The Meaning Of Death

Q: When I first heard you speak about taking my death dearly to my heart, I was trembling and it was extremely provoking for me. I have been trying to do that, to embrace it and make it part of me. I know it’s all about letting go and basically being nobody in it. Would you speak more about it?

John: When your death is brought dearly into your heart, your whole relationship with your self ends as you’ve known it, and time, for you, opens.

Q: Time? Can you elaborate on that?

John: Death won’t be later anymore; it isn’t something that comes later. It’s welcomed into you. It opens the levels of life for you instead of life being contextualized through your relationship to your self. The deeper levels of life open together with the deeper levels of your self, allowing you as a being in all of your real levels to become one with your self instead of separate.

Q: Is that why my whole body is feeling wobbly and my brain is not the same? 

John: And because you are opening, your brain is opening. That opening creates a dynamic tension in your self. Part of that tension is like a love-excitement and part of it is apprehensiveness and fear.

Q: Apprehensiveness?

John: Nervous and scared.

Q: I don’t feel scared. I don’t feel fear.

John: It’s in your nervous system. You don’t know what it’s like yet to have a nervous system that is without that. You’re used to it.

Q: I am used to having death in my nervous system and now it will disappear because I embraced it.

John: Because of you, as love, letting in the meaning of death so that it’s free to come right into you. It doesn’t separate you from life. It opens you into life. Until death has opened you, you can’t really live. Until it’s opened you, you’ll be relating in life to what you like and what you don’t like. Your relationship to life will be polarized. 

The meaning of death is for you to be warmly taken by what is so other than your self, for you to be completely taken by what is beyond your self. It’s all within, and it’s beyond your self. As you let it take you, the beyond, within, will come up into your self and take your self, and it will take your life. 

Your body won’t die as this takes place. Your body will open up into all of its levels, altering your whole sense of reality and of life. You will be life from the innermost outwards, and then when your body dies you won’t go through very much change. Everything that you integrate in this opened life as a being remains as you, so then this innermost life that comes all the way out into life is death-proof. It’s the meaning of death that opened it and death isn’t going to close it; it’s already freed. 

Q: It seems that I’m getting more alive by dying in this process. It’s really paradoxical.

John: The life of an unintegrated self dies, just as it will when your body dies, and life as a being within the multiple levels of your body, of reality and life, replaces what has died. And when your body dies, all of this continues.

Q: You’ve also said that it takes ten thousand times longer to evolve when you’re dead than when you’re in a body…

John: I don’t know how accurate the number is, but it’s something like that.

Q: A lot more! So we just follow what is here, being here, seeing…

John: And then instead of you being quite a bit the same as this world, you will live in Planet Opportunity.

Q: What do you mean?

John: That’s this planet, for a being in a body. 

Q: And after we die? 

John: All of the deeper levels of your body remain with you. Most of what your body is stays with you. It’s only the physical aspect, as you relate to it so far, that ends. 

What happens next, after your body has died, is you full-on continuing. It’s a little like graduating from school and then entering the rest of life.

Q: Thank you, John.

 

Leading A Child Into The World Within

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 …

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

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

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. 

What Is Real Groundedness?

Q: Welcome to New York, John! I’m wondering, what’s the best way to stay grounded? 

John: By deeply not needing to. Any real grounding comes from deeper within than we relate to as our selves. It comes from deeper within than any kind of thinking or feeling. The access to it is through openness and softness of heart. If we’re looking for any kind of grounding, we’re misunderstanding what we really are.  

All there is that is really worth being grounded in and therefore coming from is what we know the truth of in our hearts, aside from anything that we experience in our selves, aside from our past, aside from any kind of conditioning. When we are most deeply quieted within, we realize that tiny little bit that we do know the truth of. That tiny little bit may not even be something that we understand, but we do directly know it. It’s what enables us to rest, within. 

So a real grounding is when we are relaxed as awareness, simply being one with what we actually know the truth of. Believing what we actually know the truth of is deeper than any belief. When we have beliefs, we’re fundamentally ungrounded.  

You do come into most profound groundedness, one with what you know the truth of, every time you go to sleep. You completely turn into that. When you lie down to go to sleep you first relax as a person, so you come into a deeper level of your person. As you come into a deeper level of your person, your person begins to pass away. With that, your day also begins to pass away and you come into your self, a deeper groundedness as you relax as awareness. You naturally rest within your own interior.

As you continue to relax as awareness, your self also passes away and you are soon coming into an even deeper groundedness where it is enough for you to reside in your heart. As you continue to relax as awareness, your heart also passes away. You enter your being, and you are being what you really are. You come into that, as awareness, the moment you fall asleep. At that very moment you are grounded in the deepest of what you really are.  

When you realize how much home that really is every time you fall asleep, and you realize the fundamental value of that which is deeper than your life, your person, your self and even your own heart, right there you have direct knowledge of what to be in your self, in your person and in all of your life. Then you are profoundly grounded.

It isn’t mysterious: it’s natural and immediate, and requires no process. You can’t work for it. You can’t earn it. You can only respond to it.

All-Weather Cleaning: The Purification Of Your Heart

Q: When you say that we need to do inner cleaning, what do you actually mean?

John: When you first recognize the value of cleaning, the tendency is to respond to your self and not what you’re knowing. Then you’ll be a fair-weather cleaner, so you clean your self when your environment is stable, everything feels good, while people are nice to you.

But the cleaning that counts the most is when you’re most under pressure, where the weather is not fair and everything feels terrible. The only way to do that is when the cleaning starts in your heart and not in your self. If you’re not first purifying your heart and you work on purifying your self, you’ll have a self-oriented, self-centred purification. It will be highly conditional.

Purification of the heart means that you’ll always be in your heart with openness and softness, at any cost to your self. Purification of your heart is really simple. If you’ll purify your heart in its simplicity, then you’ll be able to move into purifying your self, which is full of complexity. It’s the simplicity of heart purification brought into your self which enables complex purification.

The way to purify your heart is being what you actually know the truth of in your heart, at any cost.

Q: So there is nothing to clean? Just to be there in the heart?

John: Yes. Being openness and softness in your heart cleans out what is closed and hard in your heart. When you’re being openness and softness in your heart, it cleans your self out of your heart. Anything of your self that you’ve taken to heart, including your conditioning, will be cleaned out. Then your self is being conditioned by an open and a soft heart. It’s being cleaned out and it’s being changed.

When you work on purifying your self but you haven’t purified your heart, that’s like cleaning your house to favour appearances. So when company comes over everything is nice and clean, but they’d better not open a closet!

The Purpose Of Memory

Q: I have a question about my memory. It’s getting worse all the time. I’m going to have it checked, but I’m also wondering if it’s an expression of something that’s not physical. I can see some of the benefits, like not clinging to things, but I’d love to hear you talk about this.

John: The whole purpose of memory is to manifest your being in. The moment you’re even concerned about your memory, you’re separate from your own being, and you’re making the substance of memory of greater importance than being both in your heart and in your being.

Q: I can understand that because much of the time I’m even enjoying it, but there’s a scary sense of dissipating.

John: When you don’t want it to dissipate, you cut off the supply of your own being to your memory. The supply of being matters more than memory, but it isn’t going to matter more if you’re not connected to it. So be the supply of being to your memory without any focus of result.

Q: I understand it as just relaxing. Is that it?

John: Yes. Do what you can on the same level as memory for your memory, but don’t use any movement of your being to improve it. That’s not what it’s for.

Be unconditionally open and soft in your heart within the context of memory. That includes the loss of memory as much as having more memory. The existence of memory isn’t less when memory dissipates. Your experience of it changes with the decrease or the increase, yet it isn’t about either.

It’s you being open and soft in your heart within memory, and that openness and softness doesn’t become less when your memory becomes less.

Q: I think it’s even helping me to get deeper. Am I using it? Is this what it’s for?

John: If you’re being openness and softness within memory, when memory increases there’s an impetus to openness and softness, and openness and softness deepens. If you’re being that openness and softness and memory decreases, the impetus is the same to openness and softness.

If you try to use openness and softness for the benefit of your memory, you disconnect from openness and softness. Or, if you notice that decreased memory feels open and soft, you will subconsciously compromise your memory.

The balance is simply being open and soft whichever way your memory goes.

Q: So my wanting a high-functioning memory back is not something I should give energy to?

John: On the level of your self, yes, and deeper within than your self, for instance in your heart, no. And you’re able to do both at the same time. On the level of your self, work on your memory, while in your heart it makes no difference to you.

It’s the truth of multi-tasking, but if you connect the two you fool your self. There needs to be a full flow on a heart level and a full flow on a self level. They work independently of each other. You’re moving on both levels at the same time, and you’re all in both levels.

Q: Okay. Practically, what I’m getting from this is just to relax.

John: Yes. The more relaxed you are, the less you’ll cross the levels. When you’re profoundly relaxed as awareness, you will naturally move in your heart and in your self in the way that you know.

 

 

The End Of A Relationship: At Rest In Your Heart

Q: My question is about how to be in the ending of a relationship. My partner has decided it’s not right for him to be with me and I’m ready to let go, to see the good in what is there between us and just to be with the pain as it is. Yet there is also the pain of desire and longing, and a feeling of not being good enough. This has happened lots of times in my life. How can I just have the goodness without having to prove that there is something wrong with the situation?

John: By being openness and softness instead of being your self. As soon as you’re being your self, you have a story. Your self is important, but it is not important for you to be your self. What’s important is to be like your own being, in the midst of your self. That adds a thickness to your own being instead of a story.

Q: This is something really new for me; I heard it for the first time today and it really resonated that I might connect to my being rather than to my self.

John: When you’re being your self you’ll have some kind of story about how you experience your self, whether that’s a happy story or an unhappy one. Either way, the story isn’t what satisfies you. It satisfies your self, but you’ll always need more and there’s an endless supply. If you’re being your own being in the midst of your self, you’re truly satisfied.

Q: This resonates, and I would love to be present enough to do this, yet I feel there’s such a fine line.

John: Yes. When you’re in your self, your self feels important but when you’re quieted within your heart you know that there’s something more important than how you presently experience your self. Be what you know is more important in the midst of what feels so pressing. That turns you right-side up. You’ll be manifesting your own being within your self, without a story. There’s an experience to that, which generates a story, but there isn’t first a story.

As soon as you have a story about anything, you are in some way separate from your heart and your being. When there’s an openness and a softness of heart, that relieves you of your story. The openness and softness of heart is fundamentally real and immediate to you. It satisfies you.

In a relationship ending, the story of it is “what about everything that was? And what about this pain? What about what I would like to have?” You can have stories when you’re in the relationship and you can have stories as the relationship ends, but when you are being openness and softness of heart there is no story – either to being in a relationship or to a relationship ending.

The relationship doesn’t need to end, and if it ends despite the truth of that, openness and softness of heart doesn’t end.

Q: I think I had a little glimpse of that earlier in the meeting. I felt connected to my being and didn’t have pain.

John: When you realize that the value of openness and softness of heart exceeds the value of your self, that it is what gives meaning to your self, live in that openness and softness. Don’t look for another relationship. Realize what is fundamentally meaningful to you, and it isn’t your self that’s meaningful. You use your self to pursue meaning but the meaning is in you being in your heart and connected to your own being.

From here forward, live in that openness and that softness of heart. Live quietly connecting to your own being and there you realize that you have need of nothing. You don’t need a relationship, but you are open to what may come. Don’t move into another relationship unless it’s really clear to you that your potential partner is coming from the same place and moving in the same direction as you, with openness and softness of heart meaning more than his self or what he’s experiencing.

Because this is new for you, don’t move quickly into a new relationship because it will be a huge distraction; you won’t settle into just simply being in your heart and connecting to the quietness of your own being. Become established in that before you take on a new relationship.

Q: That’s good to hear, even though I thought I’d done that before this relationship! It feels good to take time for that.

John: And if he sees a change in you and he wants to stay in relationship, don’t be quick to resume what you had with him before. Set the terms of the relationship continuing based only on what you are newly realizing.

Q: What you say feels so true, yet I hope the temptation of the love that comes with a relationship doesn’t pull me to resume the old, or begin a new one.

John: It’ll pull you – as will every other distraction in life – unless you are fundamentally clear that openness and softness mean more to you than anything you can have in your self.

If you don’t make that clear, every distraction will come along and you’ll be tempted because of your investment in them. If you’re not invested, you won’t be tempted. If it’s real that you value openness and softness in your heart more than your self in the present, there isn’t anything that can entice you. It’s real to you that you belong to openness and softness of heart.

Q: How will I know this is established? I feel it’s taken all of my life to develop this, and I still feel I have so far to go! I guess it’s just about doing it.

John: It’s really being it and really doing it. If anything distracts you, let go of that distraction … and more. It’s not actually what’s on the surface that distracts you; it’s that you’ve been selling out to the promise of something in your self.

Your real satisfaction is not from anything that comes from outside of you. It’s from what is present and quietly within. When you’re rested in what is quietly within, you are in your heart and connected to your own being.

 

Micro-Moments Of Realness In Chronic Pain

Q: I work with people who suffer from chronic pain and I’m wondering what would assist them in dealing with it.

John: To have no personal issue with chronic pain. For the most part, people who have chronic pain are attached to it. Only profound honesty can be in pain and make no story about it.

Q: So the story is the problem, more than the pain?

John: Yes. The dishonesty of awareness to what it knows is what creates that story.

Q: What’s a way in to assist someone in that situation?

John: The way in will be very short-lived. There are many ways in, for example a kind look. When someone who is in chronic pain receives a kind look, for a moment they’re distracted from their pain. They’re distracted from their story because they’re touched in their heart. The touch in their heart has nothing to do with their story.

Q: So, compassion?

John: It’ll be a very short-lived distraction from their story. For that short moment they realize again, without a thought process, what works. The touch in their heart works. Their story doesn’t work, their chronic pain doesn’t work, their whole relationship with it doesn’t work.

The touch in their heart works. Right there, someone in chronic pain knows how to be, and it has nothing to do with their story or their pain.

Q: It’s giving them something, another way of being. If you’re in your story all the time, then that is your experience.

John: Everyone is distracted in micro-moments of being throughout every day. Everyone is distracted from their story.

Q: So is it a matter of bringing their awareness to that valid distraction?

John: Yes, but that won’t do because you’ll need another momentary distraction. When someone becomes honest within that moment, doubling the time of that moment, they realize what they know the truth of.

Right there is where they’re able to be completely free of themselves by sustaining being in agreement with what they know, despite anything that they’re experiencing. Right there is either a micro-choice to remain in that or a micro-choice to turn back to the story.

Q: Is it necessary to get a sense of the response within the body for them to know that’s happening, so it’s a body awareness and not all in the head? 

John: Everyone has micro-moments of that throughout the day. You can do something to bring more awareness to that, but that won’t necessarily make a person better. It won’t necessarily really help.

It costs the whole story to walk away from the story.