Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
mean, a few years ago I-thought being spiritual meant sitting on a
mountain and meditating or something. I used to have so many
ideas of what was spiritual was, what spirituality was.
WIZARD: Did you have a personal relationship with anyone that
helped ignite?
JEFF FOSTER: I never actually, in my own story, I never actually
had a teacher; I read a lot of books. I was an intensely private;
very, very shy, intensely private person, and for some reason in my
story I never… I had this strange attitude towards the whole thing.
For me it was always, if there's any Truth to be found, and I know I
want to find the Truth, but if there's any Truth I have to find it
myself. Somehow that was always in me, maybe that's why, maybe
it was an arrogance, I don't know, I don't know what it was. It
was arrogance, or it was shyness, or it was determination, I don't
know what it was, but I knew I was suffering desperately, but I
also knew in a strange way that I had to find the way out of
suffering myself. I somehow knew that no one could do it for me.
And so I ended up locking myself, well not literally, but basically
locking myself away for a year, meditating for like hours and
hours, and sitting and watching thoughts, and watching feelings,
and self-inquiring. And but I read a lot of books, I was reading like
a book a day for about a year, but I never actually had a personal
relationship with any teacher. I never spoke to anyone about it.
Back then I did not know that there were people out there I could
speak to. I don't know how it happened this way; I felt that I was
the only one going through this. And I realize now of course I
wasn't, of course I wasn't. But back then I never spoke to anyone,
I never spoke to anyone.
I was a very strange character really, I was a very obsessed
character, very determined, I don't know. So I never went to any
Satsang, or meetings, or anything. It was really funny when I
eventually years later when I was invited to do my first meeting, to
hold my first meeting, I had never been to a meeting before, any
meeting. I didn't know. What do people do in these meetings,
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