Without A Speck Of Negativity: Surrendered To What You Really Are

Q: For a long time, I have felt defeated in some way by my self and wanting it to be different. I would like your help to avoid getting so triggered and to stay in my heart.

John: Deeply surrender to using no negative phrasing within your life, inside and out.

Q: I’ve been thinking about being more positive, but that feels like pretending.

John: Not positive; just not negative. If you are positive instead of being negative, you’ll fool your self. Just simply not negative. That exposes your self.

Q: So what would that look like in my life?

John: That you won’t say anymore what you don’t like; that you won’t anymore validate the feelings of not liking something.

Q: But wouldn’t I still have those feelings?

John: And you’ll give those feelings no voice and no movement, without replacing them with the positive.

Q: What do I replace them with?

John: Being quieted. There is the difference between you and your self. You can say what you do like because that often and easily puts you into your heart. Just no longer say what you don’t like.

Q: So if I’m in the midst of feeling negative about something should I just not say anything?

John: Not even on the inside. If you say it on the inside, you’ll say it on the outside. Give it no voice and no movement. The easiest is when you give it absolutely nothing – not even a speck.

Q: In order to do that, I need to be coming from what I really am.

John: Yes, which means that any time you have a negative feeling, that’s your cue to drop deeply, within, into surrender. The deep surrender to being quieted within when any negative feeling comes up puts you into what you really are. Replace the negative with the positive, and you engage your self. You make what you’re experiencing all about your self.

Q: What if I’m in a situation where someone has done something to me that isn’t right? I feel justified in feeling negative about it.

John: Be quieted within instead of being right.

Q: So I don’t have to fix anything – just me?

John: There’s nothing to fix in you.

Q: Just to change where I’m coming from.

John: Being you instead of being your self, yes. Being you is uneventful. Being your self is all about what you like and what you don’t like, but mostly what you don’t like.

Q: If there’s a situation where I think there’s something I need to resolve, I should first come from me and then resolve the situation?

John: And forego resolving things if it means leaving you.

Q: It seems inevitable that I’m going to fall a lot. 

John: And when you do, let it be without a negative word or movement about it.

The Menstrual Cycle: An Invitation Into Your Mystery

Q: I wanted to ask you about menstruation. During that time of month, or at least the week before, I am in so much pain in my heart. Does that come from my self?

John: The different hormones moving in your body are going to put your self under pressure. So it doesn’t come from your self, it comes from the hormones. But the self that you have isn’t prepared to deal with those hormones. It brings it under pressure.

Q: Is that what creates the pain in my heart?

John: Yes. Your self is being pushed and it’s a good thing. It’s a sweet thing.

Q: So is that just a block or a weakness?

John: Yes.

Q: Is that also the opportunity?

John: Yes, so once a month you get to really deal with those things that stand in between you and your future self. Once a month you get a heads-up. This is your homework.

Q: I feel it’s something I don’t understand. Obviously on a physical level I do, but I still feel like there’s so much more happening on deeper levels.

John: Then on a deeper level be quieted within a deeper sense of what’s occurring, which will open up a vulnerability in your self.

Q: It’s just I already feel so vulnerable during that time.

John: So that’s the time of the month where you don’t want to feel vulnerable, but that’s also the time of the month where you have access into a deeper level because the mystery in you is near the surface. That’s why you feel more emotional, more vulnerable. Your self isn’t accustomed to mystery coming up. The hormones come up and the mystery comes up, and that puts your self under pressure.

So once a month you have the opportunity to deal with some of the things that you’ll need to deal with for you to come into your future self, and once a month you have the opportunity to be in the presence of your own mystery. They are opposite directions.

Q: Can you say more about the opposite directions?

John: Dealing with your self as well as with your mystery. Dealing with your self takes you out, and dealing with the mystery takes you in. Both make you vulnerable.

Q: And is it better to be more in the mystery?

John: Be in both. Be okay in the vulnerability.

 

Attention Deficit Disorder And Your Use Of Mind

Q: I have a question about ADD. When I’m studying, thoughts come and I can’t focus anymore. I am able to go within and be in my heart whilst it’s happening, but I am still not able to study.

John: Then you’re going into your heart but you’re not bringing your heart into your thinking. It’s easy for you to go into your heart. To bring your heart into your thinking is difficult. 

When you bring your heart into your thinking, that brings you into your present development in how you use your mind and your thinking. You’re confronted with your actual state of development, the actual developmental stage of your own mind. When you bring your heart into your thinking, that makes your thinking developmental.

Q: Otherwise they’re just separate?

John: Yes. Then you’ll use your mind by way of its strength, and when you’re not in that strength you won’t use your mind. Gaps remain in the development of your mind, and when you bring your heart into your thinking you’ll face the lack of development in your mind.

Q: Does that mean I can’t study because there’s something I’m afraid to see?

John: When you’re in your heart and you bring your heart into your thinking, you’ll encounter the blocks in your self to deal with your thinking. You’ll encounter your mental blocks. Within each mental block there’s a developmental lack in your self and in your mind, areas where you haven’t grown up in your thinking.

When that is so, you’ll think through the use of force. You’ll think because you want to or you have to. You won’t be relaxed in your thinking. As soon as you’re relaxed in your thinking, you come into inability in your mind. You don’t like the inability, so then you’ll use force in your mind, whereas depth of thought requires relaxation in your thinking. If you use force within your thinking, you can’t have depth of thought. 

Profound thought requires thinking in the same way that your own being is. You can put your mind to work through the use of force, but then your mind will work in the way that your self is, not in the way that your being is.

Through the development of your mind by you responding to your heart and being your heart in your mind, you slowly come into the subtle use of your mind. You realize your subtle mind. There’s more power in the subtle mind than in the surface of your mind. If you’re only used to the surface of your mind, then you’ll use force to think, whereas the clearest kind of thinking is within your subtle mind where the use of force and power isn’t needed.

Q: So, speaking practically, if I’m sitting studying and see my surface mind working, how would I bring my heart into my mind? How do I deal with this lack and be able to study?

John: Most of your studies don’t require anything more than a surface use of your mind. They don’t require a whole use of mind. When you’re in a whole use of mind, then as you study, your mind is much more expanded than the subject requires. You’re able to perceive the depth of what you’re studying, which has little to do with what you’re actually studying. Then the information opens up in its depth and it becomes applied to everything, so whatever you’re studying applies to everything on every level. That won’t help you with your marks.

Q: I can study for hours but never finish – I seem stuck in some part of it. But I need to finish the work! How can I bring myself to finish it?

John: That has to do with the mastery of your self by what you know in your heart. If you try to confine the mastery of your self so that you can get your homework done, then you’re applying a self-discipline. 

A self-discipline is only an aspect of your self being mastered by what you know in your heart. You can apply the aspect of mastery through self-discipline so that you can achieve good marks in your studies, but that doesn’t mean your self is mastered by what you know in your heart. That means that you’ve mastered something in your self so that you can have good marks.

Q: Actually, I don’t want the good marks; I just want to keep studying so they can’t throw me off the course!

John: You need to master some aspects of your self for you to be able to fulfill the course, but you need to master all of your self for you to fulfill your life. Fulfill your whole life while you’re fulfilling the requirements of the course.

Beyond Survival: The Power Of Real Womanness

Q: We’ve spoken about sexual lameness, and I know the truth of that. I’ve lived in fear of being a woman. At about three years old, I saw someone with very large breasts, and I prayed to God that I wouldn’t grow up like that. I’ve given a lot of my energy to being androgynous, but I do really want to be a woman. When I meditate, I can feel the power I could have as a woman. It’s so much more pure than the energy I put into androgyny, which is exhausting. But as soon as I stop meditating, I turn back into the fear. I don’t know what it takes to be a woman in today’s society, but I want to get beyond the fear.

John: Cleanness. Cleanness is what is required to be a woman.

Q: I get that part because that is what I’m experiencing when I’m meditating. But my brain takes over when I’m not doing that, and it feels so heavy. How do I carry that into my daily life?

John: By not existing in your daily life for survival. Real womanness is something that is beyond survival.

Q: So would that mean that I’m surviving as a woman, or I’m just surviving?

John: Trying to survive. Needing to survive separates you from a very tender femininity. Needing to survive or identifying with survival will make you masculine. 

Q: How do those two go together?

John: Real womanness is beyond relating to survival.  Relating to survival distorts your womanness. When you relate to survival, that brings in a hardness of heart. Womanness becomes more masculine: womanness being the strength that it knows it is not. 

The actual strength of womanness is transparency. Transparency doesn’t relate to strength; it relates to realness. Realness is beyond survival. Real femininity is secure in transparency.  

As soon as you either use your sexuality or neglect your sexuality, that makes you more masculine. Being within your sexuality without needing to use it, without relating to it as a power to use, brings in real femininity. Being quieted, even while being transparent, allows your womanness to come through.

Q: I think I get that.

John: When you use your sexuality or neglect it, that would make anyone sexually lame.

Q: I know how to be transparent the masculine way, but I don’t know how to be transparent the feminine way.

John: Being transparent in a masculine way is you using being transparent. Being transparent in a feminine way is you being transparent without needing to use it.

Q: Okay. Will that take me out of survival?

John: Relating to survival makes you coarsely masculine. Relating to the using of power and having an appetite for power makes you coarsely masculine. Not needing to use your power for your self allows real femininity to come through. 

Real femininity doesn’t relate to the need of using power. When you relate to survival, you’ll relate to needing to use your power. When you relate to survival you become a controller.

Q: I see how all of that ties together, now. I’ve been doing that since day one, pretty much. That clarifies for me how what I felt were a lot of branches are actually one.

John: To become truly androgynous you would have to integrate tenderness and gentleness. 

Integrated masculinity is gentleness. Integrated femininity is tenderness.

Raising Your Child Without Raising Your Voice

Q: When it comes to educating my child, I feel that I’m not being heard unless I raise my voice.

John: If you need to raise your voice to be heard, that tells you that when you speak she doesn’t believe you.

Q: She doesn’t!

John: Raising your voice doesn’t make her believe you.

Q: No, but it makes her feel fear, and then she would do what I want because she doesn’t want me to shout at her again.

John: When you want to tell her something, you’ll make it work even if you have to pound it into her. That’s what the shouting does.

Q: And that’s wrong?

John: It doesn’t work.

Q: So what does work? Opening the heart while telling her to clean her room?

John: Open your heart so that she’ll listen to you. You have a need in your self for her to listen to you, so you have a need in your self to control. When you say something and it doesn’t work, you raise your voice. Your bottom line in saying something is she has to believe you. She has to see and do things your way.

Q: So what is the other option? Just let her stay in her filthy room with all the disorder and not do her homework?

John: What’s the difference? Her being in a filthy room or her being in your shouting?

Q: Okay, so what is the solution?

John: You need to reach her. Shouting doesn’t reach her. Shouting pushes her into a corner.

Q: But even when I’m just having a conversation with her, I have to explain to her why doing homework is needed. She says: “Yes mommy, I understand.” And then the following day or two she goes back to her old patterns.

John: Your explanations to her don’t reach her.

Q: The question is, if it does reach her, will she change her ways? Maybe it’s just the way she is.

John: Your explanations to her are not comprehensive and they lack depth. Children growing up are fascinated with anything that’s real. When something really meets them in a way that is real all the way through, as far as they follow it, it continues and continues. Just an explanation doesn’t go very deep. She doesn’t experience the realness of her own interior.  

You’re not talking to her about reality, you’re talking to her in a way that gives her an understanding of how you’re thinking. So all that’s taking place is that she understands what you say, but it doesn’t mean her interior really gets a reality meaning of what you’re saying.

Q: Can she get that ever? Is there a way that she will want to do these things?

John: She will like to do these things if they have a relationship with her interior, particularly her deep interior. For a child growing up, that’s fascinating.

Q: So I can’t do anything; it’s in her hands.

John: Your interior doesn’t mean very much to her because when she looks at your interior, she doesn’t want to be like you. There’s not a draw from her interior to your interior.

Q: Thank God! She is her and I am me and she has to be her own person. She doesn’t have to be my interior.

John: It’s not about being a different person. Real parenting is when a child reads your interior and your interior has more taking place, a greater depth, a greater breadth than the child’s interior. That’s really exciting for a child because it invigorates her interior.

Q: What changes do I have to make in my self for her to be attracted to that?

John: As you have conditioned it, your interior is predominantly about your self. That’s not interesting to her.

Q: Okay, so when it would be about my heart or about my knowing?

John: Not about your knowing, but you, in some way, being like your own being and that having function in your self. That function in your self isn’t about your self; it’s about your being and how your being interfaces with this world. That’s exciting for a child.

Q: And until such time, what will happen? Do I stop asking her to do things?

John: Instead of pushing her into a corner to control her, begin to realize that in your parenting you’re the one who’s cornered. You’re in a corner because it doesn’t matter which direction you move, she doesn’t believe you and you don’t really have much to offer her. The only way that can change is for you to turn into something different.

Q: Can it happen in a day or is it something that takes place over time?

John: It can take place very quickly. If it were to take place in a day, your whole self would be in shock and the shock in your self would stop you. What you would go through, in your own interior, is like a very heavy earthquake.

Q: Physically as well?

John: The experience would be real in your body. It’s not that your body is going to split. The earthquake is in your self. When you open profoundly to what you are as a being and when you believe the truth within your awakening, that’s your reality and no longer your self.

When that is free to take place it will split right through your self. The meaning of your awakening will push all the way through everything in your self. Anything that is not like that in your self is going to crack. Your self will go through a catastrophic failure. That doesn’t mean that your self won’t be functional. What will remain is very profound shock in your self, because in your self you will realize what is no longer real and true for you.

The program in your self, your usual ways, will no longer be real for you.

Building A Relationship For A Higher Purpose

Q: Hello, John. My partner and I have been living together for the past six months. Many times I’ve wondered whether that was kind or skillful because of the pain and suffering that arise in the relationship. If I had had my time over, I would not have included sexuality and living together in our relationship until we had a solid, long-term commitment to each other. We want to take some time apart. Is it possible to be together as friends and not be involved intimately until that commitment is solid and strong?

John: Yes. But what is more important is what each of you is living for. It is that that determines the relationship. What good is your relationship, your commitment to each other, if that isn’t clearly and solidly based on the commitment within each of you, and the purpose of the relationship, for something higher – not as an ideal but as a clear and solid response to something that you know the truth of?  

If it is for an ideal then it is for something that is already less than you. If it is for what you know is true and you’re understanding it, then it is for something that is greater than you. If a relationship isn’t for something within each of you that is greater than each of you, then each of you will be using the relationship to eventually pull your selves down. The level in which you exist within a relationship is the same level that you’ll be confirming within your selves.  

To evaluate a relationship you would have to evaluate your selves with the purpose of being open to change anything that isn’t in alignment with what you really know is true. It would require the most tender and the sharpest use of intellect, without which you won’t be seeing what you’re unaccustomed to seeing, all for the sake of benefitting within each of you a higher awareness. You would be judicial love, the kind of love that doesn’t favour what is personal but rather includes what is personal in favouring what it knows.  

If this exists within each of you then the two of you are able to profoundly be together: two beings dwelling together, both supporting and existing for one beingness. There may still be real difficulty, but without either one of you being difficult. It would be intelligent goodness interacting with each other, where the slightest playing of a game would be a shock instead of the truth being a shock. Kindness would become skillful in establishing the goodness that it knows.

Within such a relationship the two of you wouldn’t be existing for anything else. This would be the foundation for the relationship, and everything that each of you builds would be of the same beingness.  

Q: Would you tell me, John, how can I be more aware of my goodness?

John: By using your backbone for goodness instead of using your backbone for coping.  

Q: Thank you, John.

Sleeplessness: What Can I Do?

Q: I told you long ago about my sleeplessness. I’m only able to sleep with strong medicines and even then it’s difficult. I feel weak and there are long periods when I feel completely empty: no thoughts and emotions, only emptiness and fear.

John: In everything that you speak, what really matters is that you quietly open. As you’re lying down to go to sleep but you cannot sleep, enjoy opening. When you go about your day and all seems empty, go about your day opening.  Above all else, in your whole life, like opening.

Q: In every state I’m in?

John: Yes. All these states that you’re in are not you. What you are in all of these states is either opening or closing. Like opening. Opening is the real you.  It doesn’t matter when you close, open. When you open, open. 

Q: At home I don’t feel the opening as strongly as I do here.

John: Open when you feel it. Open when you can’t feel it.

Q: There is nothing more to do?

John: That’s right.

Q: Open when I feel very shy. Open when I feel helpless.

John: Yes, and yes. When the sun comes out and shines on your body, open. When the weather turns wet, dark and cold, open. When you’re struck by lightning, open.

If you’d like a little help in your life, buy a t-shirt that you wear under everything. No one needs to see it. Have written on it the words: “My name is Open.”

What matters is not what happens to you or what you’re experiencing. It doesn’t matter how many layers of clothing you have on, what matters is that special t-shirt that is right next to your heart. That it’s always covered matters not.

Q: The pain, the fear, the lonesomeness and anything else are unimportant.

John: Yes.

Tender Openness: Your Real Strength And Power

Q: I’m struck by the immense emotions I have felt in just making eye-contact with you. Your teachings about honesty are what I’m looking for: not only to be honest but to speak, act and live my life in honesty. I had a dream that told me to reach out for help in finding answers. My problem is that I don’t know the questions, and it’s frustrating.

John: Then don’t reach with your right hand. Reach with your left hand. Let your right hand support that. That takes you out of what you think is you and enables, a little bit, what is really you.

Q: I don’t fully understand what you mean. Do you mean to search or look in a different way?

John: To look in a different way.

Q: That takes a whole other level of awareness.

John: Hold the microphone with your left hand. 

Q: That’s pretty clear!

John: When you let yourself be delicately comfortable in that, you are seeing differently. What you are then is tender openness. Then you are not relating to your strength. You are relating more to what is delicate. That gives you a different heart.

Q: Which is what I want, to allow my heart to open.

John: And when you think with that, that will give you a different mind. You are so accustomed to relating to your strength. That makes what you are looking for very easy to find because it’s not in your strength. It is in your manner within your strength. 

Gentled power isn’t less powerful; it’s more sensitive. Love taking care of what’s delicate and you’ll realize what your strength is for. 

Q: Thank you. That will be a goal in itself for some time.

John: You have integrated your power when what is most profoundly delicate within you is your strength, instead of your strength being your strength.

Love that goodness can lead you by your thumb. Its hand is much smaller than yours. This goodness is not only within you, but it always moves to hold your hand. Because it is within you, it reaches to you. It will be the thumb of your hand that it first holds. It is also your thumb that represents the power in your hand. It’s stronger than your fingers. 

When goodness, within, can lead you by your thumb, then you are being sensitive to what is delicate, within, without losing your power. Then you are power letting itself relate to what’s delicate. When you let such tender goodness, within, lead you by your thumb, that will move your whole being. That is you recovering what you left behind when you were very little. 

Q: I’ve been searching for that. I remember it and I want to go back there.

John: You can’t go back there. You can let what you know that is have what you are now. Then what that is is able to lead you by your thumb.

Its hand, so to speak, is not too little to hold your thumb.

 

Is There A Life Plan For Me?

Q: I have a question about arrangements between souls. If you plan to meet someone in this life, is it possible to miss that?

John: If it’s true, if it is of a truth and you’re in your heart, no. But don’t believe anything that you don’t know the truth of. 

Q: So it doesn’t really matter in the end.

John: That’s right. Don’t buy into concepts of truth just because they’re interesting and appealing. If you do, it will put you on a false trajectory.  

Q: I often feel this anxiety that I may not fulfill some kind of life plan, or miss something, somehow…

John: If there is such a thing, if you have anxiety about missing it, you’ll miss it. The anxiety has nothing to do with the deep, inner truth of anything. Be gentled and quieted in your heart and don’t believe anything that you don’t know the truth of. The truth within is first simple. 

Q: The concept of a life plan is another attempt to control or to do something. 

John: Yes. If you do have one but you don’t know it, believing that there is one for you will make you miss it. Believing anything you don’t know pulls you into missing the real.

The real begins with a deep inner beingness, opening and softening unconditionally at any personal expense, being gentled and quieted in your heart, and being the nurture of that. That’s your inner life. That alone will grow your inner garden. Don’t leave that for anything that’s presented in your self or for anything in the world. 

Q: I’m scared I’ll be lonely. If I go deeper and deeper into that, there are fewer and fewer people that can understand how I see the world, how I feel and perceive things. I’m scared of that.

John: That will make you lonely. Where you are in fear, you are not connective within, separated from your heart. If you’re believing your fears, you’re believing and taking to heart what is unintegrated in your self. Your heart then becomes full of your self instead of being full of what’s quietly real. 

Q: Thank you.

Your Baby Needs Your Relationship

Q: We’re having a baby. I really feel the baby is going to be our greatest teacher.

John: Having a baby will strengthen whatever orientation you presently have.

Q: Will it? It won’t be the opposite?

John: If you are giving heed to the specialness of what’s there, and you’re taking that specialness to a deeper level than just having a wonderful experience in your self, then you can shift your orientation.

Q: In a not so good way you mean?

John: Shifting your orientation in a really good way.

Q: Yeah, being responsible for what we say and how we act, even now when the baby is in the womb. The baby is picking up everything.

John: The greatest thing that matters in parenting is your relationship, because that is what is feeding the child. So if there are little bickerings and negativities, that’s what you’re feeding your child.

Q: I can relate to what you’re saying, knowing what the baby is and how I can move inside the baby, and my job is to surrender to the baby. That’s how I can relate to what you’re saying.

John: That’s true, but more important than that is what you are in relationship. How much do you function as a person instead of functioning as a deeper self? It can become an abstract, non-costly thing to surrender to the beingness of the baby and be carried by that, but nothing else changes in your life.  

Your relationship doesn’t change, so that means that when the warm feeling starts to pass away and the baby starts to grow up and have its own power, you won’t be in what you were surrendering to because that surrender didn’t apply to everything. It’s easy to surrender to an easy experience that has no cost.

Q: How do I do it in that way that you’re describing?

John: In your relationship, have not a speck of negativity, including in the privacy of your own heart, because if it is there it is definitely going to come out. As soon as it germinates, it’s going to come out, even when you try to keep it in.  

It doesn’t matter how right you are about anything. The moment you have a spark of negative emotion about that in the privacy of your own heart, you’re wrong.

Q: So that means if you take a stand in anything at all, even a kernel is too much?

John: A kernel? A speck is already a whole thing ready to go.

Q: You can’t take a stand in anything that’s not soft. You can’t have any edge at all.

John: If you take a stand, it’s because you’re clear about something, and your beingness in it is as clear as your thinking. That’s also a really different kind of self; that’s not usual. So any time when you have a thought toward each other and it comes out as, “why did you…?” or the slightest little shake of your head, that’s already way too far.

The rolling of your eyes, a slight turning of your head, a slight breathing in, mean that emotionally you’re wound up and in your heart what you’re saying is “you’re so stupid!” or “come on!” That’s beneath the slightest tense breath. You can’t have any of those things.

Q: So the only thing to do is just turn into each other?

John: Dearness.

Q: Wow! Big order!

John: What else are you together for?

Q: So we’ve used those occasions where we get annoyed to step out of dearness. It’s almost an excuse to step out of it.

John: You cannot have a real relationship and hang on to negative emotion. There may be regions or moments of your relationship that have measures of realness in them, but you don’t have a real relationship.

The baby needs for the two of you to have only a real relationship. That’s the first real building block of parenting. If you take on spiritual mentalities but don’t have that dearness between you, you delude yourself and confuse your child.

Q: That’s sobering.

John: Your ability to hold negativity is also your ability not to hold negativity. The only thing that makes it really difficult is when you have a payoff in being negative.

Q: It does make the self stronger, for sure.

John: And it’s satisfying; it’s negatively satisfying, and if that payoff continues to mean something to you, you’re not going to stop. You might lessen it a bit but when it does come out, you give it a little extra juice. You have to pay your self off because you’ve been without it for a while.

Q: It’s another addiction. Is that what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body ­– because it needs feeding? We’ve made it in such a way that it needs feeding.

John: It’s your orientation as awareness. The pain body doesn’t make you express the negativity; your present orientation guarantees you continuing in it. Even if your pain body were completely healed and wiped clean, a negative orientation is going to bring your pain body right back to where it was before it was healed. 

The moment a speck of negativity shows up in your heart, the fire alarm needs to go off. There’s a fire where a fire doesn’t belong, so it doesn’t matter how right you are within the building. It doesn’t matter what issues are being carried; everyone leaves the building. When the fire is out, everybody can go back into the building.

If you continue in the sense of rightness, you delude your self. You’ll use that negativity to fuel your clarity. That means that even humour, with a slight undertone of tightness, can’t have any of it. You will nurture negativity as part of your humour. Your child is going to learn from every nuance of how you are in your heart. It’s all training and the child wants to be just like you.

Q: It just makes me want to cry because it’s such a game changer. There’s no wiggle room at all.

John: Absolutely. You can’t even have your own private space where you recede into your self and the other person’s not welcome, or a little corner in your self where you have your own thoughts and feelings. Those are all like weed seeds – a whole barrel in the corner.

You can’t go at it in part. You need to address the whole thing, so the only way it actually works is to have none of it. If you don’t do it now, you’ll know how wrong you were when you’re dead, and you can’t make it right anymore.

Q: I just hope this baby will bring out the deeper in me.

John: People do not change their orientation for family. Orientation is thicker than blood. Having a baby can have you considering that you need to change your orientation but it’s not the baby that will have you changing it. It’s you being honest with what you’re realizing, and then going all the way through with that and doing it.

Q: So is there something that would help us remember?

John: In your relationship, dearness matters more than being right.

Q: So, as we turn into each other more and more, is that getting closer to what you’re talking about?

John: Beware of closer. Closer can never end. There’s closer and closer and closer and then there’s just shifting your orientation because you know it is true for you. If you’re going to do it with a process, do it within a few days because it doesn’t take more than a few days. It takes a little bit of time to do inventory on what you’re actually all about and how you’ve been fooling your self.

Q: So you think three days?

John: A few days, then you pull it all together, shift your orientation, and you apply that in your self. Cost is not a factor.

Then you’re an honest parent and your child will learn to be like you.