This page will be updated occasionally with new writing. Some of these pieces are taken from Jeff's books.

"There is no path,
there is no 'ending of delusion',
for the delusion never began,
which is to say that the miracle never ended.
For the Miracle is this..."

 Jeff Foster graduated in Astrophysics from Cambridge University in 2001. Several years after graduation, following a period of severe depression and illness, he became addicted to the idea of “spiritual enlightenment”, and embarked on an intensive spiritual search which lasted for several years.  The spiritual search came to an absolute end with the clear seeing that there is only ever Oneness. In the clarity of this seeing, life became what it always was: spontaneous, clear, joyful and fully alive, and Jeff began to write and talk about "nonduality" (which he often calls "the utterly, utterly obvious"). He holds meetings and retreats in the UK and Europe, clearly and directly pointing to the frustrations surrounding the spiritual search, to the nature of mind, and to the Clarity at the heart of everything. His uncompromising approach, full of humor and compassion, shatters the mind’s hopes for a future awakening, revealing the awakening that is always already present, right in the midst of life.

 "This isn't about understanding.
This is about falling into the mystery..."

THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

This article originally appeared in Watkins Review Issue 20.

Life is not really “life” at all. It is the unknowable Mystery, it is Unity in diversity, it is the Tao appearing as a thousand different things, it is God dancing, it is something emerging out of nothing, it is creation and destruction all in one. Life is grace, and it is given freely, now, now and now. And yet we are so lost in the dream of separation that the secret of spiritual awakening, which is right under our noses, may be ignored for an entire lifetime.

You see, we believe that we are separate people, “individuals”, somehow separate from each other, somehow separate from this moment, somehow separate from life itself. Somehow abstracted from these present sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings. We talk about “me and my life” as if we had a life, as if we could lose a life, as if we were a little wave separate from the vast ocean of life. But of course, the wave was never for one moment separate from the ocean, and we were never for one moment separate from these present sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings, from the heart beating, from breathing, from the little robin in the tree over there, singing her heart out, from the roar of traffic, from the sound of children playing out in the street. Life has always been here, right here, closer than a heartbeat, closer than anything we could ever imagine. And yet we spend our lives searching for something more than the grace that surrounds us. I know I did, anyway. Let me tell you a little story.

Years ago, my search for spiritual awakening has made me into something of a misery. I had tried everything to escape the suffering of a lifetime and to reach that elusive state of joy and peace that the spiritual masters had spoken about so eloquently. And yet nothing I ever did seemed to work. After years of meditation, contemplation, self-enquiry, and all sorts of thought gymnastics, I had reached a place of total exhaustion and despair. I was never going to awaken.

And then one day, in the midst of that despair, I saw a chair. And in the clear seeing of something so ordinary, the miracle was revealed. And the miracle? Well, it’s really too extraordinary to talk about. But if I had to use words, it would go something like this: It wasn’t a “chair” at all. It was Oneness dressed up as a chair. It was God pretending to be a chair. It was unconditional love, manifesting as a chair. Words could never capture the grace of it. A chair, how ordinary! And yet, when seen in clarity, how extraordinary! William Blake once wrote “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.” And that cleansing is the falling away of the little “me”, the separate, solitary self, and a plunge into the mystery at the heart of the Universe, a mystery which is all the more mysterious for being right there in the midst of the ordinariness and messiness of our lives… the last place we’d ever look!

In this clear seeing, life was never the same again. All seeking fell away, and along with it the sense of being a separate, solid, suffering individual. Last year I began to run meetings in the UK, in which this secret is shared in friendship and openness, with much laughter. What a gift, to be able to share this message of love and intimacy with others all over the world, although of course there are no “others” at all, and I’m only ever meeting myself, and Oneness is already shining, dancing, singing, from every pore of the universe.

Life isn’t “life” at all. It’s a constant revelation of Oneness.

NONDUALITY: EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

    Breathing...

    the heart beating...

    sounds in the room...

    sensations in the body.....

    thoughts arising and dissolving into nothingness...

Already, there is only Oneness.

And this is it.

Just life, but nobody living it. Just this, playing itself out spontaneously, of its own accord, in its own time.

And there is no "you" separate from "this". That's the illusion.  That's the dream. That's the suffering.

Only nothing - no-thing - arising as everything. Only the absolute paradox of it all. And yet, in life without a centre, there are still faces, places, feelings, ups and downs. Although now the ups are equal to the downs, pain is equal to pleasure, the most excruciating suffering is equal to the greatest joy. Because with the collapse of the individual self comes the ending of all opposites, all opposition, all duality, which is to say that everything now exists in perfect balance (as it always has done). And yet, there is nobody to know that balance, nobody who could name it, nobody who could speak of it, even if they wanted to.

This is grace, and it will never be captured in words.

How to use dualistic concepts to describe that which is beyond duality? And anyway, isn’t “beyond duality” just another concept, perhaps the biggest concept of them all?

And of course, the mind will struggle with these dream questions. But the mind has missed the point entirely. The mind is so lost in the dream that it could never hope to see this.

What is being said here has nothing to do with words. Once we get lost in words and concepts and meanings we're so totally, completely, utterly lost. Because this message is about what is presently happening – present sights, sounds and smells. It’s about the utterly obvious present appearance of life, an appearance which appears to nobody, an appearance which dances and swirls and pretends to be solid but actually has no solidity at all, an appearance which cannot be grasped in any way (and the attempt to grasp it would only lead to suffering anyway…)

It’s an appearance which cannot be escaped, cannot be denied, cannot be transcended, because the person who would try and do any of these things in the first place does not even exist. The person is an apparition, a ghost, a mirage, a thought. And what power does thought have?

This is the absolute freedom which cannot be reached through any sort of effort or non-effort.

This is the end of duality because it is the wide open space, the vastness in which duality appears to arise in the first place.

This is totally extraordinary, and yet it is nothing special.

This is the miracle of all miracles, and yet it is as simple as breathing.

This is death, and yet it is also the source of all life.

This is not something a mind could ever hope to grasp. This is not a concept to be understood, not a new belief to be believed.

This is breathing, this is the heart beating, this is an entire world arising out of nothing and falling back into nothing, ceaselessly, playfully, like waves in the ocean, like icy breath on a winter’s day, like the memory of a loved one, long since departed.

This is not a state to be reached; it is not something that some people have and others don’t.

This is just a description of the utterly obvious.

And it’s so simple a newborn baby could see it: life already has no centre.

INTIMACY

This exquisitely fragile world, this mind-blowingly impermanent, iridescent parade of sights, sounds smells.

How impossible to communicate the absence at the centre of it all, the fact that it has no centre, that it swims in nothingness, arises and dissolves continuously in the barest emptiness.

How fragile it is, how fleeting. How beautiful. How … indescribable.

And yet, how simple, how utterly obvious.

And in liberation, when the person is not there, it is not an empty void .... not at all!... it is a full-bodied cacophony, a stunning play of dancing, singing, shimmering reflections of refractions of reflections of the original One, an utterly convincing trick of light… and it all happens for no-one, and it is always already released from the need to be anything other than what it is.

Yes, it all appears to no-one, happens for no-one, but it’s not a detached world, no, not at all…. in fact, it’s now all so intimate, in fact it is nothing but Intimacy itself…. because there is simply no “me” separate from “it”…

Only It, only Life in its totality, the One and only, in its infinite, intimate manifestations.

This will never be communicated. It is beyond all that, too great for all that…. and yet too simple for it too.

Just this – shimmering this, impermanent this, ineffable this.

EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARINESS


All around, the utterly ordinary reveals itself. And this ordinariness is precisely that which we have been seeking our entire lives, without really knowing it.

You see, in the search for the extraordinary, the ordinary was always ignored. And indeed, in the search for the extraordinary, the ordinary was created. And so, as long as there was seeking, the ordinary stayed ordinary, and the extraordinary was always out of reach.

But with the collapse of the search, with the collapse of the extraordinary as a goal to be achieved, the extraordinary collapses into the ordinary, and the ordinary into the extraordinary. And so there is really no “extraordinary” to be found, and there was never anything “ordinary” to be escaped from.

Which is to say that this – the obvious present appearance of it all – is always already beyond all ideas of ordinary/extraordinary.

It’s just this – so simple, so obvious, and yet so damn elusive to a mind searching for it. So ordinary, and yet so extraordinary.

The clarity we’ve been searching for is already with us. And it doesn’t take any time to see this. And it’s not something a person could ever see. Why? Because it is always now, and a future time in which this could be “seen” would just be a presently arising thought. And the person who would “see” this is just a thought too.

And so when I say that this is the end of the search, I mean exactly that. The search never happened. It is always now, and the search is just an idea, arising now. And it arises in this ordinary, extraordinary present appearance.

A person could spend a lifetime trying to end the search. But how could an illusory person end an illusory search? It could only ever end in frustration.

But there was never any need to fight. The miracle is already here. The miracle is already this.
Nothing more to do. Nothing more that needs to be done. Nobody here who could do anything anyway.

Just this – and nothing more.

JUST A THOUGHT


This has nothing to do with effort.

This has nothing to do with understanding.

Nothing to do with process, nothing to do with praxis.

Nothing to do with lack of process or praxis.

This is not about seeing anything new, or getting rid of anything old.

This is not something the mind could ever grasp. Nor does the mind need to give up its grasping.

This is nothing personal, nor does it have anything to do with the "impersonal".

This is not about choiceless awareness, or seeing through the ego, or self-enquiry.

This cannot be expressed using concepts. Nor will it ever be expressed in the absence of concepts.

This is not about words. Not even these words.

This is not about getting anywhere.

This has nothing to do with any kind of future achievement.

This is not about following a path: there is no path, although there may be the idea of "a path".

This is not about reaching a higher state: there are no higher states, although there may be concepts about "higher states".

This is not about becoming anything, although beliefs about that may arise too.

This is certainly not about "putting an end to the I". Only an "I" would want that.

This is most definitely not about "becoming more present" - the present was never lost in the first place.

This is not about waiting for an event called liberation - that would require time, and a "me" who would eventually become liberated.

This has nothing to do with going "beyond" anything - there is nothing to go beyond, and nobody who could go beyond even if they wanted to.

This is not about enlightenment. There is no such thing as enlightenment.

This is not about awakening. There is no such thing as awakening.

This is not about enlightened individuals passing on their understanding. That's a good story, and a compelling one, but it's just a story, and has no deeper reality.

This is not something that could be of any use to anyone.

This is not something that anyone would ever want.

But no matter - the "me" who would want this is just a thought anyway.

Just a thought.

THE MESSAGE OF NONDUALITY

The message of nonduality is simple: nothing is separate from anything else. But apparent separation is at the root of everything the individual does; indeed, the individual is nothing but apparent separation, and that separation drives the entire spiritual search and the quest for the dissolution of the ego, as well as all worldly pursuits.

But the seeking mind (that is, "you", the individual) will never be able to grasp this message, as, to the mind, this message is nothing but its own dissolution, that is, its own death.

Yes, this message is death, but it is also life. All life is here, all life is now, and the mind cannot accept that, because the mind is nothing more than a denial of life. The mind cannot grasp the totality, so it creates a world, a little world of knowledge and values and meaning. And that's fine, but the intellect will never grasp the vastness of life, because life, that is, this, is prior to intellect; indeed, the intellect already arises out of the totality, out of this.

In this moment, all the problems of an individual are merely thoughts, and since thoughts already simply appear in the play of life, thought is already impersonal, already liberated, because consciousness already transcends, inherently transcends, everything that appears in it.

But this is already getting way too heady, too intellectual. The reality is simple, obvious, present. Thoughts appear now: they are not "my" thoughts, they are just thoughts. They are not "my" problems, they are just problems. This is not "my" life, this is just life.

Life plays out, and I am both utterly immersed in it, and utterly absent. And these are not polar opposites: to be immersed fully, is to be fully absent.

Fully immersed, fully absent. And yet there is still the noise of traffic outside, still the click-click of the boiler switching on and off, still the sound of breathing, still the tap-tap of the rain at the windows, still the tiredness in the body, still the sensations, moment by precious moment…

And so, even though I am fully absent, life carries on.

Even though I am nowhere to be found, life cannot, will not cease, not now, not ever.

THE CARNIVAL

The contingency of it all, the impermanence of it all, the devastating meaninglessness of it all, its total inability to be grasped. And yet, the apparent solidity of it all, the seeming concreteness of it all, the joy in the simple arising of it all, and its utter inability to be denied. Who would deny any of this anyway?

This is happening, undeniably, and the person who would deny this would just be another happening anyway: another thing happening, another happening thing.

And yet, nothing – no “thing” - really happens at all. There is only this, and nothing more.

There is a carnival in the local park. It is a beautiful sunny day. Everything happens and nothing happens: The carousel, the candyfloss, the smell of cheap burgers frying. Children screaming, tacky, distorted music pumping out of giant speakers, raffle winners being announced to cheers and claps. Families picnicking, lovers embracing, the sun beating down on everything, reflecting off shiny surfaces, turning skin red.

Oh, the contingency of it all, the impermanence of it all! The comedy of it all, the tragedy of it all! Tragedy because it will all pass, will all fade into nothingness. Comedy because there is nobody here to whom any of that would matter. Only these seemingly apparent “individuals”, playing out their seemingly individual lives, buying raffle tickets, eating candyfloss, riding on the bumper cars, bumping into other seemingly apparent individuals, screaming with joy (yes, there can be joy): the joy of bumping into each other, the joy at eating candyfloss and being at a carnival on a hot day and forgetting for a moment that none of it means anything at all, that it will all immediately pass into memory, and the memory will pass into nothingness, and that nothingness has always already passed into the Abyss that consumes every damn thing. But for now, there is the simple joy at bumping the bumper cars, and that seems to be enough.

And I walk through all of this, and the world is passing, passing, passing, always passing. There is no longer anything to cling on to. There is no longer the possibility of clinging onto anything, even if there were things to cling on to. There is only the present appearance of it all, only a radical emptiness that contains the world in all its fullness, and these are not-two, which is to say there are those kids over there soaking each other with water pistols, a clown over there blowing up a balloon to look like a little puppy dog, a child slipping as he tries to climb to the top of a slide, his parents gasping and dropping their bags and running over to him and thanking their God in heaven that he is alright, that he will live another day, that beloved son of theirs.

And the carnival is really life itself. And this life-carnival cannot last – nothing can. And deep down, somewhere, even the most individual of individuals knows this. Eventually, the carnival will shut down and pack up and move on, and the candyfloss and the bumper cars and the child who scraped his knee on the slide and the parents who love him more than life itself will fade back into this open space which embraces everything, which allows it all to be. And yet, the carnival and the candyfloss and the cars and the little kid with the bleeding knee –their home is already this open space, they never left this open space in the first place, and so they can never really return to it. The open space is the reason and condition and possibility for all apparently separate things, and it is their destination too. Which is to say, there are no separate things at all: things only appear to be separate, but really, they are simply expressions of that which could never be expressed (because any expression of that which cannot be expressed would just be another thing expressed).

And yet, with phrases like “that which cannot be expressed” we’ve already moved away from the simple and obvious appearance of it all. We’ve already moved away from this carnival that appears presently, from the present sights and sounds and smells, from those fatty burgers and vomit-inducing rides and little old ladies who are manning the antiques stall with such admirable dedication, as the sun beats down, showering everything with sunshine, allowing everything to be, just as it is, on this beautiful day that is the Last day.

There is only the carnival, only life itself in all its tragedy, comedy, contingency, impermanence, purposelessness. Only life playing out, playing at playing out, with apparent individuals playing at being separate, playing at playing at playing at forgetting that they are only ever playing.

Somebody tries to hand me a leaflet as I leave through the park gates. A leaflet, a memory. Something written on paper, something that says “you were here, and this happened, and here’s something to prove it”. But of course, nothing happened at all, and I politely decline. And I walk out of the gates, and the carnival is forgotten, and life carries on.

COMING HOME

This is timeless, deathless, eternal.

This is without equal, this is never-to-be-repeated, this is utterly unique and totally new, in each and every moment, although there are no “moments” at all.

This is empty of all qualities, even the quality of being empty of all qualities. And yet, this is totally full, pregnant with infinite possibility, possibility that overflows again and again into a world.

This is peace, but it is a volcanic peace, a peace which does not deny noise but embraces it fully, a peace which does not rest, an ecstatic peace that throws itself out of itself now, now and now.

This is completely unknowable, and yet it is filled with the knowledge of things, filled with an apparent world "out there", in its infinite guises.

This is something that cannot be spoken of by anyone, and yet words are thrown out, day after day after day.

This is not of this world, and yet it is nothing but this world.

This is completely extraordinary, and yet it is as simple and as obvious as the sound of the rain splish-splashing on your rooftop.

Splish! Splash!

This is a wide open space, with enough room for an entire world, pulsating with a radical and unconditional love that will never be grasped by a mind locked in the search for something more.

This is simple, obvious, ordinary.

This is what everybody is seeking, but nobody can find.

And nobody can find this precisely because the one who searches for this is exactly that which apparently obscures this (although this can never be obscured, because it already includes any idea of a somebody who would want something more).

This is Jesus dying on the cross.

This is the Buddha seeing through all confusion.

This is the world falling away when two lovers embrace.

This is a mother cradling her newborn child.

This is watching an old man waddling down the pavement, and seeing only yourself.

This is your heart breaking at the sight of an old woman, her shopping bags full of groceries, struggling to cross a busy road, and finding yourself, without hesitation, rushing over to help her, because you have no choice, and you never did have any choice.

And this is realising, at long last, that choice is illusion, that you were never for one moment separate from this thing we call “life”, that we were never for one moment separate from each other; that no man is an island, that we affect each other in more profound ways than the mind could ever hope to grasp.

And yet, there are no others, and "you" cannot realise a damn thing.

LIBERATION IS ... PAYING THE GAS BILL

 
Only this.

Only ever this.

Arising spontaneously.

Leaving no trace.

How could it be otherwise?



Emptiness and fullness, being and non-being.

All is here. All is Now.


But those are just words.



No words necessary.

Just this.


*


Cat miaowing. Kettle on the boil. Heart beating. Eating cornflakes (milk's a bit sour). Bills plopping through the letterbox.

Breathing.

Breathing.

Liberation.

Eating.

Liberation.

Drinking.

Liberation.

Going to the toilet.

Liberation.

Pain in the chest.

Liberation.

Craving, delusion, desire, love, hate, jealously, guilt.

Liberation, liberation, liberation!


*


No need to search anymore.

Was there ever a past?

Was there ever someone who searched? Someone who suffered and longed to be free from it all?


Someone who believed in anything?


Oh, God! What madness! To want anything other than this…


*


Just stop.

Stop, look and listen:

This is all there is.

There was never anything else.


I wonder how much British Gas have charged this month?

THE END OF THE SEARCH  


This is it. This is the end of the spiritual search. Freedom and happiness and enlightenment are to be found nowhere else but here: right in front of us. 

The low hum of the computer fan, a tingling feeling in the left foot, the tweet-tweet of the little birdies in the garden, hopping from branch to branch….

Why are we never satisfied with this? Why is this moment never enough?

Perhaps it is because at some point in our lives we picked up the belief that there exists something More Than This; some sort of state in which our True Nature™ is revealed to us in all its glory, in which all thoughts dissolve, in which the ego burns up and vanishes for all time, leaving no trace. Some state, in other words, that is very different from this present state.

But what reality does any of that have? Right now, there is only the sound of the little robin jumping about in the tree over there, the beating of the heart, the steam rising from a freshly brewed cup of tea, the morning breeze gently caressing my cheek.....

And then the thought "there must be more than this! I’m not there now, but soon, one day, maybe, maybe even in a few minutes, I’ll reach that state that I’ve read so much about! That state of no-state, that freedom, that release!"

But the thought "there must be more to life than this" arises now. It is a present thought, as all thoughts are. All thoughts are present thoughts. All sounds are present sounds, all sights are present sights. The present can never be escaped: thought is just the illusion of past and future.

And if there is only ever the present, then this state of enlightenment, of liberation, or whatever you want to call it, must be achieved in the present. Which is to say, it cannot be achieved at all. Because an achievement implies time, implies a self. Someone to achieve, and a time when it will be achieved.

Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless!

There is only ever now. There is only ever this. The search for something other than this is a denial of the undeniable thisness of this, the undeniable presence of being. The search for enlightenment is a denial of the enlightenment that always already is. The search for oneness is a denial of … oh, you get the idea.

And the paradox goes even deeper. Because even the search for oneness, for liberation, for release, for freedom … even the search is simply an expression of oneness, liberation, release, freedom. 

It cannot be found, it cannot be escaped, it cannot be avoided.

*

And so, after a lifetime of searching, the utterly obvious reveals itself. And the utterly obvious is always right in front of us.

AND THIS IS IT!

This is oneness! This is liberation! It cannot be lost, it cannot be found. It cannot be avoided, it cannot be ignored. Avoid it, and it is simply oneness avoiding oneness. Ignore it, and oneness is ignoring oneness. Try to find it, and it is oneness trying to find oneness.

So what to do?

Is there still seeking?

That’s fine.

Is there still pain?

That’s fine too.

Is there suffering, hope, despair?

That’s all fine. Nothing else is needed. Nothing more, nothing less.

The end of the search is a radical, radical acceptance of what is. And this acceptance, this seeing through, is not done by you. It is not a doing. It is not an achievement. Not something to be strived for.

*

So, there may be seeing through, or there may not. There may be absorption in the search, or there may be a sense of ease, a feeling of release. It's all fine, it's all wonderful, it's all part of the play.

There may be a little robin hopping from branch to branch, and it may be seen (or not) that there is only the robin, there is only the hop-hop-hopping, there is only the "tweet-tweet". All this is oneness. Without beginning or end. Without purpose or goal or meaning.

The little robin doesn’t give two hoots (tweets?) about finding itself, or reaching a state of liberation. For it, just the hopping, just the search for the next worm is enough, it seems.  Perhaps that’s why we’re so drawn to nature. Animals seem to be so free of the burden of individuality, of selfhood, of the search for something more meaningful that what is already the case.

But the great liberation is already here, for all of us. This - what is already clearly given in this moment - is all the meaning there is. This – sitting on the toilet, or eating lunch, or buying bread and milk from the local shop  -  is all the purpose there is.

It is the very search for purpose that creates purposelessness, and it is the search for meaning that creates meaninglessness.

*

There is nothing more than this. Fall in love with it... or not. You know, it doesn't really matter either way.  There is nothing to be gained by seeing this. This is not an achievement, it is not the result of a long struggle, it is nothing to do with intelligence or skill or knowledge. It is nothing to do with cause or effect, with effort or persistence or anything else.

Freedom and enlightenment are to be found nowhere else but here. Which is to say, they cannot be "found" at all.

This is an edited version of a longer piece which appears in Jeff's book "Beyond Awakening"

“In the gap between subject and object
lies the entire misery of humankind.”
- J. Krishnamurti 

As the story goes (and I can barely remember any of it now) I was walking through the rain on a cold Autumn evening in Oxford. The sky was getting dark; I was wrapped up warm in my new coat. And suddenly and without warning, the search for something more apparently fell away, and with it all separation and loneliness.

And with the death of separation, I was everything that arose: I was the darkening sky, I was the middle aged man walking his golden retriever, I was the little old lady hobbling along in her waterproofs. I was the ducks, the swans, the geese, the funny looking bird with the red streak on its forehead. I was the trees in all their autumnal glory, I was the sludge sticking to my feet, I was my body, all of it, arms and legs and torso and face and hands and feet and neck and hair and genitals, the whole damn lot. I was the raindrops falling on my head (although it was not my head, I did not own it, but it was undeniably there, and so to call it "my head" is as good as anything). I was the splish-splash of water on the ground, I was the water collecting into puddles, I was the water swelling the pond until it looked fit to burst its banks, I was the trees soaked by water, I was my coat soaked by water, I was the water soaking everything, I was everything being soaked, I was the water soaking itself.

And everything that for so long had seemed so ordinary had suddenly become so extraordinary, and I wondered if, in fact, it hadn't been this way all along: that perhaps for my whole life it had been this way, so utterly alive, so clear, so vibrant. Perhaps in my lifelong quest to reach the spectacular and the dramatic, I had missed the ordinary, and with it, and through it, and in it, the utterly extraordinary.

And the utterly extraordinary on this day was awash with rain, and I was not separate from any of it, that is to say, I was not there at all. As the old Zen master had said upon hearing the sound of the bell ringing, "there was no I, and no bell, just the ringing", so it was on this day: there was no "I" experiencing this clarity, there was only the clarity, only the utterly obvious presenting itself in each and every moment.

Of course, I had no way of knowing any of this at the time. At the time, thought was not there to claim any of this as an “experience”. There was just what was happening, but no way of knowing it. The words came later.

And there was an all-pervading feeling that everything was okay with the world, there was an equanimity and a sense of peace which seemed to underlie everything there was; it was as though everything was simply a manifestation of this peace, as if nothing existed apart from peace, in its infinite guises. And I was the peace, and the duck over there was it too, and the wrinkly old lady still waddling along was the peace, and the peace was all around, everything just vibrated with it, this grace, this presence that was utterly unconditional and free, this overwhelming love that seemed to be the very essence of the world, the very reason for it, the Alpha and the Omega of it all. The word "God" seemed to point to it too, and the word "Tao", and "Buddha". This was the self-authenticating experience that all religions seemed to point to in the end. This seemed to be the very essence of faith: death of the self, death of the "little me" with its petty desires and complaints and futile plans, death of everything that separates the individual from God, death of even the idea of God himself ("if you see the Buddha, kill him") and a plunge into Nothingness, the Nothingness that reveals itself as the God beyond God, the Nothingness that all things are in their essence, the Nothingness that gives rise to all form, the Nothingness that is the world itself in all its pain and wonder, the Nothingness that is total Fullness.

And yet this so-called "religious experience" is not really an experience at all, since the one who experiences, the "me", is the very thing which is no more. No, this is something beyond, something prior to, all experience. It is the foundation of all experience, the ground of existence itself, and nobody could ever experience that, even if the world lasted another billion years.

*

That day, there was nobody there, and yet everything was there in its place. Beyond experience or lack of it, there were the ducks flapping their little wings, there were the raindrops trickling down my neck, there were the puddles under my shoes which were now caked in mud, there was the grey sky, there were other bodies, just like mine, splashing through the puddles, some walking their dogs, some alone, some cuddling up to their loved ones, some running frantically to escape the downpour.

And there was a great compassion. Not a sentimental compassion, not a narcissistic compassion, but a compassion that seemed to be part of what it meant to be alive on that day, a compassion which seemed to be the very essence of life, a compassion which seemed to pulsate through all living things, a compassion which said that none of us were separate from each other, that nothing at all was really separate from anything else, that your pain was identical to my pain, that your joy was my joy, not because these were principles we'd read in the Bible or taken on authority from those we held in high esteem, not because these were ideals that we tried to live up to, but because this seemed to be the way of things, this seemed to be the nature of manifestation: that we were all expressions of something infinitely larger than ourselves.

But even the word "ourselves" seemed to imply that we were separate, and therefore this was a compassion which was beyond words, beyond language; indeed this compassion transcended any idea of “compassion”, this compassion arose from the fact that there actually is no separation at all, that separation is an illusion, that in fact we are each other, that I am you, that you are me, that we cannot be ourselves without others, that I cannot be I without you, and you cannot be you without me, not in some wishy-washy lovey-dovey sentimental way, but really, honestly:  we need each other, we are bound to each other, we cannot live without each other, we cannot live without everything else. I cannot live without that tree I'm walking under, without the raindrops that have made their way down my back, without the old woman who's managed to waddle a little further down the path (she's being so very careful to avoid the puddles, bless her!), without the pond, without the ducks, without the swans, without my new coat keeping me warm, without the man with the dog who smiles and says “hi” as he walks past.

We are bound to each other, all things are bound to all things, which is to say there are not really any separate "things" at all, there is only Oneness, only the whole, only the Buddha, only Christ, only the Tao, only God himself, and nothing exists apart from anything else.

And so to say that on that day there was no "I" is really to say that there was only God, there was only Christ, there was only the Tao, only Buddha, only Oneness, only Spirit, and Jeff had exploded into it all, Jeff was nowhere to be found, in the sense that he was not separate from everything that arose. Jeff was just a story spun by a storyteller with a vivid imagination, Jeff was missing from the scene and yet infused into it, Jeff was nothing and he was everything, he was present to his own absence and absent to his presence, he was life itself, in its entirety, and yet he, in all truth, had died.

And yes, there were tears. What else is there to do but cry at such a discovery? A discovery which really wasn't a discovery at all, because nothing had been found, since nothing had really ever been lost. This clarity had always been there, I'd just been looking elsewhere my whole life and ignoring the utterly obvious. God had always been right there, in the present moment, in the midst of things, but I'd spent my life seeking Him in the future. The Buddha Mind had been my own mind, always, but I'd spent years trying to attain it. Christ had been crucified and resurrected and was walking in the midst of us, drenching our lives in unconditional love, but for a lifetime I had assumed he was elsewhere, in some other world (or in this world but not in my own life, at least).

No, nothing had been found, because nothing had ever been lost. But perhaps it was the realisation of the utterly obvious that hit me that day, the realisation that there was nothing to realise, that everything I ever wanted was always right there in front of me and always would be, that peace and love and joy were always freely available in each and every moment, that love, pure unconditional love, the love of Jesus, the love of Buddha, the love that passes all understanding was the very ground of all things, the very reason for anything being here in the first place. It was there, always there, always waiting patiently for me to return home.

And there, in the rain, on that day, I knew finally that I was home, and what's more, that I would always be home, that I had always been home, through it all, through all the tears and the pain, through the dark times and the desperate times and all the times I thought I'd never make it, through all those times and more, the Home of all Homes had been there. The possibility of the Kingdom of Heaven was always present, the grace of God was always an open invitation, through thick and thin, through sickness and through health, through all that, world without end....


*

It was a very ordinary walk on a very ordinary, and very wet, Autumn day. And yet, in that ordinariness, the extraordinary revealed itself, shining through the wetness and the darkness and the sludge on the ground, shining so brightly that I was no more, that I dissolved into that brightness and became it.

And yet, that makes it sound way too special. That day, in the rain, nothing really happened at all. It was just a very ordinary walk on a very ordinary day.

I left through the large iron gates, crossed the road and waited for the bus, huddling in the shelter with several others.

Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I had glimpsed something, something deep and profound and in some ways shocking, and yet something that was utterly ordinary and somewhat unsurprising. Yes, it was unsurprising that the very ordinary should turn out to be the only meaning of life, that who I took myself to be should turn out to be just a nice fairy story.

Yes, it was unsurprising, that the divine should be in the utterly ordinary, that God should be one with the world, present in and as each and every thing.

I boarded the bus and as the rain streamed down the dirty windows I smiled to myself. What a gift - to be alive now of all moments, to be in this body of all bodies, to be here, in this place of all places, even though it is all a dream, even though it is all impermanent, even though if we really look, we find nothing but emptiness...