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…
Q: What is the calling and how does one surrender completely? What is the right expression of it? It seems that anything else is irrelevant.
John: Why do you bring up the calling? What is it to you?
Q: There’s something that I awakened to, and from that point on nothing else seems real and true.
John: When you are known, known from outside of your reality – outside of your reality as you experience and perceive it in your self, and also outside of what you have known in your heart – when you are known from a level that has no connection to this world, to your self, to anything of reality as you’ve have perceived it, that level awakens in you...
Q: I experience my self as a very shy person. How I can adjust my shyness so that it doesn’t restrict me in certain situations?
John: Don’t adjust it or change it. Don’t cover it. Don’t be ashamed of it, and whatever that restricts in your circumstances, be genuinely okay with. In particular, don’t do anything with your face or your head to cover it, or with how you hold your lips.
The reason that you have your shyness is that you are sensitive to being seen, and you feel uncomfortable in your self when you’re seen...
Q: I spend most of my days doing things I enjoy, but I’ve noticed since I’ve moved to New York, my stress levels are increasing and I feel very much caught up by life. I’m wondering if there’s a way that I can continue to be active all day and remain in my being and be able to expand within the activities, as opposed to meditating or do I need to sacrifice the lifestyle I lead and take a step back and just rest?
John: You don’t necessarily need to sacrifice that lifestyle, but you do need to change what that lifestyle means to you…