Acceptance - Jeff Foster

 Freedom is found not through escaping the present experience,
but by diving fearlessly into its hidden depths.  You must be
open to exploring suffering - how and why it manifests in you,
where it originates.  You must be willing to look at your pain,
fears, sadness, longings.  They are part of the wholeness of
life.  You must be willing to face them head on and find deep
acceptance for the seemingly unacceptable aspects of yourself...
Beyond the personal story of my own suffering, I discover the
pains is not really my pain.  It's the world's pain.  It's humanity's
pain...

It's one thing to know who you really are [your Beingness]
when life is easy and things are going well for you.  It's
another thing to remember this in the heat of the moment, 
when things fall apart, when life gets messy.  We find another
way of looking at suffering, a radical new way of relating to
it.  We can see the messiness and the beauty of day-to-day
human existence as something to be avoided, or transcended,
or we can see it for what it really is: a secret and constant
invitation to wake up... It's about finding out who you
really are, beyond who you think you are, beyond who you've
been taught you are, beyond the story about who you are,
beyond all your concepts and images of who you are.

...we must face reality with open eyes.  We must move away
from denial, wishful thinking, and hoping and tell the truth
about life as it is.  Great freedom lies in admitting the truth
of this moment, however much it clashes with our dreams and
plans - and self image...  Acceptance is about seeing reality,

seeing things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be.
And from that place of alignment with what is, all creative,
loving and intelligent actions flow naturally.

Freedom is about embracing all that appears in the Ocean
of our present experience.  Maybe the true calling in life is to
accept present experience deeply - to let go of how this
moment should be - letting go of our false self-image.

Great freedom lies in fearlessly facing the darkness and finally
coming to see that the darkness is inseparable from light...
Life cannot be good or bad.  Life is simply life.  It's about
seeing the Mystery of Life that is already here.

Jeff Foster
Excerpts from - The Deepest Acceptance
published in 2012
Facebook

As many of you know Jeff has been dealing with a
severe debilitating illness for the past few years, 
having to come face to face with Acceptance...
He writes about his experience on his Facebook page...

~

Photo - taken by my brother
at Plum Cove, Gloucester, MA

What Calls the Eye to See - Adyashanti

What calls the ear to listen or the eye to see
more than the surface facade that shrouds our essential spirit?
Parting the strata and dross, what is essential picks its way
through the manicured narrative of endless lives.  In each
moment of every day, Truth is not lacking or held in
abeyance for some later date; it is given in full measure,
and abundantly so.  Do not be afraid of what appears to be
chaos or dissolution - embrace the full measure of your life
at any cost.  Bare your heart to the Unknown and never
look back.  What you are stands content, invisible,
and everlasting.  All means have been provided for our
endless folly to split open into eternal delight.

Adyashanti
2012

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Storm Cloud at Sunset

Churning - Mark Nepo

Art by Peter Koster

Having loved and lost enough,
I'm no longer searching
just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone.  But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it's a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shells call "God."

Mark Nepo

via - Being Silently Drawn

Personal note:  I've been "churning" a lot lately over the externals of life and living (like the churning waves of the sea), distracted, unable to settle into the "Listening."  The poem reminded me to step back from the things that make me "churn" inside, that keep me from hearing the quiet lapping of Grace upon the shore of my heart and just listen to its Rhythm...

~

Art - Peter Koster
Autumn Surf

A Passing Show - Etty Hillesum

Understand that all outer appearances are a passing show...

People sometimes say: "you must try to make the best of things."
I find this such a feeble thing to say.
Everywhere things are both good and very bad at the same time.
The two are in balance, everywhere and always.  I never have
the feeling that I have got to make the best of things.
Everything is fine just as it is.
Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself
and contains the good as well as the bad...
Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must
learn to listen...

Etty Hillesum
Jewish Mystic of the Holocaust
From: Letters from Westerbork
Aug 1943

Etty died in Auschwitz Nov. 30, 1943
at the age of 29

~

"All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and every kind of thing shall be well."

Julian of Norwich
Christian Mystic
1342-1416

Kindness - Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crown of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

via: The Beauty We Love