Rebirth yourself

For me this is what #sacredbeginnings is all about, not only your child's birth, but yours... welcome to... sacred REBIRTH.

Photo credit: Megan Soto

from Jeff Foster (www.lifewithoutacentre.com)

HOW TO REBIRTH YOURSELF

"When you were a little one, you were a ball of pure creativity, an explosion of raw and ancient energies, energies you had no way of naming, let alone understanding, let alone integrating.

Unnamed joys and sorrows surged through you without warning, prehistoric longings, rages, undigested terrors - the snake, the velociraptor, the unnameable movement in the deep, watching, waiting. The overwhelm of being alive, tasting your own taste, being in your own being, moving as a body. You were a riot of light and sound, an amorphous mass of pure sensation, often startled and overjoyed in equal measure, out of time and out of control, out of the safety of the womb, outside of mother, and your very life was at stake, or so it seemed.

You are essentially no different now. Yet you have been taught how to be a good boy or girl, kind, polite, careful, consistent, nice, right, even 'spiritual'. You have been taught the right things to say, to want, to ask, to seek, to feel, to think, to do.

Know your place. Don't ask too much. Stay small. Don't stray too far from the herd.

You have become civilised, taught to push away half of your nature. Brainwashed, even, to believe that half - or more - of your being is sinful, sick, bad, broken, evil, dark, unenlightened, unawakened, unspiritual, negative, untrustable, pathological, unintelligent.

Don't feel sad, they say. Don't feel angry. Don't feel fear. Don't doubt. Don't talk back. Don't have negative thoughts. Don't be in a low vibration. Don't wallow. Pretend to be something you are not. Conform. Be like us. Heal. Don't question. Don't trust yourself. Get enlightened. It goes on and on.

You have split yourself in two in the name of love and freedom.

And it was so intelligent to do so. You were only seeking safety and sense in a world that often made no sense, looking for sanity amidst a cacophony of nonsense. Your defences were creative, not pathological...

"Shut up baby, stop crying! Cry, baby, why won't you cry? Why do you want so much? Don't touch that. Stand, don't stand. Walk, sit still. Behave! Why are you just sitting there? Bad child. Good child. Bad child. Don't be such a child! Do something! Stop it! I love you. I'll only love you if you... I love you. I hate you. Speak up! Shut up! You just ate. Go to your room. Eat! Why are you still in your room? How dare you say that! Shh, baby. Baby? Why are you so quiet? I'm here for you. I'm not here for you. I might be here for you. You're bad. You're sick. You're good. You're nice. You're evil. You're perfect. You don't need me. You need me. I need you to need me. You are so needy! Grow up! Get over it. Get over here! Leave me alone! Come back!"

It made no sense.

How to navigate it all without getting hurt? How to please mummy or daddy? How to hold it all?

Am I loved? Is it safe? When will they leave me alone? Why have they abandoned me? Do they see?

Is there something wrong with me? Am I broken? Are they broken? Am I whole or half or less? Do I exist? Is this my life?

Can I trust myself? Should I trust them? Can I trust my lack of trust? Why can't I trust? What's wrong with me?

Should I talk or not talk? Stay or go? Feel or not feel? Smile or not smile? Laugh or cry? Run or sit still? Go forwards or backwards? Tell the truth? Lie to protect myself? To protect them? Let it out? Hold it in?

What if they find out what I really think? Can they see into me? Am I being watched? Is something rotting inside me?

Should I stand or fight? Change or stagnate? Whose path am I on? Will it always be like this? What did I do wrong? What did I do right? Do I deserve this?

Who do they think I am?

Friend, you are grown now, and it is time to question all this conditioning, this basic fear of life, to unlearn what you learned when you were a little one and you craved love and life, and to begin to realise that love is not something given but something lived, something deep and ancient and trustworthy within you, and you are not sick, or wrong, or bad, or evil, or unworthy, or a freak of nature, but you are so damn alive, nature itself, an explosion of creativity, an amorphous and intelligent mass of ancient energies that you need not understand, or escape, or numb yourself to, but hold in your vast heart, and breathe into, and trust.

You are no longer a little one, but a vast One, as you always were, despite your growing body, a wide open space in which all of these energies that you once pushed away and disowned can now celebrate themselves, dance as waves in your oceanic embrace, and self-liberate.

In a sea of non-duality (non-separation), a Oneness that you are, all thoughts, sounds, sensations are not against life but life, not mistakes or punishments or signs of your failure, not separate from you, but little celebrations of you, beloved waves in the ocean, embraceable. Or rather, they are already embraced, for they are timeless, not yours yet intimately yours, as the clouds do not belong to the sky but dance within it.

There is nothing you have to do to receive this grace. It is not a state, not something you can reach, attain, or be given. It cannot be transmitted by gurus in loincloths. It is not a reward for your spiritual or material success. It is already here, shining within your very ordinary experience.

In the beginning you were a child of human parents, but now you are your own parent, that ever-present awareness shining on all movements within and without, that undying presence by which you know you are loved, always, even when you get it all wrong, even when you stumble and fall and doubt, even when you are hungry and tired and don't know where to turn.

You are loved for you are love, the lover and the beloved as One.

I am here with you, child, it says. I am here. You are the One, my chosen One. Even when you feel alone and far from love, I am here. Trust this moment. Trust this ground. This breath. This devastation. This birth, this loss of your old world. Trust, even if you feel you cannot trust. Trust that too. I am here with you, closer than this next exhale.

And its voice is your voice, your heart its heart, and the world is its womb, and you are forever born anew in each moment, thrust into life, bruised and gasping but alive, exhausted but alive, and you breathe with every living being, and nobody can ever take this love away from you now, nobody can break your spirit.

You are so fucking worthy of life.

I teach this, and only this: an unconditional love more timeless than the stars."

- Jeff Foster

Photo credit: Three Plus

wow! so grateful to Jeff Foster (www.lifewithoutacentre.com)

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