Month: September 2021

Attention Deficit Disorder And Your Use Of Mind

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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.

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