Q: The other day I talked to you about opening and closing, softening the heart. Then you said something about honesty and that really rang home. Then I really experienced moments of my life where I didn’t follow my heart, what was true for me, and I also understood why this relationship I was in turned emotionally abusive. So when I sit here everything feels all right.

John: Because it actually is.

Q: It feels so strange to talk about those things, although when I think about it, I would like this in my life.

John: You can’t have it.

Q: I can’t?

John: You can’t have it for your self. You can’t have it for what you experience in your self. You can’t have this to make the weather wonderful. You can have all of this for what you know in your heart. What you know in your heart represents you; it represents what you really are. Your self doesn’t represent you. Your self represents what you experience in your self. You can have all of this for what is really you.

Q: And then I feel something insecure, so how do I know what is really me? Do I know?

John: Pure you has no aversion to anything. Pure you just simply moves precisely in the same way as your own being. Your being is pure form and a pure manifestation of what is purely you. You’re able as awareness to be what your being is like, in the midst of the self that you have. Then you are raising your self, instead of following your self. Your self will grow up if you don’t follow it. The more that you follow your self, the more unruly it becomes.

Q: So it actually all starts and ends with awareness.

John: Awareness, one with what it knows and not awareness, one with the unintegrated self it has, one with what it knows in its heart, bringing it into its own being, which brings forth its own being into its self, and its self becomes like that.

Q: Yes, I can totally follow that now. And for the honesty to happen, to be, is through the same way?

John: When you are honest to your self, you’ll be true to what you think and feel in your self. You’ll be true to what you experience in your self. It’s a very coarse kind of honesty. As your awareness goes deeper, you know that there’s deeper in you than what your self is. That directs you to your heart. The honesty of awareness moves away from your self and it moves to your heart. Instead of being honest to what you think and feel and experience in your self, you are honest to the way of your heart.

That honesty brings you into openness and softness. When you are honest to your heart, your heart opens. It doesn’t matter what’s taking place in your self, when you’re honest to your heart, your heart opens.

When you are in your heart, you realize as awareness that there is something deeper than your heart. The direction is always deeper. As soon as you’re aware that you know that there is what is deeper in your heart, you become honest no longer to your heart but to what you know in your heart, what you know the truth of in your heart. The honesty increases by depth. When you are honest as awareness to what you know in your heart, you become aware again that there’s deeper. What you know in your heart directs you to what is just beneath that. It directs you into what is your being.

The direction is increasingly further and further away from what your self is like. There’s no neglect of your self in this. This just directs you, as awareness, what you are to come from. Instead of coming from your self in your self, you come from your heart into your self, and then you come from what you know the truth of in your heart, with all of your heart, into your self. And then you come from…from within your own being, filling all of your heart, with the overflow of that coming into your self.

Your self never suffers neglect and it’s never followed. You’re always pouring into your self from what is deeper than your self. The pouring into your self is for what is deeper.
When it is for what is deeper then it is surely what you’re coming from. Anything that is for your self makes you come from your self, in your self.

Q: It feels like I can sit here a long time…but the word is actually ‘forever’…

John: Stay in what you know in your heart is forever. Have your orientation in that, despite what self you have. Live for what you know is forever…without result. The results will come even though you deeply don’t need them.

The tree will grow, but always first the roots.

Q: How can I help grow the roots?

John: The roots of the tree are underground. They’re not part of what you see; they’re generally unseen. It’s the above-ground part of the tree that you experience. It’s the unseen part of the tree that the tree, in its health, is dependent on. It’s what sustains the tree in every kind of weather.

Let your awareness belong to what is underneath your self, out of sight of your self, unseen to your experience but known by you. Then you are existing in response to what you really are. You resting in what you know in your heart, instead of favouring negatively and positively what you experience in your self.

The tree is controlled by its roots, not by the weather. It’s controlled by what is unseen. It’ll all eventually come through the branches and the leaves, but that part isn’t primary.

Q: Thank you, John.