Q: A few days ago, I became aware how much energy, how much awareness is going towards sexuality. It touched me deep to see that. Here I come on this border of pulling and wanting. Sometimes I can see very clear, but I also know, I get confused there as well.
John: Your relationship with sexuality is your relationship with power. Your sexuality is something for you to completely be in without a trace of need. And that is you being in your power without using your power. Your relationship with your sexuality shows you your relationship with your power as soon as you’re aware of your sexuality. And, if you’re not completely free of your own power, then while you’re aware of your sexuality, there is either ‘want’ or ‘don’t want’. There is either a need to have or a need to not have, versus being in your sexuality without personal issue, without any want of having or want of not having. Being in your sexuality with your heart being completely at rest. Being in your sexuality without the presence of tension. Where there’s need there’s tension. Your use of power shows up as soon as you’re in your sexuality.
Q: Is this also the source of lots of suffering? It more seems like a war going on in men and women, because of the pain?
John: That’s just a war of need. The struggle is one of power. Where there is no need there’s presence without struggle. Being in the midst of any kind of pull with your heart still, being completely at ease, not striving in need of something, and not striving in need of keeping something out. You’re to completely be in your sexuality and not use it for your self and not keep it out. For your heart to have no momentum concerning sexuality while you’re being in it.
Q: Where is the delight coming from being with someone else?
John: Is that delight based on what you’re feeling or is that delight based on what you know? If the delight is based on what you’re feeling then you’ll use your power to chase and control that feeling. If your delight is based on what you know, then you’ll use your power to be in what you know regardless of what you’re feeling.
Q: It’s just difficult to answer this question. It almost seems like there’s a choice then.
John: There is a choice but it doesn’t exist in your mind. And you cannot use your will to make it. The seed of choice exists in your heart, and that choice takes place either in your heart opening or closing. You cannot do this using your will and using your mind. It’s your openness of heart that determines the flow of your will and the flow of your mind, and when your heart tightens that determines the flow of your will and the flow of your mind. The only real choice that you have is for your whole heart to very gently be or for your heart in some way through effort to not be or to try and be.
When your sexuality comes up, are you very gently content to just be in it or do you have need to do something with it? When your sexuality comes up is there a trace of tightening of ‘I want’ or ‘I don’t want’? Or is there just very gently being in it without any kind of want? As soon as you have want or need in sexuality then sexuality is only an expression of want or need. It can only be an expression of love if you are free of want or need. That for you is an issue of power. Letting your power go and just resting in your power or taking hold of your power and using it to have what you think you need. Let your sexuality come up without you having to do anything with it. Just completely resting in it and using your power to let go of any need. When power is released when you would most want to use it, that is when your heart most opens up.
Q: What is there in this moment of sexual union?
John: That depends entirely on where your heart is. That depends entirely on how deeply your whole heart is at one with what you know. The more that your heart is at one with what you know, the more that you can feel fineness instead of feeling what you like. When your feelings are given over to what you like, then within your feelings you lose fineness. The return of fineness in your feelings is only when your heart is immersed in what it knows. Sexual union is entirely for your being. Sexual union is not for your will being used in the need to feel. That is what separates you from what you are as a being.
Q: Can sexual union be a practice for being?
John: Only if there is a base of being, in which that sexual practice can completely rest. Otherwise the sexual practice may be about being as an idea in your mind while it is really only about your use of will in needing to feel what you want to feel. Honesty can tell the difference and dishonesty will turn it all around until it can have just exactly what it wants.
Q: And how is that with having an experience? Besides wanting to have a feeling I can foresee that? But how is that with an experience, where there is a kind of knowing in that?
John: If your experience is cut short or altered and if there is any disappointment at all, even just a trace, then that is how much you’re not in what you know and you’re in what you want. If there’s any hope – hope shows you how much you’re in what you want instead of what you know. When you’re in what you know, there is just the most gentle ease of being, where hope or disappointment doesn’t exist. Ease of being and what you know – they are the same. Where there is ease of being, there cannot be disappointment.
Q: Knowing this place of no wants and no expectations – wanting to be there, it’s a little bit tricky, how I say it but, ‘wanting to be there’ – is that a want or is that an attraction happening, a pull…?
John: There is a pull, but if something separates you from your experience of that pull – are you disappointed? If I were to tell you that in one year you’ll be completely at home – would you be excited? And if I were to tell you in almost one year from now, that it will actually be two years instead of one – would you be disappointed?
Q: Disappointment, ya…
John: Then there’s want and need in the midst of a legitimate and a wonderful pull.
Q: It’s also what it makes it so tricky. It seems so tricky because I know this pull home has everything to do with letting go and with letting go and…
John: Real letting go.
Q: Uh?
John: Real letting go. And not you being tricky in letting go so that you can have what’s real.
Q: It’s almost the want to let go.
John: It is not so tricky. It’s you that’s tricky. It is wonderfully simple. It gets tricky when you get tricky. You are completely home when the experience of home can be given to you in any form and just as easily taken away and you remaining in the same wonderful ease of being where there’s no ripple of either hope or disappointment. You are genuinely at home in either experiencing home or losing that experience. When you’re completely being what you know regardless of your present experience, when you’re being what you know, regardless of what you’re thinking or feeling, then thought and feeling is an expression of being instead of thought and feeling being an expression of want or need.
