Being Free Of Your Thinking Mind

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

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.

Read moreThe Dexterity of Consciousness

Providing For Your Child And For Your Self

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.

Being More Open within, to Really Meet Without

Q: Hi, John. Ever since I was little, I never saw that, whatever my dad was doing, that he was wrong. I just loved him so much that, whatever he was doing, I was okay with that, and I didn’t take it personally. Then my little sister was born and I don’t know why but I took it personally. I can’t open my heart to her.

John: It isn’t really her that you are not opening your heart to. It is really a deeper level of you. There is more to you than what you have found and related to in your self. There is also you in what is represented outside of your self. For you to see what your little sister is, is for you to be seeing, from within, a little bit more of you. Relating from a little bit more of you. For you to love your little sister is for you to be landed in your heart and coming from a little bit more of you. It isn’t really her; it is really you.

Q: So it is personal then?

John: The more open you are, within, the more capacity you’ll have to really meet with something outside of your self; to know, to see, to meet and to love. For you to love her includes more of you, requires more of you, within, for you to love her. If you have difficulty in loving her, your difficulty is really in opening deeper within, and realizing more of you that does really relate to knowing her, seeing her, meeting her and loving her. In this way your relationship with her shows you something of your relationship with you. In that way, how you are with her is how you are with you.

Q: I can see that.

John: Then you see her, and in seeing her, you see you. There’s much more to you than what you are used to.

Q: I used to be always on my own and figuring things out by my self.

John: That’s what you’re used to. What you are used to doesn’t represent all of you. That doesn’t represent all of reality. There’s much more to you than what you have experienced. There is much more to you than what you can see. There is much more to you than what you relate to. When you release what confines you, you come into what encompasses you. It’s slightly similar and profoundly different.