Q1: I had a dream: I was holding a baby – my baby – and it felt extremely peaceful. Then somebody took that baby somewhere. Next day it was brought back to me and it was badly damaged, and I immediately thought I should have looked after the baby much better. I held the baby and I was surprised that there was the same peace that had been there before. That’s what I thought was the message: to let that peace have me. I saw that whatever happens, it just goes endlessly deeper. I immediately fell so in love with that purity, but listening to all the other people talking, I felt like a lamb outside and inside was this wild energy going on. I saw that, actually, there is love underneath all of it.

John: Don’t try to relate to something that anyone speaks of that you don’t directly know the truth of. All you do is just open. When someone speaks of something that’s new to you, you just open and you hear it, and you either resonate with it or you don’t. But you don’t conclude the truth of it just because someone is speaking from a place that’s well-meaning and they seem to know what they’re talking about. If you don’t know the truth of what they’re saying, don’t discard it and don’t believe the truth of it just because it sounds interesting or it sounds deep. All you do is open and you conclude nothing that you don’t know. That leaves you deeply available.

Q1: So I can stay with the purity of that which I do know and open in the purity?

John: And either know what someone’s talking about, directly, or not know.

The baby represents what is like a birthing, a birthing on the level of your self and your person of what is unseen. In awakening, you come into your being and in being your awakening you have your awareness in your being. You have your awareness in a space that is deeper than your self. It isn’t like your self and you have your awareness in it, so you’re encompassed by it. What develops in your self of that is similar to a pregnancy.

You being what you really are, encompassed in your being, develops on the level of your self that you can see and that you experience, so something is growing that is known; you’re being it and it’s seen. As you continue to be that, it keeps developing in your self, and it comes to a point where you give it birth in your self.

What you have, then, is like a body of being that’s the result of you being your awakening in the midst of your self, and you’re able to hold this body in the way that you would hold a baby. It’s something that you comprehend. It’s fully real on the level of your self and, within your self, you’re able to hold it, nurture it, care for it, give it your space and your time.

It can also suffer neglect. If in some way you suffer distraction and you forget about this body of being that’s you and you’ve been developing in your self, and you can get on with something that’s seemingly really important in your life, this that you’ve given birth to in your self will be left alone, and instead of developing it can become sick. At any point that you resume its care, it all heals and everything wonderfully continues. It’s much more resilient than a baby.

When you have a baby, the baby never leaves your awareness. It has your care in all of your life. This newly birthed body of being – form that you’ve given to your awakening in your self – requires the input and the care in all of your life. There isn’t anything more important.

With a physical baby, it’s much more difficult to neglect it because it’s so physical and so in this world. Whereas, something that is birthed of your being because you’re being it, something of that birthed in your self is real in your self and so perceivable and hold-able on the level of your self, but it isn’t seen in this world; it isn’t physical in this world. So as soon as you’re taken with something that you were accustomed to before in your life and you’re distracted by the seeming importance of it, it isn’t difficult to forget your baby. It’s easy to go a whole day without it being in your care.

Q1: This is very practical for me. The message is becoming much clearer. It’s the simplicity from moment to moment and nurturing what I love, what is in my care.

John: That you won’t neglect it for anything that seems important in your life. The important things in your life are not more important.

Q1: I can really see the pain caused by giving importance to something else.

John: With the peace, the deep peace, it’s so direct and easy to come into, that when you have your baby back and you resume its care – even though it’s lost health and development, even though it may be sickly – you’re able to resume being what you really are in your self, taking care of its form in your self without any kind of process; the peace that’s there in instantly resuming your walk in being what you really are. The application of that in your person is really practical. On the level of your person the meaning of peace, of this deep peace, turns into perspective. In your person it’s the implications of this peace you know, rolled out into perspective in your life.

When the peace is brought into your person, right there, what is worked out in your person is what is practically most important on the surface in your life. When you’re in a situation and something’s aggravating or frustrating, when you’re being that peace in your person, the opening within that peace tells you, in your person, that this peace matters more than what seems important on the level of your person in your life. Your whole perspective on life completely shifts when you’re living that peace in your person.

If someone steals your purse with all of its contents, your person will be alarmed and rattled, but if you’re being that peace it doesn’t take much, as you open within that peace, in the midst of the realization that your purse is stolen, that you realize in practical ways that the purse stolen doesn’t have the level of importance of this peace that you’re being, so your whole way of thinking, feeling and seeing shifts.

What matters in your life, the form of what matters, all changes because you know peace. What takes place in your life, what takes place on the level of your person, no longer forms perspective for you as a person. The deeper that you’re being this peace, present in your person, is what’s forming your perspective, and no longer what happens to your person – seemingly good or seemingly bad. Your perspective isn’t formed, in person, by good things happening or bad things happening. You are letting your person be formed by what you’re being in it.

You’ll still give importance to your lost purse. You’ll put energy into that; you’ll do something about it, but not at the expense of the peace. The peace matters more, and that’s real to you in your thinking and in your feeling.

Q1: If something really rattles me, afterwards I can find some peace behind it, but I always lose the peace for the moment.

John: It comes back to the baby. When you’re taking care of the baby, that which you’ve birthed of your awakening out into the level of form in your self, in your interior, it has form of your self but it isn’t at all like your self, and it’s in your care. As it remains in your care within all the really little things that affect your interior, the baby thrives and grows. It develops through every little thing that touches your self. As you’re living that within the little things, inside, then on the outside, in your person, whatever affects your person, it is already real to you in your interior that the baby matters more.

So then, when your purse is stolen, you don’t put the baby down and go running out into the market looking for your purse. You can go running out into the market, holding your baby, but only running in such a way that your baby is not put at risk. You’re so in touch with what you’re carrying, and you’re going out there looking for your purse. You’re doing what you can, and you’re taking care of what matters more. You have perspective.

Q1: So even in my quest to come to Edmonton again, what’s more important at the moment I’m stepping forwards is the baby and not Edmonton.

Your care of the baby matters more than what you’re doing. The doing matters, but not the same. If you must cross a river and it’s deep and fast, you won’t do it with the baby. You will walk miles and miles and miles until you find a way of crossing that’s safe for the baby. The baby matters more than you getting across – and it matters for you to get across.

Q1: In this whole process of coming back to Edmonton, it seems that things don’t flow well.

John: Nothing needs to flow. Nothing needs to work well, and you are unstoppable. The baby is cared for all the way through. It never suffers neglect, and you are unstoppable in what you’re doing. You’re really clear on two completely different levels at the same time: you are clear in what you’re being and you are clear in what you are doing, and you are clear that being matters more than doing.

Q1: So that is separating it in a constructive way, and my orientation in moving forward isn’t lost in it. Is it intention that’s moving it?

John: You’re being it, and the being it is what moves all of the doing. The doing really matters, but not as much as what you’re being in it. Travel with the baby isn’t the same as travel without it.

Q1: It’s always taking care of the baby. That’s nourishing is what means the most.

John: As soon as you’re awakened, you’re pregnant, and it matters much more now what you eat and what you drink. Your care for your body matters in a way that’s new. What you move in, when you’re pregnant, of even a thought and feeling, will and emotion, how you are in your self matters in a way that’s new.

Q2: I wanted to ask you about giving power to what’s most deep. When you were here in a situation that, for me, would have translated as pressure, it so touched me to see how you would do nothing to protect or harden: you just move with openness and grace and there’s such power in that. John, when I just rest in you and there’s nothing left of me; it’s so easy.

John: Then you move up one level, where there’s so much there of yours waiting for you that hasn’t been integrated yet. You can be gentled and quieted in your heart knowing that that beingness matters the most, and then you be that up into your thinking and your feeling, your use of will and emotion.

That’s like taking care of your baby while you’re out spending time with people; you’re using thinking and feeling, will and emotion to move with other people, and you quickly realize what levels of power no longer belong. As you remain sensitive to the baby, as soon as you yell at someone while you’re holding the baby, you quickly realize that’s all over, and you gain perspective in how you are with other people because of what is in your arms.

Your whole life changes. How you use your power, how you move as power in thought and feeling, will and emotion, shifts. It’s real to you that how you move with anyone, what you do to anyone, are also how you move with your baby and what you do to your baby. When you’re even frustrated with someone while you hold your baby, that’s what you’re putting into your baby. While you’re holding your baby you realize, in all of your interactions, that what you are being matters more than anything that you’re doing.

It’s the meaning of what’s in your arms that teaches you directly how to be with others, and because what is in your arms is your love, it becomes easy to be that way to others.