16/11/2021
Now this is what I mean by the true essence- ore CORE energy.
Embrace the dark and the light since its the same and we all have it in us.
‘OUT OF HELL AT LAST’
(SOMETIMES ALL YOU CAN DO IS STAY ALIVE)
In the past twelve months I’ve fought a debilitating disease that very nearly killed me.
Perhaps it did kill me, or rather, “killed” the one I used to be.
I am no longer the same person. Yet I feel more myself than ever.
A total experience of the hell realms has changed me irrevocably.
I have gone to the deepest and darkest places in myself, travelled to regions of the psyche that seemed truly unbearable and unendurable, met the hidden parts that craved the sacred blessing of loving awareness. I have faced the utter unspeakable horror of raw trauma, the sheer unbelievable hell of the abandonment wound, the desperation and hopelessness of the forgotten child, the terror and dread and helplessness of the bodymind seemingly falling apart before my very eyes.
I have faced my own physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual death.
Nothing could help me. No technique, no enlightenment, no spiritual process, no therapy, no inquiry, no cure. I was beyond all that.
Neurological Lyme Disease is brutal. My heart goes out to all my brothers and sisters suffering with this very misunderstood illness.
I have survived states of pure dread, excruciating panic, loss of sense of time and space and ground and lifeforce, with no guarantee that the unbearable hell would ever end. (I would not wish any of this upon my worst enemy, if I had an enemy.)
I faced appalling suicidal urges that shocked and engulfed me, urges that nearly destroyed me, tore me open to life, then ripped my heart out and replanted it, with new roots forged in new soil.
I have been cracked open to an even deeper level of compassion for myself, for all of humanity, for all who seek and suffer and long for a way out, for all children of this terrible and wonderful cosmos.
I understand the urge to “suicide” now better than ever, the longing for a way out, the pull to eternal rest, sleep, home.
(There is no death, only the death of dreams.)
I understand more clearly than ever what drives people to take their own lives.
I am grateful and amazed that I am still here.
That I chose life, or it chose me, or both or neither.
I have seen the best and worst of humanity. The best and worst of Western and Eastern medicine, and the best and worst of the alternative medicines.
I have witnessed the shocking violence - yes, VIOLENCE - of spiritual bypassing, the terrible pain of being disbelieved and ridiculed and gaslit, and the joy and relief of being truly listened to, believed, honoured, validated, seen, held, loved.
I have touched into the core of sacred and divine anger, that healthy and protective loving fire that fights for truth and destroys the false, that will not tolerate bu****it, that speaks up for itself directly and fearlessly and get its hands dirty to protect that which it loves, rescues the helpless and forgotten and leaves no-one behind.
I have seen the astonishing world-building power of the inner child, discovered an even deeper joy in my awkwardness, my frightened parts, my imperfections, my mistakes, my wobbly and young and fragile and naive and silly bits. God I love these bits so much.
(Our vulnerability will save us! Our wounds will heal us! The “Love and Light and Bliss” spirituality hasn’t a damn clue.)
I have been to the edge, and over the edge, and knew I would never return but I returned.
I have left this world and I have come back now to let you know you can survive ANYTHING, even your own death.
I died to experience more of life, jumped into the voidless void to break open to more fearlessness and deeper joy and love of self. I have been destroyed and resurrected, ridiculed and celebrated, ruined and reborn.
I have grown so much closer to the love of my life, Alice, a wise and powerful and beautiful woman who can hold me and walk with me, who has seen my darkness, my weakness, my fear and my shame a hundred times over, and who has the capacity to hold me there in love and understanding. And she lets me hold her, too, in her vulnerability and in her power, in her joy and in her sorrow. Our inner children are in love as much as our adults. Alice is wild and free and warm and honest and creative as hell and I adore her. She is helping me become a better man, a better human, a better servant, a more empowered healer.
I have come to see that only the truth frees us, and that sometimes truth is raw and painful and sticky and messy and stinky and deeply inconvenient.
I have found out who my true friends are, met the ones who are able to meet me, see me, hold me, hear me, even in my pain… and I have met the ones who just can’t do that from where they are, bless them. I have experienced those who wish to fix me, change me, advise me, guru-ise me, and in their fear, try to stop me from experiencing what I desperately need to experience. I have seen how dangerous it is to give good (bad) advice instead of doing the hard work of honouring where somebody actually is. And there is a lot of bad advice out there, and there is a lot of fear and misunderstanding of the darkness, and yet I do now see the innocence in it all. Bless everyone who tried to help me. Bless everyone who tried and failed. Bless me, for reaching out and reaching in and reaching further than I imagined I could ever reach.
(“I am large. I contain multitudes.”)
I emerge now, day by day, step by step, moment by moment, grateful beyond measure to be alive, grateful for the gift of life, grateful for each breath, ten times stronger than before, a hundred times humbled and ready and willing to learn and begin again from the very beginning.
I know nothing anymore… and yet I know more than I ever did.
I am a wise child once more.
I will speak truth now and forever, and I will forever surrender to the will of life.
I will fight for humanity and humility - and humour - with my last breath.
I will sing of a spirituality that bows to our mistakes, that drenches our longings with empathy, that understands that we are ALL human and frail and mortal and gorgeously imperfect as much as we are “Divine Pure Awareness That Never Suffers”, students as much as we are teachers, painfully broken as much as we are joyously Unbroken.
And not one of us is immune from the Will of life.
I will not tolerate the shaming of our vulnerability any longer.
I will love until I die and I will not die because I have died already and transcended death over and over and I will hold your hand as you have held mine, and I will never leave you, my love.
I will take this hell I have been through and transmute it to gold and offer it to the world.
- Jeff Foster
