Course Recordings
Week 1 Replay Present Moment Awareness and Your Breath Practice
Week 2 Replay Identifying Messengers
Exercise: Create your jar of water and oil. Keep it where you will see it often. Shake it and let it settle as a reminder.
Week 3 Video Replay Receiving the insight
Week 4 Video Replay Feeling without condition
Week 5 Video Replay Integrating the Child Self
Week 6 Video Replay Integrating Charged Emotion
Song: OM Cosmic Sound by Ahanu Om Chant & Swami Drishti Tratakauram
Week 7 Video Replay
Week 8 Video Replay
Reading from Entering the Castle by Caroline Myss:
If you truly believe that God loves you, you act accordingly. Divine love is compassionate and accepting, silent and healing, nonjudgemental. How does divine love influence your everyday life, including your thoughts, actions, emotions, and how you treat others? How often and in what circumstances do you consciously act without love? Divine love is the most difficult love to put into practice on Earth, and yet, if you believe in the power of Divine love what other choice do you really have? Anything else you do will create chaos and contaminate the rooms of your Castle, which you’ve just begun to clean out!
We are not Jesus or Buddha, we all prefer to love within our comfort zone, but that is not what is asked of those who seek to know the deeper nature of the soul.The soul is essentially the vessel of love. As a channel for love, you cannot hold expectations that you will be loved in return or appreciated for your efforts. You cannot judge yourself for not being able to act out of love. Rather, your task is just to love again and again.
Week 9 Video Replay I love myself unconditionally.
Music: Devi Prayer
Week 10 Video Replay I appreciate what I am
Trust the Darkness Now - Jeff Foster
If you are lost. If nothing makes sense anymore. If all your reference points have collapsed. Breathe. In, out. In, out.
If the old life is crumbling now. If the mind is foggy, tired, busy. If the organism is exhausted and longs to rest. Trust. This is a rite of passage, not an error. You are healing in your own original way. You are not damaged. You are not “screwed up.”
You are not going mad. You are not destined for the dung heap. Contact the ground now. Breathe. In, out. In, out.
Make room for the invitees: The sorrow, doubt, fear, anger. An ancient emptiness. A longing. This familiar taste of incompleteness. They just want to pass through. They just want to be felt. They just want to be known.
You are a vessel, not a separate self. You are a vast sky, not the passing weather. Breathe. In, out. In, out.
Others may not understand. Give them back their misunderstanding. Celebrate the place where you are. Celebrate your inability to celebrate sometimes. Celebrate your total lack of interest in celebrations.
Contact the ground. Breathe. In, out. In, out. Breathe, friend. In, out. In out.
Week 11 Living In Presence Fruits and Flowers
Poems and Excerpts
Poem by Jeff Foster
NO FEELING IS EVER A MISTAKE!
Awakening is not about deleting or transcending human feelings, for how would the ocean transcend a single one of its precious waves, and how would the sun transcend one of its beloved sunbeams?
PRESENCE is not interested in that kind of transcendence. PRESENCE sees that every feeling, from joy to despair, from bliss to boredom, is only an innocent movement of life, actually a movement of itself, a wave in its vastness, and never a threat, an enemy, a punishment, or a mistake. Every feeling is an invitation - to remember who you are, to rest in your true nature, to drop into deep acceptance, to open your heart to a lost ancestor.
You are on a pathless path of radical inclusion in this life, friend, and PRESENCE transcends all notions of transcendence, and there are no mistakes here.
Excerpt from This Moment by Jeff Foster
The invitation today is to be present to your life, to wake up to it, to turn towards this immediacy, to dignify what is actually happening where you are. If there is loneliness visiting you here and now, do not turn away. If there is fear, do not push it away or try to escape. If there is frustration, anxiety, or just a quiet sense of hopelessness moving in you, do not reject these energies. They just want to be felt, now. They are not wrong. They are your lost children, orphans of awakening, and just want to move and be felt. Sometimes life brings us to our knees so that we will FEEL everything we've been running away from all our lives. And yes, the 'meeting' may hurt. But perhaps feeling the hurt is the beginning of healing, not the ending of it.
And watch the mind. How it constantly spins, rewinds and fast-forwards, constantly leaves the present scene of your life, here and now. Thought is constantly running away from the present moment. It goes into memory - of how good things were before, of how wonderful your life used to be. And it longs to return there. And it feels unable to. And despair results. Regret. Longing. Homesickness. And it fast-forwards into the future, imagining all kinds of future scenarios, many dark and scary. It takes you into regions way beyond your control. And both movements into past and future disconnect you from where you are NOW, which is all there is. They take you away from your only point of power - this moment.
Listen from silence - Jeff Foster
Be present. Be here.
The teaching is so damn simple.
Be present. Be here.
Feel your feet on the ground, your belly rising and falling.Be open and receptive to the life all around you.
The sounds, smells, tastes. Feelings rising unexpectedly.A tingling in the belly. A contraction in the throat. Heaviness in the head.
An old melancholy coming to visit.
Stay curious as the moment dances.
Stay curious even as you lose your curiosity.
Listen. Listen with your entire body.Hear yourself. Hear the person you’re talking to.
Hear the silence in between the sentences.
Let the silence linger a little while longer.
Move just a little into the discomfort.
There’s no rush. There’s no “better” moment to get to.
Silence doesn’t always need to be filled.
Be a little more naked. A little slower.Know a little less what you’re about to say.
Be a little less prepared, a little messier, a little more willing to expose your shaky, vulnerable heart.
Be surprised at your own responses. Don’t numb yourself with the same old stories.Stumble if you need to. It’s okay. You are held.
Let your words emerge from silence and return to them.
Notice if you’re talking just to avoid the silence.
Notice if you’re regurgitating a story you’ve told before.
Notice if you’re trying to impress, or win love.
Or avoid being seen for who you really are.
Friend, in silence we can truly meet. Genuine understanding is beyond mind.Let us be awkward and shy and hesitant together. And clumsy. I don’t mind.
Love is wordless; she needs no more words.Listen to the silence; it is volcanic.
Be present,. Be Here.The teaching is so damn simple.
Be present. Be here.
HOW I BECAME A WARRIOR - Jeff Foster
Once, I ran from fear so fear controlled me.
Until I learned to hold fear like a newborn. Listen to it, but not give in.
Honour it, but not worship it.
Fear could not stop me anymore.
I walked with courage into the storm.
I still have fear, but it does not have me.
Once, I was ashamed of who I was.
I invited shame into my heart.
I let it burn.
It told me, "I am only trying to protect your vulnerability".
I thanked shame dearly, and stepped into life anyway,
unashamed, with shame as a lover.
Once, I had great sadness buried deep inside.
I invited it to come out and play.
I wept oceans. My tear ducts ran dry.
And I found joy right there.
Right at the core of my sorrow.
It was heartbreak that taught me how to love.
Once, I had anxiety.
A mind that wouldn't stop.
Thoughts that wouldn't be silent.
So I stopped trying to silence them.
And I dropped out of the mind,
and into the Earth.
Into the mud.
Where I was held strong
like a tree, unshakeable, safe.
Once, anger burned in the depths.
I called anger into the light of myself.
I felt its shocking power.
I let my heart pound and my blood boil.
Listened to it, finally.
And it screamed, "Respect yourself fiercely now!".
"Speak your truth with passion!".
"Say no when you mean no!".
"Walk your path with courage!".
"Let no one speak for you!"
Anger became an honest friend.
A truthful guide.
A beautiful wild child.
Once, loneliness cut deep.
I tried to distract and numb myself.
Ran to people and places and things.
Even pretended I was "happy".
But soon I could not run anymore.
And I tumbled into the heart of loneliness.
And I died and was reborn
into an exquisite solitude and stillness.
That connected me to all things.
So I was not lonely, but alone with All Life.
My heart One with all other hearts.
Once, I ran from difficult feelings.
Now, they are my advisors, confidants, friends,
and they all have a home in me,
and they all belong and have dignity.
I am sensitive, soft, fragile,
my arms wrapped around all my inner children.
And in my sensitivity, power.
In my fragility, an unshakeable Presence.
In the depths of my wounds,
in what I had named “darkness”,
I found a blazing Light
that guides me now in battle.
I became a warrior
when I turned towards myself.
And started listening.
Week 5 Reading (Excerpt from You Were Never Broken by Jeff Foster):
The NOW is the only place where life can emerge, be digested, and healed (returned to whole). This will take courage, the willingness to feel old pain and breathe through it, and trust the body today instead of giving in to the mind and its age-old fears.
In the safety of your own presence, or in the safe presence of another being (imagined or real) who can hold you and trust your process, can you turn toward the sore place, the tight place, the dark place, the aching place, the frightened place, the anxious place, and bring to it the light of your awareness, the light of love? For it is love that truly heals. A love that welcomes all.
Forget Unconditional Love by Jeff Foster
Forget unconditional love. Forget loving perfectly. Forget having a permanently open heart. You can’t do it. It’s an impossible goal that, paradoxically, makes you violent inside.
Your inner child rebels against any spiritual ideal.
You cannot do unconditional love. But you can embrace your imperfect attempts to love, your failure to reach the goals, your disappointment, your exquisite shame, your ecstasy and your agony too.
You can bless your inherited conditional ideas of love. You can celebrate your messy, deeply human, totally conditioned attempts to love, in unconditional present awareness.
Friend, even your failure to love unconditionally is welcome here, unconditionally. That is the true meaning of unconditional love: the love that smiles at our trying too.
No Place Like Home - Jeff Foster
You can feel abandoned, yes. You can feel lonely, far from love and life, warmth ad companionship. Others can trigger powerful feelings in you, yes. But strip away the word the concept, the story, the thoughts you have about abandonment, and return to the actuality of the living body, Now.
What does it feel like Now, this abandonment? How do you know you’ve been abandoned? Where is the evidence, in the body, today? Attend to those sensations surging now in your belly, chest, throat. Feel the fluttering, pulsating, stinging sensations. Let them grow in intensity, or dissipate, and move. Drench the tight and tender places within with curious, loving agenda-free attention. Give the sensations space; soften around them.
You’ve got to breathe into yourself now, friend, for nobody is here to breathe into you, and they cannot do that anyway.
The dream of love has died; you are waking up to the reality of love. Love does not come from without. It never did. It was always within you. It was your power.
You only had to click your heels together. Three times. Click, click, click.
It was always your calling, you see, to find a way to love yourself deeply, to not beg for love, or seek it externally, or wait for it, or try to hold on to it, but to drench yourself with it, moment by precious moment.
Do not abandon yourself when you feel abandoned, for there is a pain worse than abandonment; the abandonment of self, the flight from where you are.
Running from yourself when you most need yourself.
Focus on “the ones who abandoned you” and you are powerless and helpless today. There nothing you can do to change the past, or others. The present is your only place of power, nowhere else.
Here’s how to break the cycle of abandonment: focus your love on the inner “abandoned one,” this precious child within. Invite loving attention deep within the belly, heart, head. Breathe into the ground. Feel your sorrow and your rage. Feel your own aliveness. Connect with these precious energies.Ask a friend for help if you’re struggling. Or a therapist. Or a thousand-year-old tree. Or a mountain. Or the sky a d all the gods and angels. Call on the universe for support.
Weep. Rage. Allow ourself to feel everything. Cry the tears you were never allowed to cry. Scream the screams you were never permitted to scream. Speak the words of truth you’ve stifled for decades.
The inner child is real, and longs for you. You have not been abandoned. Life is here. For you are here.
Do you understand?
And from here a new life grows. As you learn to not abandon yourself, you will, in time, attract others who are not abandoning themselves either; others who will not abandon you. Who will stay with you when you cry, when you feel lost, and will help you stay with yourself.
When you stop abandoning yourself, you can never be truly abandoned; you refuse to abandon your own inner world, even when others leave unexpectedly. Nobody can abandon you; they can only move to another place, with their own pain or joy.
Abandonment is the story of lost love, an old story, for love cannot truly be lost, only rediscovered deep within.
You are courageous enough to be present with yourself now. You have broken the addiction of a lifetime; You have discovered the deep joy of being alone.
There’s no place like home. Click, click click.