Q: Two years ago I went for a retreat in the desert. One of the nights, after the evening talk, I start walking to the desert. I went out from the talk with such a powerful desire, such a powerful love for God and when I was walking in the desert everything revealed itself as that love, as that God, as oneness. The whole structure of me wasn’t there. Everything was the moon, everything was the sky, everything was love. Life was fire – fire of the open heart. I longed for God all of my life. The longing carried me to the shore when I realized there is no longing any more. I don’t know what happened, but after that month there was me again. Being me is not logical because I know the true logic, the logic of oneness, but somehow the addictions and desires took the energy to themselves and materialized my self again.
John: The experience that you had was there to put you directly into the knowledge of the truth. The experience delivers the knowledge to you. It delivers to you what you knew in your heart. When that experience begins to dissipate and you’re wanting again to be within something of that experience because of what you knew in it, that has you being oriented to experience and not to the knowledge of the truth that the experience delivered to you. As soon as you are oriented to experience, and wanting to have that experience again or wanting to have something of that, that brings up the coarseness of you experiencing your self and all of the patterns that are in it.
When you have the kind of experience that you had in the desert, you knew in your heart, you knew in all of you what you were experiencing. You knew the truth of it. The next that is for you isn’t then going to be about the experience. It’s going to be all about what you knew in the experience. It’s going to be all about what the experience delivered to you, what the experience gave to you. The experience doesn’t give you the experience. The experience gives you direct knowledge. It gives you knowing. As soon as you have the knowing, the experience is free to pass.
When such a beloved messenger delivers the most beloved message, it’s no longer about the messenger. It’s about your living with all of your heart in the message. The message isn’t an experience. The messenger was an experience. The message is what you knew.
Q: I still know. It can never go away.
John: As soon as that knowing in your heart is absolutely enough, that you don’t need anything more, then you as awareness and this most profound knowing in your heart are one. When it doesn’t need to be experienced at all, when knowing is absolutely enough for you, then you’re the same; you’re the same as what you are knowing. When you are needing to experience that again, you’re not telling your self the truth.
For you to tell your self the truth is for you to love, with all of your heart, that knowing what you know is forever enough. That puts you into what the experience gave you. That has you directly being the love of the truth, the source of life for you. You knew it was the source. You knew what was the source.
What’s next for you is to not have the experience again. What’s next for you is much deeper, much more subtle. It is you turning into what you knew, making you the same as what you are knowing. When your heart – your whole heart – is all given to what you know the truth of, within, then you are the same.
Knowing, for you, is enough. While you experience it again, knowing for you is enough.
Q: ‘Knowing is for me is enough’ is like feeling love that is subtle and not with the fire. It’s a whole other orientation. Now I can see that the one who is eager is the one who separates. The knowledge has nothing to do with it.
John: Know the truth and love knowing the truth. Love the truth.
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
