Matters at Heart

03/12/2022

YOU DO NOT NEED TO "FORGIVE" RIGHT NOW

You have to fall to fly, you have to break to heal, and when it comes to forgiveness you have to feel the hurt, the sorrow, the anger, the despair of violated boundaries, before it can all pass into love. You have to validate the part of you that burns, stings, aches, feels bruised and abused and abandoned now, drench that part of you with loving awareness, hold that vulnerable and precious child close.

You cannot 'do' forgiveness, no, you cannot jump to it, fast-forward to it, you have to allow yourself to forget about forgiveness and SLOW RIGHT DOWN and hurt first. This is the way of the Gods. You have to open your heart to your hurt and closed heart, soften into the hard protective place, tend to the beautiful injured self, grieve the shattered reality and slowly sink into this new and present one.

Only then, perhaps, as the heart digests the pain in love will the heart begin to open by itself. When it is ready and not a moment before.

Open your heart to yourself and, in time, you may be able to open your heart to the one who hurt you.

Without condoning what they did, without making excuses for their unconscious behaviour, you may be able to find compassion in time, see the unloved part of them that just didn’t know how to live or love, understand the pain they were not able to feel, know the feelings they were not able to digest, comprehend that they sought relief outside of themselves and their ignorance and violence was only self-violence, alienated, projected.

They know not what they did, even if they knew. It was a sickness of the soul. They were seeking relief in unconscious ways.

You can still set and hold clear boundaries. You can still speak up passionately for yourself and for loved ones. Compassion for others is not the opposite of self-love.

But do not try to forgive them now. Yes, if you cannot forgive, forgive that instead, forgive the absence of forgiveness, and know this as a deeper forgiveness.

Do not shame yourself in any way for your “inability to forgive”. Do not call yourself weak or unspiritual, you are neither. Forgiveness may happen in time as you drop into the depths of yourself and find the wholeness that was never taken from you, the sacred power that is yours and yours alone.

Forgiveness is primarily self-forgiveness,
a love that burns inside and radiates outwards in time.

I love it when I forgive
and I love it when I don’t.

A fierce and forgiving Presence
holds us all, always.

- Jeff Foster

14/09/2022

Your power is in your loving.
Not in your brute strength.

Nor in your bank balance
or your ever-changing reputation.
Nor in your incredible tales
of conquest and gain.
Nor even in your intellect, your brilliant mind.

But in your willingness to let your heart break today.
In your courage to let another in, let them matter.
To feel what they feel.
To feel joy, or sorrow, or the most delicious doubting.

To stand with them, but not try to fix them.

To be the room for all this… emergence.

That is your power -
your ability to provide sanctuary,
to let life nestle in your giant heart.

To hold the powerless and the helpless.
To breathe into your belly, your chest,
your head, your tense shoulders.

To stand victorious there -
holding all of yourself
in a light yet powerful embrace.

Saying to yourself:

Sweetheart, I am here.
I am here at last.

- Jeff Foster

04/09/2022

if abandonment is the core wound

the disconnection from mother

the loss of wholeness

then the most potent medicine

is this ancient commitment

to never abandon

yourself

to discover wholeness in the whole-mess

to be a loving mother

to your insides

to hold the broken bits

in warm open awareness

and to illuminate the sore places

with the light

of love

- jeff foster

26/08/2022

"What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn't lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - The Little Prince, 1943.

02/08/2022

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
With each step, the wind blows.
With each step, a flower blooms.

Thich Nhat Hanh

31/07/2022

HOW THE LIGHT COMES

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden,
what is lost,
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body,
for finding its way
toward flesh,
for tracing the edges
of form,
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.

Jan Richardson ❤️

29/06/2022

08/06/2022

Worth the read: the impact of your parents’ trauma on you!!

Hoe je ouders met trauma in hun leven omgaan, dat beïnvloedt jou. En zelf kun je dat trauma weer doorgeven aan je kinderen. Hoe die cyclus ophoudt? De pijnlijke waarheid, zegt de Britse psychotherapeut en bestsellerauteur Julia Samuel, is dat we alleen kunnen repareren wat we onder ogen zien.