You are pure Awareness
with very human wounds.
You are indestructible Light,
untouchable and infinite, yes,
but you are also deeply sensitive, fragile,
a human with a tender heart
and unspeakable longings,
and more questions than answers.

Do not abandon yourself for the Absolute, friend,
but do not lose yourself in the relative either.
Just see them as One. God taking shape.
Non-duality dancing as duality,
as the deep mystery of the belly,
the throat, the genitals, the hot blood
and the yearning for home
and the search for union,
and the restlessness and the rest,
and the boredom and the joy of this ordinary life.

All form is sacred here,
since all form is formless here.
The relative is absolute in its holiness here.
Your pain is not an error here but a call to home.
Your sorrow is not a mistake but a movement of divinity.
And even your sense of incompleteness is complete, and your feeling of unworthiness has endless worth.

The old dream of perfection has crumbled.
The old myth of spiritual enlightenment has turned to dust.
The untouchable gurus with all the answers and no human flaws have been swept away.

Certainty has been destroyed by fire.

What is left to trust now
but the belly and the throat, the whistle of the kettle and the pitter-patter of rain hitting the roof, and the laughter of children, and the pressure between the eyes and the loneliness of evening, and the yearning for God and the simplicity of breathing.

The spiritual patriarchy is collapsing under its own weight.
The fear-based notions of how you “should” be.
The sad ideal of bliss and light and only positive vibes.
It has destroyed souls for too long.

A new spirituality is dawning.
One that allows for imperfection.
Healthy shame. Flaws. Not knowing.
Allows us to doubt. To feel sad. To break.
To be groundless yet know our ground.
To be Light yet love our darkness too.
To be Awareness yet maintain our humanity.

A spirituality not of opposites but of inclusion.
A spirituality of the feminine and the masculine working in harmony.
A spirituality of the breath, the dirt, the erotic, the taboo and the inconvenient, the impure and the unfinished and the unknowable.

A spirituality of you, as you are.

– Jeff Foster