3 Amigos: Love, Fear, Anxiety

A LOVE AS FIERCE AS THE SUMMER SUN

Don't search for love, or try to make others love you. Simply be what you seek, give yourself what you long to be given. Be more loving, open your heart wider, without expectation, without needing anything in return. You'll get hurt? You'll waste your love? You'll look like a fool? Keep opening anyway. And opening. Your heart needs to break sometimes, so it can give more love, and in giving, receive. In the cracks, compassion will take root.

You can still say no. You can still draw, redraw and erase boundaries as you go. You can still leave, or stay, or never come back, or return. But you are loving yourself first. And through that love, loving a world. No longer waiting for others to save you, or complete you, or remove your pain, yet no longer denying yourself the love that in the end you can only give yourself. No longer protecting a broken heart by trying to close it. And no longer being a masochist either, dishonouring your own boundaries to find a love you could never find outside of your very own heart. Others will disappoint you until you realise this. Love sees others as they are.

The sun has given her light freely for billions of years, delighting in the life she brings to all beings; a joyful warrior of love, she is in relationship, first and foremost, with her own shining.

- Jeff Foster

BE GENTLE WITH FEAR

Be gentle with fear.
It is a child of the unknown.
It has travelled light years to find you.

Do not be afraid to feel it fully.
It will not harm you.
Let it come closer, let it penetrate you if it must.
Feel its aliveness, its pounding heart, its vibrations and tingles in the body.
Until there is no division between 'self' and 'fear'.
Until you cannot call it 'fear' at all.
Until there is only life, raw and immediate, and nameless, and benevolent.

Fear is a breaking open into the unknown,
a shattering of certainties.
It is the forging of a new path into the vastness of night.It is the thrill of being awake.

Fear reminds you
That you live on the edge of mystery.
That you drink from the fountain of possibility.
That your being is vast.
That only the false can die.

Do not push your fear away, or label it 'negative' or 'unspiritual'.
Do not pretend it is not there.
Do not rush to delete it, or transform it, or even heal it.
It is not an enemy, and not a mistake.
It holds great intelligence and healing power.
It is ancient and wise.
Bow before it.

Let fear be fear, fully itself.
But do not be afraid.
Let the body shake, let the heart quake.
And know that you are present.And opening, and opening.

Let fear, so misunderstood,
Come to rest in your vast heart.

Standing on the threshold,
You take those first steps into the void.

You are shaking but you are so damn alive.

- Jeff Foster

HOW TO BEFRIEND ANXIETY

When you feel anxious, don't pretend not to be anxious, for this feeds the anxiety, adds an extra layer.

What you run away from always haunts you. Don't cover up the discomfort or distract yourself from it, or pretend to be 'fine'. Eating, drinking, shopping, pill-popping, incessant talking, whistling, rushing around mindlessly, running to check your messages or contact a friend, trying to control everything around you, spinning off into the narrative of 'me and my busy life', these are all ways to avoid the fact of anxiety, ways to abandon yourself in your time of need. (Yikes! I believe Jeff  is a "Peeping Tom"?)Breathe. Feel your feet on the ground, your belly rising and falling with each breath. Don't think about your anxiety, and how to get rid of it - that is the old paradigm. Feel the anxiety more completely! Locate it in the body - is it in the belly. the chest, the throat, the head? Drop the word 'anxiety' (for it is a second-hand word) and directly feel the living sensations that are there, moment-by-moment, without trying to get rid of them or stop them, without even hoping they'll go away. Allow yourself to be curious about what's alive in your body right now, about the physical sensations of this moment. Come out of past and future, and dive into presence. Breathe into the sensations, dignify them with breath, with oxygen, with life, with your kind attention. Are there butterflies in your stomach? Do your muscles feel tense? Which ones? Can you bring some loving attention and breath there? Let the sensations know that they are allowed to be here, that they are included in life, that you finally have no agenda to destroy them, that they can stay, for now. And there is only Now.If thoughts are spinning out of control and having a party, if there are many thought-clouds in the sky of awareness, that's wonderful. Don't try to stop thoughts or silence all these voices, pictures, memories, fantasies, for that makes you more anxious too. Only thoughts would want to stop thoughts. Be the sky, in which thought-clouds can dance. Thoughts are not reality, and they are not who you really are. They are sounds and pictures.Thoughts may be shooting off into the future or past, but that's okay - that's what the mind does, it constantly rewinds and fast-forwards. Yet you are here. You are right here; here is where your presence lives. Allow all thoughts to be here, with you, all sounds, all feelings, all urges. Even allow your feelings of non-acceptance, your urge to escape this moment. As the body releases tension, you may find yourself shivering, yawning, laughing, even shaking, or just resting more deeply...If you cannot accept yourself completely as you are, then can you completely accept your complete inability to accept? And if you can't accept that, can you see that even your inability to accept is part of life, part of this moment, part of the movement of the universe? You don't have to accept yourself, or accept this moment, for it is already accepted. It is already here, already alive, already the way it is. (DUH!)Anxiety is just a little child, who has arrived in your space. It has not come to ruin you, or hurt you, but wake you up. It only wants to be acknowledged, held, allowed in to the vastness of the moment. The anxious one longs for a home. Will you run away when it arrives again, distract yourself, or finally turn to greet it?

- Jeff Foster