Summary: We spend our lives seeking love, acceptance, wealth, success, and even ‘spiritual enlightenment’ in the future. We long to be complete. Yet right at the heart of life there is an intimacy, a simplicity, a completeness that is totally beyond words – and which cannot be reached through any effort of ours. In our exhausting attempts to change, to improve ourselves, to become perfect or enlightened - or perfectly enlightened - we end up ignoring this wordless intimacy which exists here and now – an intimacy which is really our true home, and the end of all our seeking. Julie Ann's ConsciousSHIFT guest Jeff Foster, author of "The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life," invites us to discover the ocean of who we are: an awareness that has already allowed every wave of emotion and experience to arrive. What if we were to deeply explore the nature of our experience, not with the aim of ‘fixing’ it – but of seeing the wholeness within it? Jeff invites us to think of this ‘nonduality’ as a ‘finger pointing to the moon’ (as they say in Zen) - directing our attention to the wholeness of all life, to the Oneness which exists here and now. Despite all the ways in which we try to run away from uncomfortable and painful experiences, the possbility of discovering ease and freedom lies right in the midst of those experiences. It is beyond comprehension, yet it is as obvious as breathing, as familiar as the feeling of your heart beating in your chest, as ordinary as the sights and sounds and smells appearing in this room. Ultimately, who you really are, and life itself, are inseparable. They are not-two, they are "non-dual" - they are intimate. This is a timeless truth that goes right to the heart of all the world’s spiritual traditions, and ultimately right to the heart of modern science, too. How can we bring an effortless yes to this moment? How do we stop running from “the mess of life” — our predicaments, our frustrations, even our search for liberation - and start flowing with all of it? Join Julie Ann and Jeff to discover unexpected new ways to a enter a space of absolute acceptance and joy, no matter what’s happening in our lives ... and to stop trying to “do” acceptance … and start falling in love with “what has already been allowed.” The message is always the same: What you are, in the deepest sense, is what you have always been seeking. Jeff Foster studied Astrophysics at Cambridge University. In his mid-twenties, after a long period of depression and illness, he became addicted to the idea of ‘spiritual enlightenment’ and embarked on an intensive spiritual quest for the ultimate truth of existence. The spiritual search came crashing down with the clear recognition of the non-dual nature of everything, and the discovery of the extraordinary in the ordinary. In the clarity of this seeing, life became what it always was: intimate, open, loving and spontaneous, and Jeff was left with a deep understanding of the root illusion behind all human suffering, and a love of the present moment. Jeff was voted #51 in Watkins Mind Body Spirit’s 2012 list of the world’s 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.
