Alchemy of Awareness

11/26/2024

Nonduality is the Truth.

But here’s something else that’s true:

Nonduality is a Lie.

That is, the moment it claims to be the truth, the absolute truth, the most important truth, the truest truth, the highest truth, the only truth, it becomes a terrible lie.

Nonduality is untrue when it divides itself in any way from duality, when it bypasses or suppresses authentic human feelings, when it shames the feminine, and judges our human vulnerability, fragility and sensitivity to be “less than”.

Nonduality is a lie when it sits on its Absolutist throne, looking down in superiority at relative existence, deeming it to be “merely an illusion”, a projection of the separate self, our doubts and pains and broken hearts so many things to be transcended or extinguished.

Nonduality is toxic when it loses its heart, its humanity, its humour, its fierce and deep compassion for the trauma and emotional wounding that lives on inside all human beings.

Nonduality is the truth, yes, but please, I beg you, students and teachers alike, hold that truth very, very lightly.

- Jeff Foster

10/25/2024

10/15/2024

TRAUMA, THANK YOU FOR PROTECTING ME

Here’s the main thing you have to understand about trauma:
It wants to keep you hidden.

Why? It’s trying to protect you.
It’s only ever trying to keep you safe.

It imagines threats where there are none.
Stuck in the past, it wants to keep you close to what you know, close to what you can control.

And away from death.

When you begin to leave your comfort zone, take that brave step, express yourself, assert a boundary, try something new, separate from the known world, it will assume, based on past evidence, that YOU ARE IN DANGER, and it will do everything it can to get you back to safety, convincing you to be small again - in order to protect you from failure, ridicule, abuse, further shaming.

Your mind will scream.
Your body will shake.
Your muscles will tense up.
Your heart will race.
Your breath will quicken.
Everything will feel… wrong.

We can’t destroy this conditioned fear.
We can’t get ‘over’ it.
The more we resist it, turn against it, judge it as bad or wrong, or fight it, the worse it gets.
The more we reject it, the more we reaffirm to it that the world is TRULY unsafe.

We cannot delete the fear but we can turn towards it. Understand it. Have compassion for it. Have a more loving conversation with it:

“Thank you for protecting me, trauma. You’ve served me well. But maybe the danger has passed. Maybe I don’t need your protection today. Maybe I am bigger, stronger, safer, than I knew…”

Then, the very same energy that repressed your authentic self, starts to work for you. Liberated, it begins to express your authentic self, helping you play, be creative, speak up, take up space, and take those courageous steps into the Unknown.
The very same energy that suppressed you, now works to express you.
The energy that used to shut you down from life, now spends its time trying to open you up to life.

You learn, IT’S SAFE TO BE ME.

This is the greatest thing of all. It really is.
To feel safe within yourself.
To know that your nervous system is always working for you.
To love your body, and to know that you are not your body.

Trauma is condensed life energy, that is all.
Stuck, constricted, it longs to be liberated.
It longs to be seen, known, felt.

When it's met with love, it can blossom, YOU can blossom, into pure creativity.

- Jeff Foster

02/25/2024

🐦 🎶 Birds Singing in the Forest, Deep Healing Music for The Body

I hope you find some instant relief from stress and anxiety with this healing music. Gentle delta waves have been added for extra calm and peace. Wishing you...

03/15/2023

Whenever you meet fear honestly and directly, not as a story but as pure phenomenon, you begin to see deeper into the foundations of the fear. This usually births compassion and insight to support the next level of your liberation. Often, the fear itself simply dissolves.

If you do not pe*****te into and through your fear, you can too easily live daily life trying not to feel deficient, trying to prove you are lovable, valuable, or good enough. This trying is the single greatest block to the experience of Grace. It turns your life into an endless self improvement project entered in denial of a simple human fact: your ego actually is limited. All egos are fundamentally insecure because their nucleus is hollow, based in a sense of separation.

When you recognize that this is not something to be afraid of, you will discover that what you thought was a big problem is the gate to a game-changing realization: You are more than this. You are the one who is looking at the layers of fear. You are the loving awareness that is contacting memories, feelings, beliefs, assumptions, projections, and layers of conditioning. As Saint Francis of Assisi is reported to have said, “The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.”

Read more in 'The Way of Grace' or at www.mirandamacpherson.com.