If you’re trying to ‘let go’ of something uncomfortable in your experience, if you’re trying to release it, give it up, surrender it, dissolve it, ‘be with’ it, accept it, you’ve probably already unconsciously rejected it!

You are only trying to ‘allow’ or ‘accept’ or ‘be with’ the pain so that it will go away, disappear, die, never return. You are longing for the death of your present experience. There is a violent agenda there, disguised as ‘spiritual practice’.

Can you see that your attempt to ‘release’ this moment is really an act of resistance, a rejection of life, a NO to the moment as it is?

Instead, begin where you are.
Instead, acknowledge that the pain is here.
Validate, honour, sanctify the present scene in the movie of your life. Don’t try to rush to the next ‘pain-free’ scene. Get intimate with this scene, the only scene there is right now.
Acknowledge, too, that an urge to be free from the pain is also here. Don’t pretend that it’s not.

Know yourself now as the wide open space of awareness in which BOTH of these life-movements are appearing – the pain AND the longing to be free from the pain, the discomfort AND the search for its resolution, the burning questions AND the search for the answers.

Know that both the pain AND the longing, both the discomfort AND the ego’s resistance to it, are ALREADY ALLOWED in this moment. They are already valid expressions of life, welcome visitors in your vastness, waves in your great ocean. You don’t have to ‘allow’ them in – they are already in. Your allowing or non-allowing, as I often say, is already ‘too late’.

You cannot ‘do’ acceptance when you ARE acceptance. Forget about trying to allow this moment, and simply notice that this moment is already allowed.

Give up trying to give up! Let go of trying to let go! Allow yourself to not be able to allow at all! Accept your inability to accept! Lose interest in resisting your resistance! Surrender your attempts to surrender!

This is the gentle way, the way of no-way, the way of grace.

– Jeff Foster