Q: I find myself in the midst of a tremendous emotional backlash for having come deeply out of centre into extreme humanness, subconscious, unconscious emotional behavior that has been extremely painful and destructive to myself and another. Each time, certainly remembering your words, to rest in softness in the heart, it’s like a volcano. If I tried to relax into it, I brought up more and more.

John: Don’t. Don’t try to relax into it. That will frustrate you.

Q: Yes, extremely.

John: Like relaxing despite anything you’re experiencing, so you are not relaxing into what you’re experiencing. There’s just you, awareness, in the midst of whatever environment, whatever experience, whatever condition, liking relaxing. As you are liking relaxing, you’re already relating to what’s real in you. The liking aligns you. When you try to relax, it’s because you are not relaxed. As soon as you like relaxing you are already relaxing. The liking is real because you do deeply, really like relaxing.

Q: Yes.

John: That makes your inner alignment nurturingly simple and immediate. There isn’t anything to address in your self or your environment first. There isn’t anything to change first. The relaxing of awareness is unconditioned: it’s free of all of your forms, it’s free of everything that is around you and everything that’s yours. It doesn’t matter the condition of your mind or your body, your relationships or your life. What matters is that you, awareness, are relaxing without the use of anything that is yours. You don’t need to relax your body for you, awareness, to relax. You don’t need to relax your mind and your self for you to relax.

When you lie down to go to sleep, as you near sleep, you are nurturingly relaxing without the use of your forms. That’s what enables your past, your personality, your life and your self, with all of its conditioning, to actually pass away and all of that is home to you. Through that relaxation you are out of your self, out of your seen forms, and relaxed in your heart. As the relaxation continues, you naturally go even deeper within than your heart. You pass into your being, and then you tip into sleep. What enables you to sleep is that everything is gone.

It’s that kind of relaxation that you come into toward the tipping point of sleep that is how to be in your mind, your body, your self, your circumstances, your life. It’s so simple, so nurturing, that if you are interested in your difficulties you’ll overlook it. It is this real you that all of your difficulties belong to. Let this which is most simple and immediate, without any kind of process, without any technique, without any path, address your difficulties. It’s what makes everything in your life no problem, enabling you, awareness, to move as equanimity of being in the midst of anything.

This isn’t learned; this is your love. You can’t work your way into it. You can’t earn your way, but you can like relaxing into it. You can nurturingly, freely, like it. Then as you settle even a little bit into it, you love it. As you are completely settled into it, you are that love.

You’re not dead yet, so you can still really live this.

Q: I’ve been unable to sleep for weeks – not more than two or three hours at the most. All my attempts to do what you are saying, to relax, to breathe, to settle …

John: Without results.

Q: Without results?

John: Yes, without you hinging core relaxation on personal benefit and results. That makes you, awareness, relaxing, real, authentic. What sleep you don’t have, despite lying down, you don’t need. What health you don’t have, despite taking care of your body, you don’t need.

Any emotional turmoil is all because of stories – every bit of it. These stories are all supported by your beliefs, endless beliefs that you’ve taken on since you were little, that fuel your emotional difficulties, that justify your stories.

Q: Yes, that’s exactly true, and in attempting to observe emotional turmoil, I find exactly what you’ve said, but I’m not finding the way to disentangle from the beliefs.

John: Don’t. Don’t disentangle from emotional turmoil, don’t disentangle from mental difficulty, don’t disentangle from your beliefs or your past. Instead, in the midst of all of that, like being given to your heart, like being givenness, on its own, that flows within. There isn’t anything for you to disentangle, there isn’t anything for you to do or deal with so that you can be gentled and quieted in your heart. Whatever you move to disentangle, you’ll make worse.

Q: Yes, absolutely, with each effort much worse.

John: Address your mind and you’ll add sophistication to your mind – unreasoned sophistication. You’ll add more thought forms of illusion to support your mind. Address your emotions and that will inflame, even more, your nervous system. Like making your return to your heart really simple. Like making it baby simple and there you are, without any process, without any reach, home.

You, being the simplicity of this, without using anything in your self and in your life to help it, is you directly resting into the beloved within.

Q: A question arises that if these thought forms, these delusions have arisen, many after never surfacing for twenty five, thirty years, there’s nothing to be learned? Simply go beneath them? Don’t touch them?

John: Yes: touch them, and the power that you’ve invested in them, even from a long, long time ago, will grab hold of you.

Q: Yes, okay. I thought that as they were arising I needed to understand or take some steps to heal them.That was why they were surfacing after so many years, and you’re absolutely right. It made them much, much worse.

John: That’s good.

Q: Good because you’re here today to understand that! But without understanding, not. It was impossible to come out. The more I tried to look at them and understand them and heal them, they just grew ten more heads, like Ravana.

John: That’s good. It’s all useful feedback, telling you, if you’re really listening within, “not that way.” What pain tells you is “not that way.” It’s really a kindness.