THE SELF THAT CANNOT BE DOUBTED
When you are truly presentthe entire world can vanish into nothingness.You are groundless. Spacious. Vast.There is only you. Only present experience.Yesterday can seem like a million miles away.You can’t believe that tomorrow will ever come.Maybe it won’t. You simply don’t know anymore.You are plunged into Not Knowing.Time expands to infinity and vanishes into the night.Have you ever met another human being here?Will you ever meet again?Are you still part of humanity?Or are you finally disappearing?You actually don’t know.
There is no direct evidence.You have only memory now. And memory is only thought.And thought is always passing, never stable.And the world seems far away.And your aloneness is total.Your gut is a little shaky, your heart a little tender,the night is so alive, and you feel as naked as a baby.
Do not fight the strangeness. Do not brace yourself against it.Relax into it. Fall into its endless embrace.Be pulled into its sacred heart.Take this life moment by moment. It is all you get, anyway.Not a series of moments, but only One.Rich, full, alive, pure.You are not crazy. Only less numb than before.More of life can move through you now.More joy and more sorrow. More bliss and more boredom.
You have not become vast. You were always vast.The more present you are, the more fluid everything seems.The less solid.The less graspable.The more strange.Old ways of trusting break down.A new kind of trust is born:A trust not in objects, or people, or experiences.But in the Source. And trusting the doubt, too.Bowing even to the doubt.Loving the doubt.
There is no way back.You will not recover from this awakening.You will find only greater courage.And a greater willingness to walk your path.And you will learn to love your fragility.And smile at your uncertainty.And laugh out loud as the world vanishes.(It is so familiar, this place, so soft.And you inhabit it so beautifully.)So this is the price you pay for being totally free:The loss of the old ground.The vanishing of a world.The questioning of everything you once held dear.But soon you tire of ponds, friend,and the ocean’s depths sing to youas you fall asleep...
- Jeff Foster
