Q: I do a lot, but it also feels good to do, or a lot of things I do I think I know to do them, but it’s a lot and I feel tired, so I don’t know really how to handle this well, to do the things I think I need to do without burning myself off. Maybe you can you tell me something about that.
John: If you’re doing what you think you need to do and you’re not managing, then you need to manage what you’re doing. You need to manage differently. That is your managing what you’re doing with your self. That’s somewhat of a superficial issue.
Q: I should look differently at the issue. I can still do all the things that I do, so there’s nothing wrong in doing the things…So I can learn that while doing all these things.
John: Mmm-Hmm
Q: Is also part of my superficial issue that I’m always running? Is that the ego thing?
John: What is your own deeper sense of it?
Q: When I relax, I don’t have my focus to things to do them right. Should I relax and let it go as it comes, even if it’s not right, or focus and attend to do it right?
John: Both.
Q: How do I make that balance?
John: What you’re doing and how you do it does really matter, and it doesn’t matter as much as what you’re coming from. Don’t use coming from something deeper within as a convenience to your self. Then your own sense of a deeper restedness will have you favouring less of a sense of responsibility on the surface of things. Coming from a deeper place within doesn’t alleviate you of your responsibility and carrying that responsibility doesn’t alleviate you of coming from what is deeper within.
Q: I also have a question about when felt something when I saw somebody. Could you tell me what it means?
John: What did you feel and what was it meaning to you?
Q: It felt very deep.
John: What was it in regards to? What are you speaking of? What are you talking about? Explain it more.
Q: This guy, when I saw him he reached something in me and it pulled me and it wasn’t physical attraction. I felt an opening. I think the first feeling was sincere but I made things up about it already.
John: When you feel something like that, it doesn’t mean that you’ve met someone that you’re to be in relationship with. It means what it means. You were deeply touched by something in connection with him. If he is in a moment of openness and there’s a sweet vulnerability in himself, you’ll easily experience what you were experiencing, but that doesn’t mean that it is how he lives. Given the right moment you can experience the deep in anyone.
There are many who will feel toward the deep within and there are fewer who will live for the deep within and even fewer who will be so and do so at any cost, at any personal cost. It matters what you are like, within, under pressure and what he is like, within, under pressure. That determines the relationship, not how you feel toward each other when there isn’t pressure.
Q: I always knew or had a feeling how it would be when you saw somebody who could be the one for you. And I recognized that feeling in it.
John: Don’t trust it. The less grounded experience you have with such feelings, the less you can trust the feelings. The less grounded experience you have in your self concerning such feeling, the less experienced you are with such feeling. Within such a feeling, for you to have good judgment you need to be discerning what the subtleties are within the feeling.
If you’re not discerning what is actually discernible, you won’t have the right judgment. You’ll be ill informed in your self in what you do with the feeling. Having strong feelings doesn’t mean that you have clear thinking and it doesn’t mean that you have good judgment. If you’re relying on the feeling, the feeling will pass. What will you then have?
Q: But I always felt that when it’s good the feeling won’t pass.
John: It will pass.
Q: Even if it’s good?
John: If the strong feeling is there because it really is a goodness and you move with that goodness, you’ll be riding a goodness wave, but the wave will pass and as the wave passes the newness passes away with it and you’ll be left in your patterns with him in his pattern. And there the real relationship begins.
Q: What do we need then? I thought we need real love with each other.
John: For you to have real love, you need to be able to move past your self. You can’t have real love if you’re not being bigger than what your self is. Feeling what seems like real love isn’t the same as having real love.
The patterning that you have with those who you are closest, your family, is the same patterning that you’ll have in a relationship once the newness is gone, once the profound feeling is gone.
If you’re living being bigger within than what your self is, then you really don’t want to be in relationship with someone who isn’t the same. Finding a depth of goodness in someone else doesn’t mean that he is being bigger than what his self is. If you are and he isn’t, then eventually you will be a baby sitter. You’ll be investing your time in someone who doesn’t necessarily want to move past himself.
Be sure of what you’re living for, that what you’re living for is deeper than what your self is, and that you’re doing so even at a personal cost. That means that you’re clear. And if you’re going to be in relationship then do so only with someone who is the same.
If he seems like he is, that doesn’t mean that he is. You need to do all of your deepest homework on him and really find out and not be persuaded by how you’re feeling. You need to know, you need to find out. And if necessary, you need to dig into your self and into him before you decide to engage in a relationship, or you’ll be swept along by a wave and when the wave ends you’ll end the relationship. The wave will end. The very best wave will end and that’s when you really need to be with the right person. You need to discern that beforehand because when the wave ends you’re not going to change him.
Look for someone who has suffered and has learned and realized something beautiful in the midst of the suffering. If he hasn’t suffered he doesn’t likely really know himself. There isn’t virtue in suffering. The virtue is in being what is deeper within in the midst of the suffering. Not everyone who has suffered has really learned something or really realized the deeper truth of something.
Listen to John de Ruiter Audio podcast 47 – Your Heart Needs No Protection or visit the John de Ruiter YouTube Channel.
