Month: July 2021

Leading A Child Into The World Within

by

Q: I have a question about raising children and enjoying them in the way you’ve been describing. I have two daughters.

John: How old are they?

Q: Five and nine. I enjoyed the first child from the beginning, and it has been easy. The second is very different. From the moment she started talking, she can’t stop!

John: “Very different” in that her self is not like your self?

Q: Yes! For all three of us it is a challenge to have someone in the family who, from waking up in the morning until going to sleep, is talking. And we all feel, like, “wow!”

John: A challenge to your self because your self is different from her self.

Q: I often don’t know how to enjoy her.

John: You can’t enjoy her if what you’re seeing is her self. You experience your self when you see her self, because hers is so different from yours, and you use that experience to be removed from enjoying her. If you’re not directly enjoying her, you’re making much of her self and you’re projecting your self onto hers, which gives her a lot to sort out.

She will use her self to sort out what you’re projecting onto her. She’ll then be more intensely her self. If you just simply enjoy her, despite her self, she is relieved of the pressure in her self.

When she is simply seen, that makes her self, for her, less important and she’s able to relax.

Q: I understand what you’re saying but it’s not only talking, it’s also that she’s addressing me all the time.

John: Then, instead of being affected by that which energizes your self, you can be sweetly humoured by it. See the humour in how her self functions and see the humour in how your self is affected by that.

Q: And give up every wish for silence?

John: Yes. If you wish for her to be silent, she experiences not being heard, and she’ll talk more. Make it really easy for her to have the self she has.

Q: It’s not easy for her because everyone is reacting, including her sister and other children. They all feel it’s too much, and say “stop!”

John: She’s watching you more than she’s watching others.

Q: I’ve tried telling her she doesn’t need to think so much. It seems to calm her, but then it starts again.

John: Her thinking hasn’t really developed yet. She’s following your suggestion, but better than your suggestion is for you to lead her thinking into her own interior. Then her thinking isn’t made to be something that’s wrong. But you can’t lead her mind into her own interior if you’re not really seeing her interior.

Q: That seems to be a second step. I’ve been managing my own reaction and staying in what I know, but that did not include her.

John: If you can see her interior and you can lead her mind into her interior, she will become fascinated. She’ll realize the difference between what she is and what her self is.

Once children have been introduced to that, it’s not going to stop. Then they love realizing more than thinking, which trains their thinking. If they’re in their thinking without realizing, they become lost in their thinking. Their thinking has no profound purpose.

If they’re thinking because they’re realizing, their thinking has profound purpose, and their thinking relaxes.

 

If You Had Someone Else’s Self For A Day …

by

Several people speak with John in the Jewel Cafe:

Q1: Things are better with my daughter.

John: It’s better between you and your self.

Q1: What do you mean by “better between me and my self”?

John: It’s not really between you and your daughter; it’s between you and your self. If you had a different self, then what you experience between you and your daughter would be completely different.

Q1: Yes, but that’s the self I have. It’s really very difficult for me to see.

John: Your experience with your daughter is really your relationship between you and your self. As soon as your self changes, your relationship with you and your daughter changes, even if she doesn’t change.

Q1: It’s difficult, yes, but it’s so mutual. If I have a very strong relationship with someone, it’s not just me.

John: If you had my self instead of yours, your experience of the relationship with your daughter and other people would be really different.

If you were to have someone else’s self each day for a whole year, you’ll realize that your experience of what it’s like to be with your daughter is going to change with each self. It wouldn’t take very long, and you’ll realize what it is that is constant in your relating with her that is not based on the self you have. 

At the end of the year, when you get your self back, the way that you view it is going to be really different. You won’t be able to take it seriously anymore because you’ll realize it’s like one of many selves, and it’s the constancy in being within each self that is real to you.

Q2: Is there anything in the self that really has worth or informs us of anything?

John: Yes. The value is in the clarity and the delicacy of feeling that’s there. When you have a different self each day, you realize what you know is true within the thinking and feeling of each self. You develop this constancy of knowing which part is worth relating to within each self. You’ll receive and move with that, and you’ll let go of the rest of it.

Q3: Truth is in everything, right? It’s not only underneath but it’s in everything.

John: If you discern it, then you’re moving as that in whatever self of the day you have. In some selves there will be an enormous amount of really good clarity and deep goodness. With some other selves there’ll be almost nothing, but it doesn’t matter which self you have, there’s going to be something. There’s going to be what you’re able to discern as real and good. 

After going through many selves, if you’re able you’ll realize that what is constant is the part within each self that you can use to discern what to receive into your heart and what to just let go.

Q2: There’s this vast, empty space that I am in the most. It’s a constant, available space and I know the goodness of it. Things arise within it, and what I notice in that is that my sense of ‘I’ is completely changing.

John: If you would have a different self, someone else’s self each day for a year, what you’d realize is that you are that which you speak of. The way that you move within your self of the day is as warmth and clarity, and it doesn’t matter to you what self you get.

Whether it’s extremely clear, wholesome, good and mature, or full of holes and tightness, it wouldn’t matter to you because you’ll move as this warmth, clarity and goodness.

Dealing With Stress In Relationship: A Softer Heart, Not A Bigger Hammer

by

Q: We have a lot of stress at home because my husband doesn’t have full time work. We’ve talked about how he gets himself into these situations, but he doesn’t seem to want to hear anything from me. It’s his learning, but it’s also very hard for me.

John: It’s very hard unless you make it easy.

Q: I think I should love him more rather than put pressure on him to listen to me, yet if I think he doesn’t want to listen I close my heart. I want the best for him, but I also think I need to let go and go my own way.

John: Loving him more is difficult. Loving him isn’t. If you are loving him, then in your heart what else is there?

Q: We don’t communicate and we don’t understand each other.

John: If you are loving him – not loving him more, but simply, in your heart, loving him – there is no fear, and love communicates as nothing else can.

Q: But if we don’t communicate, then at that moment there is no love.

John: Then return to the best part. The best part is, in your heart, simply loving him. Then comes communication on your part. When that doesn’t work, return again to the better part: loving him.  

Loving him means that you are unconditionally coming from dearness in all of your heart toward him. That dearness means more than any result. As soon as needing a result means more and has your heart, then the dearness is gone and what you’ll have in your heart toward him is a need.

Q: What about the letting go and going my own way; not putting him under pressure?

John: You can put him under pressure as long as it is dearness in your heart that is putting him under pressure. Then he is under dearest pressure. The moment that negative emotion comes up in you, before it has any chance to come out, surrender in your heart to dearness within.

Negative emotion relates only to one thing when it cannot get its way, and that’s the use of force.

Q: That’s what I do when I don’t get something. I hit harder! I know it doesn’t work so I try a softer way most of the time.

John: Instead of using a bigger hammer when something doesn’t work, use the softest touch in your heart that you know, the softest touch in your heart that doesn’t back down. Dearness, in what it is, doesn’t back down. It can’t be faced down. The softest touch has the finest backbone, and to be that touch requires your whole heart.

Your whole heart being in is essence of real backbone. If there’s anything that all of your heart isn’t really in, then you’ll use force of will and emotion to make up for the lack.

Q: I have a softer touch now than I had in my youth, but it’s still not easy for me if the other takes no notice of me. I need to learn to use the backbone of softness.

John: If you need to use force because you are not being seen or listened to, then it is you within your own heart that is not really seeing and listening. If you love listening within your heart, you won’t be using force when something isn’t working.

If really listening your way through and really, in your heart, seeing your way through isn’t working, then the use of force isn’t going to add anything good. If you are in your heart and loving listening within, you’ll be able to listen your way through much more easily. You’ll be able to find your way outside of you in a way that you couldn’t before.

The real listening in your heart is what shows you the way when something seems not to be working. If you use your will and your emotions instead, then you’ll break whatever doesn’t work. Your loving him more is really difficult, but simply loving him isn’t really difficult.  

Remember that whatever you are using in a situation, you are teaching him to use the same. Begin with dearness and then let dearness develop skill in being able to move through a situation. But if you step out of dearness and into the use of will and emotion, it is that which will increase. You’ll develop in the skill of being able to break things.

Q: Can you give another description of coming from dearness?

John: Openness and softness of heart, listening and seeing, and then doing.

If delicateness of heart, openness and softness of heart, knows not to move on something, then the mightiest storm against that isn’t going to move it from what it knows. At the end of the storm there is the same openness and softness of heart, the same delicateness of heart being what it knows, and the mighty storm couldn’t change it. It didn’t need to use will and emotion against the storm. The storm is on a different level even though it is completely felt in all of your self.

What you are remaining in, in your heart, is on a different level from what your self is experiencing. Through the difficulties that you would be having in your self while maintaining such a heart in the midst of a storm, your self will become as your heart is. You’ll mostly see the change in that after the storm.

To keep confidence during the storm you don’t need any confidence during the storm. It is really listening within your heart that has you, in your heart, stable in a storm. In everything – in your self, your life and your relationship – love, in all of your heart, really listening within all of your heart.

When you are really listening with all of your heart to that which is in all of your heart, then the ears of your heart will be completely together. Then your heart is truly like this: (John draws a heart shape in the air) two ears, really listening.

 

Core Okayness: The Safety In All Vulnerability

by

Q: I have a question about vulnerability and the fear of being hurt. I want to surrender completely to vulnerability, but every time I try there come some images and feelings that are not from this life. They are really old – very strong violence – and I keep making these mechanisms to defend my self.

John: As those images come, instead of working with them be in a quieted, core okayness with anything that those images present to you, and a core okayness should any of those images manifest in your life.

Absolutely anything that is outside of your control you can be genuinely okay with. It isn’t real for you in your self to be not okay at a core level with anything that is outside of your control. 

Q: It feels like it’s not possible to experience that again. 

John: Anything that is outside of your control, you can be gentled and quieted in your heart in the midst of. That offers beingness to the circumstance. As a being, you are not vulnerable to anything that could possibly happen to your self or your body. Your being does not suffer vulnerability. It just streams, unconditionally, in the midst of anything. 

All of the vulnerability that you experience is in your self. It gives you feedback of everything that your self is not in control of. What you are in control of, in the midst of all vulnerability, is your beingness. And in your self, you are in control of your attitude. 

Q: I also feel that it is very difficult for me to be around people the more vulnerable I get, because I feel like everything is in me: every emotion, every stress, anxiety. Sometimes I can hold it and sometimes not.

John: You don’t need to hold it. Instead, you can be gentled and quieted in your heart regardless of how you feel in your self. There, you are being your heart instead of the incompleteness in your self; a rested heart in the midst of an affected self. Your self will then reflect your beingness, your heart, instead of your self reflecting its incompleteness and its imbalance.

That won’t lessen the feeling of vulnerability. It will really increase it, and it’s fine. 

Q: So the self never really feels safe, right? It’s always vulnerable. 

John: It can feel safe, but that’s highly conditional. 

Q: I feel that it’s sometimes difficult to accept that there is no real safety in the self. 

John: Your being is safe and you are safe in your being. You don’t need to be safe in your self. 

Subscribe for Updates!

Looking for a transcript of your talk with John? Check out MyTalk​

This site is created and maintained by a team at the College of Integrated Philosophy.

JdR Gems Copyright 2024 © All rights Reserved.