Tammy

Present in a Hug, and Healed

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Q: I want to thank you for that connection we had on Saturday night and your continued loving support of me and my wife as a couple. I’ve asked you on numerous occasions to help me move through difficulty or find a way to overcome challenges and of course you’re able to do that in ways I don’t understand but I know it’s happening.

I saw that I completely reattached to what I was before an event that happened when I was about seven. I realized how much I vastly loved my mother when I was a little boy and just as much how I formed a hate for her. I want to clarify that the event didn’t have to do with her. I know what body memory is, of course, and mental memory, but this event and aftermath of it has everything to do with my patterning and conditioning. After that event, I closed my heart so hard and the first person I closed it to was my mother. I held her responsible and I didn’t even know that had happened until a couple of years ago and I don’t want to dwell on the pain, just reconnect with what I was fully, and I know I’m able to do that more.

But this self that I constructed is pretty tenacious and it brings challenges that becoming aware of and I’m here, not to tell a story, but because you’re the number one person to maybe give me a really solid re-connection with that sparkle I had, like I see in the kids here. And in that, of course, is every reason for me to feel the love for my mother that I had before, because holding it back, the damage, I’m holding it from me, my wife, and everyone, everywhere.

John: No event prevents your response, and when you’re honest to your heart, you love responding. When you’re honest to your heart, response is natural to you. When you’re honest to your heart, you respond as your heart. If anything of your past comes up, relate to it from your heart. Openness and softness moves, changing your past. It changes your relationship to your past. It changes how you see it. It changes your presence in it, and there your past opens and you are free of what it was before.

Q: At one point you told me I had to hit a wall of perspective and, well, that’s my wall back there. I don’t know, I guess that’s what I’m doing up here.

John: I overcame it in you as soon as we hugged. You came in and you left opened.

Q: When I reconnect with that little boy that is me, I have to give up everything that I have constructed. There’s no room for any of that because of how much love I have. I don’t have the energy to sustain any other coverings. It’s always that, the loss of control that comes with that choice, the perceived loss that keeps me from falling into you. It’s just a matter of relaxing, and yes, it’s fear.

John: You don’t do that when we have hugged.

Q: I know what it feels like not to maintain that control, but I still turn it on and off.

John: Stay in the hug.

Q: When I stay in the hug like this, it’s like I was seeing things in 2D. I was mistaken because now this is 3D.

John: This is 3D plus.

Q: I know that I know how to meet you in this and it’s just for me to really trust that knowing or is that wall of perspective that you recommended I hit, is that an awakening, or would it just be seen in 3D plus?

John: It’s the thinking that comes from seeing in 3D plus.

Q: That’s very clear to me, what you just said. I can see it’s just no more complicated than for me to reconnect with that bottomless love I had for my mother back when I was a boy.

John: Concerning your self and others, form no opinions and you won’t be chained to them anymore. Concerning your self and others, all you have is your response to what you know in your heart, like when you were little.

Seeing Your Self as it is

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Q: What brought me to the chair today was to come from what I am, having broken enough ground to have you pour into it and to come from that with you, here. The part that I thought would be here more is being in my heart so that when all of the ‘it’s too big for me’ parts start to come in, they’re not too big for me anymore, and it just becomes a joy to let in that expansiveness. At times it’s a flow it’s broken and patchy but it’s still there. It’s not far away. But the dropping into the heart isn’t always there. I’m not always aware of that.

John: If the rhythm of your being is in a decrease, it will be difficult for you to experience being in your heart.

Q: So that is what’s happening. The rhythm of my being is in a decrease?

John: You can’t conclude what I’m stating. You can just hear it.

Q: Can you explain more about the decrease of one’s being?

John: Its outstanding rhythm can move from level to level. It can move to a level that is completely independent of your self. Its movement has no relationship to your self and it can, from there, move to a level that has a relationship to your self and how you are relating in your self. For you to stably come from your own being, you need to be able to move as awareness with its rhythm, regardless which level of your being the rhythm is coming from, each one affecting your experience in your self of what there is or what there isn’t.

The effect of this rhythm on you in your self is important to your development. If you try to follow it in your thinking and based on your experience, it’s confusing. All you have as awareness in following that rhythm is knowing. That can come with experience or without experience. The decrease can come right when it seems to you that you most need increase. If you adhere to any sense in your self in your relationship with the rhythm of your being, you’ll be separating from that rhythm and you’ll be set against your own being.

Openness and softness answers any misunderstanding.

When you are in synch with the rhythm of your own being, as that rhythm comes from different levels of your being, every line in your self will eventually be hooked. It will bring up every manner of discomfort in your self. It will bring about every kind of pressure in your self. It brings up everything that you haven’t dealt with in your self. It will sift your self. Being sifted in your self, because of your adherence to the rhythm of your own being by you being what you know, takes apart your own comfort zone. It removes you from your relationship with comfort in your self.

Instead of you being separate from your own being, you’ll experience in your self how separate your self is from your being. You’ll experience how much your self isn’t like your being. Your self is not like what you really are. The true development of your self comes by you being the same as your own being in the midst of a self that isn’t like that yet, regardless of how uncomfortable that is, regardless of the strange pressures in that.

Q: I’ve loved seeing that lately the self that isn’t me, that isn’t what I am. That’s what feeds back to me what I am, observing that form as a level for me to move into what I am and be aligned with what I am, and I see that as my first purpose. Part of me is screaming for more, and then the other part just sort of doesn’t know how to handle it, hold it, and yet I’m aware of it landing and landing and landing where it needs to land.

John: In your self, while you’re aligned with the rhythm of your being, it’ll be easy to feel like you are a victim of that rhythm, a victim of truth somehow. It can be easy to feel like it plays tricks on you, that it’s unfair with you.

You’re experiencing the disjointedness of your self, that your self on a deeper level doesn’t fit together very well. It’s in your accustomed self, the way that you normally experience your self, that it seems like there’s a continuity in your self. It all moves in a way that generally makes sense to you. When you’re in response to what is deeper than your self, you will lose that held-together cohesion, and you’ll be subject in your experience to what your self is actually like. That can be most unpleasant.

The energy of your own beliefs will most stand out and rail against you, but because it is in your self you’ll experience it as being real. You won’t see it for what it is. It will all seem real to you. It is all meant to incline you as awareness to believe your self. When you align to the rhythm of your own being, you’ll be awakening the multi-leveled gauntlet of your self. In living, you’ll be subject to that gauntlet. You can relieve the pressure of that by simply believing your self, adhering to your self, taking your self to heart. When you adhere to the rhythm of your own being, that can make you feel in your self like you’re dying. There is a real dying that’s taking place. It isn’t your self that dies. What dies is your patterned way of relating to your self.

Q: What’s holding together those patterns, John?

John: A self-orientation. What holds the patterning together is past investments of want and need. They all continue in the present, not so much directly in your self but in your subconsciousness. They are all mechanisms controlling your experience of your self. As you adhere to what you think and feel in your self to tell you what is true, you’re adhering to your subconscious mechanisms, whether you realize it or not, whether you believe it or not.

The true interruption to the cohesiveness of this patterning in your self, your patterned way of relating to your self, is openness and softness of heart. As the cohesiveness of your patterning is interrupted and diminishes, the vulnerability in your self increases, making you feel in your self that you’re getting worse and it’s all going backwards.

Your self tells you how you are doing in this world. It doesn’t tell you how you are actually doing. In your self, you don’t relate to what you know the truth of. In your self, you relate to what affects your self. You relate to how others see you and treat you. When you relate to your self, you are unseen.

Your direct experience of your self from the perspective of your own being is that your self is made of forms of separation, and that it requires the constant maintenance of self-oriented doing to create comfort. When you sign-up, within, to be what you know, you are really taking your self on, as it actually is. When illusion is removed, you’ll realize why, before, you didn’t want to see. What you see when illusion is removed is most unappealing to your self. If you don’t want to see, that can be accomplished as easily as looking away from what you’re seeing. As you look away, in a fraction of a moment you can cover what you know and then look back again, and what you see will be all different.

That kind of power in your self is always at work. It ceases when you are oriented as awareness simply to what you know in your heart. Your self un-distorts and you’ll experience your self in its actual condition. It will feel and seem so distorted, but if you have any aversion to the actual condition of your self, your being cannot fill your heart and a being-filled heart cannot come into your self.

Q: Thank you for placing that into me. The picture just looks like a…a journey of discomfort filled with the joy of seeing and being right-side up. I love you…and I love that you’re here with me, even in the black. As I…as I look around, you’re there in me.

Listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 166 – Seeing Your Self as It Is or visit John de Ruiter on iTunes

Deeper Sense

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Q: What do you mean by ‘deeper sense’?

John: A deeper sense is a non-cognitive process and it’s also not a common sense. A deeper sense is when something is not clear with a cognitive sense or common sense, so you go to a deeper sense. If you don’t have clarity about something on any level and you need to have some clarity, then you go to a deeper sense. It’s a level in which you’ll have very little to go by but just a touch of something in one direction.

Q: It’s very subtle then?

John: Very subtle. Even to have just a touch that lends in a direction may not give you something specific to do, but it helps. It’s far from nothing.

Q: For me would that come to a feeling?

John: Yes.

Q: Do I get that in my self or in a deeper level?

John: It’s like intuition. You can use your intuition for your self, for what you know, or your heart or your mind. Whatever you’re focused on for a deeper sense, the deeper sense will serve. Whenever you change what you’re looking at, the deeper sense will change.

Q: There’s often a question of where we’re at. That discerning is almost a deeper sense, isn’t it? Like when we ask a question, it’s always going to that subtle deeper sense?

John: Unless something is even clearer within.

Q: Is that the same as when you see something, like when I saw something in India and I said to you I saw what I saw and what I thought I saw? And you said, you have a deeper sense.

John: Yes. The value of a deeper sense is that it always gives you your direction. While your self may be filled with resistances, ideas, or preferences, your deeper sense will always indicate where to go. You may not like it, but the deeper sense will keep directing you if you’re open to it. The other thing about deeper senses, is that once you let it in, there will be more.

Loving Knowing – Part 1

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Q: Will you speak about the difference of knowing and living the truth. How can I know what the truth is?

John: You have always known it. But it is so simple that it has been easy to overlook. The very simplest of what you know is that within yourself, it is always true to soften. And that it is never true to harden. Softening within, instead of hardening within has always been your deepest truth. And the easiest to overlook. Opening and softening within, instead of closing and hardening within: that you have always known. For you to live being what you know is for you to live being that openness and that softness, within yourself.

Q: I am afraid to cause aggression or afraid to attract that. But at the same time I do attract that. I do bring it on myself.

John: How do you know that? Just because there is aggression toward you, that doesn’t mean that you are attracting it. That is a teaching. But do you know that that is absolutely true, all of the time? Do you know that or do you just believe that?

Q: I believe it. I suppose I interpret experiences of how the child is growing up. And in that interpretation, I think I know.

John: That doesn’t mean you do know.

Q: It doesn’t mean I know. Yes, I know. Means I think I know. Especially when it is kind of directed towards me. That makes me, I suppose, interpret what is.

John: You don’t have to interpret any more. You either clearly know what is happening. Or you clearly know that you only think you know what is happening. Let the two be apart without mixing them. And what you know that you just think you know – treat those as just opinions, and not as truth. And what you know that you know – give your heart away to that.

Loving Knowing – Part 2

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Q: I can’t really ask a question or something, it is just a fear. There is so much fear inside me, of being alone and I can’t really…

John: When you fear being alone, that makes you lonely. When within, you let yourself completely relax into enjoying being utterly alone, without need of anything, then you find out, in the most intimate way, that you are not alone. That you are intimately connected with nectar everywhere. Instead of being alone in your mind, be alone in your heart. There is no nourishment in being in your mind. There is nourishment in you being in your heart. All of the nourishment you are looking for isn’t in your mind. And it is also not in this life. It is within you. And the doorway is your heart.

Do you enjoy cappuccino? Then cappuccino is your way home. When you are enjoying cappuccino, notice what is happening. You cannot even enjoy cappuccino when you sip it without dropping out of your mind into your heart.

Q: I really don’t understand, because it is something outside?

John: When you are enjoying it, it is not something outside. It is something within you. When you are enjoying a cappuccino, you are actually enjoying something within you. Notice what is happening when you are enjoying a cappuccino. Your system relaxes and is absorbing something. Your whole system is responding.The response of your own system shows you how to be. And it is the same thing when you sit in a hot bath or stand under a shower. Notice what is happening. If you are absorbing it, that is you dropping out of your mind and into your heart. And it happens so easily that you miss it. You are not noticing it, because within it, you are not doing something. You are not doing something within. What you notice most is your doing within. What you notice the very least is a very little moment when you are actually being within.

There are these little moments all day long. And what you notice all day long is not your beingness. What you notice all day long is everything that you are doing, because that for you is what shows. When you put your shoes on, there is a moment, when there is a matching of what your feet are and what your shoes actually, really are, which is not what you think they are or what they look like. But there is a matching of beingness. And it is so subtle and so natural that you don’t notice it. The next time you put your shoes on, notice what is happening within. And you will notice a moment of beingness just by putting your shoes on. When you notice that, then every time you put your shoes on, you are reminded within, how to be. Every time you put your coat on, there is a very subtle moment that is magical. You are so used to it, and it happens so naturally, that you are not noticing it any more. Let yourself notice what happens. There is a beingness in your coat, and there is a beingness to your body. And the moment you put your coat on, there is a matching of beingness.

There is a oneness of being that flows. It is very subtle. But when you let yourself notice it, it knocks on your heart. It is not something that you understand in your mind. But it is something that you recognize in your heart. The next time you sip a cappuccino, notice the meaningfulness within. The meaningfulness is there because there is a flow of beingness. Without that meaningfulness within, you would not be able to enjoy a cappuccino. Notice a very subtle meaningfulness in every little thing in your life. Instead of noticing what is obvious to your mind, which is what you are used to, begin to notice what occurs and touches within your heart. You will be amazed at how much life is actually full of nectar when you are being in it. The more subtle the noticing, the deeper the nectar.

You are used to noticing everything that appears as big within your mind. What you are overlooking is the very tender little. It is that which touches your heart and connects you with meaning. Not the kind of meaning that you understand with your mind, but the kind of meaning that you know in your heart. Enjoy sipping a cappuccino and then notice what is happening within. Notice what it is within, that is magical, and then remain in that, and be that, without the cappuccino. When you are remaining in that and being that without the cappuccino, that gives you new eyes. Then you will see what it is that you are being. You will see it all around you. Then you will recognize that it has always been there. It is only you that has been gone, not it, gone somewhere in your mind, instead of being in your heart.

It is only when you are being in your heart that you can see what you know. When you are being in your heart, seeing what you know, you let all of your heart dissolve into what you know. That is you returning to the source. That is you being where you came from. That is you being what it is that you are most deeply longing for, being it instead of looking for it. When you look for what you know in your mind, all you will find is thinking. When you return to where your mind came from, that is you returning to your heart. Then let yourself return to where your heart came from, which is something that your mind doesn’t know. But when you are being in your heart, your heart does know. And when you are surrendering to what your heart knows, that is you returning to where it came from.

It is a very gentle and subtle melting, in the same way that you would enjoy sipping the cappuccino. You will find the very same when you enjoy sitting with a tree. You won’t find it in your mind, because the tree doesn’t exist in your mind. It exists only in your heart. It is only your heart that knows what a tree is. Your mind only perceives the tree; it doesn’t know the tree. If you are lonely, it is because you are existing in your mind. When you let yourself be warmly alone in your heart, you will find yourself one with everything. What you will find there is flow. It is so easy, you have been missing it. You have been missing it in all the moments of your day because you are focused on what you see in your mind instead of being focused on something that you know in your heart.

Deeper Level Sameness

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Q: I would really like to continue the conversation we had earlier about relationship, when you said that in a dear relationship you move as one heart. Is it that a new heart is being created from the two of us?

John: Yes, similar to that. He was the ‘husband of’. Now you are the ‘wife of’. Next, the two of you are husband and wife on a completely different level. Before he was the ‘husband of’ your awakening. Now you are the ‘wife of’ his awakening: you stepped in, he stepped in. The ground of your relationship can no longer be what it was. It can only be about what each of you has stepped into.

Q: To be the ‘wife of’ is to give everything to him?

John: Not to him, but to what you know he’s stepping into. That greatly activates what you know you have stepped into.

Q: That will create new ground for us to live and walk on?

John: Yes, ground that doesn’t involve your selves. As you live that, your self will change.

Q: I have the sense that it’s now more important to give everything to his awakening. It’s all about the togetherness now.

John: It always was. It always was about the togetherness. That’s why the two of you married.

Q: But I have a different sense, now, of how we can be together. Maybe it has to do with the one heart, that we can move differently together in more oneness, and to give everything to that.

John: Now, when you step into what you know of his awakening, you’re stepping into his river. When you step into his river, his river rises because your river pours into his. In relationship, then, there is a confluence of two rivers. It’s no longer yours or his.

Q: Is it also when the deeper levels of our bodies are joined in that?

John: Yes.

Q: And all of that eventually creates that one being that you spoke about?

John: One being is realized by the two of you, being one river. In that movement, the two of you realize one being.

Q: Is it different in function than each of our individual beings?

John: Yes, but that won’t come about without the two of you as individuals being together as one river. That involves prioritized multitasking. The one river is more than the two individual rivers, but without the two individuals there cannot be one. That requires a living response in each of you to the deeper levels within each of you and the other.

Q: Within each of us and within each other?

John: Your response to the deeper levels in you is then equal to your response to the deeper levels in him. That occurs in you and in him. You not only move as one river, there is also one being.

Q: When I try to relate to my deeper levels, it’s almost impossible for me to separate them from his.

John: You don’t need to separate them.

Q: No, but you said to relate to my deeper levels and then to his, but it’s naturally moving into one.

John: Yes.

Q: How does it show on the more superficial levels?

John: On a superficial level, you can have differences without either one of you empowering those differences, and that brings the river into your differences. Within the differences, you are then so together. It’s what your relationship is for.

Q: When we move as that, in a relationship, what does that accomplish?

John: Deeper level same-ness, realized love, conscious beings that have selves and persons.

Q: My sense is that also it would speed up our integration.

John: It’ll speed up your evolution as awareness and it’ll provoke the same in others.

Q: I have the sense that we have to find our new movement.

John: Yes. The movement is entirely based on deeper levels, on the movement of streams in your being and his.

Q: So the together movement for each couple is different?

John: Yes.

Q: And moving together as one has more weight than just one of us moving that way, and has a greater effect on others?

John: Yes.

Q: Thank you, John.

How to Bring Purity Into Your Heart

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Q: Last week you spoke about purity and it struck me because I don’t feel very pure and I remember the saying in the Catholic church about being pure in thought, word, and deed, and when I look at myself and the places I’ve been and the things I’ve done over the years, I feel that those scars are permanent in my self and that I can never undo them and they somehow taint where I’m at or they’re still hangovers of those things around, and when I look at my baby boy, I see his purity and when I look at my own being, I see that it’s immaculate and pristine and impeccable, but I don’t know how to marry those together and the more that I’m with my son, it’s like it just shines a light on where I’m not, and so there’s been a lot of things lately with the seminar and it just brings up everything. I want to know how to bring purity into my heart.

John: Purity of heart begins with you from within your self being in full response to your heart without the need of addressing anything in your self. That makes you within your heart available to be in full response to what you know in your heart. Your full response to what you know in your heart brings you into your being. All of this full response brings your heart into purification. It displaces what you have taken to heart concerning your self. You being in full response to your heart, to be in your heart, to what you know in your heart, and to be what you know in your heart, creates the opening in your heart to your being.

Through that opening you enter your being, you stream into your being and your being streams into your heart, fulfilling the final displacement of your self in your heart. Your heart is clean because your being is in it. All of that without any change in your self, any focus of change in your self. The filling of your heart is from your being because of you entering it, you entering your being, by being what you know in your heart. Then your being can begin to fill your self, your experience. The infilling of your heart is by your being. The infilling of your self is by your heart. When it is your heart, your being filled heart which fills your self, your identity in your self and the importance in your self are displaced by your heart having all of the space in your self. The purification of your self comes from the overflow of the purity in your heart.

Q: And what enables this is my love of what I know?

John: For the sake of what you know. That makes you in your heart just like your being. When you are just like your being, you have entrance to your own being. You naturally move as your being. That movement brings your being, the deeper levels in your being, into your heart. What fills your heart is what fills your self. When you take your self to heart, you fill your heart with your self. It makes your self all important. Your self, believed because you take it to heart, allows the patterning and the conditioning in your self to have more form in your self. That taken to heart makes your heart worse than what it was before, when it was filled with your self.

Q: Can you say that again?

John: That makes your heart worse because what fills your heart of your self is worse. As you continue to take your self to heart, your self worsens. It becomes the exclusive home of your patterning and your conditioning.

Q: Well, that’s what’s happening.

John: When you take to heart what you know in your heart, awareness relaxes. In the relaxation of awareness, awareness returns to being like its own being. and the infilling of the heart by your being occurs a tiny little bit. As you continue in response to what you know in your heart, the filling of your heart with your being continues and that cleans your heart. It cleans your self out of your heart. When your self is cleaned out of your heart, your self rests. Your self, no longer in your heart, is no longer the provider, is no longer made to be the provider of
meaning in your heart. It’s no longer held to do what it isn’t able to do. It rests.

The resting of your self makes room for what is filling your heart. Your being-filled heart has room in your self. It’s free to come into your self. As it does, it cleans your self. It cleans your self of the beliefs that you’ve installed in your self.

Q: Is there something I can do in my relationship, with my wife and son, that will facilitate this more? Maybe I’m looking for something practical I can bring to the table without involving my self.

John: Let your response to her be entirely defined not by anything in your self, but by your full response to you being in your heart and you being what you know in your heart. That makes your response to her like your response to your being. In that, her self is as incidental to you as your self is incidental to you. You can see her being as you respond to your own being.

Q: Will that allow me to read her more? Because I don’t think I’m reading her very well.

John: You won’t first be reading what matters to her. You’ll be reading what matters to what she knows in her heart. What you read won’t suit her self but, when she’s quieted in her heart, what you read reaches her. It reaches her in her heart, and the two of you are together.

How to Really Change Habits

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Q: Hello, I’ve been dealing with trying to change habits, habits that no longer work for me, you know, being lazy, indolent, stuff like that, and I’m just wondering if you have some advice or instruction on how to drop habits. Thank you.

John: Changing a habit is, in principle, very simple. As awareness, be and do only what you know the truth of in your heart. What immediately complicates that is efforting to do that for the sake of anything that you experience in your self. When you do it for your self you’ll use what is not integrated in your self to try and be and do what you know in your heart, for benefit in your self. It only really works if you’re being and doing what you know for what you know.

But what you know is unseen. It’s unseen in the sense that it doesn’t have form in your self, you can’t see it in your self. You can see it in what’s deeper than your self. For you to be and do what you know in your heart, that brings what’s true of your own being into your self. It’s what your self is for. When you try and do that for your self, that’s not what your self is for.

Q: I get the impression you use “the self” in a particular way. Could you say a little bit about that?

John: There are many levels to the self. But the one that we’re most accustomed to is the self in our experience. Our customary experience is the self that we’re used to. Most of that is to the neglect of what is deeper in the self, or higher in the self. The deeper and the higher isn’t representative in what we experience. When we’re coming from our heart, then we’re able, little bit by little bit, to manifest a deeper self. The deeper self or the higher self isn’t going to be representative in the experience that we’re most accustomed to. Your experience of laziness isn’t a reflection of your deeper self, but of what you’re most used to in what you’re accustomed to in your self. The laziness is a part of your self that hasn’t yet become like what you are.

Q: You know, one gets all these uncomfortable body sensations. When, you know, I’m trying to do something new, it’s just like, so uncomfortable.

John: Yes. And, it doesn’t stop you. When it doesn’t feel good for you to exercise, that doesn’t stop you from exercising. If the uncomfortable feeling of you bringing your self to exercise doesn’t serve you in your experience of your self, then you won’t do it, so what you’ll feel is, ‘too lazy to exercise.’ As soon as there’s something that you very simply know to do and you know it’s a goodness for you to do that, then do that.

Q: Thank you.

Knowing the Place of Emotion

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Q: Hi John. My question is, does emotion exist in being or is it a construct of self?

John: It doesn’t exist in being. It’s a dense form that offers you more form. Positive emotion very easily has heart in it. Negative emotion has only the experience of your unintegrated self. It has no heart in it. When you experience the separating power of negative emotion, that can turn you against all of your emotion, but as soon as you return to your heart, there’s going to be an expression of that in your self, and the expression of that is going to come through positive emotion. You’ll easily move in that because you’re being your heart in that. But to move into positive emotion also makes you vulnerable to the power of emotion, and as soon as something crosses you in your self, that power flips to a negative emotion, which is an unintegrated power in your self, that isn’t really you.

Q: If emotion isn’t part of being, then should one recognize it and acknowledge it?

John: You can recognize it and acknowledge it, but that won’t help you integrate it. It is yours to integrate. It is a form of yours that isn’t like you are, but is able to be just like you are.

Q: But doesn’t it exist to be integrated?

John: It exists to be integrated by virtue of you being in it. You can’t integrate it by acknowledging it. You integrate it by being what you really are in it. You have an example and it is your own being. Your own being is form of you, and you’re also in your self. Your self is form, your form, but it’s not form of real you. It’s like a raw material. You integrate it by being just like your own being, in the midst of that form. That both acknowledges it and draws it into you.

Q: But it seems as though, if emotion itself isn’t actually worthy of acknowledgement, I mean, what’s its requirement?

John: It’s not worthy of acknowledgement on the terms of how you experience it. It’s worthy of acknowledgement on your terms. Which means you being what you really are, in the midst of it. And you being a form, form of yours, that is accurate to you, which means you being your own being, in the midst of it.

Emotion isn’t wrong or bad. It just doesn’t reflect you. But if you’re being what you really are, in the midst of emotion, there’s available form there that is changeable. It offers you more form than the form of your own being. You can speedily increase your real form by being what you really are in the midst of form given to you that isn’t yet like you are. You naturally assimilate it and it naturally changes to you.

Q: Do your responses to us have anything to do with an emotional intelligence?

John: In as much as it does on the surface use the same face. The face reveals emotion. But, in its delicateness, it reveals your heart. It’s made for your being, but it doesn’t belong to that yet. By you, your face is able to belong to your heart, and in it belonging to your heart, your heart is free to come up into your face. That makes your self in your experience feel vulnerable. If your heart remains in your face in the midst of the feeling of vulnerability, that draws up your being into your face. When you live that way, your face slowly belongs to your being.

When you really meet someone, it isn’t through your emotions that you meet. It’s with your heart that you meet. That can be present in the midst of emotion. When you don’t belong to your own heart, as soon as you have emotion in your self, the emotion will distract you from your heart. So you’ll easily leave your heart. When you leave your heart in the midst of your self, your positive emotion turns into negative emotion, but when you become quieted in what you know, you’re naturally relaxing. As you relax, you return to your heart. The real integration of your emotions is by you being in your heart while you’re in that emotion. That grounds your self in your heart. With that grounding, your self already becomes a little bit just like your heart.

At the Very Centre of Emotion

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Q: Hello, John. I’ve been pondering about a few issues and in a way I do think they are all related and I would like to bring them to you and to ask for some clarity about it. The first is being in your proximity versus following-through what I know, and I would like to say a bit about where my question comes from. When I need you, I am aware that there are several depths, so to speak, where you come from. Here in the meetings I would dare to say that where you come from I would…yeah…for me that would be greater reality. Then there are the informal gatherings and you being in the café; that would be for me a different level where you come from. I have a working relationship with you and that would be another level. And then there is the husband and a father and a friend.

And I was wondering because when I was in Venwoude and when I was not always physically being present during the informal gatherings or the meetings because there were certain things that I really knew to do, I had the feeling that I had been given more of you than ever. And also for me being here in Edmonton and being in the meetings, I so much would like to not be tight about being in your proximity, and yet, for example, I care whether I’m sitting in this chair or close by you during the meetings versus being in the back of the hall, being easily distracted with noises. And yet what I also sometimes see in me that as more people come to here which at first I always find so fantastic, there is also a little part of me that is thinking I will be pushed aside a little bit. I think if I’m really honest then I sometimes that you might not see me anymore, or I know in my heart that is not true, but…

John: Then that’s it.

Q: Would there be a bit more to say about being in your proximity versus following-through what you know while not being in your proximity?

John: The two are not mutually exclusive.

Q: Could you say that differently? I don’t understand.

John: The two move together, not against each other. Proximity means something to you because of what you know in your heart. Then it is for you to discern the different levels of knowing in your heart and how to balance the levels. You need to discern what you know for you to balance the levels, the different levels of knowing.

Q: Could you give an example of what you’re saying, John?

John: If you know to be in proximity and at the same time you know, within, to do something that removes you from that proximity, you discern what you know which is deeper and then do that. The deeper will take care of what isn’t quite as deep. This is something for you to discern.

Q: You are saying, because you follow through what you know. that almost automatically brings you deeper?

John: Yes.

Q: So if my longing for being in your proximity would come from not a true knowing…

John: Knowing to be close isn’t necessarily the same as you longing to be close. You long to be close because of something that you do know, and mixed in with what you know is the effect that that has on your self. Something of your self and something of what you know are mixed together. When you see some of the difference, then from a deeper place discern what is what, and see what you can unmix. Identify what you know the truth of within the longing and be what you know in that, while letting go of the emotional aspect of longing. That puts you into pure response. That makes a deeper level, within, more real to you than the emotional aspect of what you know the truth of.

Q: When I feel that emotion coming up, because what I’m now in my life trying to do or practicing is to kind of hold that emotion, and then sometimes I’m asking the emotion what it actually wants to say to me.

John: That has some value. The greater value is not what the emotion wants to say to you but what of the truth are you knowing within the emotion.

Q: So that would actually be from the outside in rather than inside out, and the reason why you would say that is that I then, by doing that, would feed knowing rather than emotion.

John: Yes. The nucleus within an emotion is not the same as the emotion. The nucleus in it is what you know the truth of. At the very center of the emotion is not the emotion itself. At the very center you know the truth of something and your emotion collects around that because your knowledge of the truth has implications in your self; it affects your self. Your emotion then, in your self being affected, collects around what you know. When it does, that brings attention. The attention needs to go to the center of the emotion, which is what you discern of what you know in that emotion. What you know deeply within the emotion is not going to be the same as what’s represented by the emotion. As soon as you see the difference, in you go to what you know and the emotion around it relaxes.

If you try to address the emotion, you’ll be distracted from its center. The value of an emotion is that it has a center. Its center is not like the emotion. Discern what you deeply know the truth of in the midst of any emotion and be that deeper truth in the midst of that emotion. The emotion will transform. It will take on the form of what you’re being in it.

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