Q: We’ve been talking about the importance of life goals. I think my life needs to be the way I like it with my goals fulfilled. That’s the life I think will make me happy.
John: Are those people around you who have fulfilled their superficial, worldly goals happier than you?
Q: I don’t know but I think I would be happier with my goals fulfilled!
John: This is important. Why do you believe that?
Q: I don’t know.
John: To your deepest wellbeing this one point is critical: don’t believe anything that you don’t know the truth of, regardless of what that may cost you. If you conclude the truth of something without knowing, that’s how you lie to your self. What you form in your thinking and feeling is an illusion. That illusion takes form through the use of your thought, your feeling, your will and your emotion, and in that way you use your self to build something that isn’t real.
Q: How can I find the real truth of what I should have in my life?
John: Begin with the tiniest little bit within that you directly know the truth of: that you were not taught, you didn’t learn, and that when you are most deeply quieted and gentled within, you know. Whatever it is that you know, believe. When you go that deeply within, what you will know is not anything made of thought and feeling, will or emotion. There are no self constructs there. What is there is beingness.
Q: So shall I do more meditation to touch this beingness?
John: You can. When you meditate and you come into deeper beingness of a depth and a quality that you directly know the truth of, then you be that depth and that quality at any personal cost. Then you are being what you know the truth of. You are concluding what you know. That may not work very well with the intensity of your plans for your life.
As you deeply settle into believing what you know the truth of, your core beliefs will all begin to come apart because you’re not giving them your power anymore. You’re not withholding your power from them; you’re giving your power to what you directly know. As you believe what you do know the truth of, that’s where your power goes.
Because of that shift, your core beliefs will starve to death, leaving you being the same as your being, forming your self by what you’re being in it, instead of forming it to suit your goals.
When you form your self to suit your goals you make your self the centre of everything. Your self is your centre, making the truth within not your centre – which makes you blind.
Q: I cannot imagine a life without those things that suit my plans! If I were even able to reach that state, what would my life be like?
John: A manifestation of your being instead of a manifestation of your conditioning and your goals.
Q: But then who would I be in the world? What am I supposed to do in the world?
John: You’re starting with a false premise. You’re starting with the premise that this world is it; that whatever you’re being and doing somehow needs to fit in this world, somehow needs to look right in this world. You’re starting out with an artificial reality, which makes you artificial.
This planet is real. Humanity matters. This world isn’t real and doesn’t matter. But you’ve taken on its precepts just because you’re in this world, and you’ve been raised by this world. You are already much like this world.
Q: Yes. I’m also affected by the thinking of my relatives, other people, my mom. I have to think this way or they will be disappointed.
John: Then you have a serious problem. The very greatest disappointment has yet to come, which is that you’re going to die.
Q: I’m going to die? No way!
John: You’re going to terribly disappoint anyone who has something invested in you when you die. Every goal that you fulfill amounts to nothing when you die.
Q: That’s right.
John: Everything that matters in how you’ve been conditioned by this world, when you die won’t matter anymore. When you are on your last-hour deathbed, what will matter to you is not all of the goals that you’ve fulfilled. What will matter to you is not what you have become in this world. What will matter to you is not what you’ve done with your self. What will matter to you is what you’ve done with your heart, and deeper.
Q: Okay, but I’m alive and I think the material world and all those things matter to me. Of course the heart matters to me, but both are important.
John: That’s like building a house on the beach when the tide is out.
Q: So we just do nothing? We need to do something!
John: First, begin with a real premise. A real premise won’t be something seen, anything that this world can quantify. A real premise begins deep within your interior that isn’t subject to your upbringing. It isn’t subject to the views of this world. This premise way deep within is subject only to what you directly know the truth of. That premise is foundational to what your self and your whole life belong to. If you don’t get this right you will build believing that the tide is not coming back.
Q: So how can I start doing these things that really matter?
John: Use your doing in this world and on the surface to support what you are doing within in the unseen. So whatever you do to make money with your time, you do so that you can have food and shelter; so that you have space and time that you provide for what matters more than this world, and you use your space and your time to support what’s deepest within. In the midst of all of this doing, what you are being is this underlying premise that you directly know the truth of. You’re being it in all of your doing.
Q: I feel a long way from what you’re talking about. I don’t feel able to change how my current life is. I understand what you’re saying but I need more inner power, more help and support to follow through.
John: Then live as close as you can to someone who you know lives this. Then you’re living as close as you can to what you know is an example of this. Without the example you will keep fooling your self. If you know one, use all of your resources in all of your life – inside and out – to be as close as you can to that one.
Q: Thank you so much.
