The Chalice of Wisdom - Part 1

Mandi Solk, 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCMzeBOj9Y


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It is wonderful and heartening to hear that all over the world, in all kinds of ways, all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds are maturing like fine wines, going beyond the "I'm enlightened and you're not" spirituality, the-blind-worship-of-the-guru spirituality, the "there's nobody here and nobody there and I'm not a person and there is no choice and no free will and everything is a concept .... and that is the Only Truth!" spirituality, and discovering a spirituality beyond all second-hand concepts, beyond all fixed positions and regurgitated beliefs and theories, a spirituality that involves fearless first-hand looking beyond assumptions, rigorous questioning of all that we hold dear, and a constant and timeless return to the Home that we never left, the Home of Now and always-is and always-has-been. A revolution indeed. This is a real-time spirituality for the times we are living in. And the times they are a-changin'. Yet in the midst of the most tumultuous change, we are forever called to that which never changes and cannot change...

This is a spirituality that does not separate itself from something that is not 'spiritual'. It has no enemies, sees no 'other'. Can we still call it "spirituality", then, when all boundaries have fallen away? Let us call it Life, and let us Live it.

Who lives it? That is the thrilling pathless journey, the never-ending question with no answer, grounded in an ever-present discovery of a fresh new moment beyond time.

Jeff Foster

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"We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden."

- Goethe

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Hugh Milne - 'My Journey To The Heart Of Listening'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNQT1VL7I2s


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Jeff Foster 'Conscious Relating: the Power of Honesty'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKbXYnVo6-M


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A Visionary Soul

Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. This great soul was a visionary. What is a visionary? Visionaries are those rare and inspired individuals who see great promise and imminent potentials for human consciousness and culture that most of us haven't even begun to imagine yet. They see far beyond the present to a future that has yet to be created. For them, in a sense, that future already exists because their awareness is illuminated by inspiring and compelling images of the possible. Unless we, like Dr. King and other great spiritually awakened beings, invoke that same capacity to see and intuit beyond where we already have come, it is unlikely that our lives will be expressions of anything other than the status quo.

—Andrew Cohen

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Jeff Foster 'The Crucifix is the Present Moment" Interview by Renate McNay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RdwqGNRV_U


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If we talk about the Mr Luther he was not a spiritual man he was the leader of human rights.

"I'M NOT PRETTY ENOUGH"

by Jeff Foster

I'm not pretty enough. I'm not successful enough. I don't have enough money. I'm not awakened enough. And so on, and so on. We can all get stuck in limited and limiting beliefs.

I was working with a woman who had felt "not pretty enough" for her entire life. It had been drummed into her by her mother, and had become the lens through which she saw life. She couldn't seem to shake this belief off, no matter how many therapists she saw, no matter how many spiritual retreats she attended, no matter how many techniques and methods she used, no matter how much spiritual work she did on herself. I knew there was something there at the core, something in her that was not really being "met". You cannot disable a belief on the level of belief. It's not possible to just "stop believing" something. Was it really about being pretty or not being pretty? Or was it about something more profound?

She was insightful enough to see that all the makeup, all the plastic surgery, all the beautiful clothes, all the positive thinking in the world wouldn't remove this basic sense that she wasn't pretty enough. She knew full well that even if the entire world thought she was the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, she would still feel this longing. It went deep.

Because she'd always felt "not pretty enough" she had hidden away from life, not doing what she really longed to do, withdrawing from others, not really stepping into her own 'power' as she put it.

I asked her to close her eyes and let her present experience become the most fascinating thing in all the universe. I asked her to really feel into that belief "I'm not pretty enough". What effect did that belief have on her body, in the moment (since mind and body are one)? Where did she feel it? What was activated, in the moment, by that belief? What images popped up? What sounds and colours? She spoke of a kind of anger in the pit of her stomach, red and glowing, a burning frustration, a kind of battle cry. "I SHOULD BE PRETTY! I SHOULD BE PRETTY!". It had a real charge to it. She felt the violence in it, the contraction, the intolerance. It was like a child screaming for attention. She had never really acknowledged how violent this belief was. It felt like it could destroy the world if it had to, all to reach some elusive goal of 'pretty'. How ugly this violence was! How unattractive!

I invited her to stay with that feeling, to give it space, to deeply allow it to be there, to stay fascinated, to stay close and not run off into stories. As she sank into that feeling of anger, after a while she said, "strange, it actually has a kind of power to it, a beauty. It's kind of... pretty at its core....". In paying attention, the anger's intelligence could move and shine. Then, with loving attention, as the anger dissipated, expanding into the vastness, she started to speak of a kind of sadness underneath the anger. Where? She checked. It felt as if it was all over her body, a old sadness, that had always been with her. It had ruled her life, she said. It had informed all of her decisions. I invited her to drop the word 'sadness' for a moment (even that is a judgement and a belief) and really contact the raw life energy that was there in the moment, prior to words and labels. This was breaking apart her image of her pretty/unpretty body, and really contacting the living, breathing real-time body that was there, beyond all labels. Sinking into the sadness, she spoke of a kind of powerless feeling underneath it, moving into her chest, tingling. Powerless - yes, this was how she'd felt throughout her childhood. Misunderstood. Never 'at home'. Feeling as though she could never live up to what others wanted of her. She'd spent her life trying to avoid this powerless feeling, never really allowing herself to touch it. It had become her taboo. It had come to represent death. Death and decay. Nobody had ever shown her how to be with this feeling. Nobody had ever held her hand in this place. People had been too busy trying to "cure" her, trying to play the expert or the teacher or the knowledgeable therapist, fuelling her sense that she wasn't good enough, pretty enough, powerful enough. It was time to allow her to truly meet her powerlessness. And to be with her fully as she did so. To mirror her own capacity to hold all experience as it came and went.

Dropping the word 'powerlessness', and contacting the raw life energy directly, she started to tell me that at the core of that powerless feeling, there was a kind of beauty, something strong and unshakeable. She spoke of a "burning candle". She stayed with the candle for a while. I asked "is the candle... powerless?". "No," she said. "It's just energy, not powerful or powerless... It's... kind of.... beautiful, magnetic..."

This was the beauty, the attraction, she'd always longed for. Beauty not as the opposite of ugliness, but the beauty of raw life. Her longing to be 'pretty' wasn't really a longing to be "the pretty girl" at all - it was a disguised longing to be in touch with this unlived life that was trying to express inside her. She had always longed to be fully alive, and had gotten sidetracked with some second-hand longing to be "pretty". This the last place she'd ever thought to look for life - at the heart of everything she'd been running away from. The candle had always been burning brightly. It was the candle of consciousness itself. This was a resurrection, a discovery of life where death had been assumed.

"It's just a small candle," she said. I invited her to drop even the word 'small' - that was another judgement, a comparison. "Ahhhh", she said, "it's just life, isn't it. Just life." Yes, it was just life. Not "against life", but life. In staying with the powerless feeling, in dropping all her assumptions and seeing freshly, she had seen the life - the true power - that was there. This feeling was not something to be feared. She had called it "powerlessness" and run away from it, but had missed its deeper secrets and its intelligence. She said she no longer felt powerless, even though nothing in her life circumstances had changed.

"I'm not pretty enough" - that thought had been life's ingenious way of calling her back to her own power - she'd just never understood the intelligence of it all. It wasn't a "negative" thought that needed to be erased at all - that's what she'd always thought, and that's why nothing - no process, no method, no positive thinking - had ever worked for her. That's why the thought had never gone away. "I'm not pretty enough" had been an invocation, a clarion call, asking her to sink deeply into her present experience, to shine light in the darkness, to expose the emptiness of that darkness once again. Nobody had ever been able to truly meet her in her 'powerlessness' - not her mother, not her teachers, not the world. This was an invitation for her to become the mother she'd always longed for - the mother who could hold her in the midst of her powerlessness, and shine the light of herself. This was a call to remember who she really was, beyond all stories of beauty and ugliness. This was an invitation home.

In profoundly contacting a sacred moment, in staying with all those energies that we previously rejected, the intelligence of life can work its magic. Anger, sadness, feelings of powerlessness are not "negative energies" at all, for they contain within them all the intelligence of life itself, just as every wave in the ocean actually contains, in essence, the entire ocean.

It's a real privilege to meet people where they are, and stay profoundly close to them as they travel into the darkness, and discover there the light of themselves.

Darkness does not become light, for there is only light. And you couldn't care less about being "pretty enough", when you are life itself, undivided from the power that moves planets.

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There is nothing other than this present moment;

there is no past,

there is no future;

there is nothing but this.

So when we don't pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing."


- Charlotte Joko Beck,
"Attention Means Attention"

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Scilla Elworthy 'My Life -- Transformation Through Listening' Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzwntsE5RU


cilla is author of several books and important papers including 'Making Terrorism History.' She talks about her life and how at an early age she learnt to listen to people and how healing that was for them. After her daughter was born she contracted encephalitis and was ill for 6 years. After she was cured questions came up such as, 'Who AM I?', 'What AM I here for?' which changed the course of her life. She became very involved with the anti-nuclear movement and helped start Peace Direct and the Oxford Research Group. She learnt how to engage in real dialogue with the nuclear policy makers.
'Try to understand why people are seeing things differently'. 'Change must take place inside me'

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A Classic Poem for Living

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mJN93wBqrg


A Classic Poem for Living~"The Desiderata of Happiness" by Max Ehrmann
Desiderata is the famous poem written by Max Ehrmann which means "desired things." It urges people to see the beauty and troubles of the world through wise, hopeful and compassionate eyes.

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" When spiritual beliefs are used to build up walls between people, this is a total misunderstanding of the purpose of spirituality. Spirituality should mean coming closer to yourself. When this happens, you become closer to others, too. Spirituality and religion should dismantle discrimination and labels, not shore them up. It should break, not create, barriers between people."

His Holiness the 17th Karmapa,
Ogyen Trinley Dorje
from: The Heart is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out

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Thank You Clearwater

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Amoda Maa Jeevan - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD8J-asn0f0


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What is the Now?

The Now is not a single moment in a movie, sandwiched in-between a "past" and "future" moment.

The Now is the entire movie screen, which allows the whole movie to play itself out. Time passes in the movie, and locations change, people are born and die, but the movie screen itself is always deeply at rest, constant, unchangeable, unfindable within the movie, unborn and undying, and wide open to what happens. It is pure capacity.

You are not 'in' or 'out' of the Now. You ARE the Now, the unlimited capacity for all of life.

Jeff Foster

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"A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe."
- Wayne Dyer ~ ♥ ~



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THINK on THESE THINGS By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

If you don't know what to do about a situation - wait awhile, the answer will come. If weariness overcomes you before you've completed a difficult job, wait awhile, you'll get your second wind.

If you do not agree with someone else's philosophy, don't fret, perhaps later you will come to know that the same philosophy can be reached from many different directions.

If you think the activities of another person or group are frivolous and unnecessary, wait a bit, they most likely will feel the same way about you sometime.

If you don't like what others have to say, wait, they may clarify it - or you may change your mind.

If life hasn't dished you unhappiness, wait a bit. If you've planted any happiness seeds, you will also reap.

We can't always wait, but sometimes waiting is action, and action of the hardest kind. It is difficult to keep quiet when you have something to say, but it more often saves your face later and sometimes your life.

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"There are two kinds of 'nothing'. The mind can say 'nothing', but this 'nothing' is a psychological state. It is mathematical, sterile, stagnant, desolate. You ask: How to discern? The real 'nothing' is emptiness, free from psychological connotations. It is freedom, completeness, silence peace and love - these shine there. Nothingness or emptiness is the inner climate of the wise. When I say 'nothing', let the word 'nothing' vanish and just be here."

~ Mooji

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