sense of lack. An urge to smoke. A craving, a want. The sense that something needs to complete itself. Pain. Agitation. Perhaps heart palpitations. Sweating. All sorts of images—of how awful your life is, of you smoking the cigarette in bliss, of yourself deeply inhaling the cool smoke, of all the relaxation it will bring, of the release of it. The release is so close, you can almost touch it. 

There’s a desperate urge to reach out and light up. In one moment, all this discomfort could be wiped out. In one moment, hell could turn to heaven. The anticipation feels unbearable. You desperately want a cigarette. The cigarette will take all of this discomfort away. Just one tiny, little cigarette. Just a few moments away. Go on. Just one little cigarette. Oh, it’s so tempting.

As we have seen, you don’t really want a cigarette. What you really want is for the present moment to be deeply okay again. What you really want is to no longer be in want. What you really want is to no longer be in lack. What you really want is for all of this discomfort to be deeply accepted. You want to be deeply okay where you are; you want to be at home here and now, and you think having a cigarette is the only way to get there.

“I want a cigarette”—that is a lie. It’s a lie based on misidentification, a lie based on huge assumptions about who you really are, a lie that comes from not seeing the wholeness of your present experience.

Now, I’m not telling you to pretend that you don’t want a cigarette. Pretending never works—it only leads to more pretending. I’m not telling you to pretend that you don’t have urges or cravings. You’re a human being, not a robot. I’m asking you to honor the want, but also trying to get you to dive into the heart of the want—to drop all your assumptions and see with fresh eyes what it really is, beyond what you’ve been told it is, what you assume it is, what you believe it is.

We’ve pushed right through the experience of craving to discover the simple seeking mechanism at the core of it. The longing is not for a cigarette (or a drink or sex or the next high), but for the deepest acceptance. We don’t long for a cigarette; we long for the intimacy of present-moment awareness—the open space in which every wave of experience is accepted.

When a craving is simply allowed to be there, with all the discomfort that entails, and when the urge to escape the discomfort is simply allowed to be there—when every thought, every sensation, every feeling is simply allowed to be there, and when this present experience is seen to be deeply accepted right now—I no longer need the cigarette to complete me. This is where the cycle of need can be broken—right at the very heart of that need. This is freedom in need—freedom in craving, not freedom from craving. This is about discovering the freedom in which the craving and the urge to satisfy that craving both appear and are allowed to appear, just as all waves in the ocean are already allowed by the ocean.

Even without the cigarette, even with all of these feelings that are appearing in the absence of a cigarette, even in the experience of not getting what I think I want, I am deeply okay.

In this deepest acceptance, I end up getting what the cigarette could never give me—freedom to have a cigarette or not. I am no longer bound. I am no longer controlled. I am released from the clutches of my guru. The spell is broken. I leave the cigarette cult. I am no longer powerless. I am no longer a victim.

To put it more simply, when a want—for a cigarette, for a drink, for sex, for a trip to the casino, for a bar of chocolate—is deeply allowed, allowed to be as it is, the want is no longer a want in the true sense of the word. In other words, when a want is deeply allowed, it is no longer an expression of lack; it is no longer an expression of incompleteness and no longer a search for completeness. Now it is simply a bunch of sensations appearing and disappearing in what you are—sensations that are deeply allowed to appear and disappear in what you are, even if they are uncomfortable right now. Wants come and go, and what you are remains.

Find the place of deepest acceptance is not about tolerating or putting up with not getting what you want; it’s about finding the place where even intolerance and frustration are accepted. I’m asking you to see if you can find the okayness in not getting what you thought you wanted, but never really wanted.

Most of the time we’re either trying to ignore a want (which only makes the want grow) or we’re indulging the want. Deeply accepting the want is the middle way. Between rejecting and indulging lies seeing— and allowing, and finding freedom in even the most uncomfortable places.


So your new spiritual practice is this: Sit with discomfort, and with its best friend, the urge to escape that discomfort. Sit without doing anything about them. Sit without expecting them to change. Sit without trying to fix yourself. Sit without hope of any particular outcome. And notice that every thought, every sensation, every feeling—including any expectation, frustration, lack of acceptance, or attempt to change this moment—has already been allowed into this moment. Find the okayness in the midst of the not-okayness. Find the place where this moment is okay, even if it feels uncomfortable and not okay. That place is freedom. That place is what you are. And if that place cannot be found right now, and any feelings of failure arise, deeply allow those too. Simply notice whatever is here, and notice that whatever is here has already been allowed in. This noticing is the very essence of meditation.

The seeker always lives in memories of how bad things were and in anticipation of how bad things might become. The seeker always lives in time.

The seeking mechanism can be brutal and withdrawal horribly uncomfortable—let’s not pretend otherwise. But can you see that contained within even the most extreme discomfort is an invitation to wholeness? Can you see that even when the waves are uncomfortable, the ocean is still present? It’s an invitation that never disappears, no matter what is happening.

The pain, the fear, the frustration, even the feelings of helplessness and blind panic—these waves are not really a problem to who I am. They are part of life’s constant invitation; they are deeply allowed in what I am. They are there to be noticed, to be seen as part of life—they are not a threat to life.

In a society where so much emphasis is placed on getting what you want, and where getting what you want is said to lead to happiness, it sounds almost crazy to suggest that you could be free and happy in not getting what you want.

When you discover who you really are, you’re free whether you get what you want or not. Either way, you are complete—and no amount of cigarettes, alcohol, sex, food, or money can give you that, just as the absence of these cannot take it away.

Maybe at some point you won’t need any more recovery plans. You will find yourself having the urge to reach for your next fix, and you will find a deep okayness within that very urge, within any discomfort that appears. You will find freedom in everything you were running away from, and in that place of total acceptance, you will discover that what you are is not an addict. You will discover that there is nothing wrong with you. What you are has never wanted or needed to use anything to escape this moment. What you are deeply allows this moment to be as it is.

Perhaps one day—and that day could be today—you will find a cigarette or a drink or a piece of chocolate in front of you, and finally you will know, on the deepest level, that it won’t give you anything that isn’t already right here. It won’t make this experience any more complete than it already is. You can honor the appearance of any urge. You can honor the urge to act on the urge. You can honor any discomfort at not getting what you want. And you can simply let it all be here, as it is, without having to change it in any way.


If you’re going to channel your seeking energies, channel them right back here, to when you actually are, and embrace everything that is happening right now. Let go of your search for a future moment when you will be free from addiction, and discover what is really here, right now. And perhaps soon this will become the overriding urge—to accept this moment totally. Perhaps you will become addicted to the deepest acceptance of this moment. That’s an addiction you’ll never need to recover from, an addiction with no known side effects.

-Jeff Foster
The Deepest Acceptance

Our Mutual Nakedness

Whenever you’re being emotionally dishonest with someone, whenever you’re hiding how you really feel in the moment, whenever you’re trying to hide a part of your experience in order to hold up an image, whenever you’re playing a role with someone rather than being honest about what’s really happening for you right now, the likelihood is that you’re seeking something from them. You want them to see you in a certain way. You are trying to manipulate their image of you (which is actually your image of their image of you). And in their presence you want to see yourself in a certain way. And what else could be the reason for this but fear?

We try to protect ourselves from life and from each other because we are afraid, and what the seeker fears more than anything is being exposed. Exposure of the seeker is like death. To put this in simple language, if you saw me for who I really am, in all my weakness, failure, insecurities, incompleteness, you would reject me. If you saw me in all my rawness, in all my nakedness and humanness, without the masks I wear, stripped of my façade, without defenses, without the games I play—if you saw what’s really here, if you saw beyond the image—you’d reject me. If you saw my fear, my frustrations, my doubts, my sadness, my feelings of failure, ugliness, incompetence, helplessness, you would not love me. Or, if you loved me before, when the image is gone you would soon lose that love for me. I fear that in the light of truth, in the light of life, all the little games I play would be exposed, and I would be left standing there, naked and ashamed, unloved and abandoned, an outcast, far from home.

The fear of being an outcast seems to go very deep in the human psyche. An outcast is literally someone who is cast out of a tribe, expelled from a social group or community, sent away from their village, their home, to die in the forest, in the wilderness, with nobody to protect them. The fear of being an outcast is the fear of being cold and alone, unprotected, forgotten, vulnerable, and near to death. 

Although we may no longer fear being torn apart by wild animals in the forest, we still somehow unconsciously associate social rejection with a kind of death. If I expose myself to you, I might die. That’s how it feels. Being an outcast is a deeply not-okay wave in the human ocean. And so we spend much of our lives avoiding intimacy—and instead pursuing more superficial goals such as popularity, fame, or just fitting into the crowd. 

You can be surrounded by people and still be lonely. Your life can be full of dinner parties, family get-togethers, social occasions, nights out, conferences, retreats, meetings, workshops, and festivals, and you can still feel totally disconnected. You can find your perfect partner and the two of you can be the perfect couple, the couple who everyone thinks will live happily ever after, and you can feel more isolated and lonely, and probably more confused, than you ever were before. No matter how many relationships we have, no matter how full our lives are with people and possessions, if there is no deep connection, no real honesty, no intimacy in the true sense of the word, you simply will not feel fulfilled. There will still be something missing. There will still be emptiness and a sense of lack.

And then, even with all the promises in the world, you will always be haunted by the risk of losing love. Even with all the external security in the world, even with all the vows and commitments and the most seemingly solid future plans, you will feel insecure in your relationships. The only true security is radical honesty in the here and now, which means risking the loss of your self-image and fearlessly meeting the other as yourself, undefended and unprotected.
-Jeff Foster

Do you ever really know another person?

We talk about “other people”—falling in love with them, being in relationship with them, being in conflict with them, ending relationship with them, meeting them, understanding them, having and losing them—but do we ever really directly experience others as outside ourselves? Or is our experience of other people always inseparable from our own stories—our own thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, projections, prejudices—about them? Are “others” really “other” to us? Are they really separate from what we are?

Just as we never really experience an outside world—a world outside of present experience, as we have seen—do we ever really experience other people as “out there”? When we relate to someone, who are we actually relating to? Are we simply relating to an image we have created of them, rather than to who they really are in the moment, here and now? Do we end up missing others as they are in this moment in our attempt to hold onto our own story of them, our own version of who they are? Do we always view others through the filters of history and future, and miss what is present?

Who is your friend, partner, mother, father, brother, sister, when you see them without your story about who they are—without your story about what they believe or don’t believe, who and what they love or don’t love, what they’ve done and haven’t done, what they’ve said or haven’t said, how they’ve hurt you or praised you or ignored you—in the story of your life? What if you were to meet, here and now, beyond all of that carryover from the past? What if you were to meet them, here, for the first time, without expectation or disappointment or even hope? What if you were to meet the one who is actually here, rather than the one whom you imagine is here?

What would it mean to meet—really meet—without history, without projection, without imagination?

Now, I’m not for one moment suggesting that we get rid of our stories about each other; I’m not suggesting that we forget about the past, about the details of each other’s lives, our names, our roles, and so on. I’m suggesting that when we live solely in our stories of each other, we end up missing what’s actually here right now. In clinging tightly to my story of you; in holding tightly to memories, to prejudices, to my conditioned ideas of who you are; in viewing you as a separate character moving through time, I miss you as you are now, in this moment. I miss the one who is actually in front of me. I am so locked into a past image of you, into my ideas of who you are, into my expectations of you, into my disappointments and fears, that I don’t really see you as you are. I don’t really hear what you are saying right now. I value the past over your present-moment experience of the world. It’s as if I already know who you are, what you are going to say, what you are thinking, what you will do, what you believe, what you want, before you even open your mouth. I have literally prejudged your experience. All prejudice begins here.

The idea of our father-and-son relationship had actually gotten in the way of present-moment relating with the man in front of me. In holding up the story of our relationship, the story of father and son in space and time, we had stopped seeing each other in the here and now. In our relationship, we had stopped relating.

Beyond the story of “us,” beyond the dream, beyond all our images of each other—that is where true relating is really possible. Beyond the father story, the son story, the mother story, the daughter story, the husband story, the girlfriend story, the student story, the teacher story—that is where true intimacy lies. And the reality is, we always meet beyond the story. We always meet beyond the image. What I am, what you are, is the open space in which all images come and go. What I am, what you are, cannot be defined by any story. As consciousness, I am what you are, always. I am what you are, and that is unconditional love.

But when I relate to you not as a separate self, but as the wide-open space in which all thoughts, feelings, sensations arise and fall away—that’s where real intimacy is possible. We meet, without a history, open space to open space, and that’s the beginning of real relationship—not the relationship of one story to another story, not the meeting of two images, but the meeting of two open fields of being, open fields in which all thoughts, stories, feelings, sounds, sensations are deeply allowed to come and go. (And there aren’t really two open fields coming together, but this is useful language for the time being. Ultimately, no language can capture this intimacy. All language is only temporary, in this place beyond words. )

As a story trying to complete itself through you, seeking resolution through you, trying to come home through you, I will end up manipulating you, being dishonest with you, playing a role with you, hiding how I really feel out of fear of losing you, punishing you when I feel hurt by you. But as open space, I am free to communicate honestly and authentically with you, knowing that I am already the love I seek; knowing that I do not need you to complete me; knowing that, deep down, I cannot ever lose you. I do not need you in order to be fully who I am. I do not need you to keep my story together.

In recognizing myself as the open space in which all thoughts and feelings are allowed to come and go, and in recognizing that what I am is beyond “son” and that what I am doesn’t need “father” to complete it, I am free to engage honestly and authentically with the man in front of me. I can allow him to be fully himself, to express himself freely. I can encourage him to explore, to express his true thoughts and feelings, because finally I do not see his experience as a threat to my identity. Ultimately, even if he leaves me, it does not detract from my completeness.

It is the most loving thing in the world to say to someone, “I don’t need you. I love you, but I don’t need you.” In other words, “I don’t need you to complete me. I am complete without you. But I enjoy your company right now, and I love being around you. And if you were to leave, I would still be able to love you—even if there was pain or sadness in the experience of that.”

Real love asks nothing in return.

Feeling Vs. Being

We are at war with the opposites; we reject any opposite that doesn’t match our image of ourselves, and we don’t realize something very important: in reality, there are no opposites. Opposites are a creation of the mind. Only the mind splits reality, splits experiences into two and then seeks one of the opposites and tries to escape the other.

Here’s something that’s crucial to understand: In reality, feelings have no opposite. Energy in the body has no opposite. Life itself has no opposite.

Does this moment have an opposite? Does the presence of life here and now have an opposite? Does anything actually oppose it?
Is an ugly feeling the opposite of a beautiful feeling? Or are they two very different experiences, with different sensations, different tastes? Is a happy feeling the opposite of a sad feeling? Thought would say they are opposites, but outside of thought, can you find an opposite?

In reality, there is no such thing as an opposite of a feeling or emotion. Every feeling and emotion is a complete experience in itself.

Experience itself has no opposite.

Feeling ugly is not the opposite of anything—it’s just feeling ugly. Without calling feeling ugly “negative” and feeling beautiful “positive,” without making them into opposites, we see that feeling ugly is simply an experience happening now—just a wave of experience, just something passing through. No wave is intrinsically better or worse than any other wave, because no wave is the opposite of any other wave. Every wave is equally water. Feeling ugly is not the opposite of anything —it’s just feeling ugly. It’s just life-energy moving in a particular way.

And let’s go deeper. Not only is beauty not the opposite of ugliness, but ugliness is also simply a concept in itself, and as such, it cannot capture the actual present-moment experience. In other words, without the story that what I am experiencing is ugliness, what is actually happening here?

Without the story that what I am experiencing now is failure, what is actually here?

Without the story that what I am experiencing now is pain, or grief, or boredom, or anger, or discomfort, or depression, or confusion, or even seeking, what is actually here?

Without any story about what is happening now, without labeling this experience as “failure” and comparing it with success, without labeling it “ugliness” and comparing it with beauty, without calling it “anger” or “fear” or “pain” and comparing it with its conceptual opposite, how do I know what it is that I am feeling?

As I was saying before, without the story, you have no way of knowing what you are experiencing.

Without any story, without naming the waves, life is simply raw energy moving. It is the ocean— nameless and mysterious. We try to put a label to that energy. We judge it, try to escape it, make it the negative of an opposite positive and then seek the positive.
And yet underneath all of this, we don’t really know what we are running away from in the first place. We simply call a wave “fear,” “anger,” “sadness,” “boredom,” “grief,” “joy,” or “pain” because these are the names and concepts we have learned, and then we try to escape these waves or hold onto them. But take away those labels, and what are you really trying to escape from or hold onto? Do you actually know? What happens when we drop all the labels, all the learned descriptions, and face the raw energy of life, as it is in this moment, without trying to change, escape from, or cling to it? What happens when we drop all descriptions of what this moment is or is not and deeply feel into present sensations?
This is where the real adventure of life begins.

When you go beyond the story of what you are feeling, you come to see that you never really knew what you were running away from. And you meet the raw energy of life. You stand naked in front of life—and this is true healing. It is the falling away of all ideas of how this moment should be.

life—and this is true healing. It is the falling away of all ideas of how this moment should be. It’s when we label the waves that the war begins. The moment we label a wave of experience, we set it up as the opposite of another wave, even though, in reality, waves have no opposite. In every label, there is an implicit judgment. In creating the opposites beauty and ugliness and then seeking beauty, we go to war with what we call ugly. In trying to be beautiful, in trying to feel beautiful, in trying not to feel ugly, we end up going to war with this present experience and trying to reach its opposite—even though it actually has no opposite! No wonder we suffer. We think, “This feeling of ugliness is a threat to my completeness. If I can get rid of it, if I can move from ugly to beautiful, then I’ll be complete.” And the game is on.

What images of yourself are you trying to hold up? What do you want to be seen as? Happy, beautiful, successful, peaceful, blissful, enlightened? Expert? Teacher? The one who knows? The one who has worked everything out? What don’t you want to be seen as? Sad, stressed, unpopular, ugly, unintelligent, a failure? Which images of yourself are not okay? What do you want to feel? What don’t you want to feel? Which waves are not okay in your world?
we want to be whole. We long to allow everything. In the true sense of the word—the wide-open ocean of consciousness in which every wave is deeply accepted.

Why must we hold up stories about ourselves? Why do we need any story about ourselves? Why can’t present experience just be allowed to be as it is, without us pretending it’s something that it’s not?

When you’re no longer at war with the opposites, there is enough room for all of this. All of human consciousness can pass through you. Everything we once called “negativity” is now seen to be part of the celebration of life. All waves are allowed in the ocean. Our ideas about what is negative and what is not are completely released in deep acceptance.

When you discover who you really are—the wide-open space that holds everything—you discover that failure, illness, ugliness, helplessness, uncertainty, and weakness are there to be embraced, not avoided. All waves—including the ones we fear the most, including the ones that seem most threatening to who we are—are already embraced by life’s ocean. What you are is not an image, and it cannot be threatened by any wave. Only an image can be threatened.

Taking your stand as the vast space in which everything happens, and knowing yourself as the capacity for this moment, notice that all feelings—good and bad, positive and negative—are already deeply allowed into what you are. They have been appearing all throughout your life, which is all the proof you need. This total embrace of all waves of experience is the love you have always been seeking.
-Jeff Foster
The Deepest Acceptance Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life

You!

What is Presence? Presence is the felt sense of being alive, of existing, here and now. The living field of I Am that has never come or gone, of which even I Am is already a translation by mind.
Thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds, smells, all kinds of states and experiences both mundane and profound, have all come and gone in your life, but your Presence has never come or gone, appeared or disappeared. The silent unchanging backdrop to all experience, the vast ocean of You, constant and steady amidst all the arising and dissolving of the waves of the manifest world.
You, in the most intimate sense of the word. You, as you have always known yourself, closer than breathing. The You that was present when you took your first breath, that will be present when you take your last breath, that is present on every in-breath and every out-breath.
Present as you took your first steps, present as you take your last. Present on your first day of school, your wedding day, and as you held your grandfather’s hand for the last time. You, prior to even the word “you.” Unknowable by thought, unable to be conceptualized, and yet the one thing you’ve always known more deeply that you’ve known anything. The one undoubtable thing; the one thing you’ve never been able to put into words; the one thing that’s always been on the tip of your tongue; the one thing that’s not a “thing” at all.
The You that you recognize in everyone you meet. The condition by which you’ve known anything at all. Undoubtable, since even doubt is allowed to come and go.
That which you have always sought, that which has been present throughout all your seeking and suffering and longing for union.
Your true Home, your most profound sense of rest, your beloved; it was always You.

How to Fail Beautifully

Sometimes, even with the best of intentions and hard work, your life doesn’t go the way you had hoped or planned or dreamed.
Your heart is broken. Your mind is spinning, confused. You fall to the ground with disappointment, despair. An old feeling of dread comes to visit, a familiar sense of cosmic abandonment. There’s a raw, shaky, sinking feeling in the gut, a tightness in the throat, a pressure in the head. 
“I screwed up.”
In the midst of your hurt, you are tempted to turn against the world, or yourself. Blame someone. Attack someone. Seek revenge, retribution. Or attack yourself, with addictive behavior. Quick, numb the pain. Drink something, eat something, buy something, try not to feel something.
You label yourself “bad” or “wrong” or “broken.” You call yourself a “failure,” a “waste of space,” words you learned when you were young. And then your mind spins off into the future. Not only a day of failure, today, but years of failure to come. A lifetime of failure, ending in death.
You’ve abandoned the present moment and been pulled into a dualistic narrative of past and future, success and failure, right and wrong, good and bad.
But here is an invitation: Slow down. Get curious.
Invite open, curious attention to drop into the present moment. Can you allow yourself to become fascinated with the actual feeling of failure? How do you know this is failure? Where in the body do you sense it? Come back to the shaky, raw feeling, the visceral hurt that’s alive right now. Come back to the nausea, the heaviness, the pressure, the sinking feeling in the belly. Just for a moment, don’t run away or numb yourself from these movements of life. Get curious about the sensations. Give them space; let them dance, move. Don’t distract yourself from these precious parts. They simply long for loving attention right now.
You are leaving the heavy story line of “me and my failure.” You are showing up for life, connecting with yourself at a moment when you need your own tenderness more than ever.
And out of the rubble of shattered expectations, a new and different life may grow. You may be shaky, broken open, now; your heart may feel tender and raw; your certainties may have crumbled to dust; but you are alive and sensitive, and willing to feel what needs to be felt. And your greatest failure may turn out to be your greatest beginning, the time when you learned more about yourself than ever, the scene of the movie where you discovered humility, courage, and radical self-love.
Stay close; you cannot fail.