SING, WORLD, SING!
Break me open, LifeShatter my remaining defences against YouYou placed magnificence at the heart of my despair
You sowed volcanic strength into my vulnerability
Even my doubt vibrated with courage"Leave the familiarWith no hope of return"?Of course!
I am not afraid, I was never afraid!I once walked a familiar path of self-constructionI now walk a path of grace and destruction
Of weeping at birdsong and telling the truthI will never turn back!
- Jeff Foster
BE MY VALENTINE, WORLD
Love is not a feeling.If love were a feeling,it would come and go,like in a great drama.Love is not a thought.If love were a thought,it would have an opposite.Love is too huge to be contained in thought.
Love is not a belief.If love were a belief,you would doubt it.And who would believe that?Love is not a state.If love were a state,you could enter or leave it.Or fall out of it.Love is not an experience.
If love were an experience,it would begin and end,and you would long for its return.Love is not something you find.If love were something you found,you could lose it too,so you'd have to cling to it for dear life.
Love is simpler, kinder, closer, less dramatic.Less urgent, more present.Love is the space in which everything appears.Every thought, every sensation,every feeling, pleasurable and painful,blissful, boring, erotic, gentle and intense,all are held in love's vast embrace.
Yes, YOU are the space for it all,spaciously intimate with every breath,in love with every beat of the heart,every sound, every smell,every sensation in the body,every moment of life.
Feeling like you're in loveor not feeling like you're in love,either way, you are in lovewith the bliss and the boredom of existence,with the certainty and the doubt of it,with the pleasure and the pain,with the success and the failure,with the seeking and the resting,with every sacred movementof this astonishing dream-world.All that can be held, can be lost.
All that you can gain, can be taken away.All that you can build up, can turn to dust overnight.All that can be created, can also be destroyed.Only love remains. Only love.Not a feeling, not a thought, not a belief,not a state, not an experience,not something that you 'have',not something that you're 'in' or 'out' of,not something that you 'get' from others(despite the romantic myths we are sold),but the endless embrace of all of this.Love is you.
You, before you were named,before you were even born.You. You are the One.The One you have always sought.The unsilenceable call of the heart.The cry from deep within.The fragile silence in the middle of the night.You will never abandon yourself again.Be my Valentine, world.
- Jeff Foster
