Jeff Foster was born in 1980 in London, England.[1] He studied Astrophysics at Cambridge University.[1] At the time he was overwhelmed by feelings of despair and loneliness,[2] which eventually led to physical illness and a personal breakdown soon after graduation. He was convinced he was going to die.[1] Foster returned to live with his parents, reading and studying for a year on spirituality, searching for relief from his depression.[1] This ended in 2006 with the dissolution of the sense of separation, which he understood to be a spiritual awakening:
As the story goes, I was walking through the rain on a cold Autumn evening in Oxford. The sky was getting dark; I was wrapped up warm in my new coat. And suddenly and without warning, the search for something more apparently fell away, and with it all separation and loneliness.
And with the death of separation, I was everything that arose: I was the darkening sky, I was the middle aged man walking his golden retriever, I was the little old lady hobbling along in her waterproofs […] I was the raindrops falling on my head (although it was not my head, I did not own it, but it was undeniably there, and so to call it “my head” is as good as anything).[3]
Works
- Life Without a Centre: Awakening from the Dream of Separation (2006)
- Beyond Awakening: The End of the Spiritual Search (2007)
- The Revelation of Oneness: Dialogues on Nonduality and Spiritual Awakening (2008)
- An Extraordinary Absence: Liberation in the Midst of a Very Ordinary Life (2009)
- The Wonder of Being: Awakening to an Intimacy Beyond Words (2010)
- The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life (2012)
- Falling In Love With Where You Are: A Year of Prose And Poetry on Radically Opening Up To the Pain and Joy of Life (2013)
- The Way of Rest: Finding The Courage to Hold Everything in Love (2016)
- The Joy of True Meditation: Words of Encouragement for Tired Minds and Wild Hearts (2019)
- You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life (2020)
“Tomorrow’s integration is not my job. The story of yesterday’s awakening is irrelevant now. Here and now is where life is. And there is only here and now.” – Jeff Foster
“True meditation is not a ‘doing’, not a task to accomplish or a process leading towards some future goal or state for the hungry seeker – it is pure, child-like fascination with the moment. Fascination with thoughts, with sensations, with feelings, with sounds, with fascination itself – with what is, right now. It is radically being here, and noticing in fascination the desire to get ‘there’ arising and dissolving.” – Jeff Foster
Find more context for these quotes here: https://onemindonline.com/no-energy-wasted-this-week/
“Don’t mistake the weather of your mind, for the sky of your BEING.” – Jeff Foster
Find more context for this quote here: https://onemindonline.com/dont-mistake-the-weather-of-your-mind-for-the-sky-of-your-being/
LET YOURSELF REST
If you’re exhausted, rest.
If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.
If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.
If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.
If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off. If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today.
If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.
Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.
Time does not always need to be filled.
You are enough, simply in your being.
– Jeff Foster
Find more context for this quote here: https://onemindonline.com/help-me-see-where-to-surrender-and-show-me-where-to-take-action/
“What you really long for is a deep intimacy with your own experience – the deepest acceptance of every thought, every sensation, every feeling. And that cannot come from outside of yourself.” – Jeff Foster
“Stop trying to heal yourself, fix yourself, even awaken yourself. Stop trying to Fast Forward the movie of your life. Let go of ‘letting go’. Healing is not a destination. Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings, your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes, and they are not asking to be ‘healed’. They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly, in the loving, healing arms of present awareness.” – Jeff Foster
“Feelings that have been pushed away do not actually disappear; they live on in the darkness of the Unconscious, pulling the strings in our relationships, our work, self-expression, causing us to become reactive, compulsive, obsessive, depressed, anxious, and deteriorate our physical health until one day, we remember, all feelings have a right to exist in us. So, we stop numbing ourselves, and feed them love, attention, curiosity and Presence. Now, they can finally come to rest.” – Jeff Foster
Find more context for these quotes here: https://onemindonline.com/this-brings-an-end-to-the-inner-war-this-creates-true-inner-freedom/