Q: I really want to be inspiring and effective, to work for a better world together with a lot of people. I don’t know how to do that and I really would like to see people taking care about the environment: for example, not to go on holiday by plane. When I see people doing that I really am so frustrated and angry and I don’t know how to reach people any more. Maybe you can say something about it?
John: The environment can deal with pollution. It’s not able to deal with your frustration and your anger. The environment knows how to deal with dying. The planet knows how to deal with dying. The planet doesn’t need to be saved. What it does need is your innermost. It needs what it relates to. It doesn’t relate to living or dying; it relates to your being. When you are in nature, when you are really in nature, when you’re connected to the beingness of nature, you’re not relating to living or dying. You’re relating to your own being.
Tree-ness doesn’t relate to the survival of trees. Tree-ness relates to your being, which is why you are reached when you’re in nature. Perhaps, before this planet dies, we will all be relating as beings. For that to be so, this planet will be met.
When you are dying, you won’t be concerned, or looking for, or be interested in anyone’s concern for your dying. When you are dying, what is enough for you is for you, with another, to meet. If the other is concerned about your dying, then the two of you cannot meet. What this planet really is, is the same.
Trees are, because tree-ness first is. If the planet would be dead, with all of the trees – if there would be no more trees – tree-ness still is. It’s a level of reality that reality comes from, just as when you die, you still are. You’re not less after you have died. You’re more, because before you have died you might not be seeing, because of being so taken with everything you’re experiencing, making it easy to value your self over your own being, making it easy to value the planet over its being.
The being of the planet is greater than the planet. Your being is greater than your body. If someone is trying to save your body while not seeing you, what you know in that is loss. The deeper reality in you, when you are honest to it, is that you would much rather be known and seen than saved. That’s what nature does to you: it knows you and sees you. Whether you live or die isn’t a factor in that. It’s a different level and it is the level that matters first.
Just like you, this planet has a being. This planet doesn’t come into what its own being is until we come into our own being. This planet has a being and it doesn’t function, yet, as a being, just as you don’t function, yet, as a being. This planet will function as a being when we do.
You experience nature not because of your senses. You experience nature because of your being. Your experience of nature is the connection between its being and yours. That connection is there because that is nature’s relationship with you. It isn’t looking to be saved; it is looking to your being. Its functioning as a being is dependent on you functioning as a being. Nature bypasses what you are familiar with. It bypasses your greatest familiarity. It goes right past your self and goes right to your being. It’s showing you how, and waits – not to be saved, but to be directly related to.
The planet thriving does not enable it to function as a being. The planet doesn’t come into its function as a being until we do. What nature is, cares directly for our beings by relating directly to our beings. The being of nature isn’t birthed into function until we, as beings, are birthed into function. The being of this planet doesn’t come into real potential in its thriving. The being of this planet comes into real potential when we come into our beings and function as beings.
That is how the being of this planet is dependent on us.
Q: When I see a child dying or hungry, on television, I feel connected to the child and to the family. It’s natural to want to help, and then because of climate change people are dying because they don’t know when to sow, and harvests are ruined. People are dying and in all my wealth I don’t know what to do now. I want to find the right way.
John: Have your being more than having your self and your life and you’ll have everything, in your living and in your dying. When you have your own being, you have it all. When you have everything but your own being, you know in your heart you have nothing. This doesn’t answer situations in this world. This does answer us in our situations.
Life isn’t as we perceive it to be. Life is as we know it in our beings.
Don’t relate to this planet and to others in a way that you don’t really, really want to be related to. When you are most gentled and quieted within, and most honest to the core, you would rather be known and seen than live.
All of us will die. Not all of us will have come into our own beings.
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
