Knowing the Place of Emotion

Q: Hi John. My question is, does emotion exist in being or is it a construct of self?

John: It doesn’t exist in being. It’s a dense form that offers you more form. Positive emotion very easily has heart in it. Negative emotion has only the experience of your unintegrated self. It has no heart in it. When you experience the separating power of negative emotion, that can turn you against all of your emotion, but as soon as you return to your heart, there’s going to be an expression of that in your self, and the expression of that is going to come through positive emotion. You’ll easily move in that because you’re being your heart in that. But to move into positive emotion also makes you vulnerable to the power of emotion, and as soon as something crosses you in your self, that power flips to a negative emotion, which is an unintegrated power in your self, that isn’t really you.

Q: If emotion isn’t part of being, then should one recognize it and acknowledge it?

John: You can recognize it and acknowledge it, but that won’t help you integrate it. It is yours to integrate. It is a form of yours that isn’t like you are, but is able to be just like you are.

Q: But doesn’t it exist to be integrated?

John: It exists to be integrated by virtue of you being in it. You can’t integrate it by acknowledging it. You integrate it by being what you really are in it. You have an example and it is your own being. Your own being is form of you, and you’re also in your self. Your self is form, your form, but it’s not form of real you. It’s like a raw material. You integrate it by being just like your own being, in the midst of that form. That both acknowledges it and draws it into you.

Q: But it seems as though, if emotion itself isn’t actually worthy of acknowledgement, I mean, what’s its requirement?

John: It’s not worthy of acknowledgement on the terms of how you experience it. It’s worthy of acknowledgement on your terms. Which means you being what you really are, in the midst of it. And you being a form, form of yours, that is accurate to you, which means you being your own being, in the midst of it.

Emotion isn’t wrong or bad. It just doesn’t reflect you. But if you’re being what you really are, in the midst of emotion, there’s available form there that is changeable. It offers you more form than the form of your own being. You can speedily increase your real form by being what you really are in the midst of form given to you that isn’t yet like you are. You naturally assimilate it and it naturally changes to you.

Q: Do your responses to us have anything to do with an emotional intelligence?

John: In as much as it does on the surface use the same face. The face reveals emotion. But, in its delicateness, it reveals your heart. It’s made for your being, but it doesn’t belong to that yet. By you, your face is able to belong to your heart, and in it belonging to your heart, your heart is free to come up into your face. That makes your self in your experience feel vulnerable. If your heart remains in your face in the midst of the feeling of vulnerability, that draws up your being into your face. When you live that way, your face slowly belongs to your being.

When you really meet someone, it isn’t through your emotions that you meet. It’s with your heart that you meet. That can be present in the midst of emotion. When you don’t belong to your own heart, as soon as you have emotion in your self, the emotion will distract you from your heart. So you’ll easily leave your heart. When you leave your heart in the midst of your self, your positive emotion turns into negative emotion, but when you become quieted in what you know, you’re naturally relaxing. As you relax, you return to your heart. The real integration of your emotions is by you being in your heart while you’re in that emotion. That grounds your self in your heart. With that grounding, your self already becomes a little bit just like your heart.

At the Very Centre of Emotion

Q: Hello, John. I’ve been pondering about a few issues and in a way I do think they are all related and I would like to bring them to you and to ask for some clarity about it. The first is being in your proximity versus following-through what I know, and I would like to say a bit about where my question comes from. When I need you, I am aware that there are several depths, so to speak, where you come from. Here in the meetings I would dare to say that where you come from I would…yeah…for me that would be greater reality. Then there are the informal gatherings and you being in the café; that would be for me a different level where you come from. I have a working relationship with you and that would be another level. And then there is the husband and a father and a friend.

And I was wondering because when I was in Venwoude and when I was not always physically being present during the informal gatherings or the meetings because there were certain things that I really knew to do, I had the feeling that I had been given more of you than ever. And also for me being here in Edmonton and being in the meetings, I so much would like to not be tight about being in your proximity, and yet, for example, I care whether I’m sitting in this chair or close by you during the meetings versus being in the back of the hall, being easily distracted with noises. And yet what I also sometimes see in me that as more people come to here which at first I always find so fantastic, there is also a little part of me that is thinking I will be pushed aside a little bit. I think if I’m really honest then I sometimes that you might not see me anymore, or I know in my heart that is not true, but…

John: Then that’s it.

Q: Would there be a bit more to say about being in your proximity versus following-through what you know while not being in your proximity?

John: The two are not mutually exclusive.

Q: Could you say that differently? I don’t understand.

John: The two move together, not against each other. Proximity means something to you because of what you know in your heart. Then it is for you to discern the different levels of knowing in your heart and how to balance the levels. You need to discern what you know for you to balance the levels, the different levels of knowing.

Q: Could you give an example of what you’re saying, John?

John: If you know to be in proximity and at the same time you know, within, to do something that removes you from that proximity, you discern what you know which is deeper and then do that. The deeper will take care of what isn’t quite as deep. This is something for you to discern.

Q: You are saying, because you follow through what you know. that almost automatically brings you deeper?

John: Yes.

Q: So if my longing for being in your proximity would come from not a true knowing…

John: Knowing to be close isn’t necessarily the same as you longing to be close. You long to be close because of something that you do know, and mixed in with what you know is the effect that that has on your self. Something of your self and something of what you know are mixed together. When you see some of the difference, then from a deeper place discern what is what, and see what you can unmix. Identify what you know the truth of within the longing and be what you know in that, while letting go of the emotional aspect of longing. That puts you into pure response. That makes a deeper level, within, more real to you than the emotional aspect of what you know the truth of.

Q: When I feel that emotion coming up, because what I’m now in my life trying to do or practicing is to kind of hold that emotion, and then sometimes I’m asking the emotion what it actually wants to say to me.

John: That has some value. The greater value is not what the emotion wants to say to you but what of the truth are you knowing within the emotion.

Q: So that would actually be from the outside in rather than inside out, and the reason why you would say that is that I then, by doing that, would feed knowing rather than emotion.

John: Yes. The nucleus within an emotion is not the same as the emotion. The nucleus in it is what you know the truth of. At the very center of the emotion is not the emotion itself. At the very center you know the truth of something and your emotion collects around that because your knowledge of the truth has implications in your self; it affects your self. Your emotion then, in your self being affected, collects around what you know. When it does, that brings attention. The attention needs to go to the center of the emotion, which is what you discern of what you know in that emotion. What you know deeply within the emotion is not going to be the same as what’s represented by the emotion. As soon as you see the difference, in you go to what you know and the emotion around it relaxes.

If you try to address the emotion, you’ll be distracted from its center. The value of an emotion is that it has a center. Its center is not like the emotion. Discern what you deeply know the truth of in the midst of any emotion and be that deeper truth in the midst of that emotion. The emotion will transform. It will take on the form of what you’re being in it.