Q: You talked about being in your heart, and I have this longing to be there more often and act more often from this wisdom that’s inside.

John: You know how to shift your awareness to deeper levels. What you’re accustomed to is a change in your environment that helps carry that shift. When you relax into a hot bath, the effect of the hot water on your body causes an opening and a softening in your body. As awareness, you relate to what that is like in your body. There’s meaning in it for you as awareness that is beyond what you experience in your body. When you relax into a hot bath, your level of awareness easily shifts and changes to match the meaning of what is occurring in your body.

Instead of just benefiting from the pleasure of sitting in a hot bath, notice what happens in you as you relax into the bath. Notice how your awareness changes, and as your awareness changes, notice the level from which you feel and think also changes. As you’re aware of what’s occurring, it’s easy for you to realize that you are, as awareness, in a deeper level of your body. Your body invites the shift because of the temperature change that your body enters into.

When you enter a hot bath you are naturally and easily dropping down into the level of your heart, and your whole body feels like your whole heart, your whole heart opening and softening. As you notice what is occurring in you as awareness within that change in your body, you see how you are able to move as awareness from a surface level to a deeper level. You experience it in your body because you function this way as awareness. Were it not for this natural function you wouldn’t have the experience that you have when you enter a bath.

When you go for a walk in nature, and you are completely responding to what you’re entering… you’re entering into nature…there’s a change again in your body. It’s more subtle than when you enter a bath. When you walk into nature it’s easy for you to enter a little bit of your own being. When you step into nature and you’re letting go of everything else that was occurring or is occurring in your self, your experience of your body is different. You’re entering a different level of your body than the level of your body that you’re accustomed to when you’re in your self.

As awareness you know the beingness of nature. You may not understand it and it may not have been explained to you, but when you enter nature you naturally begin to match what you’re coming into. It engages a shift in your awareness. As you make that shift of awareness you are in a deeper level of your body, a level of your body that corresponds to what’s occurring in nature on the level of being. These shifts come naturally. It isn’t difficult for you. You require no understanding of what is occurring for you to make these shifts.

When you walk into a room coming out from a walk in nature, a room full of talking people, people busy with one thing and another, as soon as you walk into that room you shift again. You naturally match what’s occurring in the room. As awareness, you move up from your being or up from your heart and you come back into your self. You resume the self that you’re most accustomed to that corresponds to what’s occurring in the room. As you enter different environments, different qualities of environment, different companies of people, you naturally shift to match the company you keep.

When awakening hasn’t taken place, you are still functioning as awareness on the different levels, but you’re not entering them with understanding and you’re not understanding the meaning of them. Despite not understanding, you relate to the meaning of each shift. When you awaken, you come into an understanding. When you awaken you come into a connectivity between the various shifts to the different levels, within, and how to move with awareness matching your environment. You begin to realize the value of sustaining the deeper levels while being in an environment that isn’t of the deeper levels.

You’re able to be what you are as awareness when you’re entering a bath, and to sustain that in a room full of busy people. As you do, you begin to see the level that you’re in, the level of your heart. You begin to see that same level in others. They don’t need to be coming from that level for you to see where that level is in them. You can find their heart and you can see their heart even if they’re not in it. You can see how close they are to it and how little a change in their environment for their awareness to immediately shift just a little, where there is a tiny connection to their heart. All it takes is for you to notice a look and you see someone else’s heart open and respond to a look. In their response, they do a little bit of the same as what occurs in you when you enter a bath.

When you begin to be aware of everything that’s actually occurring, and the meaning within these shifts means more to you than the environment that you’re in and for meaning to mean more to you than what your self means to you, then you’ll be able to be what meaning is regardless of the environment that you’re in.

You’re able to relate directly to meaning. You understand the meaning of different levels. You understand what happens to you as awareness and in your body and how your body changes when you enter nature or when you enter a bath. Two different levels of meaning occur and you match them. You relate directly to them, so then you’re being the same.

Instead of responding as meaning to meaning by shifting, realize what is occurring and then sustain the meaning that you’re entering in the shift. You can’t sustain it with the use of your self. When you enter a bath you’re not using your self to enter your heart. You naturally enter your heart because of what is occurring to your body. You’re relating to the environment that your body enters. Your body opens and softens, so then your heart opens and softens. When you enter nature, as awareness you shift to the meaning of the environment that you’re entering. You’re shifting as meaning, meaning of the level of your self to meaning of the level of your being, and as awareness you do this naturally. You’re able to be either level.

When you begin to notice and be aware of how this is occurring all day long, as you begin to notice even the micro-shifts, the micro-changes of awareness from moment to moment to moment, you are naturally doing what you’re always looking for. You’re always going into deeper levels, and then you come right back out. You easily go in and you easily leave them because you match the environment that you’re in. As soon as you have a thought, that that thought is of a particular level in your self, as soon as you have that thought, you shift as awareness to match the beingness that you know of that thought.

This doesn’t occur with your understanding. You do this naturally. So when you’re looking for how to shift into deeper levels and how to enter deeper levels, what you’ll naturally do in your self is you’ll see it as something that’s so profound and difficult and complex, not realizing that all day long you are already really good at it. What you haven’t come into is how to do it, as awareness, consciously.

There are some inherent difficulties, and that is when you enter these deeper levels you naturally match them and you come in. When that level of meaning isn’t what you’re consciously relating to, and that level of meaning isn’t what you consciously value more than a subsequent level of meaning, when you’re not consciously realizing that you value the level of your heart more than the value of the level of your self, you’ll easily just move back and forth depending on the thoughts that you have in your mind, creating an internal environment and depending on the external environment that you enter.

When you awaken to the value of meaning on its own and you realize the deeper levels of meaning, and when it becomes real to you that the deeper levels of meaning are clearly worth more than the levels of meaning which follow, which follow closer and closer to the surface, if you’re not realizing the difference of value, you’ll easily overlook the value. If you’re not consciously valuing the deeper levels of meaning, you won’t consciously stay there. You’re able to stay there as easily as you shift into them and out of them.

The shift doesn’t stick without your values fundamentally changing, not because of the results that you like of what you experience in your self, not because of the results that you experience in your body. You sustain the deeper level of meaning because of your own knowledge of the truth of that level mattering more than other levels. You come into the knowledge of the truth of the value of each level, the deeper levels having a greater value and the more surface levels are completely dependent on the deeper levels, so they also have their value but their value is beautifully dependent on the deeper level of meaning.

As you begin to know this and realize this, then the deepest level of meaning that you have awakened to will have your loyalty. When it has your loyalty, not because of results it brings but because of your awakening to the knowledge of the truth, then you’ll easily enter that level and you’ll sustain that level. There is a lot of pressure that comes with that. You are patterned to move from level to level to level depending on your thinking, your feeling, your internal environment, and depending on what is occurring in your external environment. So you’re patterned to move about from level to level.

For you to remain in a deeper level because you know the truth of it, different levels of thought will still come into your mind. When that occurs, you’ll experience the pressure, the pressure in your self, in your mind and in your body for you to leave the deeper level and to match the level that’s under pressure. When you match the level that is under pressure, you will do something in your self to move on that level. When you move on that level, you release the energy that was stored. You release the pressure, so you obtain relief from discomfort.

When you sustain the deeper level, there isn’t a release of that energy. That energy comes in in the way that it always does. It comes into the level that is of the same level as the energy that moves, and it highlights that level in you. When you remain in the deeper level, there’s no relief from that pressure so it puts you into discomfort and you’re not responding to the discomfort. What that pressure accomplishes then is that it helps make real to you what you’re being on a deeper level and it makes real to you the value of that level.

Then you realize that your existence is no longer about pressure relief. Your existence as awareness is all about meaning, and you’re no longer shifting as awareness because of the different pressure movements. You’re sustaining being meaning because of what you’re knowing the truth of. That has you developing your roots as awareness to no longer respond to your environment but to respond directly to meaning, within.

These roots develop when you’re under pressure. As you remain in the deeper, while the energy that moves within your interior environment or your exterior environment is pushing you and influencing you to a more superficial level and what you’re remaining in is the meaning that you’re knowing, roots grow into that meaning. You become the same as that meaning, not just in your shift as awareness, but that level of awareness is beginning to have form for you.

As the roots grow, you have more and more form, more and more capacity to remain on that deeper level of meaning regardless of any pressure on other levels, so that you then begin to stabilize as awareness. You’re no longer shifting from level to level to level, back and forth, because of what’s occurring in your thinking, what’s occurring in your feeling, what is occurring in your external environment. You begin to have an equanimity of being, that you simply move from the deeper level regardless of anything else that’s occurring, regardless of the pressures that that brings, bringing up your old patterning to shift as awareness to match an experience of the environment you’re entering.

Simply put, as awareness, you are growing up. You’re being the deeper level of meaning that you’re knowing, regardless of any cost. You are being the level, within, that all of your other levels are totally dependent on. Instead of having the deeper levels you are then being the deeper levels, and then being these levels within the levels of your heart, the levels of your self and the levels of your person, giving you skill as a being, skills that move on the level of your self. You’re coming into your higher functions instead of being led around by the energy of the environment you enter. You come into control of your own beingness.

What is occurring as you’re sitting there is that you realize the truth, within, and, as you realize, you respond. As you respond, you enter a deeper level. As we are meeting, I move to a deeper level, the level in you that is just a little bit beyond your reach, a little bit beyond what you’re accustomed to, and because we are meeting and I am being that deeper level in you, you realize. You know and you see, and you respond, and you move into that deeper level that you’re seeing. What then happens is that in your heart you ask. You’re not asking anything from within your self. You’re not asking in the way that you’re used to. You’re asking directly as a heart, and what you’re asking for is more.

As soon as you ask, I shift and I move, and in our meeting you recognize the truth of the shift. You know the truth of it. You realize and you respond. You shift. As you shift, you enter and you love. You soak in it because of how you’re moved by the truth of it. As soon as you have filled out that level just a little bit, you ask again, and you’re asking for more. Each time you ask for more, I move to that deeper level in you that is just beyond your reach and as I move into it, and turn into that level while we’re meeting, you know the truth of the shift because it matches the level in you, and you respond.

As you are coming in deeper and deeper and further and further, your experience of your body keeps changing. Your body isn’t actually changing. Your experience of it is changing because you are entering deeper levels of your body. As awareness, you are in levels that you’re not at all used to, a level of your body that feels subtly very different to you. With these much deeper levels, your seeing also changes. You don’t understand what you’re seeing. What you know is that your seeing is different.

These are deeper levels that have real form but it’s not the kind of form that you’re accustomed to. They’re not the kind of forms that relate to the kind of reality that you’re accustomed to.

What you are coming into is a little bit of greater reality. Reality, in what you’re accustomed to, has depth to it and levels to it, and that reality doesn’t come from that reality. That reality comes from its parent reality. It comes from greater reality where the laws are all different. How it moves is completely different. When you’re in it, it makes you completely different in your body. The deeper that you go within, the more you realize this is what you belong to; that this is actually, all along, what you’ve been looking for.

Now you are well acquainted. You have come into everything that you’re asking for.