Your Soul’s Evolution: The Opportunity Of This Life

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Q: You speak of the evolution of the soul and the opportunity of this life, and I want my soul to evolve if that’s why we’re here. Can you, first, remind me of the connection between the soul and the being? 

John: Both are unseen forms. Your being comprises form, multi-levelled form of true movement of you: of forms of love. 

Q: So the being doesn’t need to evolve? 

John: It doesn’t need to evolve, doesn’t need to develop. It just needs to be unconditionally free to move anywhere in your self without you having any ‘no-go’ zones. 

Anywhere that you let your being freely move, you empower what you are as a being and your being will then master and control your self. The development is in your self; your self developing because of how your being moves in it and moves it, so it’s a clean development of your self. 

Q: And the soul is? 

John: Your soul is your unseen level of form. It’s the form of your evolution, your development as awareness. It is nothing to do with the development of your being or your self. 

The only way that you, awareness, develop is when you’re being what you know, particularly in difficulty in your self. So there’s no greater opportunity or context for the development of you, awareness, than when you are in your self, in your body. 

As soon as you separate from what you know because of pressure or difficulty – positive or negative – you’re not evolving as awareness: as awareness you’re stagnating. But as you evolve as awareness because of being what you know – you being oneness in the midst of difficulty – you get to know what you really are in all of its regions, and in them you’re developing. 

The form of that development is your soul, and that form is of greater value than the forms of your self. It’s of greater value than the form of your heart and it’s of greater value than all of the forms of your being. It’s a level of form of yours that matters more than all others. That form, and its well being, is dependent only on you, awareness, being what you know. It doesn’t need anything else. It doesn’t hinge on anything else. 

Q: That’s very straightforward. I can do that as long as I don’t think about it too much. 

John: And your soul is difficult to see because it’s evenly distributed within all of your forms. It is as present anywhere in your self as it is everywhere in your being, so you don’t have its contrast enabling you to see it. But after you’ve died, it is the form of yours that is more visible than all others. When you meet someone it is what is first seen. After you’ve died it is your most prominent form.

It reveals every micro-choice of yours that you’ve made as awareness in relationship to knowing. It reveals your actual story. It’s not a personal story. It reveals everywhere you’ve been within your micro-choices as awareness:  not as a person, not as a self; just as awareness. It shows where you’ve opened and where you’ve closed. 

Q: So that’s why letting awareness open everywhere is so important?

John: Your greatest opportunity for your evolution as awareness, your greatest soul opportunity, is that of being in a body with an incomplete, imperfect self, full of difficulty and pressure. And in all of that, quietly not separating; being what you really are in all of that. 

It’s what you are in a body for. It’s what you are in your self for. It’s what your life is for. 

On Alzheimer’s and Being Together

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Questioners at two different meetings ask John about being with a loved one who is in mental decline. What’s happening, and how can we still meet and be together?

November 5, 2015 New York USA

Q: My father died of Alzheimer’s. There was a beautiful simplicity in our relationship towards the end, but where he was going, why and how were all confusing to me. Could you address mental decline and this journey towards being? He had no sense of being or meaning; he just melted away and it seemed so inhuman.

John: When you degenerate from within your own brain, you don’t degenerate, but you lose your capacity to communicate and to function. What really becomes manifest in you as awareness when you degenerate from within your brain or your body is your orientation as awareness. What becomes manifest is what you’re being. 

When someone’s in that kind of decline, all of the coverings are removed and you see what’s really there of what they have been and what they are being.

Q: It’s true: we did have some amazing being-to-being communication. As I get older, the thought of ‘losing it’ scares me too, so it’s comforting to remember this. Thank you.

John: When someone degenerates in their mental capacity there’s going to be either a softening or a hardening. Whichever way awareness is actually moving is going to really show, because the capacity to cover what’s there is removed. 

In that way, it’s also similar to returning to being like a very small child. When there’s a hardening within a very small child, there isn’t anything that covers it. It comes straight out as it is, and when there’s a softening there isn’t anything that covers it. The beauty of it, the delicacy of it, comes straight out as it is.

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June 1, 2019 Moen, Denmark 

Q:  My mother has Alzheimer’s and in many ways is ‘gone’ into her world. My dad is taking care of her. I’m soon going to visit them for a while. Apart from really enjoying being with them, is there anything else I need to do while I’m with them?

John: While you’re with her, leave alone being her daughter. She keeps forgetting. Instead, go right into being her love. She’ll relate to that without any need of memory.

Q: My father is very shy. He’s a really good man and it’s a little difficult just to relate on a deeper level with him. I’m guessing it’s just okay to be with him as is. Do you have any other recommendations?

John: Be with him as is but don’t relate to him as is. Relate to him directly, despite what is. Enjoy being with him regardless of what his self is like, so you’re seeing right through everything into the real, and that’s all you’re relating to. You’re enjoying the real.

It’s like enjoying being with someone without any mind to the clothing they wear. It doesn’t matter what they wear: you’re not distracted by this kind of clothing or that kind of clothing.

 

 

 

 

At Home In Your Heart: The Simple Healing Of Everything

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Q: Is it true that there’s no need for us to keep going back into our past experiences, into the emotions that cause us to react?

John: Yes, so in that way you don’t need to address your thinking or your feeling. You don’t need to address your emotions, your will, your self, your personality, your past. You don’t need to focus on others. 

What you return to is a most simple okayness within. The okayness isn’t an experience; it’s something that you know. You return to being okay as is: okay in the midst of your emotional body, okay concerning your relationship with anything in your past. That enables you to open, which enables you to feel and think differently than your patterned way of looking at something in your past, or your patterned way of moving in an experience.  In that way, no one really needs help concerning their interior, and no one needs counselling or therapy. 

What naturally heals is being what you really are in the midst of anything as it is. But this only works if it’s really your orientation, when it’s your orientation as awareness without result. If you do it to heal your self, you do it for your self. Anything you do for the sake of your self removes you from being what you really are. 

This is extremely simple and at the same time it really costs everything. If you follow it through in its simplicity, everything heals. It is what makes meditation work. It’s what makes counselling work. It’s what makes therapy work. When you realize that, then you can be what it is that makes anything work, without you doing anything. So it is you being what you really are that is the magicalness and the real meaning of anything. 

Q: So it’s really just our mind that’s the block from allowing us to drop down? 

John: No. There isn’t actually any block. Your own nervous system and how it’s patterned to react is not a block. The blocks in your body, your nervous system and your mind are not blocks to you being what you really are. They’re blocks to you normalizing in your experience. They can be blocks to your movement on the surface, for example a block in being able to think really well, or a block in being socially adjusted. But these blocks don’t prevent you – even in your experience of them – from being in your heart. 

Q: So the more time I spend in my heart the more at ease my nervous system will become and the more I’ll flow; I’ll just be? 

John: Yes. 

Q: And that will take care of the outside world? 

John: Yes – if you’re truly oriented to your heart. 

Q: And what exactly do you mean by that? 

John: That you’re not going to start to be in your heart so that your emotions can clear. You won’t be in your heart to move some of the blocks in your nervous system. You won’t be in your heart for any purpose. So it isn’t result-oriented. You’ll be in your heart for the sake of your heart, so then it’s genuine. It’s not conditioned on anything that’s taking place in your self. 

Q: So the seeking will stop? 

John: Yes. Then you are genuinely at home within, in the midst of anything as is. 

Q: Thank you.

What Is My Real Responsibility?

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Q: I see that I often take responsibility for things which are not my responsibility. Can you help me figure out what real responsibility is in daily life?

John: Having real responsibility in your life opens when all of your responsibility belongs to the expression of what you know the truth of in your heart, when all responsibility is given to the tiny little bit, within. And as that, you’ll be choosing differently. 

Q: There are different levels inside. What about the rules in daily life? Do they all depend on the same?

John: Yes

Q: So it’s okay to break some of the rules I’ve had. It’s really hard to go against my beliefs!

John: When you’re coming from openness and softness within and you don’t yet have the experience of the deeper levels, in openness and softness you’ll be following the rules. When you’re not sure of the rules, you’ll be following openness and softness, which will manifest within the rules.

As you awaken to the deeper levels within, you awaken to your capacity to discern the levels of knowing. That moves you with the rules, within the rules, and without the rules. 

If it is without the rules, you’ll be taking care of those rules that you’re no longer upholding. You’ll have a deeper heart understanding for what you are no longer walking in. The more that you are living without the rules, the more delicate your walk. 

From within the deeper levels, openness and softness walks without the rules, with that being in its care … and with that also being without apology. 

Q: Thank you.

Goals, Happiness And Your Real Foundation

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Q: We’ve been talking about the importance of life goals. I think my life needs to be the way I like it with my goals fulfilled. That’s the life I think will make me happy.

John: Are those people around you who have fulfilled their superficial, worldly goals happier than you?

Q:  I don’t know but I think I would be happier with my goals fulfilled!

John: This is important. Why do you believe that?

Q: I don’t know.

John: To your deepest wellbeing this one point is critical: don’t believe anything that you don’t know the truth of, regardless of what that may cost you. If you conclude the truth of something without knowing, that’s how you lie to your self. What you form in your thinking and feeling is an illusion. That illusion takes form through the use of your thought, your feeling, your will and your emotion, and in that way you use your self to build something that isn’t real.

Q: How can I find the real truth of what I should have in my life?

John: Begin with the tiniest little bit within that you directly know the truth of: that you were not taught, you didn’t learn, and that when you are most deeply quieted and gentled within, you know. Whatever it is that you know, believe. When you go that deeply within, what you will know is not anything made of thought and feeling, will or emotion. There are no self constructs there. What is there is beingness.

Q: So shall I do more meditation to touch this beingness?

John: You can. When you meditate and you come into deeper beingness of a depth and a quality that you directly know the truth of, then you be that depth and that quality at any personal cost. Then you are being what you know the truth of. You are concluding what you know. That may not work very well with the intensity of your plans for your life. 

As you deeply settle into believing what you know the truth of, your core beliefs will all begin to come apart because you’re not giving them your power anymore. You’re not withholding your power from them; you’re giving your power to what you directly know. As you believe what you do know the truth of, that’s where your power goes. 

Because of that shift, your core beliefs will starve to death, leaving you being the same as your being, forming your self by what you’re being in it, instead of forming it to suit your goals. 

When you form your self to suit your goals you make your self the centre of everything. Your self is your centre, making the truth within not your centre – which makes you blind.

Q: I cannot imagine a life without those things that suit my plans! If I were even able to reach that state, what would my life be like?

John: A manifestation of your being instead of a manifestation of your conditioning and your goals.

Q: But then who would I be in the world? What am I supposed to do in the world?

John: You’re starting with a false premise. You’re starting with the premise that this world is it; that whatever you’re being and doing somehow needs to fit in this world, somehow needs to look right in this world. You’re starting out with an artificial reality, which makes you artificial. 

This planet is real. Humanity matters. This world isn’t real and doesn’t matter. But you’ve taken on its precepts just because you’re in this world, and you’ve been raised by this world. You are already much like this world.

Q: Yes. I’m also affected by the thinking of my relatives, other people, my mom.  I have to think this way or they will be disappointed.

John: Then you have a serious problem. The very greatest disappointment has yet to come, which is that you’re going to die.

Q: I’m going to die? No way!

John: You’re going to terribly disappoint anyone who has something invested in you when you die. Every goal that you fulfill amounts to nothing when you die.

Q: That’s right.

John: Everything that matters in how you’ve been conditioned by this world, when you die won’t matter anymore. When you are on your last-hour deathbed, what will matter to you is not all of the goals that you’ve fulfilled. What will matter to you is not what you have become in this world. What will matter to you is not what you’ve done with your self. What will matter to you is what you’ve done with your heart, and deeper.

Q: Okay, but I’m alive and I think the material world and all those things matter to me. Of course the  heart matters to me, but both are important.

John: That’s like building a house on the beach when the tide is out. 

Q: So we just do nothing? We need to do something!

John: First, begin with a real premise. A real premise won’t be something seen, anything that this world can quantify. A real premise begins deep within your interior that isn’t subject to your upbringing. It isn’t subject to the views of this world. This premise way deep within is subject only to what you directly know the truth of. That premise is foundational to what your self and your whole life belong to. If you don’t get this right you will build believing that the tide is not coming back.

Q: So how can I start doing these things that really matter?

John: Use your doing in this world and on the surface to support what you are doing within in the unseen. So whatever you do to make money with your time, you do so that you can have food and shelter; so that you have space and time that you provide for what matters more than this world, and you use your space and your time to support what’s deepest within. In the midst of all of this doing, what you are being is this underlying premise that you directly know the truth of. You’re being it in all of your doing.

Q: I feel a long way from what you’re talking about. I don’t feel able to change how my current life is. I understand what you’re saying but I need more inner power, more help and support to follow through.

John: Then live as close as you can to someone who you know lives this. Then you’re living as close as you can to what you know is an example of this. Without the example you will keep fooling your self. If you know one, use all of your resources in all of your life – inside and out – to be as close as you can to that one.

Q: Thank you so much.

 

Your Genetic Conditioning And You

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Q: Does our genetic conditioning strongly influence our life and behaviour? 

John: Where you’re not in your heart, absolutely. Where you are unconditionally in your heart, at any personal expense, no.

Q: Sometimes I think a person’s genetic imprint is what makes it so easy for them. They seem blessed with an open heart and everyone wants to be with them. Others seem to have to dig and dig. They seem to have a strong shadow and it’s not easy for them. How is this? We all have this one life! Do some come with a more golden destiny and others really have something to work through? 

John: No. The genetics that you have are the genetics that you need for you to manifest what you are as a being. It’s going to be different for each. Opening within what genetics you have draws on different streams and delicacies of your being that open up a particular movement of being. Regardless of how you experience it, your genetics, your circumstances, your upbringing, are all helping you. 

But it’s also somewhat like finding the truth in your dream life. Many dreams won’t make sense to you. They might deeply affect you, but it doesn’t matter how much you look into the dream to understand it, you can’t. Such a dream can stay with you for years. It’s because its deeper meaning is into you, and it stays in you until you get it. 

Q: I don’t want to be about my dream life anymore. How can I maintain my focus, go forward, like a ship in a storm, and not get distracted?

John: By relating to a deeper level of meaning than what comes by your mind, your thinking and your understanding, and quietly relating to these deeper levels of meaning in your dreams and in your day. 

Your real life isn’t about your surface life. We make our lives about our surface lives, but that’s not real. Your real life is your deep, quiet, inner life in the midst of your surface life, without your surface life being a distraction. Your surface life needs to be in service and in response to your deep, quiet, inner life. 

Q: So it’s about keeping these in the right balance, to serve the inner life and weave it into the physical, daily life. Are they in an eternal dialogue?

John: If you are existing from the innermost, outwards, yes. Then the outward opens and transforms, and the outward speaks the same language as the deep inward. But that’s a being kind of self instead of a genetic self.

Q: Yes, I see. So the genetics don’t matter.

John: No. You can come in with a very difficult package or a very easy package. None of it is as it appears to be. It isn’t about the easy or the difficult: it’s about what you’re being in it.

 

Why Is My Relationship So Difficult?

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Q: My relationship with a man is very difficult.  I wonder if he’s the wrong man for me, or the difficulty is because of something in me? Can you help?

John: Any time that you have difficulty, the difficulty is first your self. When you experience difficulty it’s because you experience a lack, an actual lack that is there in your self in being able to deal with a person or a situation. The tendency when we experience a lack in our selves is that we focus on what looks like the catalyst to that lack, which is something outside of our selves: a circumstance or another person. As soon as you make it about the other person, you become blind to the actual lack which is in your self.

Q: What do you mean by ‘lack?’

John: If you have a difficult time with someone, it’s not really that other person: it’s you. For example, if your self were more highly developed, and you were to spend time with that same person with whom you had difficulty before, you would realize that the difficulty is gone although their behaviour is still the same. Then you realize that you didn’t have the development of self before to be able to be comfortable in your self while with that person.

When you come from a deeper place within, while you’re spending time with someone who triggers lack in your self, the trigger doesn’t exist within that depth. The closer you are relating from within your surface, the stronger that trigger becomes. For instance, the trigger that you experience with someone doesn’t exist in your heart.

When you’re quieted within your heart while you’re with a difficult person, it’s not difficult for you because of what you’re coming from. When you leave your heart and you go into your personality, then your experience of how difficult that person is becomes much more heightened. 

When you’re forgiving toward someone, they can be in a negative pattern and you are deeply okay. When you’re unforgiving toward someone, then every little thing that person does in being difficult catches all kinds of triggers in your self. When you’re unforgiving toward someone, you’re easily provoked. When you’re coming from a deeper place you’re naturally more forgiving, so from within you you’re given to sweetly overlook things in people. When someone’s behaving in a way that would normally be difficult for your self, you’re easily overlooking that and relating to something that’s deeper in them. Then you’re enjoying that person despite their behaviour. When you’re not dependent on his behaviour toward you, that relieves him of your self, which also then eases up his behaviour.

The more you come from your heart, the more you like him. The more that you come from your heart, the more that you easily feel for him, and the more that you feel him instead of feeling how his self affects your self. If you’re not coming from your heart, everything that he does will bother you. If you’re deeply coming from your heart, everything that he does has little effect on you and you are right there enjoying him.

If you’re having difficulty with him, instead of focusing on what he is doing or not doing, simply go to a deeper place in you. From within that deeper place you think differently, you feel differently and you see differently. And that’s without him changing.

Q:  I understand that.

John: If you have a difficult time with someone, it really says something about you – not first the other person. When you realize that, as soon as you have difficulty with someone you immediately drop deeper within. You drop deeper within by opening and softening.

When you come from a deeper place within, instead of having somewhat hard eyes toward him you’ll easily have soft eyes toward him. The softer your eyes the happier you are.

Q: Thank you.

 

Cancer: Your Beloved Teacher

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Q: Hello John. I first encountered you a few months ago when I heard a tape of yours on the subject of cancer. At the time I was very struck by the beauty and truth of your responses. Cancer wasn’t an issue for me then, but it is now. I feel a sense of unreality about it because sometimes I feel very well and optimistic about the outcome on a physical level, but recently there have been times when the pain has been excruciating and I no longer feel optimistic.

John: Then you’ve taken cancer personally. That disables you from being able to see through it. Then what you wish to see comes back at you as a disappointment in the form of cancer. Cancer is a disappointment only in view of what you wish to see. Then, what you wish to see is the very thing that disables you from being able to see your way through cancer, regardless of its physical outcome.

Q: So it sounds to me that it’s about being with what is. Is being with what is and being as fully present as possible what might deepen my practice, spiritually?

John: You are in this life to be spirit in form, not to be enticed by form looking for spirit. Cancer is a form that spirit is at home in. As soon as you wish that it wasn’t there, then that is the form that has caught you.

Q: I think the most difficulty I find is when it gets very painful. It’s hardest then.

John: It’s hardest when you are more interested in your self than in your first love.

Cancer is to be a beloved teacher, not an interference. Be most kind to such a teacher that seems most nasty. It is such kindness that unlocks the living gold that is being given to you. This isn’t about survival. It is about giving love permission to develop at a depth that it hasn’t developed before.

Everything that you are most deeply asking for may easily come in the form that you would least like. When you’re deeply asking for something within that has not yet been completed in you, that makes it very easy to not recognize the messenger when it comes.

You are in this life to be tutored by love. You’re not in this life to have what you want. When you are not letting love tutor you, then misery will.

Q: Thank you.

Real Power: Givenness To Love In The Midst Of Polarity

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Q: I’ve recently experienced a restedness within and I know there’s new life there. I feel I’m stepping into something of the weakness you speak of. Would you speak more about weakness and real power?

John: From within the conditioning in our selves, we relate to power as what gives us advantage: an advantage over vulnerability, an advantage over weakness, an advantage in being taken advantage of, an advantage in unfairness, having an advantage in being liked, being loved, being cared for. It’s all an abuse of power: the use of power that doesn’t come from within nurture, the use of power that has its relationship to lack, the use of power that perceivably gives remedy to lack. It’s all the illusory power of separation. 

Real power is the capacity deep within, fundamentally as awareness, from within our forms, to empower what is just a little bit deeper than what affects our selves. It’s the giving of our power from within our selves to the heart, while our selves are affected by others and by circumstances. 

Real power is the power of givenness.

Real power nurtures present subtle connectivity.

Real power is what enables the subtle movement of humanness in the midst of difficulty and pressure.

Real power is the quiet givenness that enables love to be freed from within in the midst of polarized circumstances, in the midst of polarized experience in our selves: love being freed into a polarized nervous system. 

Real power is awareness relaxed in forms of difficulty.

 

What Is Real Forgiveness?

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Q: I want to talk about forgiveness. We’re often told to forgive this and forgive that, but if we’re really coming from our heart there is no need for forgiveness. 

John: Yes. When you hold a grudge, or when you’re closing and hardening towards someone because of how they’ve treated you, it doesn’t matter how wrongly you’re treated, you’re not right in closing or hardening. So in that way no one has a good or a real reason to close and harden. 

We can close and harden when we’re mistreated, and what we understand in ourselves is that ultimately we need to come to a place of forgiving, forgiving the other. What that’s really based on is that we need to come to a place of openness and softness of heart concerning how we were treated. When we move in that beingness there isn’t the need to forgive, and what passes away with the need to forgive is also being above others by forgiving them. In a way, as we forgive someone, there’s something in ourselves that’s condescending. 

When we’re just opening and softening within toward how someone has treated us, there is no beingness that brings us in any way to being condescending. What there is, is an extension of openness and softness – a movement of love. For anyone who’s identified with themselves, it’s a simple way to point to the heart by encouraging that one to forgive. But as soon as you begin to go deeper within than your self, you don’t need to relate to forgiving: what you come into is the beingness that moves in the value of forgiveness. 

What makes forgiveness real, and gives it its value, is a deeper beingness. 

 

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