A Beingful Life Instead of a Meaningful Lifestyle

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. Your relationship to it needs to change. Your being is not in service to any kind of lifestyle and your lifestyle needs to be in service to your being. Your lifestyle needs to be a field of realization and not lost to personal pursuit.

With every lifestyle are the ideas that serve that lifestyle. There are ideas that move different lifestyles. Those ideas can’t be what move you. What moves you needs to be what you know the truth of, and what you know the truth of first has nothing with do with a lifestyle.

Q: I’m curious about what a lifestyle looks like that serves the being. I enjoy taking photographs but that’s for personal pleasure. I can’t see how that can relate to nourishing the being.

John: It is an environment and a practice through which your being can manifest. Your point of view needs to come from what is different than the self you’re used to. Your point of view in what you do needs to come from what is greater than your self. For that you need an overall perspective that is of what your being is like and includes all of the possibilities of your self, and you need to hold that perspective in the midst of your self. Then you are guiding your self and moving your self not by what fulfills your self, but by the more that you know, within, than what your self is.

Q: It’s not so much what I’m doing. It’s why I’m doing it. So often I’m doing things for the ego, not so much my being and maybe if I’m pushing things for the wrong reason, and it’s not satisfying.

John: Yes, if you do what you do for your ego, you are practicing getting lost. Then it’s only a matter of time and you will be really lost.

Q: I’m wondering if one can practice art not for the ego.

John: Everything in an existence isn’t for the ego. When you do something for ego, you exploit everything in you and around you.

Q: What’s the other option?

John: Doing everything for what you know in your heart.

Q: Then I’ll have to make drastic changes. If I start working or functioning from the heart, I don’t know if I can make a living out of it, for example.

John: You need to come from your heart more than you need to make a living.

Q: I’ve got massive rent and bills to pay.

John: That’s because of your lifestyle. You don’t need to have a certain lifestyle. You need to be in your heart more than having any kind of lifestyle, or your choice of lifestyle will keep you from being in your heart.

Q: How can I maintain that lifestyle whilst being in the heart? Maybe it’s me being greedy, wanting everything. I like to make money. I like to spend money. I like to enjoy traveling and being free to do the things I want. To be more in the heart may mean I’m going to have to sacrifice all that, which is not much of a loss maybe. (laughter). I’m not sure which way to turn.

John: Whatever your lifestyle is, it needs to serve your realization of profound meaning. If your lifestyle forbids that, then change your lifestyle.

Profound meaning matters more than personal satisfaction. Without meaning, there’s no meaning at all to the personal. Live for what everything is dependent on. Live for what personal satisfaction is dependent on. It’s dependent on meaning. If you live for personal satisfaction, you’ll be exploiting everything that you’re dependent on, for the sake of what is personal.

It’s like using the personal to collect meaning. The more that you can collect, the more fulfilled your feelings. But that doesn’t have much value if what you are being isn’t more than all that you’re collecting.

The reason that you comprehend satisfaction on the level of the personal is because you comprehend meaning and you’re attracted to the personal level of meaning. You have that because what you really are is meaning, not personal meaning, not even meaningfulness. What you are is meaning. When meaning moves, there isn’t personal satisfaction. When meaning moves, there is love.

Q: That seems so elusive for me.

John: That’s because what you’re accustomed to is what you can hold, what you can hold with the abilities that you have in your self, is completely dependent on the beingness of meaning. Without beingness you couldn’t like something. Without beingness you couldn’t comprehend pleasure.

Q: Which kind of pleasure?

John: Any.

Q: When I pursue physical pleasure it takes me away from the being.

John: Yes, what enables you to experience physical pleasure is that you have a being and your being supports the life of your body. You can separate from your own being and your being continues its support, even though you may use your body for something that has nothing to do with your own being. Without the presence of your own being, every pleasure would be terribly empty. If you would be completely separate from your being and from the influences of your own being and the support of your own being, pleasure would have no meaning.

Q: Are you saying it’s okay to pursue temporary pleasures for the being?

John: In the realization of your being, yes. Then you are coming from and responding to what essentially enables pleasure, instead of exploiting pleasure just because it’s available.

There are deeper levels to every kind of pleasure. That means that you’re able to be within pleasure from within the deeper levels of you. When you exist just simply on the surface, pleasure comes down to physical gratification. It comes down to you fulfilling an appetite that you have in your body. That appetite isn’t there for you to live for, but to live for what enables that appetite, enabling you to realize its deeper purpose.

When you begin to respond to the deeper purpose of having appetite, you’ll be realizing what you actually come from. In moving as what you actually come from, you’ll be manifesting something of your own being within an appetite, which doesn’t direct you to the coarseness of that pleasure, the coarseness of that appetite, but to the subtleties of being that you awaken to in the midst of that appetite. When you respond to those subtleties, you can’t be overtaken by the appetite; the appetite can’t have you any more. You can’t live for those appetites. When you respond to subtleties of meaning, you’re responding to being mastered by what isn’t obvious.

Q: I’m having some difficulties getting to those subtleties. When it comes to food, for example, I want to grab it, eat it, stuff my face, knowing that it’s not satisfying, it’s not necessary. Even though I know that, I don’t feel enough nourishment from the subtleties to override that.

John: Then belong to what you know in your heart instead of you belonging to what you can have. You belonging to what you know in your heart, instead of you belonging to want and need.

The great potential of your self cannot be realized within your appetites. When you exist within your appetites, your self will be kept really small. For your self to open to what is beyond that confining smallness, you need to open beyond any of your appetites.

You won’t be filling your life with the satisfaction of appetites. You’ll be filling your life with the care of subtlety. As soon as you know a difference, a difference of being in the midst of something, you’ll be that difference, instead of knowing the difference, forgoing what that difference is, and satisfying an appetite.

Q: That would mean changing the way I live in order to feel those subtleties.

John: Yes. If you can’t be in that in the midst of your kind of lifestyle, then leave that lifestyle. Don’t live being loyal to any kind of lifestyle. The deepest that you are able to be loyal to is what you are. What you are is meaning, meaning so profound that you cannot find that level of meaning within an appetite. Instead of being loyal to your appetites and to a particular lifestyle, a particular level of satisfaction, be loyal to meaning. When you open to that, you may quickly realize that what you are being and how you’re living is upside down.

Q: It’s upside down because it doesn’t nourish, but when I spent years meditating and being focused on my being, I was frustrated so I’m kind of scared to go back there again. At least this way I have approval from family, from society. The other way I’m just being kicked left, right and center for living this lifestyle focused on being.

John: If it didn’t satisfy you in a profound way, then you did it for your self.

Q: Each time I tasted the being, I liked to keep it and use it.

John: Instead of keeping it and using it for your self, completely surrender to be that beingness that you’ve realized and come into. Be what you know that is, in the midst of all of your self, without the fulfillment of that in how you experience it in your self distracting you. When you are meaning-oriented, you won’t be result-oriented, and in everything that you are being and doing you’ll be fulfilling deepest meaning. You’ll be what you first are moving through all of your forms.

Your ease of life and all of the opportunity that you have to pursue pleasure and to satisfy what is personal is possible because of technology. If what technology is dependent on shifts or changes, it won’t be available to you any more. It won’t be supplying to you everything that it has brought to you, and the bubble of life as we have known it won’t be there anymore. Exist within the opportunity that technology brings, but for what meaning is.

Q: What it seems I really want is immediate satisfaction, and meaning seems so difficult and far away. (Connection) I guess it’s so far because I pursue meaning for personal satisfaction and not the sake of meaning. To pursue meaning for the sake of meaning is like ‘what’s in it for me?’

John: For the self that you’re used to, nothing.

Q: That self that I’m used to is very greedy. It seems a lot more selfless to move in that direction, and sacrifice.

John: It isn’t really selflessness. It’s beingful, full of your being, filled by your being, instead of you being filled by your ability to have for your self. If your self were filled with your being, your self would turn into what your being is like. That’s what your self is for, but that can’t occur without you belonging to what your being is like, in the midst of the kind of self you have. For you to be meaningful is for you to be beingful.

Instead of exploiting meaning where you can because of the powers that you have in your self, you’ll be manifesting meaning, you’ll be producing meaning. What matters after you have died is not how much meaning you have consumed, but how much meaning you have manifested in your life, how much you have manifested what you really are in your life.

Q: Can I just choose to do it and fill my self, fill my being with this meaning?

John: Yes.

Q: Why didn’t I choose it?

John: Because consuming meaning gave you instant results and, while it gives you instant results, it depletes you of deeper meaning.

Q: When I’ve had opportunities to really let go, I’ve stopped when it’s something beyond my control. I’ve been using and meaning, I guess partly out of fear from fully allowing the meaning to consume me.

John: Yes, when you are completely taken over by meaning, you are meaning, meaning that has a self, a self that isn’t like you yet, and it is an entire level of form that’s yours. You’re able to manifest meaning in all of that form. The more you manifest what you are on the level of your self, the more that your self is and functions like you. On the level of your self that is experienced as constant goodness-change. When you’re being what you really are in your self, your self never stops changing. It keeps turning into what you’re being in it.

Being a Reachable, Visible, Touchable Heart

Q: Hi, John. I’m home, but how do I stay this when I’m not here? What best serves me?

John: By not using your person or even your self for your being there. In your life your being a person separates you from your self, and your being a self separates you from your heart. When you’re being a person you are immoveable. When you’re being a self you are moveable but not easily touchable. When you are being your heart you are all touchable. When you’re being your heart you have lost your control. Without your control you are really there.

The real value of your being what a heart is your being that in your self, being in your self without your compromising this. That makes your entire interior, all of your self, vulnerable to your really touchable heart. Your being this within all of your self will be a loss of control, and with all of that beautiful loss of control your heart will be free in all of your self, and your heart will be bigger than your self. To fully step up your being in the touchable-ness of your heart is for you to be this not just in your self, but for you to be this visible, available, reachable in all of your person.

Where your loss of control meets your heart, through all of your self, with its face meeting everything, that puts your really being here way out-there, with your only guidance and stability being the tiny little bit within that you know the truth of, and it is by that that you answer everything. In your being really here, your only real connection is the tiny little bit within. It is only really that tiny little bit, it is only the exquisite, within, that you have to offer anyone.

That is how you can be this, way-out-there. Being this way out there will have your relationship with your self and your person and, how it has been, gone. In your experience, that would be like being a bird with the loss of all of your feathers, but perhaps one. One left over to remind you of all you used to have that you don’t need any more.

Present in a Hug, and Healed

Q: I want to thank you for that connection we had on Saturday night and your continued loving support of me and my wife as a couple. I’ve asked you on numerous occasions to help me move through difficulty or find a way to overcome challenges and of course you’re able to do that in ways I don’t understand but I know it’s happening.

I saw that I completely reattached to what I was before an event that happened when I was about seven. I realized how much I vastly loved my mother when I was a little boy and just as much how I formed a hate for her. I want to clarify that the event didn’t have to do with her. I know what body memory is, of course, and mental memory, but this event and aftermath of it has everything to do with my patterning and conditioning. After that event, I closed my heart so hard and the first person I closed it to was my mother. I held her responsible and I didn’t even know that had happened until a couple of years ago and I don’t want to dwell on the pain, just reconnect with what I was fully, and I know I’m able to do that more.

But this self that I constructed is pretty tenacious and it brings challenges that becoming aware of and I’m here, not to tell a story, but because you’re the number one person to maybe give me a really solid re-connection with that sparkle I had, like I see in the kids here. And in that, of course, is every reason for me to feel the love for my mother that I had before, because holding it back, the damage, I’m holding it from me, my wife, and everyone, everywhere.

John: No event prevents your response, and when you’re honest to your heart, you love responding. When you’re honest to your heart, response is natural to you. When you’re honest to your heart, you respond as your heart. If anything of your past comes up, relate to it from your heart. Openness and softness moves, changing your past. It changes your relationship to your past. It changes how you see it. It changes your presence in it, and there your past opens and you are free of what it was before.

Q: At one point you told me I had to hit a wall of perspective and, well, that’s my wall back there. I don’t know, I guess that’s what I’m doing up here.

John: I overcame it in you as soon as we hugged. You came in and you left opened.

Q: When I reconnect with that little boy that is me, I have to give up everything that I have constructed. There’s no room for any of that because of how much love I have. I don’t have the energy to sustain any other coverings. It’s always that, the loss of control that comes with that choice, the perceived loss that keeps me from falling into you. It’s just a matter of relaxing, and yes, it’s fear.

John: You don’t do that when we have hugged.

Q: I know what it feels like not to maintain that control, but I still turn it on and off.

John: Stay in the hug.

Q: When I stay in the hug like this, it’s like I was seeing things in 2D. I was mistaken because now this is 3D.

John: This is 3D plus.

Q: I know that I know how to meet you in this and it’s just for me to really trust that knowing or is that wall of perspective that you recommended I hit, is that an awakening, or would it just be seen in 3D plus?

John: It’s the thinking that comes from seeing in 3D plus.

Q: That’s very clear to me, what you just said. I can see it’s just no more complicated than for me to reconnect with that bottomless love I had for my mother back when I was a boy.

John: Concerning your self and others, form no opinions and you won’t be chained to them anymore. Concerning your self and others, all you have is your response to what you know in your heart, like when you were little.

Seeing Your Self as it is

Q: What brought me to the chair today was to come from what I am, having broken enough ground to have you pour into it and to come from that with you, here. The part that I thought would be here more is being in my heart so that when all of the ‘it’s too big for me’ parts start to come in, they’re not too big for me anymore, and it just becomes a joy to let in that expansiveness. At times it’s a flow it’s broken and patchy but it’s still there. It’s not far away. But the dropping into the heart isn’t always there. I’m not always aware of that.

John: If the rhythm of your being is in a decrease, it will be difficult for you to experience being in your heart.

Q: So that is what’s happening. The rhythm of my being is in a decrease?

John: You can’t conclude what I’m stating. You can just hear it.

Q: Can you explain more about the decrease of one’s being?

John: Its outstanding rhythm can move from level to level. It can move to a level that is completely independent of your self. Its movement has no relationship to your self and it can, from there, move to a level that has a relationship to your self and how you are relating in your self. For you to stably come from your own being, you need to be able to move as awareness with its rhythm, regardless which level of your being the rhythm is coming from, each one affecting your experience in your self of what there is or what there isn’t.

The effect of this rhythm on you in your self is important to your development. If you try to follow it in your thinking and based on your experience, it’s confusing. All you have as awareness in following that rhythm is knowing. That can come with experience or without experience. The decrease can come right when it seems to you that you most need increase. If you adhere to any sense in your self in your relationship with the rhythm of your being, you’ll be separating from that rhythm and you’ll be set against your own being.

Openness and softness answers any misunderstanding.

When you are in synch with the rhythm of your own being, as that rhythm comes from different levels of your being, every line in your self will eventually be hooked. It will bring up every manner of discomfort in your self. It will bring about every kind of pressure in your self. It brings up everything that you haven’t dealt with in your self. It will sift your self. Being sifted in your self, because of your adherence to the rhythm of your own being by you being what you know, takes apart your own comfort zone. It removes you from your relationship with comfort in your self.

Instead of you being separate from your own being, you’ll experience in your self how separate your self is from your being. You’ll experience how much your self isn’t like your being. Your self is not like what you really are. The true development of your self comes by you being the same as your own being in the midst of a self that isn’t like that yet, regardless of how uncomfortable that is, regardless of the strange pressures in that.

Q: I’ve loved seeing that lately the self that isn’t me, that isn’t what I am. That’s what feeds back to me what I am, observing that form as a level for me to move into what I am and be aligned with what I am, and I see that as my first purpose. Part of me is screaming for more, and then the other part just sort of doesn’t know how to handle it, hold it, and yet I’m aware of it landing and landing and landing where it needs to land.

John: In your self, while you’re aligned with the rhythm of your being, it’ll be easy to feel like you are a victim of that rhythm, a victim of truth somehow. It can be easy to feel like it plays tricks on you, that it’s unfair with you.

You’re experiencing the disjointedness of your self, that your self on a deeper level doesn’t fit together very well. It’s in your accustomed self, the way that you normally experience your self, that it seems like there’s a continuity in your self. It all moves in a way that generally makes sense to you. When you’re in response to what is deeper than your self, you will lose that held-together cohesion, and you’ll be subject in your experience to what your self is actually like. That can be most unpleasant.

The energy of your own beliefs will most stand out and rail against you, but because it is in your self you’ll experience it as being real. You won’t see it for what it is. It will all seem real to you. It is all meant to incline you as awareness to believe your self. When you align to the rhythm of your own being, you’ll be awakening the multi-leveled gauntlet of your self. In living, you’ll be subject to that gauntlet. You can relieve the pressure of that by simply believing your self, adhering to your self, taking your self to heart. When you adhere to the rhythm of your own being, that can make you feel in your self like you’re dying. There is a real dying that’s taking place. It isn’t your self that dies. What dies is your patterned way of relating to your self.

Q: What’s holding together those patterns, John?

John: A self-orientation. What holds the patterning together is past investments of want and need. They all continue in the present, not so much directly in your self but in your subconsciousness. They are all mechanisms controlling your experience of your self. As you adhere to what you think and feel in your self to tell you what is true, you’re adhering to your subconscious mechanisms, whether you realize it or not, whether you believe it or not.

The true interruption to the cohesiveness of this patterning in your self, your patterned way of relating to your self, is openness and softness of heart. As the cohesiveness of your patterning is interrupted and diminishes, the vulnerability in your self increases, making you feel in your self that you’re getting worse and it’s all going backwards.

Your self tells you how you are doing in this world. It doesn’t tell you how you are actually doing. In your self, you don’t relate to what you know the truth of. In your self, you relate to what affects your self. You relate to how others see you and treat you. When you relate to your self, you are unseen.

Your direct experience of your self from the perspective of your own being is that your self is made of forms of separation, and that it requires the constant maintenance of self-oriented doing to create comfort. When you sign-up, within, to be what you know, you are really taking your self on, as it actually is. When illusion is removed, you’ll realize why, before, you didn’t want to see. What you see when illusion is removed is most unappealing to your self. If you don’t want to see, that can be accomplished as easily as looking away from what you’re seeing. As you look away, in a fraction of a moment you can cover what you know and then look back again, and what you see will be all different.

That kind of power in your self is always at work. It ceases when you are oriented as awareness simply to what you know in your heart. Your self un-distorts and you’ll experience your self in its actual condition. It will feel and seem so distorted, but if you have any aversion to the actual condition of your self, your being cannot fill your heart and a being-filled heart cannot come into your self.

Q: Thank you for placing that into me. The picture just looks like a…a journey of discomfort filled with the joy of seeing and being right-side up. I love you…and I love that you’re here with me, even in the black. As I…as I look around, you’re there in me.

Listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 166 – Seeing Your Self as It Is or visit John de Ruiter on iTunes

Deeper Sense

Q: What do you mean by ‘deeper sense’?

John: A deeper sense is a non-cognitive process and it’s also not a common sense. A deeper sense is when something is not clear with a cognitive sense or common sense, so you go to a deeper sense. If you don’t have clarity about something on any level and you need to have some clarity, then you go to a deeper sense. It’s a level in which you’ll have very little to go by but just a touch of something in one direction.

Q: It’s very subtle then?

John: Very subtle. Even to have just a touch that lends in a direction may not give you something specific to do, but it helps. It’s far from nothing.

Q: For me would that come to a feeling?

John: Yes.

Q: Do I get that in my self or in a deeper level?

John: It’s like intuition. You can use your intuition for your self, for what you know, or your heart or your mind. Whatever you’re focused on for a deeper sense, the deeper sense will serve. Whenever you change what you’re looking at, the deeper sense will change.

Q: There’s often a question of where we’re at. That discerning is almost a deeper sense, isn’t it? Like when we ask a question, it’s always going to that subtle deeper sense?

John: Unless something is even clearer within.

Q: Is that the same as when you see something, like when I saw something in India and I said to you I saw what I saw and what I thought I saw? And you said, you have a deeper sense.

John: Yes. The value of a deeper sense is that it always gives you your direction. While your self may be filled with resistances, ideas, or preferences, your deeper sense will always indicate where to go. You may not like it, but the deeper sense will keep directing you if you’re open to it. The other thing about deeper senses, is that once you let it in, there will be more.

Loving Knowing – Part 1

Q: Will you speak about the difference of knowing and living the truth. How can I know what the truth is?

John: You have always known it. But it is so simple that it has been easy to overlook. The very simplest of what you know is that within yourself, it is always true to soften. And that it is never true to harden. Softening within, instead of hardening within has always been your deepest truth. And the easiest to overlook. Opening and softening within, instead of closing and hardening within: that you have always known. For you to live being what you know is for you to live being that openness and that softness, within yourself.

Q: I am afraid to cause aggression or afraid to attract that. But at the same time I do attract that. I do bring it on myself.

John: How do you know that? Just because there is aggression toward you, that doesn’t mean that you are attracting it. That is a teaching. But do you know that that is absolutely true, all of the time? Do you know that or do you just believe that?

Q: I believe it. I suppose I interpret experiences of how the child is growing up. And in that interpretation, I think I know.

John: That doesn’t mean you do know.

Q: It doesn’t mean I know. Yes, I know. Means I think I know. Especially when it is kind of directed towards me. That makes me, I suppose, interpret what is.

John: You don’t have to interpret any more. You either clearly know what is happening. Or you clearly know that you only think you know what is happening. Let the two be apart without mixing them. And what you know that you just think you know – treat those as just opinions, and not as truth. And what you know that you know – give your heart away to that.

Loving Knowing – Part 2

Q: I can’t really ask a question or something, it is just a fear. There is so much fear inside me, of being alone and I can’t really…

John: When you fear being alone, that makes you lonely. When within, you let yourself completely relax into enjoying being utterly alone, without need of anything, then you find out, in the most intimate way, that you are not alone. That you are intimately connected with nectar everywhere. Instead of being alone in your mind, be alone in your heart. There is no nourishment in being in your mind. There is nourishment in you being in your heart. All of the nourishment you are looking for isn’t in your mind. And it is also not in this life. It is within you. And the doorway is your heart.

Do you enjoy cappuccino? Then cappuccino is your way home. When you are enjoying cappuccino, notice what is happening. You cannot even enjoy cappuccino when you sip it without dropping out of your mind into your heart.

Q: I really don’t understand, because it is something outside?

John: When you are enjoying it, it is not something outside. It is something within you. When you are enjoying a cappuccino, you are actually enjoying something within you. Notice what is happening when you are enjoying a cappuccino. Your system relaxes and is absorbing something. Your whole system is responding.The response of your own system shows you how to be. And it is the same thing when you sit in a hot bath or stand under a shower. Notice what is happening. If you are absorbing it, that is you dropping out of your mind and into your heart. And it happens so easily that you miss it. You are not noticing it, because within it, you are not doing something. You are not doing something within. What you notice most is your doing within. What you notice the very least is a very little moment when you are actually being within.

There are these little moments all day long. And what you notice all day long is not your beingness. What you notice all day long is everything that you are doing, because that for you is what shows. When you put your shoes on, there is a moment, when there is a matching of what your feet are and what your shoes actually, really are, which is not what you think they are or what they look like. But there is a matching of beingness. And it is so subtle and so natural that you don’t notice it. The next time you put your shoes on, notice what is happening within. And you will notice a moment of beingness just by putting your shoes on. When you notice that, then every time you put your shoes on, you are reminded within, how to be. Every time you put your coat on, there is a very subtle moment that is magical. You are so used to it, and it happens so naturally, that you are not noticing it any more. Let yourself notice what happens. There is a beingness in your coat, and there is a beingness to your body. And the moment you put your coat on, there is a matching of beingness.

There is a oneness of being that flows. It is very subtle. But when you let yourself notice it, it knocks on your heart. It is not something that you understand in your mind. But it is something that you recognize in your heart. The next time you sip a cappuccino, notice the meaningfulness within. The meaningfulness is there because there is a flow of beingness. Without that meaningfulness within, you would not be able to enjoy a cappuccino. Notice a very subtle meaningfulness in every little thing in your life. Instead of noticing what is obvious to your mind, which is what you are used to, begin to notice what occurs and touches within your heart. You will be amazed at how much life is actually full of nectar when you are being in it. The more subtle the noticing, the deeper the nectar.

You are used to noticing everything that appears as big within your mind. What you are overlooking is the very tender little. It is that which touches your heart and connects you with meaning. Not the kind of meaning that you understand with your mind, but the kind of meaning that you know in your heart. Enjoy sipping a cappuccino and then notice what is happening within. Notice what it is within, that is magical, and then remain in that, and be that, without the cappuccino. When you are remaining in that and being that without the cappuccino, that gives you new eyes. Then you will see what it is that you are being. You will see it all around you. Then you will recognize that it has always been there. It is only you that has been gone, not it, gone somewhere in your mind, instead of being in your heart.

It is only when you are being in your heart that you can see what you know. When you are being in your heart, seeing what you know, you let all of your heart dissolve into what you know. That is you returning to the source. That is you being where you came from. That is you being what it is that you are most deeply longing for, being it instead of looking for it. When you look for what you know in your mind, all you will find is thinking. When you return to where your mind came from, that is you returning to your heart. Then let yourself return to where your heart came from, which is something that your mind doesn’t know. But when you are being in your heart, your heart does know. And when you are surrendering to what your heart knows, that is you returning to where it came from.

It is a very gentle and subtle melting, in the same way that you would enjoy sipping the cappuccino. You will find the very same when you enjoy sitting with a tree. You won’t find it in your mind, because the tree doesn’t exist in your mind. It exists only in your heart. It is only your heart that knows what a tree is. Your mind only perceives the tree; it doesn’t know the tree. If you are lonely, it is because you are existing in your mind. When you let yourself be warmly alone in your heart, you will find yourself one with everything. What you will find there is flow. It is so easy, you have been missing it. You have been missing it in all the moments of your day because you are focused on what you see in your mind instead of being focused on something that you know in your heart.

Deeper Level Sameness

Q: I would really like to continue the conversation we had earlier about relationship, when you said that in a dear relationship you move as one heart. Is it that a new heart is being created from the two of us?

John: Yes, similar to that. He was the ‘husband of’. Now you are the ‘wife of’. Next, the two of you are husband and wife on a completely different level. Before he was the ‘husband of’ your awakening. Now you are the ‘wife of’ his awakening: you stepped in, he stepped in. The ground of your relationship can no longer be what it was. It can only be about what each of you has stepped into.

Q: To be the ‘wife of’ is to give everything to him?

John: Not to him, but to what you know he’s stepping into. That greatly activates what you know you have stepped into.

Q: That will create new ground for us to live and walk on?

John: Yes, ground that doesn’t involve your selves. As you live that, your self will change.

Q: I have the sense that it’s now more important to give everything to his awakening. It’s all about the togetherness now.

John: It always was. It always was about the togetherness. That’s why the two of you married.

Q: But I have a different sense, now, of how we can be together. Maybe it has to do with the one heart, that we can move differently together in more oneness, and to give everything to that.

John: Now, when you step into what you know of his awakening, you’re stepping into his river. When you step into his river, his river rises because your river pours into his. In relationship, then, there is a confluence of two rivers. It’s no longer yours or his.

Q: Is it also when the deeper levels of our bodies are joined in that?

John: Yes.

Q: And all of that eventually creates that one being that you spoke about?

John: One being is realized by the two of you, being one river. In that movement, the two of you realize one being.

Q: Is it different in function than each of our individual beings?

John: Yes, but that won’t come about without the two of you as individuals being together as one river. That involves prioritized multitasking. The one river is more than the two individual rivers, but without the two individuals there cannot be one. That requires a living response in each of you to the deeper levels within each of you and the other.

Q: Within each of us and within each other?

John: Your response to the deeper levels in you is then equal to your response to the deeper levels in him. That occurs in you and in him. You not only move as one river, there is also one being.

Q: When I try to relate to my deeper levels, it’s almost impossible for me to separate them from his.

John: You don’t need to separate them.

Q: No, but you said to relate to my deeper levels and then to his, but it’s naturally moving into one.

John: Yes.

Q: How does it show on the more superficial levels?

John: On a superficial level, you can have differences without either one of you empowering those differences, and that brings the river into your differences. Within the differences, you are then so together. It’s what your relationship is for.

Q: When we move as that, in a relationship, what does that accomplish?

John: Deeper level same-ness, realized love, conscious beings that have selves and persons.

Q: My sense is that also it would speed up our integration.

John: It’ll speed up your evolution as awareness and it’ll provoke the same in others.

Q: I have the sense that we have to find our new movement.

John: Yes. The movement is entirely based on deeper levels, on the movement of streams in your being and his.

Q: So the together movement for each couple is different?

John: Yes.

Q: And moving together as one has more weight than just one of us moving that way, and has a greater effect on others?

John: Yes.

Q: Thank you, John.