When Discomfort Knocks (by Jeff Foster)

By Jeff Foster

Just sitting with discomfort, without trying to escape or numb it in any way, without expectation, without a goal in mind, without seeking anything, including some abstract notion of 'comfort' – that’s the juicy place, the place of creative transformation, the place where newness shines.

For many years, I would just sit with grief, frustration, anger, fear, pain, loneliness, just resting in that bubbling, burning mess for hours and hours, without trying to escape or fix my experience, without hope, without a dream, without trying to 'accept', without time itself … until peace was discovered even in the midst of that storm, the unshakeable, non-conceptual, ever-present peace that I am, and have always been.

Instead of trying to escape discomfort, we let discomfort reveal its deeper secrets. We sit with discomfort and watch all boundaries between ‘me’ and ‘my discomfort’ melt away, until it is no longer ‘me sitting with my discomfort’ at all, and never was - there is only unspeakable embrace. We sit with frustration in the place where it has not yet coagulated into ‘I am frustrated’. We sit with fear prior to the resurrection of the image ‘I am the one who is afraid’. We sit with anger before the birth of our identity as ‘the angry one’. We know ourselves as the vast open space, the boundless and identity-less ocean that welcomes all of these waves, these raw, alive sensations,