Q: I would like your assistance in taking me deeper into my knowing. I’m longing to rest more in my heart, and I notice that there’s a guardedness that arises, and a mistrust, and fears, beliefs around rejection. I’ve done a lot looking at that but somehow it just comes in through the backdoor, and even though I know that it’s a projection or it’s a thought, I can’t seem to cut the pattern.
John: There’s no pattern that stays with you that isn’t serving you. You wanting to be free of it pulls it in tighter. What does work, however, is you enjoying being in your heart at all costs. The first part means nothing without the second part. When it is at all costs, there is nothing in the way. When it is at all costs, you’re free. Add to that a single condition and you are back in the game.
Q: Can you elaborate on “at all costs” and what I get out of holding onto a pattern?
John: When you relate to a pattern, you use that pattern to be grounded in your self. Your relationship to the pattern gives you an artificial sense of your self. It’s an artificial relating. It isn’t a real relating. As you relate to a pattern, your way of being in that relating isn’t at all like your own being, so it’s that manner in your relating that separates you from your heart.
As soon as you enjoy being in your heart, you’re there. The longing to be in your heart doesn’t bring you into your heart. The longing to be in your heart means that at that moment you’re facing your heart, while still being separate. Enjoying being in your heart brings you right in, but you won’t be able to sustain it unless enjoying being in your heart, you enjoying that your heart has you, is at any cost to your self.
When it is at any personal cost, that means that you being in your heart has no competition in you; that you, awareness, are not divided or split; that you, awareness, are all in your heart; that you won’t sell out on your heart for absolutely anything in your self and in your life; that nothing else has purchase with you; that you won’t leave your heart for someone to like you; that you won’t leave your heart for love, for someone to love you. You won’t leave your heart for you to have any kind of control in your self. You won’t leave your heart to be right about something. You won’t leave your heart for you to be right or wrong.
Q: I’ve left my heart already by wondering how I can sustain this! It seems so enormous.
John: In your self you’re not capable of sustaining it. In your self you’re not able to return to your heart. Use your self to return to your heart and you go even deeper into your longing self – love your heart. It doesn’t matter how and when you leave your heart. What matters is, as soon as you see that, that you directly enjoy being in your heart without addressing anything in your self.
Q: Does that mean without paying attention to the patterns or…?
John: Yes. If you work with your patterns, you feed your self. If you enjoy being in your heart, you are watering your heart. Working with a pattern makes your self more important than your heart.
Q: So, when the feeling of not belonging in the world arises, I find it very difficult to enjoy being in my heart.
John: That’s because you value that feeling more, in a negative way, than you being in your heart. What it means is that you would rather struggle than love. Struggling with your self makes your self important. You enjoying being in your heart makes what you know the truth of in your heart important.
Q: The struggle is still happening. I seem to be struggling with letting go of the struggling!
John: While the monkeys of struggle are running about in your self, enjoy being in your heart.
Q: So to include it all.
John: You don’t need to include any of it. All there is that is included in your heart is you. There, nothing else is of any consequence to you.
While you’re struggling in your self, hold the hand of your heart and listen.
597 – The Person, the Self and the Being: Identifying the Many Levels of You (Part 1)
Person, self, being … what’s the difference and what is real? Using different analogies, John explains how our different levels connect and shares the code to being what we really are.
596 – Beyond Sadness and Pain: Happy Without a Reason
John reveals the source of the deep well of sadness and pain this person carries, and shares how she can reconnect with her original happiness.
595 – When a Crumb of Truth in Your Heart is Your Home
John responds to a spiritual dilemma: a desperate longing for realization, coupled with the fear of nothingness that seems to come with it.
594 – Fully Present in Your Body, Fully Present in Your Heart
Closing down to the experience of vulnerability can mean dissociating from the body. John shares a simple way to become more present however uncomfortable we feel.
593 – Honest to the Way of Your Heart
An exploration of how honesty and an open, soft heart are connected, taking us ever deeper into the unseen roots we could remain in forever.
591 – The Truth About Compassion
When is compassion self-centred, when is it real, and how can we tell? An exploration of what it means to be truly compassionate.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
