Tammy, Author at John de Ruiter Gems

Working Out Your Nervous System

September 24, 2018March 12, 2014 by Tammy

Q: We were driving home and I realized my heart was opening and I felt so much pain. I felt I didn’t want to go to meetings anymore because I was so scared. I felt I was naked and everyone had a knife and could cut me at any time. I was just scared and I’m still scared.

John: It’s easy for something to hurt your body. It’s difficult for something to hurt your self, and it is isn’t possible for anything to hurt you. Your experiencing that you can be hurt is really your experience of your own nervous system. It isn’t your experience of your self and it isn’t your experience of your heart. As your nervous system changes, your experience of what hurts you changes. When you really come to know what your heart is, then you come to realize that, within, you are not damageable even though you can feel everything and it is okay to feel everything. For you to feel more involves more of you. That makes you feel more vulnerable. It doesn’t actually make you more vulnerable.

When you protect your self in the way that you’re used to, when you protect your heart in the way that you’re used to, you’re not actually protecting something. You’re actually limiting you and stopping you. You’re closing down your actual capacity, your actual capacity to receive what seems that you’re not able to receive. You have your experience and you make a judgment based on your own experience of what your capacity is within. You misinform your self in that.

Trust something deeper within that you’re knowing a little bit. Trust that more than trusting your experience to tell you everything of what is actually occurring. The more trust, the more you open, the more you feel.

Q: But I trust my body.

John: When you don’t want to feel hurt, you’re trusting your nervous system. Your nervous system won’t open if you’re not opening within your own body. You can open in an instant within all of your body. As you’re being that in your own body, it takes time, perhaps even a long time, for your nervous system to open and change as much.

When you open in your body beyond what you’re comfortable with in your body, you’re moving past the comfort zone of your own nervous system. You’re stretching your nervous system. When you stretch it, it grows, it opens, it changes. When you stretch a muscle, it isn’t comfortable. It hurts. You need to stretch, even though it hurts. You understand the value of stretching. Apply that understanding to stretching your self, to stretching your own nervous system, to stretching the openness of your heart. All of it hurts and it’s all good.

If you’re uninformed and you stretch your muscle somewhat and it hurts, it will be easy for you to think in an uninformed state that you’re doing something wrong and you can make a judgment within. Then never stretch any muscle because it hurts when you do it; therefore you’re doing harm to your body when you stretch.

Q: But it’s all good?

John: You know that opening is good. It’s only when pain and hurt accompany the opening that you easily draw the conclusion that that’s damaging you. If you believe what you’re thinking in that, you’ll secure the conclusion and you’ll act on it and you’ll stop opening. You’ll stop stretching and everything becomes tight.

When you first realize the goodness of opening and you’re knowing it, you’re knowing the truth of it. That knowledge is worth more than the experience that follows. Experience doesn’t inform you. Knowledge informs you. There’s knowledge that is in the experience, but don’t just believe what you experience. Don’t take it all at face value. Discern what it is that you’re knowing the truth of in the midst of your experience. Then, when you experience something, that has you coming into realization. You begin to realize what you are knowing in the midst of your experience.

Q: So when I felt I was opening, I really stretched my self?

John: And before you felt the pain in that, you knew the truth in that and you loved it.

Don’t believe everything that you experience just because you experience it. Discern what you know the truth of in the midst of it. What if you have never worked out before and you decide to work out a little bit and it hurts and you’re somewhat confused, so you tell someone that it hurts and that person tells you it’s quite all right, keep going. You’re unsure but you’re trusting. The next day your whole body is really hurting and really sore. It would be easy for you to draw the conclusion that you are a fool. You shouldn’t have done what was hurting and now you have the proof of it to never do it again.

Stretch your self and be always giving your self work-outs. Stretch your nervous system. Stretch your mind. Work out your nervous system and your mind.

Q: How?

John: Open, within, and as soon as it hurts don’t recoil just because it hurts. Get to know how things actually work within and then live by what you have come to know the truth of.
When someone isn’t moving along fast enough for you and you have to wait, if you feel impatient, impatience hurts. It’s uncomfortable. It’s another level of hurt. If you listen to the hurt, it will be easy for you to draw the conclusion that the other person is doing something to you and that you need to stop what that person is doing to protect your self from that hurt.

Carefully examine every little way within everything in your life. Carefully examine hurt and you’ll realize how much of it you already understand and you already have perspective in, that you already know the truth of and that you’ve grown from. That you have grown immediately tells you there is much more for you to grow in. Then based on what you have already realized and learned, love realizing and learning, and you won’t stop the moment something hurts. You’ll realize instead. The truth of it is that you love realizing and you love learning. Have that on every level, within, that you’re capable of having awareness of.

Q: Do I just grow by stretching?

John: Yes, while really listening, within, while stretching. There’s a lot of information to take in while you’re stretching. Really open, within, and love really listening.

Q: I don’t know how to show more that I’m not a little kid.

John: Part of you is a little kid. There are aspects of that that need to never go away, and there are other aspects of that that you know, within, to let go of, that you know to move past. There’s a sorting out in that also hurts. Don’t not sort it out just because there is some hurt in it. Within every stage of your development there’ll be more that you come into that needs to be sorted out. Some of it you actually know to keep and some of it you actually know to let go of. If you’re being really sensitive, you’ll keep the good of every stage of development, including that of being a baby.

When you find the baby and the little child and the kid in your dad, you love him the more for it.

Q: Yes. That’s true.

John: In knowing that, keep the same true for you. Being seventeen years old, if you are all there, really all there, then you are not seventeen, you are one going on seventeen.

Time and Timing

September 24, 2018March 11, 2014 by Tammy

Q: Can this be too much openness, if you’re not ready for it? Sometimes my heart is very open and there’s many layers removed around my self, so it’s good and I have many positive contacts but then if something unpleasant happens, that’s too much. You really hurt.

John: That’s fine. You can’t be too open for your heart.

Q: So a big heart is okay? I have the feeling that my response is negative because I feel I have to protect my self.

John: You don’t need to protect your heart. You can protect your self as long as you’re not protecting your heart. That has you integrating your self. That has you developing in your self. If you are all open in your heart, you’re clean. If you’re all open in your self, you are naïve.

Q: So, the heart can be open and the self should be protected, can be protected? If I manage to sort out what’s my heart and what’s my self, then this also means that my response is not negative so that I can respond in an open way.

John: Yes.

Q: So if I feel open and a bit too unprotected, does it mean that I’m confusing the two?

John: If your heart is all open, you are able to protect your self in a way that helps the other. If someone says something to you that is unfitting and your heart remains all open, you won’t be taking what the other is saying about you personally, enabling you to speak to what the other has said or done in a way that helps the other. As soon as your heart closes, you are not able to really help the other.

Q: So when I am in a situation and I have enough awareness to feel that I’m closing, how do I find the strength or courage to stop it?

John: If you try to stop it, you’re valuing your self more than openness in your heart. If you value the openness in your heart more than your self, more than valuing your self, your whole heart will open, despite what’s happening to your self. When your heart is all open, that empowers you to function with clarity in your self. When your heart closes for any reason at all, you are disempowered. When your heart is in some way closed or hard, you are not all there in your self. You’re not present in your self. You’re occupied in your heart with something that on a heart level doesn’t matter as much as how you’re making it matter. When your heart closes or hardens for any reason at all, from your heart you are making your self wrong. That will have you needing from within your self to be right and you’ll project what you are in your heart onto the other person.

Q: Is it about being in touch with my heart all the time?

John: To start with, yes. When you’re in touch with your heart, you become in touch with what you know the truth of in your heart. What you know the truth of in your heart is of greater value than your heart, just as your heart is of greater value than your self. As soon as you start to move within, the deeper that you go within, the greater the value. When it is that value that you are awakening to and living for, then it is such value that fills your heart and fills your self. It becomes your life. It fills your life.

If your heart is always more open than what your self is, you’re getting it right. If your self is more open than what your heart is, you’re fooling your self. You’re lost in your self.

Q: So is it also about timing, to do what I’m ready to do or do what my heart is ready to do?

John: Always opening. On a heart level it is always time to open. Timing has to do with your self. Timing is developmental. Time has to do with your heart. Your real sense of time comes from openness in your heart. The application of that in your self with others has to do with timing.

Living In Your Heart

September 24, 2018March 10, 2014 by Tammy

Q: Five years ago I experienced my own death and since then I seem to be a little dysfunctional. I have mixed feelings about it. Actually I feel on the one hand very blessed and on the other hand it feels like a burden. Sometimes I get excited for a short time and then when I realize what it is that I’m excited about I feel that it’s actually not important. I feel a big urge to do things perfect and feel like losing my mind. Often I don’t know, so I feel like in a continuous upcoming crisis and accepting that again and another one is coming and then a few seconds later I can feel completely different and feel very much at peace or at ease with the same situation.

John: Surrender to being openness and softness of heart, regardless of what perception of reality you experience in your self.

Q: One moment I become very sad or whatever emotion comes up and then two seconds later it’s just completely disappeared. The first feeling of the emotion doesn’t feel that real afterwards but at that moment it did.

John: Take everything that you experience in your self lightly, regardless of the strength of the experience, so instead of relating to what you experience in your self, direct all of your relating to openness and softness of heart. You know how to let your heart open. You know what it means when you open your heart. You know what it’s like when your heart softens and you know how to let your heart soften.

The movement of your heart isn’t to be determined by what you’re experiencing in your self. When the experience of your self determines the movement of your heart, then depending on what you’re experiencing you will close and harden or you will open and soften. Live in your heart with the experiences that you have in your self no longer determining how your heart moves. Live deeply liking opening your heart and deeply liking softening your heart all the time. That puts you in control of your self, whereas the way that you are, your self is in control of you.

Whatever you’re experiencing in your self is determining what you are. With every change of what you’re experiencing in your self, that is for you like a change in the wind. With each little change, the direction of you is changed. That means that you are determined by what you are experiencing in your self. You have given your power to your self so whatever you’re experiencing rules.

Your self is not worth dying for. Your self is not worth living for. Live only for what you know, within, is worth dying for. Letting your heart open and letting your heart soften completely is worth dying for. Live that and your self will not govern you and rule you and own you any more.

Q: When I don’t know what to do in…

John: Open and soften your heart. It is what you know in your heart to be. Instead of looking at what you know in your self, look always to what you know in your heart. If you look for what you know in your self, you will become lost in your self because of not coming from what you know in your heart. Your living letting your heart open and soften without any conditions, meaning that anything that you’re experiencing in your self or as a self is not determining what is happening in your heart any more.

Live only for what you know in your heart is worth dying for.

Your Heart Needs No Protection

September 24, 2018March 9, 2014 by Tammy

Q: To me it looks as if I have to protect my heart and then I cannot find my own way to the heart. It looks that I need this protection.

John: You didn’t have the protection first. You didn’t have the protection when you were much lovelier. The more protection that you have over your heart, the less that you have your heart. Without the protection, you have your heart, you’re in your heart, and, in that, you are in everything. With the protection you are no longer in everything.

Q: Does it need a safe place in the outside, too, for protection?

John: No.

Q: I have the experience that I will be hurt if I don’t protect myself.

John: If you protect your self you’ll be much more hurt, the kind of hurt that you won’t feel. When you don’t protect your heart you will feel everything. You will feel every hurt and it won’t hurt you. You won’t suffer damage. When you protect your heart, you suffer damage. To protect your heart you need to harden, you need to harden your heart. In hardening your heart, you lose your heart. You’ll be coming from a hardness instead of coming from your heart.

You can protect your self, but from within not protecting your heart. When you’re protecting your self but not your heart, then you’re taking care of your self without taking your own self personally. When you protect your heart and you protect your self, you’ll be taking everything personally, everything of your heart and everything of your self. You’ll be making everything fit into a little perspective. You’ll make everything about your self. You’ll make about your self what isn’t about your self.

When you protect your heart, there is not going to be an expression of your own being. When your heart is unprotected, something of your own being is visible. When you protect your heart, you are removed from your own delicateness. When you are removed from your own delicateness within, you have lost your way. You won’t be navigating with beingness. You won’t be moving about with beingness if you are removed from your own delicateness.
With an open and a soft heart you still have your self through which to function. Even through the function of your self in coming from an openness and a softness of heart, what is someone else going to do to you?

Everything hurts. When your heart is open and someone shows you a kindness, the kindness hurts. Protect your heart and you won’t be hurt any more. You’ll be without all of your delicateness. Everything needs to touch your heart without your putting something in front of that. Everything that touches your heart brings out the deep in you. The deep in you is what gives presence in your life. As awareness, you are not all there if the deep in you isn’t present. When the deep in you is present, everything touches your heart.

When you protect your heart, that protection stays with you. It becomes a part of your self. You lose all of the sensitivity that you had when you were lovelier. Protect your heart and you will live as though you have no being.

Your heart is the door to your own Being. For that door in you to be clear, your heart needs to be unprotected, enabling you to move as a being, despite what anybody else does.

A New Level of ‘Mother’

September 24, 2018March 9, 2014 by Tammy

Q: My son came up here and there’s a pain in my heart. It’s like something isn’t completed with him. I still carry him. I carry his pain, but sometimes I see that I can be loyal to his little self and I know that’s not what he needs. I have a little guilt of my own for being so ready to take off and let my children go their own way and have their own path. I feel I need to show them and I can’t because I need to first settle in that myself.

John: Cut the strings. Cut the strings from the level within that you’re accustomed to relating to with them. Surrender to the deepest level within that you’re aware of and there you’ll be realizing most fine, delicate strings that connect to them, strings that are all like your being and theirs.

Your patterned relationship with them can gently come apart. The relationship will be in the care of the deeper level that you’ll be coming from. It isn’t able to move to the deeper level if you’re holding to the level that you’re accustomed to. The level of relationship with them that you’re accustomed to isn’t able to reach the deeper level in them or in you.

Q: I miss being in the deep with them.

John: The pain of that in your heart will help you in your use of delicateness.

Q: How can I use delicateness?

John: Use the fine, fine strings that are of the deeper levels. They are most delicate. You can pull on them. You can use the strings. It is with the delicateness of being that you use them. Anything else that uses them will break them.

Q: “Anything else?” What could that be?

John: Personal need.

Q: Of being a good mother.

John: Personal need of anything. Personal need breaks the strings of delicacy.
As you break them, you become calloused to them. You become thick-skinned toward them. Personal need makes you thick-skinned toward others and thin-skinned toward your likes and your dislikes, insensitive to others, insensitive to what you want from others, including your children.

Your coming from the deeper levels within will change what you’re relating from in your relationship with them. Coming from the deeper levels within will change all of your relationships.

Q: I look forward to that.

John: They will be realizing a level of “mother” that they haven’t seen before. They might not like it, but if they’re honest within, they’ll recognize the truth of it. Your moving to the deeper levels, and from within them setting out in what you know, is the best that you can give them. They will recognize in you what is next for them. They’ll know the way because they’ll see it in you. Your living example is of greater value than the old relating. It’s a kindness to them.

This is what you are made of. Make decisions that favor this. Form your self and your life in a way that favours this.

About Acne and Depression

September 24, 2018March 7, 2014 by Tammy

Q: Since I was very young I have struggled with depression and acne and bowel problems and the more I question my thoughts and the deeper I go the worse it gets. It just seems my self is getting a lot harder and I don’t really know what to do.

John: First be okay with all of that just the way it is. Instead of just having some problems, you are absorbed by your problems.

Q: I’ve always thought that there was like a mind-body connection and the more the thoughts and questions, the worse it gets.

John: You’re looking for a profound solution within superficial problems. You’re taking your problems to heart. Then you don’t just have problems; you make you a problem. You have a problem with your problems and you have a problem with your self. That turns the problem into you. That makes you as awareness wrong. You need to be okay as awareness within all of your problems. Have an opening and a softening of your heart within all of your problems. That relaxes your relationship with your patterning concerning your problems.

Q: So is illness irrelevant?

John: To your self– no. To what you first are in what’s deeper than your self – yes.

Q: So what am I supposed to do when it seems like depression is taking over? I hear you talk about relating to that tiny little bit, but it seems like the depression just gets louder.

John: That’s because you care about your problems more than you. Your problems matter more to you than you. Even if you could make your problems go away, you will still have all of your patterning that demands satisfaction, so then you’ll remake your problems in something else.

Q: So how do I change my patterning?

John: Let go of your relationship with your problems.

Q: How?

John: By being honest as awareness. Do your problems honestly matter as much as you feel they matter? Instead of first addressing your problems, address your relationship with what you know in your heart. When you’re being true to knowledge in your heart, then there isn’t the issue of fundamental separation any more. If there is an issue of fundamental separation, you’ll project the profoundness of that onto everything that is superficial. You’ll be confusing levels. Other than your problems being difficult in your surface existence, there isn’t something wrong with those problems being there.

Q: If I stop relating to my problems and that patterning ceased, what’s underneath that?

John: You as awareness in real relationship with knowledge, in real relationship with what you do know the truth of in your heart. Or you as awareness not in real relationship with knowledge, which makes you separate in your heart from what you first are within. What does that feel like? In your experience, tenderness, with the beingness of that in your own heart mattering more to you than your problems.

Q: So when my mind is being filled with awful experiences or things I’m ashamed of, I’m just to not relate to them and to go to where the tenderness is?

John: Yes, but that won’t work unless a touch of being in your heart such as tenderness means more to you than all of your problems. Otherwise you’ll be accessing something of your being, exploiting your own beingness to fix your problems. An awakened being with acne is not less complete and less happy than an awakened being without acne.

Q: If you’re awakened does that mean you’re happy?

John: If you are true to your awakening, then you are essence of happiness. Essence of happiness has no need to experience happiness. Essence of happiness provides happiness.

Through your problems, you’ve become addicted to your self. Have your own being instead of having your own self. Your own being needs to matter more to you than your own self. The tiniest, tiniest touch of a quality of being needs to mean more to you than all of your self. Then you have a tiny little bit of real ground, a ground of being from which to build your self. You will have problems inside your self and outside your self until you’re dead. What matters more than all of that is that you do really have your own being in the midst of your self and its problems before you’re dead.

Your life has little purpose if you are separate from your own knowledge within. If you’re separate as awareness from your own knowledge within you will live separate from your own being. Even though the connection lives, you’re not living by that connection.

As awareness, your self matters more to you than your own heart. That makes you as awareness subject to the kind of self you have. On those terms there isn’t anything that can fix your issues. You need to belong more to your own heart than to your self. Then your own self will stabilize, but you cannot belong to your own heart for a result. You cannot come to rest in your heart just so your self will stabilize. To do that is to deceive your self.

Belong to your own heart instead of to your self. When you belong to your own heart then you will become acquainted with what you know the truth of in your heart. Then in belonging to what you know the truth of you will have real and immediate entrance to what is deeper within than what your own heart is. You will have free access into your own being.

Q: Does that mean ignoring the physical for now?

John: That means having a different relationship with the physical so that your own inner well-being is no longer dependent on your physical condition. Your self matters more than your problems: you need to take that heart. Your own heart matters more than your self: you need to take that to heart. Your own being matters more than your heart and you need to take that to heart. What you know the truth of, within, matters more than your own being. You need to take that to heart.

With all of that, you’ll be living by what matters most, including, from within that, everything that matters next. You’ll have perspective. In the way that you’ve configured your heart and your self, you don’t have real perspective. What you have is a patterned development of addressing first what doesn’t matter the most.

You need to take care of your self more than taking care of your problems, and you need to take care of your heart more than taking care of your self. Work on those two things and you will find your way into everything within that is deeper than those two things.

The Tiny Little Bit of Truth in Your Heart

September 24, 2018March 6, 2014 by Tammy

Q: Lately I’ve been confused about God. Is there only one God or several Gods?

John: Despite anything that you’ve learned, despite the conditioning of your upbringing and your experiences, despite any of your reading, despite any of your perceptions, despite anything that you can seem to hold or handle in your self, despite any mind of yours, you either know or you don’t. If you know, believe what you know, adding nothing to it. If you don’t know, then don’t believe anything. Then you are devoid of having something concerning the question, and there is an innocence of heart in your simply not knowing.

If you don’t know, you don’t need to know. If you do know, you need to believe what you know. Love knowing the difference. The issue isn’t God or Gods. The real issue is what of any of that do you actually know the truth of and then to come from that. That makes all confusion in that issue unnecessary.

You need to begin with what you do actually have. You don’t have your confusion. You don’t actually have your beliefs. All that you actually have is what little bit within you really know the truth of. Return to that. In all of your heart, like having nothing else and you’ve returned as awareness to being what knowing is. You have returned to the beginning of oneness. If you develop as awareness from anything other than that, you fool your self.

As awareness, be freed in your heart by what you know the truth of, even if that leaves you without understanding. Have your freedom in what you know the truth of. You can be what you know without having to understand it. Real knowledge precedes all understanding. Real knowledge comes before understanding. Having any understanding without real knowledge isn’t real understanding.

Q: What do you mean by real knowledge?

John: Real knowledge is what tiny little bit you actually know the truth of in your heart. If all that you know at all in your heart is to let your heart open and soften, then that little bit is living Knowledge for you. It’s the knowledge that you live by. It is what you know within.

Even if you lose your mind, that knowledge in your heart doesn’t change. Living knowledge, what little bit you know the truth of in your heart, you are able as awareness to be. If your mind goes crazy, if you should lose your mind, if you should suffer dementia, it makes no difference to what you’re knowing in your heart. Your capacity to be what you know is undiminishable.

Have your heart in that and you’ll begin to realize what you know in your heart. If all that you know the truth of in your heart is a tiny little bit, it isn’t “just enough.” That tiny little bit is everything. You don’t need more. If you come from that, if you come from that tiny tiny little bit, you will realize more.

Whether God is or isn’t, whether God is one or many…you mustn’t believe anything unless you know. If you believe something that you don’t actually know the truth of, you deceive yourself. Even if your belief just happens to be true, but you’re not knowing the truth of it, you deceive yourself.

Whatever you know the truth of, whether that is almost nothing at all or whether it’s much, it makes no difference. You do need to believe only and all of what you know, nothing less and nothing more. Then you’re home.

Being Free Of Your Thinking Mind

September 21, 2021March 4, 2014 by Tammy

Q: I have a lot of thinking in my life. I was wondering if you would be willing to help or guide me a little to liberate me from that in this moment.

John: For you to change that, you would have to shift your orientation as awareness. The thinking offers you something less than what you first are. It satisfies something that you’re being in your self. Your thinking being a strength will have you naturally orienting to that in terms of function and facility. It’s your strength that will then be covering your weaknesses, using your strength to compensate for weakness. That increases your strength in an imbalanced way and separates you even more from the weaknesses in your self. For you to cope in your self and in life with that, you will have to necessarily hold an imbalance. You would have to hold your self out of balance.

For you to come into balance just in your self, you would have to be letting go of what you’re holding to in the use of your strength, in the use of your thinking. In having developed your thinking mind, you’ve been able to acquire things for your self. You’ve been able to protect your self. You’re able to use your strength in having what you want and in working for what you feel you need. To come into balance in your self, you will be letting what you are as awareness relax in your self. Consequent to that is a letting go of everything that you hold to through the use of your thinking mind, the defences that you have in place in your self. You’ll be losing those defences. You’ll be landing in all of the weaknesses in your self that you’ve been using your strength to avoid.

There is a lot entailed in your being free of your thinking mind. For you to be free of your thinking mind, that will cost you the way that you’ve put your self together. It will cost you your patterned self. The patterning of your self that your thinking mind holds together will come apart. These patterns in your self are completely dependent on your continuing to favour your strength and to stay away from your weaknesses. To begin to let go of that will be confronting the very orientation that has you inclined to favour strength and to hold weakness in disfavour. Beginning to deal with being free from your own thinking ultimately confronts your own orientation as awareness within all of your self.

Q: I know I should go beyond the thinking, and I have embraced weaknesses and emptiness, but it’s not easy to get there.

John: For this to work you would have to apply it everywhere in your life in the details that you have applied your thinking.

Q: I do. I try. That’s why I sit down here in these moments with you.

John: The self that you’ve created and the self that you’ve come into this world with has a momentum. Just because you relate to something that you’re knowing the truth of within, it doesn’t mean that momentum will stop. For the momentum to stop is for you to be of a different orientation as awareness within your self, while the energy of what has been your investment in your self slowly dissipates. As that energy dissipates, pressure will increase on you to return to an old orientation. For you to not succumb to that pressure enables the orientation within your self to come out by the roots, which as an experience over a period of time is anything but pleasant. It’s an awful experience. Freeing what you are as awareness from the habit of your self is your pulling out by the root your relationship to what habit is. You will be feeling the pressure of that everywhere in your self.

It will seem that everything of life will be moving against you because everything of life inflames the pattern in your self that you’re no longer participating with. Your suffering will increase until all of the energy that you’ve invested in your self is dissipated and used up in your self. It takes time for the momentum of your self to stop. Being what you first are isn’t a process. For you as awareness to be what you first are is for you as awareness to be completely surrendered to knowledge within, knowledge that has no form. You simply know what you know the truth of. Your return to being that can involve a process, but doesn’t need a process. It needs only your agreement as awareness with knowledge. Agreement enables absorption. The surrender to knowledge is able to occur without process in a moment. Letting go of all of that requires no process. For awareness to shift doesn’t require energy, but for your self to match that, for your self to shift, requires as much process as the making of your self.

The follow-through of a fundamental shift of awareness, through your self, requires an entire process of being, first, what is of no process. Being knowledge isn’t a process, but being knowledge within a self that isn’t like what you first are does involve an entire process – until your self becomes as you are. When you’re separate from knowledge for a long period of time, you will be developing a self that matches what you are being as awareness in it, making you and your self the same, you being different from what you first are.

The return home to what you first are will naturally show you the full extent of what you have turned your self into, the entire habit of your self that you’ve put in place to protect you from your return, your return to oneness. When you are being in some way separate from what you first are, your greatest love and longing of return that is embedded in all of your self will also be your greatest fear. When you begin to change what you are as awareness within your self, you’re changing the comfort zone of your self.

Q: But what happens if I’m letting go of things and I feel happy? What happened with the woman yesterday who said it was cool? It doesn’t match with what you’re saying. I’ve been there. It feels great.

John: It being experienced as being cool is of a limited perspective. To really live it, that cool experience, that cool perspective, will not be offering very much any more. The novelty within the self of realization passes, and you’re left with the reality, as awareness, of a fundamental shift that has with it no reward at all. As soon as there is an orientation around reward, you are split as awareness. Being what you know works with an experience of ease in your self as long as it isn’t conflicting with the patterns in your self. As soon as you’re left even being close to some of the patterns in your self, the ease passes and disturbance replaces it. You then feed the patterns in your self, giving you a temporary relief from pressure, but separating you from knowledge, creating the profound pressure of knowing you’re separate.

Addressing separation requires you as awareness, concerning knowledge, to being all in. Any little part of awareness that you leave out creates a serious problem. You’ll be using that tiniest little part to prove to your self that being what you know doesn’t work. Awareness is able to fragment itself. It’s able to be part in and part out. It’s able to be almost absolutely out or almost absolutely in. Being knowledge works in an absolute way only if all of awareness is absolutely all in. It isn’t difficult as awareness to monitor because knowing is what awareness is. To be aware is to know. All the way out into form within anything that you’re in, you’re able to be ‘in’ to different measure.

You’re able to be ‘in’ something without your heart in it. That’s part of you in, and part of you out. You’re able to accomplish subtleties of that to great sophistication. That ability comes from the ability that you are as awareness. It will all show in the management of your own forms. Being free of thinking costs you your self. For you to be free of your thinking, you will be going against you as awareness. For you to be moving with what your self is and then completely stop, that is like living moving with a stream and suddenly standing still midstream. All of your self will be pushing against you. For as long as you’re stopped midstream, your self with be uncomfortable. You will be compelled to yield to the pressure and follow the stream of your self.

The Dexterity of Consciousness

September 24, 2018March 3, 2014 by Tammy

Q: I cracked wide open today with a lot of flooding of emotion. I see clearly how self-indulgent it is to waver in that place of being in presence and being invited to go there completely but still playing in the mind and emotions. I consider myself a victim of separation, but really I think it’s just choice, that the play of life is more interesting. I can play the role of being unworthy or living a tragic love story with my self and when there’s a fall from grace, it’s just a confirmation of my humanness, which is pathetic.

John: Tricky.

Q: Is there any truth in that play of life?

John: Not for you. There’s truth in it for you if you’re coming from what matters more. If you’re separating from the greater meaning within, then you will exploit the meaning you do identify with, so you won’t be in such meaning for the truth of it. You can’t be in it for the truth of it unless you’re coming from the greater truth within.

Q: And then when that play is with another, when you’re cooperating in their drama, which is also my own, it’s easy to blame others for their behavior.

John: Projecting onto others what you’re coming from is a distraction from being able to see what you’re coming from. By believing your self in it, you make it all real. You make it your reality.

Q: Sometimes that play happens almost as if it’s not even me doing, like something’s moving through me making me act in a certain way with another.

John: You give your self the power that belongs to you. That empowers the patterns in your self. Those patterns move on their own because you need them to. Subconsciously it relieves you of responsibility, having someone else for you to deal with instead of dealing with your self, having your self to deal with, instead of how you’re being in your self, and having how your being in your self to deal with instead of you. Reinforced level upon reinforced level to protect you from being meaning, conditioning your self to be in relationship with the lack of meaning outside of you and in your self. So then you live with being stories protecting stories.

Q: But seeing that is not enough.

John: Knowing the truth within doesn’t make you what you’re knowing the truth of within. If you’re knowing the truth within and you’re not being and coming from what you’re knowing, you’ll create a story around that, a story that protects you.

Q: But really that’s more danger.

John: It puts you in danger of you. Dishonesty continues to graft new distortions into your self. Core honesty in your heart, core honesty in relationship to your own real deeper knowledge, takes you to the root of what you’ve created and it takes you deeper than that root. It takes you into what has no distortion. Then you’re coming from that, sustaining being that at the personal cost to everything that you’ve created in your self that’s separate in its function and its beingness from your own real knowledge. As soon as there is a profound liking of growing up, you’re at the beginning of being free. Liking taking responsibility for all of your powers ends the distorted use of them. Knowledge within is freed by your surrendering to it, freeing the beingness of deeper knowledge: love.

Q: There’s a lot of confusion around discerning what is taking responsibility. What is the right path? That’s a place I can get lost in and wrap stories around.

John: That’s an exploitive use of your own power. You’re using what you’re able to be confused about to cover and conceal what you’re not confused about, using confusion to conceal your clarity.

Q: All in the name of wanting to do the right thing.

John: It all reveals your dexterity in maneuvering away from your own real knowledge. Your being is impervious to all your difficulty and confusion. The use of your self, in all its complexity, isn’t enough to completely cover your own Being. Within all of that complexity you still know. Knowing doesn’t end. You’ll exploit your self to cover that, to put a callous over that, even though it never does really work. It keeps leaving you within your self with what you’ve created.

Q: And so I watch my self slipping away from that and moving back into the complexities of wanting to ask you questions about free will and is it worthy to create anything here. So if I’m creating this, is it worthy to create a better “this?”

John: More dexterous maneuvers. It all reveals your underlying genius in it all, the misuse of wonderful ability, using insincerity in an effort to make your self sincere, instead of just simply being sincere at any personal cost. You will be facing everything within that insincerity refuses to face. Until you get that right, you will make everything wrong.

Your ability as awareness within your self to exploit and distort is originally your ability to be clear, but being clear makes you completely responsible, responsible for all of your own beingness, responsible for all of your doing, for your patterned condition. You will know your responsibility for clarity despite all of your history. You will face every discomfort in your self that you’ve been avoiding. Instead of being true to the self that you’ve conditioned, patterned and created, you’ll be true to you. You’ll be true to pure you. Your somewhat wild attractions and aversions won’t have the loyalty of your heart any more.

Q: Could you speak to my very subtle unconscious fear of harming others?

John: It’s insincere.

Q: The question or the dilemma?

John: All of it. If you’re not letting yourself see your own condition in your self, seeing from within your own living knowledge, then you are living separate from the ultimate source of your own life. There isn’t anything more worthy of your own knowledge than getting right what you’ve come into this world for, and that is for you to realize you, to realize what you are: living knowledge with all of its beingness having a self and a life with which to manifest all that is deeper.

Q: I feel like I’m wasting this life because I am stuck in this place of not finding my self. There’s a world out there that maybe I’m missing and maybe I’m supposed to be in service to. That’s another one of my confusions.

John: It’s a rouse. It’s a rouse of yours. It isn’t real. You don’t need to find your self or realize your self. You don’t even need to know your self for you to know you and realize you and be what you first are in the midst of whatever kind of self you happen to have. You don’t need to understand for you to know. Putting any focus on what you’re not understanding is a maneuver away from your actual clarity. It’s a maneuver away from knowledge. It’s a maneuver away from your being what you do know the truth of. It’s story-making. It’s your power of clarity that you use to make the story.
If you look at it from its root, it reveals your own genius. You don’t give credit for the depth and the breadth of your powers and your abilities. If you did, you would know how clearly responsible you are. You wouldn’t have anything to blame. You would be liking how true it is that you are wonderfully without excuse. Instead of trying, you would love.

It all seems to you that it continues on its own because you’ve created the sophisticated patterning that accomplishes that. You make your self a victim even of your own being because of how unreachable your own being is and how overbearing your self is.

As awareness you’re highly accomplished in everything that you’ve created in your self. You’re highly accomplished in your use of all of that to keep you separate from what you actually love the most within. When you’re profoundly honest within, honest to the core, you have not a speck of ground from which you can feel sorry for your self. You’re able as awareness from within your own living knowledge to turn everything around. You’re able, more than anything, to be free.

When you’re not sure what to be or what to do, be and do completely the tiniest little bit of your own present and available clarity. You’ll have much to be and much to do. You’ll be engaging your deeper powers of realization instead of running to your powers of thinking. From within the depth of realization, you’ll be loving thinking. Your plate is somewhat full. You need to own it and you need to own that what is on your plate isn’t you. Everything that’s on your plate is yours. It’s all in your care.

Providing For Your Child And For Your Self

September 24, 2018March 2, 2014 by Tammy

Q: John, how can I be in this space and do things? How do I find this space and take care of the needs of my kids? I came here tonight because I felt overwhelmed by the responsibility. With all the caring I have for my daughter there also comes anxiety. How to do it?

John: In the same way that you are in this, in what this space is for you: the way of openness and softness of heart.

Q: What hurts is having to say “no.”

John: Say “yes” as this and say “no” as this. When you say “no” to her as this, you meet with her and she is loved. She’s seen and she’s known. That much alone exceeds the best parenting. On the surface, if you do many things wrong but come from this, she’ll get it right. Or on the surface do everything that’s right and don’t come from this, and she’ll be confused.

Q: How do I anchor in this?

John: Without using your self to do so. Then she’ll see in you how she also doesn’t need to use her self to anchor within. She’ll be learning quickly what matters most. She’ll grow up seeing it.

What she is seeing in being with you is that what this is matters more to you in your heart than your own self matters to you in your heart. She’ll love coming from the same. She’ll experience from you that this, within, matters more than her self, giving her an anchoring within that doesn’t come from her self. It comes from her knowing and being the truth that she knows in her heart.

She’ll grow up witnessing and experiencing from you a living orientation that she knows the truth of. You’ll be giving her no reason to be lost. When knowing means more to you than seeing, and seeing means more to you than experiencing, she’ll be realizing what she is, easily and quickly. She’ll be growing up in it.

Q: A doubt arises that I am as capable of this as I would like to be.

John: Has doubt ever informed you of what you do know?

Q: No.

John: Then don’t listen to your self concerning what you do know in your heart, and she’ll be learning from you the same. She’ll grow up being clear in what isn’t common.

Q: It’s the first time I’ve experienced caring in this way. It’s something of a change. Sometimes, however, I feel tied down, confined.

John: Don’t believe your self. Don’t believe your self, for what you know within matters more than what your self is. That has you drawing from what does matter most, even if you’re not understanding it or seeing it. You’ll still live being rooted in it.

You’ll be growing within, in a way that isn’t informed by your past. It isn’t informed by your learning. It isn’t informed by what you acquire with your mind. The growing within is informed only by what you know the truth of in your heart. However little that is, that means the most to you. So then you trust it and you believe what you’re knowing instead of trusting and believing something of your self to inform you of what you know doesn’t come from your self.

When you are rooted in knowing within, from everything that you have gleaned in your past in your self, it will seem that you’re rooted in coming from within what is so little while you are knowing that it’s everything. That will have you as awareness in your heart being something that is different from what your self is. And as you sustain being that in your heart in the midst of your self, your self will slowly become the same. There’s no rush at all for your self to become as this because you know that you are able to come from this in an instant. You’re able to be what this is in you without a single movement in your self.

That’s what enables, in time, your self to rest and to no longer have to produce for you what you’ve been requiring of it, knowing that what you’re requiring of your self is something that is other than you’re your self is. Your self isn’t able to produce for you what you are, in what is deeper than your self. You are able to produce in your self what you are, in what is deeper than your self. That has you, as awareness, being the provider for your self and relieving your self of having to be that.

That leaves your self unburdened by you, enabling your self to rest concerning everything that is deeper than what your self is.You are more than your self and if that’s what you’re coming from within, your self rests in that. Your daughter will also be growing up resting in that. Because of you it will be what is most real to her. She’s growing up with it. She won’t need to go all of the different ways that you have gone.