Tammy

Softness of Heart Reaching Into Life

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Q: Your talk about beauty touched something deep within. My whole childhood I felt ugly. Now I’m beginning to experience more beauty inside and outside. I’ve never felt a victim. I developed certain patterns that helped along the way. Trust is quite a big issue and I’m gradually gaining more trust now. Being in a good relationship has helped a lot. I’d like advice on how not to listen to patterns when they come up.

John: Your patterning is your conditioning, conditioning through inheritance or through choices you’ve made. The patterning, in any case, does always help what you first are. Each time a pattern touches you and provides you with its experience, your own knowing is brought up. The patterned experience in your self brings knowing about. Every time a pattern moves you, every time that you experience a pattern as being your self, you do subtly know something different. The movement of every pattern brings about what’s deeper, but subtly.

It moves your knowing. It moves your knowing what is real. Each time it’s an opportunity for you, as awareness, to identify with the subtle, the subtle that actually deeply means something, instead of identifying with the strength of the experience of a pattern. Even when you get stuck in your patterns because of identifying with them and using your own patterns in favoring those things that you are liking and disfavoring those things you are not liking, and not seeing them any more, you can still see it in others. Your subtle deep knowledge within is touched when you see others in their patterning.

As much as everything can seem to be about patterns in your self and others, within the drama of all that, it’s really all about knowing. Awareness knowing is the constant in it all. While it doesn’t provide you with an experience as a pattern does, it does provide you with a resonance, a resonance of profound value. On a subtle level it is experienced, but compared to your patterned experience it seems as nothing.

Softness of heart delivers you from the reality of your pattern, whatever pattern you are in, softness of heart removes your heart from that pattern. It immediately has your heart being something different. As softness of heart removes you from being the pattern, it also removes you from being a victim of that pattern. In being removed from the pattern, the victim is gone. With softness of heart there is immediately innocence of heart. Innocence of heart doesn’t relate to a patterned self. Innocence of heart is that, within, that just precedes your accustomed self. It is softness of heart that turns you into that. Softness of heart removes every encumbrance of heart. Softness of heart relieves you of being a self that isn’t even like you. Softness of heart afflicted, afflicted by anything, becomes even more softness of heart.

Beauty of heart afflicted with feeling ugly increases beauty. Beauty afflicted opens the deep in beauty. Innocence of heart afflicted manifests innocence. Put the squeeze on hardness of heart and hardness of heart comes out. Put the squeeze on softness of heart and softness of heart comes out. Oppression doesn’t change a heart. It doesn’t change softness of heart. Only choice can do so.

Only fundamental choice can either, be knowing or abandon knowing. It’s the heart that does immediately show it. In that way you cannot trust what you think and what you feel to tell you what’s true. It’s really only knowing that you can trust to tell you anything at all about you. As you begin to realize that, you begin to slowly discern what knowing is, in the midst of a feeling. With such discernment you’ll be able slowly to identify that more quickly so that eventually you can trust what you feel and what you think to tell you what is true, but your own knowing remains essential to that.

Eventually you’ll know what feeling is the form of knowing and what feeling isn’t. As that begins to develop you’ll also be able to trust your self. Until then you cannot trust your self. You cannot even trust the feeling of your heart. What you can trust is your own present knowing of softening in your heart. The softening and the opening of your heart is the most basic, fundamental beingness. It’s the first that you identify in your heart as being true. Softness of heart won’t necessarily make beauty feel like beauty, but it is what makes beauty what it is. Staying with it eventually has you realizing it.

The moment that you get it, the moment that you can really see it, in that moment you have real heart understanding. The moment that you see it, your world changes. Heart understanding doesn’t change your heart. It reveals an understanding of heart within your self. It’s the first of your self becoming like your heart. It’s that that reaches, as a self, to another. As soon as it reaches to another, softness of heart in the other is accomplished. Softness of heart is the response of heart in being reached. With this you can as awareness, be consciously reachable, and consciously reaching. With such a heart you’ll be an entreatable self, a self whose heart is always reached first, instead of a pattern. With hardness of heart the pattern is reached first, creating a response of self that is according to that pattern.

The beauty of softness of heart is its ready capacity to realize. Softness of heart realizes before it thinks. From within softness of heart it is realization that creates newness of thought, that creates an authentic thought. When you have such thought it moves with knowing. With such thought you know the truth of the thought. The thought isn’t on the level of regular perception. It is on the same level as softness of heart, moving a different kind of mind. It moves thinking that is just like you, thinking that, when recognized, is thinking that softness of heart trusts because it’s of the same.

You can’t simply trust any sense of knowing, but you can always trust softness of heart, that has you being innocence of heart, and innocence of heart doesn’t stop reaching, even when it is afflicted or oppressed. Reaching is the goodness of it. As soon as you can see that, then again there is heart understanding, your self again becoming like your heart. Through softness of heart, your own self is so changeable. It’s that changeableness of your self known in your heart that has you reaching into life. It has you absorbing life.

Softness of heart, innocence of heart, reaching and absorbing, is what makes relationship real and wondrous. As soon as you see that then you can give it fire, that makes you the accelerant of such relationship.

Your Greatest Strength

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Q: I’ve had some insights and experiences in the past but I forget. Then there is in daily life this identification again with emotions, thoughts. Maybe you can say something about this.

John: Your difficulty is quite understandable. If you had no forms, if you didn’t have a body and a self, you wouldn’t have the constant reflection back to you. You would be unstructured awareness. All of your forms enable you to experience what you are in form, but if that form draws you into its structures it necessarily draws you into an experience. It enables you to recognize your own beingness in your own movements. It works so well that it is profoundly difficult to realize what you are in the midst of all of that.

You have an entire nervous system drawing you away from the unseen beingness. That nervous system is affected very strongly by everything that touches it. It has you experiencing pleasure and pain, attraction and aversion. Once you’ve awakened to what is deeper than all of that, awakened to some sense within of what your source is, of what you’ve come from, some sense of what you are as a being, to sustain your awareness of that is also the retraining of your nervous system, developing a self that is more like what you first are instead of just being in a self that is programmed to protect itself. For you to be what is deeper than your own nervous system you’ll be going against the experience of it. You’ll be going against your self.

For you to be what you first are you will be going against what your self is. In your self and in your own nervous system you’re programmed to protect the form you have. That programming has you then experiencing that your form is you. You’re completely integrated into your form.

For you as awareness to recede into the deep and to be what you first are, you will have a self that doesn’t match that. The self you have is a basic form of self. You have awareness of what is deeper in your self and what’s higher in your self, but your practice isn’t in what’s higher. Without what’s deeper in your self and higher in your self being integrated, you’ll be locked into your basic personality and your basic experience of your self.

Q: But how can I integrate what I’ve experience that I am?

John: You can integrate the deeper by surrendering to being it in the midst of your self. Whatever self you have, whatever kind of self you have, isn’t really a problem. It’s the form you have. For you to be within your self what you’ve awakened to puts you into profound difficulty. It has you realizing that for you to be functional in this, you need a different kind of self. You need a higher self and a deeper self.

The beingness of what you first are is different than your experience of the beingness that’s most common in your self. The beingness in your self is driven by your nervous system. You’re able as awareness to be what’s different than that, but being that will be contrary to what your own self is; it will be contrary to your own nervous system. The experience of your nervous system being agitated strongly distracts you from the profound beingness that are levels deeper. The self you have and its structuring demands your attention. It demands that you not be a higher self or a deeper self. Your effort to be a higher self or a deeper self has you then as an accustomed self being in reaction to your self. It confirms the very thing that you’re trying to get away from.

Trying to be a different self has you then being even more like what your accustomed self is, your everyday self. It has you being in reaction against your own self. It has you experiencing the opposite of what you long to be in your heart.

Instead of looking to change something in your self, surrender your own awareness to the realization of what you are within. That has you accessing a gentled beingness within a nervous system that isn’t like that. That has you then being rested in your heart despite having a nervous system that is constantly being agitated by the positive and the negative. What you’ll be developing then is a different kind of heart than what your self is like. That has you being more aware of your heart than your self. In that, it isn’t difficult to have an open and a soft heart in the midst of a self that seems and feels closed and hard. That has you moving in your own beingness, a deeper beingness.

When you surrender to opening and softening within, that has you coming into a softer and more open heart, within, which you’ll experience as more of a brokenness, a vulnerability. Instead of having a strength in your person, you become more acquainted with the fineness and the weakness of being. In your self, you’re programmed to relate to strength. In your being you naturally move as a very fine and tender weakness, where you don’t have the need of strength. In your self you need the strength, but needing that strength to be functional in a difficult world tends to change your orientation, where you believe that you also need to be the same deeper within. That kind of orientation distracts you from the openness and the softness, your basic deeper beingness, so you’ll keep experiencing a split-within where you’ve been awakened to a deeper kind of beingness and a knowledge of what you are, a knowledge of oneness.

You’re able to be what you first are in the midst of the kind of self you have without first trying to change your self. Being that in the midst of the kind of self you have does change your self, but your focus as awareness cannot be that of needing to change your self. You just simply cannot trust or refer to your experience of your self to tell you the truth within, to tell you what you are.

Listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 24 – Your Greatest Strength is in Your Weakest Weakness or visit the John de Ruiter YouTube Channel

Rested in Your Heart Despite an Agitated Nervous System

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Q: I’ve had some insights and experiences in the past but I forget. Then there is in daily life this identification again with emotions, thoughts. Maybe you can say something about this.

John: Your difficulty is quite understandable. If you had no forms, if you didn’t have a body and a self, you wouldn’t have the constant reflection back to you. You would be unstructured awareness. All of your forms enable you to experience what you are in form, but if that form draws you into its structures it necessarily draws you into an experience. It enables you to recognize your own beingness in your own movements. It works so well that it is profoundly difficult to realize what you are in the midst of all of that.

You have an entire nervous system drawing you away from the unseen beingness. That nervous system is affected very strongly by everything that touches it. It has you experiencing pleasure and pain, attraction and aversion. Once you’ve awakened to what is deeper than all of that, awakened to some sense within of what your source is, of what you’ve come from, some sense of what you are as a being, to sustain your awareness of that is also the retraining of your nervous system, developing a self that is more like what you first are instead of just being in a self that is programmed to protect itself. For you to be what is deeper than your own nervous system you’ll be going against the experience of it. You’ll be going against your self.

For you to be what you first are you will be going against what your self is. In your self and in your own nervous system you’re programmed to protect the form you have. That programming has you then experiencing that your form is you. You’re completely integrated into your form.

For you as awareness to recede into the deep and to be what you first are, you will have a self that doesn’t match that. The self you have is a basic form of self. You have awareness of what is deeper in your self and what’s higher in your self, but your practice isn’t in what’s higher. Without what’s deeper in your self and higher in your self being integrated, you’ll be locked into your basic personality and your basic experience of your self.

Q: But how can I integrate what I’ve experience that I am?

John: You can integrate the deeper by surrendering to being it in the midst of your self. Whatever self you have, whatever kind of self you have, isn’t really a problem. It’s the form you have. For you to be within your self what you’ve awakened to puts you into profound difficulty. It has you realizing that for you to be functional in this, you need a different kind of self. You need a higher self and a deeper self.

The beingness of what you first are is different than your experience of the beingness that’s most common in your self. The beingness in your self is driven by your nervous system. You’re able as awareness to be what’s different than that, but being that will be contrary to what your own self is; it will be contrary to your own nervous system. The experience of your nervous system being agitated strongly distracts you from the profound beingness that are levels deeper. The self you have and its structuring demands your attention. It demands that you not be a higher self or a deeper self. Your effort to be a higher self or a deeper self has you then as an accustomed self being in reaction to your self. It confirms the very thing that you’re trying to get away from.

Trying to be a different self has you then being even more like what your accustomed self is, your everyday self. It has you being in reaction against your own self. It has you experiencing the opposite of what you long to be in your heart.

Instead of looking to change something in your self, surrender your own awareness to the realization of what you are within. That has you accessing a gentled beingness within a nervous system that isn’t like that. That has you then being rested in your heart despite having a nervous system that is constantly being agitated by the positive and the negative. What you’ll be developing then is a different kind of heart than what your self is like. That has you being more aware of your heart than your self. In that, it isn’t difficult to have an open and a soft heart in the midst of a self that seems and feels closed and hard. That has you moving in your own beingness, a deeper beingness.

When you surrender to opening and softening within, that has you coming into a softer and more open heart within which you’ll experience as more of a brokenness, a vulnerability. Instead of having a strength in your person, you become more acquainted with the fineness and the weakness of being. In your self, you’re programmed to relate to strength. In your being you naturally move as a very fine and tender weakness, where you don’t have the need of strength. In your self you need the strength, but needing that strength to be functional in a difficult world tends to change your orientation, where you believe that you also need to be the same deeper within. That kind of orientation distracts you from the openness and the softness, your basic deeper beingness, so you’ll keep experiencing a split-within where you’ve been awakened to a deeper kind of beingness and a knowledge of what you are, a knowledge of oneness.

You’re able to be what you first are in the midst of the kind of self you have without first trying to change your self. Being that in the midst of the kind of self you have does change your self, but your focus as awareness cannot be that of needing to change your self. You just simply cannot trust or refer to your experience of your self to tell you the truth within, to tell you what you are.

Read moreRested in Your Heart Despite an Agitated Nervous System

You Are the Healer of Your Self and Your Person

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Q: I’d like to know why I don’t have a flow in my finance, home and work.

John: For you that isn’t going to come easily. For some, with a little added awareness, there’s a lot of result; for you it would require much awareness to have some result. You would experience that and perceive that as a disadvantage.

It is a disadvantage to your self in your person from a worldly perspective, but it isn’t a disadvantage to you. Your acceptance of the experience of that lack enables you not to be a victim of it, not a victim of comparison, enabling you to take responsibility for it. It’s part of the package that you’ve come into this world with, and it is a package that works well in addressing what you need to be focusing on.

Your heartful address of this has you expiring immediate resources, finding out what doesn’t work, directing you to much deeper resources: ultimately the awakening of what you are as awareness. For you to be taking full responsibility in having such a package, you’ll be needing to move past your self, no longer using the experience of your self as a standard for you. If you’re not using your own self as a standard, as a place from which to relate, then you have what is deeper than that: your own being, within which there is no lack, no deficiency, and even deeper than that — what you are as meaning knowing, having a balanced being and a self and a person within your life not in balance.

The imbalance in your experience directs you to your self until you begin to realize that the answer to your self doesn’t come from your self; it comes from your own being, with that being rooted in what you are as meaning, meaning knowing. When you come into realization of anything deeper within than what your self is, having the kind of self you have, the kind of person you have, is a wondrous help to you. Lack directs you to your own beingness and to what you are as meaning to heal the self and the person that you have that is in your care.

For you to see all of this from within what is deeper than your self is exciting and nectarful. It brings you to being plugged in, within, and no longer plugged in to lack and deficiency, no longer plugged in to comparison. You are no longer your experience of your self. That makes you more than what your self is. You’re able to answer your self. You’re able to answer your person.

For you to be seeing this is a privilege. You need to no longer burden your self in judging your self from the perspective of the experience of your self. You are able to be the life-feed to your self and to your person by no longer coming from your self and your person, by coming from what is deeper than that. In this you’re awakening to, you are not like your self and you’re not like your person. You don’t have the lack and the deficiency that your self and your person have. You are their healing. Remain awakened to the privilege and you will be their healing.

Listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 29 – You Are the Healer of Your Self and Your Person or visit John de Ruiter on iTunes

Openness And Softness Of Heart: The Real Connection With Your Own Being – Part 2

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John: With your self not needing to hold together, not needing to be your life-feed and your source, it is able to live. Your self then no longer has your desperate grasp in it, enabling you to develop as a being in it. Movement in your self that doesn’t come from your self changes your self. Your self slowly matches whatever it is that you are being in it. If that is a distorted beingness such as your heart being closed and hard, your self in time becomes the same.

Q: Is it a bit of exercise to listen to knowledge and not believe the self.

John: Not for your self. Not for you as a self, but for you as awareness in your heart. When you are in your heart opening and softening, the direction of your awareness isn’t into your self; it is into something of your own being. Awareness within openness and softness of heart is already by way of beingness connecting to real knowledge. The openness and softness is beingness of knowledge. Awareness within such beingness is directed to the source of that beingness, the knowledge within it, awareness knowing within it.

With openness and softness of heart, despite whatever kind of self you have, realization opens, realization of direct knowledge unlearned. It is your knowing what you are even if you’re not understanding it from within the perspective that you have in your self.

Q: This opening of the heart, is it a simple decision of awareness?

John: It is a response of awareness to knowing. When awareness responds to knowing, there is a softening in the heart. With every change of awareness there is instant change of form. That instant change of form is in your heart. Your entire relationship as awareness with knowledge is in constant effect in your heart. So in your heart you do always know. You may not know what you would like to know in your self and in your person, but you do always know what you need to know. Knowledge moves by what is most relevant at the present to you.

Your relationship with knowledge is an instant manifestation in your heart. It is an immediate effect. The effect within your self moves more slowly. There is much more form to your self, requiring more time for change. Your relationship as awareness with knowledge does show in your self. What also shows in your self is something of your history of your relationship with knowledge. In your person it also shows, requiring even more time for change, a change that is for better or for worse, depending on your beingness as awareness within your self. It also shows in your body, requiring even more time. You may have heard the expression before, that by the time that you are forty you will have earned the face you have. Everything that you are as awareness does in some way show everywhere.

What you are being as awareness is instantly manifested in your heart. It is that then that moves your self. What you are in your heart shows in your self. What you are in your self shows in your person and that shows in your body. What you are being as awareness registers and shows within each successive form, all to help you see.

When you awaken within to everything that is deeper than your self and you begin with awareness to be as that and move as that, all of the control, instead of being in your person and in your self, is returned to you what you first are, enabling what is unseen, you unseen, to govern and move everything that follows with awareness. You can be your own Innermost with awareness, having a self and a person and a life with which to express it.

The future of your self and the future of your person is determined by what you are at present being in your heart.

Read moreOpenness And Softness Of Heart: The Real Connection With Your Own Being – Part 2

Openness And Softness Of Heart: The Real Connection With Your Own Being – Part 1

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Q: Good morning, John. I have a question about what you call the being or beingness. You say this deconstruction of the self is not possible by means of the self but only from a deeper level, and I’m not sure what you mean with being and if there is a connection to that or if I overlook it all the time.

John: Openness and softness of heart is real connection with your own being. The place of connection or separation in relationship to your own being is your heart. When you do, as awareness, stand against what you’re knowing within, you’ll be closing and hardening your heart and separating from your own being. Your own response to knowledge within also shows within your heart; immediately there’s opening and softening. Your heart displays for you your relationship with knowledge, whether you’re responding to knowledge or moving away from it. As you separate from knowledge and your heart closes and hardens, you are closing the door to your own being. It is not at all an absolute separation, but there is separation into form. You can see it in your own heart.

When there is openness and softness of heart, the door of your heart is not just open to knowing and knowledge, it opens right into your own being, enabling a movement of delicacies of being to enter your heart, and touch your heart, like touches of kindness within, a flow of love in your heart. As you remain in openness and softness of heart, it isn’t just the delicacies of being that begin to move into your heart and into expression in your self, but also streams of being, enabling you to learn as awareness in your self how to move in a way that doesn’t come from your self, a movement in your self that comes from these streams of being moving through your heart and into expression in your self, through your person, and to others. The delicacies, the streams of of meaning, are what provide a depth of meeting.

When your orientation as awareness becomes grounded in openness and softness of heart, you’re no longer dependent on your self in order to be. Your supply within no longer comes from your self; it no longer has connection to want and need. This is being rooted and grounded in openness and softness of heart despite whatever you are experiencing in your self, despite whatever is occurring in your self, despite whatever someone else is doing to you, despite your circumstances. Your connection, your life-feed within, is no longer your self. It is openness and softness of heart, delicate beingness.

In this being your ground as awareness, the holding comes off of your self. You’re able to see your self for what it is. There is no intrinsic need within to cover for your self, to keep your self together. You’re able to then be without any reference to your self, fundamentally freeing you of what your self is, enabling you to be present in your self, not because of your relationship to your self, but because of the openness and softness of heart and your coming from delicacies of being and streams of being.

Read moreOpenness And Softness Of Heart: The Real Connection With Your Own Being – Part 1

Knowing: the Universe of Your Own Experience

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Q: Hi, John I’m just back from a Zen retreat. I was there sitting for five hours a day looking at a wall, questioning myself: ‘who am I?’ What I found was that I don’t know. I don’t know who is sitting here. I don’t know who is speaking, who is walking, who is moving. The only thing I know is that I’m here.

John: You are meaning. There you are, and there is no ‘who.’ You are meaning moving as intimacy of being. By that we meet, meaning that has a being by which to move, that has a self enabling structured function of meaning moving as a being that has a person in a richness of life. Your best form is your heart, a heart that is like a well-worked, cultivated ground. It is display of how you have been in your self. It is what makes you a good man.

Your experience of what you are is from the outermost inwards, enabling you to sit still before a wall for hours asking of that which looks, ‘who are you?’ What you are is the inverse of your experience. Because of all the levels of your form, you naturally relate to the forms you have. You relate to their function, distracting you from what you are in all of that, not a ‘who’ as you do experience it. It’s not who you are. Who you are can be answered in your self and in your person.

But you weren’t sitting there to discover your person or your self. You wanted to know what you are, not a person, not a self, not even a being, but much better: Meaning. It is because of what you are, meaning, that you relate to it in everything by the fullness of it or the lack of it. Everything that you do in your self as a person in your life is because of what you are. Every movement of yours reveals that what you are is meaning, all the way to your outermost, a full development of form and function with wondrous complexity. So beautiful is the complexity that you overlook your own simplicity.

You don’t see what you are because you’re accustomed to being within all your forms who you are. Who you are asks. Who you are doesn’t know. What you are does know. What you are is manifest. It’s manifest in how you relate to meaning in every moment, whether it is the lack of it or the fullness of it. Your connection to what you are is unbroken.

Your heart reveals what the who has done with what you are, what you as awareness as a person and as a self have done with meaning, have done with what you are. You are from the innermost outwards. You are, from the very innermost outwards through form after form after form, you in form, experiencing that you are that form, that you are in life a person with a self and a heart whose entire relationship with everything within and without is by meaning.

And you know that there is more and more and more to your innermost, more to your innermost than there is to your outermost. Your outermost isn’t able to access your own innermost. You can’t access your own innermost without as awareness matching what it is and being what it is. For that, as awareness, you don’t need your forms, your person and your self. For you to access your own innermost as awareness is for you to surrender form after form after form, enabling you as awareness to recede to what you first are, for you to be meaning — meaning not needing a being, meaning not needing to even move. Pure meaning without manifestation, the supply and the source to every little bit throughout all of your forms, enabling you to be in them. It is what gives you cohesion in everything.

You’re able as awareness to be the inverse of your own experience knowing. It is a shift of awareness directed by knowledge, by awareness knowing, not informed by form, not informed by your form, but informed by you, meaning, knowing. You were so accustomed as meaning to your own forms that you asked for you, but you asked as form. If you would have, as meaning aware, gone through total inversion you would have, as meaning aware, been meeting with innermost of wall. Having that, having such unstopped entrance to meaning, realizing the ease and naturalness of it would have, before that wall, broken your heart.

If you would like to experience what you are in front of a wall, meet, as meaning moving as intimacy of being. Enter Meaning and meet. Meaning with all innermost meets meaning with all innermost. Someone looks at what’s occurring and you are seen sitting before a wall. Amazing.

The deeper that you go, the more form that there is of yours that you’re no longer using or relating to, with the ability of being all of that form and relating to it at the same time.

Only meaning, all the way out into form is able to relate to meaning.

Read moreKnowing: the Universe of Your Own Experience

Responding As A Deeper Level

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Q: Can I respond more?

John: As a deeper level opens, you can respond as that level. Such a response is what is required for you to really come into that level. You don’t really know the level until you’re responding as that level.

Q: So I have to completely go into that level?

John: Yes.

Q: And be that level?

John: By responding as that level.

Q: And then that changes whatever it changes?

John: Yes. You moving as a deeper level will alter your self. When you follow-through, moving as a deeper level, you begin a reconfiguration of your self that doesn’t stop until your self is like that level, that deeper level that you respond to; that you respond to being as and moving as.

Q: The experience of it is quite strong now, butI imagine that that’s not necessarily going to stay and so I’m also really…been aware of what I’m knowing in it, but in the responding as that level, that is different, isn’t it?

John: Yes.

Q: And not having filters or boundaries in it is letting it move and change whatever needs to change?

John: It means that any consultation with your self is of no value to you. It has no voice for you.

Q: Okay.

John: Whatever you think and feel in your self is of no consideration when you respond as a deeper level. The way of having movement comes exclusively from the level, within, that you respond to. You come to that by relating only to that level. You won’t be looking back to familiarity to check how you’re doing or to make sure that all is safe.

A deeper level within is a form, a level of pure you. Your movement as that requires only you. If you include your self in that movement, you won’t move as a deeper level; you’ll move as your self. You need to be able to move exclusively as a deeper level for you to be that level in the midst of your self. You can’t be that level in the midst of your self if you’re not first being that level without your self, without any use of your self.

Q: So that’s pure response? There’s no consultation?

John: Yes. In the same way, the use of your person doesn’t help you be in your self. The use of your self doesn’t help you be in your heart, and the use of your self will certainly not help you be levels, deeper than your own heart.

Q: So all of it comes from that level?

John: Movement that is of that level comes from that level. Then when you move as your self, you’re not separate from that deeper level. When you have relinquished your self to respond as a deeper level, you have really come into that level. You’ve made it your home. As you resume your self, your self, by you, will be steeped in that deeper level. Being your self won’t be quite the same.

Q: And we have to completely relinquish the self and move as that first?

John: For you to move as a deeper level, yes. You can be your self while being awakened to a deeper level, but you cannot be your self for you to move as that deeper level.

Q: There’s definitely a higher seeing that’s part of this.

John: Yes.

Q: And there’s something about a higher seeing, but also really being in my feet.

John: It’s a different level of grounding. The grounding changes from being grounded in your self to being grounded in your heart to being grounded in knowing. Each level deeper seems to be less, but you know it is more.

Q:  So it’s like having  my own feet in knowing?

John: With knowing being safe. You act, you move, by what you know. It puts you into a completely different level of action, a level of action that in your self you’re clueless about. When you awaken to a deeper level, you’re not clueless — you know.

Q: And then it’s only that knowing, you said, that we move by and act by?

John: Yes, and that takes you completely past your self.

Q: You said something about safe, but I didn’t quite get that.

John: Familiarity is not safe. Familiarity is safe where you know it’s safe. Knowing is safe within your self and familiarity, but also beyond your self and beyond familiarity.

Q: So if we’re grounded in knowing, then we might be moving in what’s familiar in the self, but also in what’s not familiar in the self?

John: Yes.

Q: It’s just about the knowing?

John: Within familiarity and beyond it.

Q: So it might be that there’s no seeing or no experience?

John: Yes.

Q: Yeah.

John: Enough dialogue about it. The deeper levels are active. Come in.

Bringing Every Pattern Into Its Own Fire

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Q: John, I wanted to thank you for your response to my question last time you were here; it’s helped me a lot. What I wanted to ask today was for some help. I find that I have a lot of fear and a lot of confusion around relationships. I feel like I’ve been going around and around in circles for years.

John: You could completely leave relationship alone until you become the kind of person you would most want to be in relationship with. It isn’t a goal; it is a reality.

At present you’re able as awareness to be true to knowledge in the midst of any kind of relationship, but being true to knowledge will certainly be painful to your self. It means that you will always be bigger than what your self is, bigger than your own experience, bigger than any of the pining of patterns. When you don’t give your body food there will be physical suffering; if you give your body the incorrect food there will be physical suffering. When you’re not giving the patterns in your self the energy they demand, according to a feeling and an experience, your self will suffer. It isn’t a wrong suffering or a bad suffering. It is your self detoxifying. The patterns will go through withdrawals.

You can stop the suffering in your self by simply giving the pattern in your self the energy that it demands. You’ll feel better in your self in a superficial way, but in a profound way as awareness you will have compromised what you knew the truth of. Being as awareness true to knowledge in the midst of your self is a pain to your self. Oneness, in the midst of what isn’t one, hurts. The patterned self isn’t one; it doesn’t become one without your being oneness in it. Oneness in your self isn’t without development, the development of your self. It doesn’t occur without pain in your self.

You’re able as awareness to sustain being one with knowing in the midst of whatever self you have without having to address something in your self first. There’s always some experience of lack in your self. There isn’t anything wrong with the lack. The lack in your self is an issue of development, not an issue of you. Your self doesn’t need to develop for you to be all of you in it. Being that in your self is nurtureful guidance to your self that won’t necessarily feel good. When you do, as awareness, move past a pattern in your self, in your being more than what that pattern is, you feel the fire within the pattern. It awakens the pattern to everything that that pattern is, enabling you to understand in your heart exactly and deeply what it is in your self that you’re moving past.

For you as awareness to be one, you do not need to change your self for you to be what oneness is within your self. The change of your self is all your responsibility. To resist any knowledge of that is for awareness to resist knowing, awareness being the cause of its own departure from oneness. Within that, the self is innocent; the patterned self is innocent; the patterns are innocent. There is no split because of the self, because of the person, because of another self or another person. There is no split because of a circumstance. There is no split because of anything that happens to you. If there’s a split, it is because of you, you as awareness in some departure from knowing resisting being what you know the truth of, awareness being separate from knowing.

You don’t need to be the kind of self and the kind of person that you would want to be in relationship with. For you to be in your self, and for you to be in your self with another self, and to be so as persons is the bringing eventually of every pattern in your self into its own fire, and it isn’t too much for you. It’s only too much if you do separate from the tiniest little bit of knowing. Then immediately your self will be too much for you. Your patterns will be too much for you. The patterns in the other self, in the other person, will all be too much. If you’re separate from the tiniest little bit of knowing, that will immediately be projected by you onto your innocent self and onto the other person.

Having a self doesn’t confuse you. Being in relationship as a self with another self and within your person with another person doesn’t confuse you. Your being separate from the tiniest little bit of knowing has you needing confusion to cover that the separation is yours. The need for confusion makes you a victim of your own thinking. It projects the problem outwards. Oneness isn’t a release from suffering in your self; it is a release from all suffering that is the result of awareness being separate from knowing.

Read moreBringing Every Pattern Into Its Own Fire

Delicateness of Being in the Midst of Emptiness

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Q: I’ve found some real clarity around how I’ve used my intelligence to create this philosophy of working on my self and growing and healing. I see that there’s goodness in that and I also see how I’ve used it to be less than what I am. I choose to use experiences and relationships to minimize discomfort. I’m seeing emptiness in everything.

John: Emptiness is a wonderful bed for you to lie down in and to enter realization. As awareness, lying down in emptiness has you realizing the presence of all of the collectibles in your heart and realizing that on a heart level you don’t need them.

Development of every kind, spiritual development, inner development, the development of your self, compresses emptiness unless you do as awareness return to your first home – knowledge, being at home within knowing. Later, every kind of development is then according to knowledge if the fine line most worth realizing is being okay as is in emptiness. What the emptiness provides for you in realization is that you are in need of nothing.

When you are in your heart in need of nothing, you are open to knowing. Knowing doesn’t provide anything but knowledge. If that’s enough then you have everything.

Q: Where does movement come from out of that lying down in emptiness? I make myself a victim of this pain that I’m with. It becomes a wallowing instead of an acceptance. So if I find my bed in that emptiness I’m still in my life. So how do I stay in bed and still live?

John: Warmly having need of nothing enables you in your living to not be taking anything. That leaves you as delicateness of being in the midst of your living, delicateness of being in the midst of emptiness, in the midst of pain. When pain is quietly of no use to you, then pain on its own opens up the deep in you. With delicateness of being there are no hooks in your descent. When there are no hooks in your descent there’s no distraction from realization.

You’ll be realizing as awareness what you’re knowing. The realization turns into seeing. You’ll be seeing everything as you’ve not seen it before, seeing without having need of anything. It lets the seeing permeate everything. You’re rooted as awareness in knowledge. Your movement is that of your own being, and you have your self through which to express the goodness of it without reward even in the midst of reward.

In warmly having need of nothing, you will have as awareness everything according to knowledge, every level of development according to knowledge. All of the terms are according to knowledge. You’ll be living in your heart, in your self, and in your life, liking and loving believing knowledge. Of that comes all of your beingness, all of your doing, all of your reason for being and doing.

Everything matters, and all that matters is wonderfully dependent on the knowing within that defines it. As soon as need defines what matters then in your heart you’re lost. To lie down in the emptiness of that, you’re home in realizing, realizing what you know the truth of, realizing what you know the truth of in your heart, whether that gives you understanding or not.

Read moreDelicateness of Being in the Midst of Emptiness

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