Q: I wonder if you could help me differentiate between fragile and delicate. I ask because I have a hard time with fragile, and in my life right now I find that as I push away the fragility I’m also losing what is delicate.

John: True delicate beingness can withstand anything. When it’s new within the person to be living within such delicate beingness, then within the person there is a distinct fragility. That eventually passes when the delicate beingness within the person takes real form as a person. The delicate remains and the fragile passes.

Q: What is beingness?

John: When you are hard within or when you are softening within, the first is a distorted beingness. The second one isn’t. Your beingness is reflected in your way of moving within, which is then reflected in how you are moving without. There is then authentic beingness and also inauthentic beingness. You are able to be what you know and you are also able to distort away from what you know. You are capable of being an aberration of reality. That’s what gives being profound reality such meaning.

Q: True being is in accord with profound reality, or is profound reality?

John: Both. You know when you are crossing that in your self and when you are so sensitively not crossing that in your self. When you do cross it, it is for perceived personal gain while there’s also within profound loss, a delicate loss. You become less aware and less sensitive to profound reality within your self. When you are taking care of such profound reality within your self, taking care of even the littlest bit that you know, that will be at a personal cost to your self, which brings the personal into alignment with the profound, giving the personal its real value.

The loss within the first is actual. The loss within the second is merely a perception that soon becomes clear as being such.

Q: If I remember correctly, you spoke of the personal and of beingness as different levels of mind.

John: There are different levels within the personal within the mind and within your being. You are vastly multi-leveled and multi-faceted. When you are confined to the personal, you think that you know your self. When you begin to inquire meaningfully what it is that is you, you realize then that you are at the beginning of which there is no end.

Q: So true beingness precludes acting from a place of personal gain. Is that right?

John: Yes.

Q: So when I feel separated from this knowing, how do I find it again?

John: By you not being the opposite of what you just said. By you not in any way existing for personal gain which, as you know, precludes real beingness, initiating a separation from what you first dearly are.

Q: That seems to be a tall order.

John: Only if personal gain is your orientation. If you are interested in profound reality, real beingness and the real first you, then this is nurturefully exciting for what you are interested in; such nurtureful excitement not even touching on personal gain even though it will cause your person to profoundly flourish. If this is clear, how is it a tall order? Clear is easy.

Q: My perception is that for some time now I have been not so concerned with personal gain and I have experienced the excitement and flourishing you spoke of, but more recently it seemed that there was more of a trade-off, more of a cost, a cost that seemed irresponsible. It seems at times to undermine my ability to be strong or have confidence in the world. I think the question for me is what is responsible and what is irresponsible?

John: For you to determine what is responsibility and what you are responsible for is for you to determine everything within and then without, that is actually in your care. Everything within you is in your care. Therefore, if your beingness is separate from your innermost beingness, then you are carelessly and irresponsibly departing from the very thing that gives you value. You are then using your power to favour a lesser value at the expense of a deeper and a greater value. Everything that you know is true, the beingness within that you know is most real, this knowing, this knowledge is in your care. That makes you responsible for it. That means that you cannot rightfully reflect anything that is other than what you know is true. It’s knowing within that generates responsibility. Your accountability is to what you know.

Q: And when I feel separated from that knowing?

John: Then you know where you are and you know where it is, with you being responsible for it. How does separation from the greatest value in you absolve you of any responsibility for being that greatest value in you? In being that greatest value in you, how is being separate an actual problem? Are you a victim of the separation?

Q: I experience a lot of pain when I feel separate.

John: Then you are able to feel what you’re doing. Then you are still in touch with what you are doing. Who caused the separation? Did what you know do it to you? Were you ousted?

Q: No, no. I did it.

John: Then the solution is as lovely as it is obvious.

Q: As long as I am willing to pay the perceived price.

John: As long as you are in love with what you know, enabling there to be no perceived cost, there’s only gain for what you know. You get to be life for what you know. You get to be its beingness. You get to provide what you know belongs to it.

If you have taken something from someone and you consider making reparation, is it a cost that you may no longer have what you‘ve taken? How is it a cost that you’d be returning it to the one that you have taken it from? How is there any cost? You are holding the power, and all of that power belongs to what you know. How is there any cost in you loving empowering what you know, instead of empowering what you want on a personal level at the expense of what you know? If there is a cost, then you have to. If there is a cost, you are a victim of that cost. If it’s realness, profound realness you are speaking of, then you only get to. You have trained your own thinking to support the victim.

Q: This is very helpful. How do you know all this? (laughter)

John: How do you not know all of this? What did you do to jackhammer this out of you? (laughter).

Q: I don’t know. What did I do?

John: At any time, when you know you are being unreasoning, then you are jack- hammering out of you your own delicate knowing. Anytime that you know to let go of something within that you were hanging onto within, you are using your own beingness and your own mind, efforting to uproot what you know because it is only what you are knowing that actually stands in your way.

When you are being obstinate and unreasoning, then you are separate from what you know is true. You are still knowing what is true, so you’ll use the knowing that you have – knowing how to speak, knowing how to think, knowing how to form an argument – you’ll use that in support of something that is actually against what you know is true, having you using elements of knowing that you are standing separate from, separating from it and then skillfully misusing it. If anyone points out something to you that you are doing that you know isn’t right, why would you ever in any way argue the point? Every skill you have is infused with knowing. Without knowing you can’t even think. You know the meaning of words, enabling you to speak. You know how to form those words in support of what you know is true, and you are also able to form these words in support of something that you know isn’t true. You are also able to use knowing within thinking and speaking to protect your self from what you know. Separation implies culpability and misuse.

Q: What do you mean by “innermost”?

John: When you become quieted within your self, then the loud pulse of your personal self begins to quieten, and a softer pulse begins to emerge, a pulse much more delicate, a pulse that takes care of even the personal self. You begin to know something finer, you begin to be able to think reasonably. There is a letting go within your thinking. You begin to become nurturefully clear, and you know that this is more you than what you were before.

The moment that you begin to relax within, the moment that you begin to be at rest within, you find your self being qualities that are, so far, exclusive to what is deeper and quieter in you. You are responding to what is actually you. You are beginning to know your own core. It is from within that core that you are able to consciously span the deep in you. Your own unconsciousness is no longer conveniently off-limits. Tender recognition begins to be your way. For you to sustain being this for any real amount of time, you become reacquainted with being a sweetie again.

Q: Being a sweetie? What does that mean?

John: Innocence happily beaming. When you see that anywhere outside of your self, you always know that is worth more than what you are being, unless of course you’re being the same. Do you remember a sweetie?

Q: Yes.

John: Are you going to return to being sweetieness?

Q: Yes.

John: You sweetie. (laughter) For what you are saying, I am calling you a sweetie. You have found your way and you even understand it.