What is the Inner Journey of Awakening?
Read MoreWhich Way Now ?
Awakening is an expansion of awareness that occurs as the 'fog of self' slowly burns away, revealing the path towards what we long to reach.
Awakening
What is the Inner Journey?
The Inner Journey of Awakening is often called 'spiritual seeking'.
more...Into The Light
The word enlightenment comes from the Latin prefix 'en' meaning 'in, or into', and the word 'lux' meaning 'light', so : In The Light.
more...Are we travelling in the right direction?
We are all on our own unique Inner Journey... but to where?
more...Questions?
We each travel our own unique journey in life.
There is our 'outer' life in the world, and our 'inner' life of thoughts and feelings. But there is also another aspect - a deeper dimension - in the 'background' to both.
The Inner Journey is a process of discovering what that 'background' is.
Whichever path or paths we follow on the Inner Journey, questions always come - and we all need ways to find answers.
So, if you have any questions, please ask - I will do my best to point you towards resources that will be helpful in answering the question: Which Way Now?
With greater understanding comes more inner peace, happiness and sense of purpose - and this unfolds in our outer life, where we find that conflicts and difficulties come to resolutions more easily - and we increasingly feel we are flowing creatively with all of life.
Questions or chats can be in one-to-one discussions by text message, email or in face-to-face meetings, either online or in person.
I do not charge for my time, but some people wish to give back and if so I suggest making a donation to the charity I support...please click here: Contribute.
Please use the form on this page to ask any questions.
Here are a few things people have said about their experience: What Others Have Said
There is our 'outer' life in the world, and our 'inner' life of thoughts and feelings. But there is also another aspect - a deeper dimension - in the 'background' to both.
The Inner Journey is a process of discovering what that 'background' is.
Whichever path or paths we follow on the Inner Journey, questions always come - and we all need ways to find answers.
So, if you have any questions, please ask - I will do my best to point you towards resources that will be helpful in answering the question: Which Way Now?
With greater understanding comes more inner peace, happiness and sense of purpose - and this unfolds in our outer life, where we find that conflicts and difficulties come to resolutions more easily - and we increasingly feel we are flowing creatively with all of life.
Questions or chats can be in one-to-one discussions by text message, email or in face-to-face meetings, either online or in person.
I do not charge for my time, but some people wish to give back and if so I suggest making a donation to the charity I support...please click here: Contribute.
Please use the form on this page to ask any questions.
Here are a few things people have said about their experience: What Others Have Said
Mind and the Ego
What is Mind? What is Ego?
Peaceful Mind
The nature of the mind is constant motion - but by stepping into the background - becoming aware of mind activity - we can find freedom from the turmoil - and this is the doorway to peace.
more...An Excitable Child
Like a child opening presents, our mind jumps on every thought, then the next, and the next...
more...Being In The Now
3-minute spoken contemplation on the difficulty of 'Being or living in The Now'.
more...Presence is the Background
It can be helpful to sit quietly with eyes closed...hope you enjoy it. ...Deep in the background behind thoughts-feelings-experiences - in the absence of the relative and transitory knowing of the body - the knowing of Oneness is realised. Behind even that lies a portal - 'the gateless gate' - through which we may begin to experience the in-flowing of the qualities of the 'Beyond' - peace, joy and love.
more...Thoughts and Feelings
Tools to help manage difficult thoughts and feelings.
Can we permanently escape depression?
Can we learn to overcome depression when it arises, or even permanently leave it behind?
more...Through The Clouds
To shine light on the causes of troubling thoughts and feelings, we need to rise out of the clouds - into the sun.
more...Stop Lighting Matches
We may not always be able to stop ourselves from lighting matches, but try to watch the flame and drop the match before getting burned.
more...Freedom From Suffering
Once we have had a first taste of this, we want it again. We want to experience it more often, and more deeply.
more...Eye of the Storm
14-minute spoken contemplation that offers a method that helps us avoid getting caught up in the energy of unwanted thoughts and feelings that arise in us, and energies from other people and situations.
more...Good Morning
5-minute guided meditation for when you first wake up in the morning, to connect to creativity, clarity, non-reaction - all the things we need for a productive day.
more...Refuge from the storm
9-minute spoken contemplation on taking refuge deep within when we're experiencing difficult thoughts, emotions and feelings.
more...Unwanted Thoughts and Feelings
17-minute spoken contemplation that offers a practical way of managing and resolving unwanted thoughts and feelings. Practised consistently, benefits will soon become self-evident.
more...Unwanted Thoughts and Feelings (practice reminder)
3-minute practice reminder for the non-connection method of managing and resolving unwanted thoughts and feelings. It is recommended that the full spoken 17-minute contemplation on this page is listened to first.
more...Grief and Loss
6-minute spoken contemplation to uncover what dies, revealing how pain can transmute into peace - and the warmth of remembrance.
more...Choices and Decisions
Looking at the topic of choice, decision making and free will.
I Know It In My Heart
Can you let your heart guide you? Does your heart know deeper answers than the mind?
more...Wave or Ocean
The wave is a temporary expression of the ocean, dancing on the surface, below which, powerful currents move.
more...Making 'Right' Decisions
It's always a balance between head and heart. Head = 'mind' = thinking (influenced by the ego aspect of mind). Heart = 'intuition' = feelings (inclined towards selflessness and kindness).
more...Choices & Decisions
5-minute spoken contemplation to help when we are faced with choices and decisions and are uncertain which way to go.
more...Seeking Meaning
4-minute spoken contemplation about answering questions like: Why are things the way they are? Why do we feel drawn to find deeper meaning?
more...Free Will?
5-minute spoken contemplation 'You Are Not The Doer' is a phrase commonly found in spiritual teachings. But does it mean that everything is predestined?
more...Relationships
Exploring the 'spiritual dimension' to relationships.
Meant To Be Together?
Awakening in one partner and not the other creates a fundamental incompatibility in the relationship.
more...Astrology And Compatibility
Could astrology help in relationships? Wouldn't it at least be worth taking an open-minded look?
more...Meeting Mr (or Ms) Right
Every person is ‘right’, even if the initial rightness becomes wrong.
more...Acceptance In Relationships
5-minute spoken contemplation about when we create expectations in our minds of how other people should be, we can harm relationships - and how to break this habit.
more...Who Am I?
Exploring this most profound of all spiritual question.
Presence Is The Background
In the state of presence we are not lost in the experiences of our body or the thoughts in our mind - we are 'in the background' to them.
more...Spiritual Beliefs
What is Belief? Is it helpful on the spiritual journey?
Unacceptable
You will never be able to accept anything that you perceive as unacceptable - so don't try.
more...What do we really know?
Only evidence, real evidence, should be considered a sound basis on which to accept something as true.
more...No Journey?
Some say there is no (spiritual) journey because there's nowhere to go - we are already there.
more...Happiness That Lasts
5-minute spoken contemplation on the three types of happiness - why the least known of these is the only one that lasts - and how to find it.
more...God Or Nothing?
5-minute spoken contemplation exploring what might have existed before the beginning of time, and all that we know.
more...Belief And Suffering
7-minute spoken contemplation looking at how beliefs arise and how to become free from the suffering they can cause.
more...About
'Spiritual seeking' began for me in my early 20s and, looking back, it is easy to see the synchronistic events that led into what I now call the 'Inner Journey'.
Having first begun to tiptoe into exploring my own inner experience and the 'psychological mind' through some of the writings of Jung, I then became interested in philosophical thought and ancient eastern wisdom teachings such as those of Lao Tzu and the Buddha.
Later I became involved in practicing meditation, studying karmic astrology and tantra, and this led into a lifelong immersion into the words of most revered, respected and highly regarded of the great spiritual mystics in history.
In the midst of this, in my middle years, during a traumatic period in my outer life, what is commonly called 'spiritual awakening' occurred.
It was a shift in my consciousness - as if I had been woken from a trance - and the person I had believed myself to be - my egoic self - lost solidity. I became aware of an 'awareness' in the 'background' - an unmoving stillness behind all thinking, feeling and perception.
From this 'place' I became a 'witness' to what was arising in my conscious awareness, and could now see how my ego had previously been in the driving seat - even when I was trying to be a 'good' person, or believing I was a 'spiritual' person.
From this moment forward all my thinking, feeling and behaviour began to change because I was no longer under the unconscious influence and control of my ego – no longer was I my ego - but the observer of it.
With this new 'perspective' and the new ability to 'sense' the selfishness of ego - and then be able to do something about it - its ‘wrongness’ - my life quickly went from conflict, stress, discontent, and unhappiness, to inner peace and a joyous sense of being connected with the flow of life.
Since that time, countless further 'realisations' and inner experiences of a mystical nature, have deepened my understanding of what 'spiritual awakening' really is.
It is so very clear now that all those years ago, what I first experienced - the discovery of 'awareness' - was just the very beginning - and only when, much 'further along' on this exploration when what I call the ‘turning point’ on the journey is reached - the coming to see the 'wrongness' inherent in the egoic self - does one grasp the true purpose of this life, and come to know the only path that must be travelled if we are ever to reach the destination of the journey.
John Foster
Having first begun to tiptoe into exploring my own inner experience and the 'psychological mind' through some of the writings of Jung, I then became interested in philosophical thought and ancient eastern wisdom teachings such as those of Lao Tzu and the Buddha.
Later I became involved in practicing meditation, studying karmic astrology and tantra, and this led into a lifelong immersion into the words of most revered, respected and highly regarded of the great spiritual mystics in history.
In the midst of this, in my middle years, during a traumatic period in my outer life, what is commonly called 'spiritual awakening' occurred.
It was a shift in my consciousness - as if I had been woken from a trance - and the person I had believed myself to be - my egoic self - lost solidity. I became aware of an 'awareness' in the 'background' - an unmoving stillness behind all thinking, feeling and perception.
From this 'place' I became a 'witness' to what was arising in my conscious awareness, and could now see how my ego had previously been in the driving seat - even when I was trying to be a 'good' person, or believing I was a 'spiritual' person.
From this moment forward all my thinking, feeling and behaviour began to change because I was no longer under the unconscious influence and control of my ego – no longer was I my ego - but the observer of it.
With this new 'perspective' and the new ability to 'sense' the selfishness of ego - and then be able to do something about it - its ‘wrongness’ - my life quickly went from conflict, stress, discontent, and unhappiness, to inner peace and a joyous sense of being connected with the flow of life.
Since that time, countless further 'realisations' and inner experiences of a mystical nature, have deepened my understanding of what 'spiritual awakening' really is.
It is so very clear now that all those years ago, what I first experienced - the discovery of 'awareness' - was just the very beginning - and only when, much 'further along' on this exploration when what I call the ‘turning point’ on the journey is reached - the coming to see the 'wrongness' inherent in the egoic self - does one grasp the true purpose of this life, and come to know the only path that must be travelled if we are ever to reach the destination of the journey.
John Foster
Blog
The arrogance of self belief is unbelievable.
Read More
There is an essence - an original 'beingness' - in all creatures.
Read More
We cruise along looking out, imagining we're living the dream.
Read More
A dangerously attractive proposition for the ego.
Read More
“There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind."
Read More
The full truth of the saying 'You Are What You Eat'.
Read More
Contact
Gallery
Contribute
If you wish to give back in some way, please help me to support TreeSisters with their remarkable work via my JustGiving page John's Fundraiser for TreeSisters.
All profit from the sale of paintings in my Online Gallery is also donated to TreeSisters.
TreeSisters is a UK registered reforestation charity that has so far funded the planting of over 26 million trees. In addition they actively seek to support a shift away from consumerism to a restorative culture by providing resources that inspire personal and collective action.