Q: Hi John.

John: Hello.

Q: I have tried a number of different things to try to get a handle on letting go of the self and strengthening the being and coming down into my heart. I can bring things in through my heart and out of my heart, and I just don’t have any confidence that I’m making progress toward shifting from being in a state of self and running everything through the self. I’ve heard all that you’ve had to say about what you’re willing to do to achieve this, and I’m there and I’m ready.

John: What’s critical in being what’s deeper within than your self is that, in your interior, you cannot be a member of the world.

Q: Yeah, I understand that.

John: On the exterior you can move as a member of the world, but in your interior you are only a citizen of the deep, here in the world. But you cannot be here for any sense of membership in the world or any sense of personal placement in the world.

Q: I’m in a good place right now. I live alone with my dog and I focus on this entirely, and I’m ready to make whatever sacrifices are necessary.

John: It’s necessary to warmly, completely abandon your self as being any source of meaning to you. Then you, awareness relaxed, not because of anything in your self, derive meaning from the depths in you.

Q: So do I need to do the first things first, letting go of the self so that I can go into the depths of my being to communicate with nature, as a start?

John: With nature as a start, and then be the same way that you are in nature, in the world. That’s paramount.

Q: Is any of this to be achieved by regular meditation or any of the other things that are out there that…

John: No. Anything that helps of something that you can do draws upon your self as a resource for you to be. You are doing to be. What does make meditation work is your own openness in it, but it’s a two-edged sword. It does cut into the deep, and it also cuts off the real.

As soon as meditation appears to work you are in belief of your self. Now you know what to do: you meditate. If you don’t meditate, everything starts to wane of the deep. The meditation doesn’t do it. It’s your openness in it, and as soon as you realize that, you don’t need to meditate. So you can start out meditating, and as it works you realize what in it works, and then you be that without the form, without the meditation.

Q: Take that openness off the cushion and into nature.

John: And then be the way that you are in nature right away in the world, with people, regardless of how you’re treated.

Q: Is reaching the point of no self an important first step to that?

John: No. The important first step is restfully, unconditionally, at any personal expense residing in your heart.

Q: So for some time now I’ve tried to lead with my heart; to let things come in through my heart and to go out through my heart.

John: If you have any remaining strands of secretly doing to be, then you’ll use your heart sense from within your self, which is a behaviour modification. You’ll be heartful, and there will be a flow of heart in it, but you’ll be crediting your heart while being blind to how you are in some way still adding on a doing to be.

Q: Right, I understand.

John: The world is actual. It’s not an illusion that it’s there, but the world is not real. The self is actual. It has actual form, but the self is just genetic. The self is biological; it isn’t you, but it is what you experience. It’s your strongest experience because it has the most form. That makes it easiest to believe, and if you dabble in it and you start to trust what you think and feel to tell you the truth within, you will be your self instead of you.

Q: Which is not what I want, right?

John: It’s not real. You, without the personality, without the world, without your self, gentled and quieted within, are real.

Q: Often when I sit outside or I walk I feel a sense of awareness that is strongest in nature and outside but I don’t know whether it’s strengthening my being or strengthening my self.

John: Both. It most easily develops a belief in your self that all you need to do is just meditate, or all you need to do is just go into nature and you know what’s real again, and you flow. It’s still a doing to be: all you need to do is go out in nature. That’s not real, even though the real, within, is in nature. But the way to connect is not by going out there into nature. Once you realize how to flow in nature, it matters to flow like that right away with people in the world, even though the world and – generally speaking – people are not like nature

Q: Right, so nature can reinforce my opening up?

John: Yes, but as soon as you get it, as soon as you’re connected, don’t stay in nature. As soon as you get it, quickly return to the world and be with people. Be with what stimulates your artificial self while staying in the same flow that you are when you’re in nature, even though the environment can feel often hostile or aggressive, where you think you need to protect your self, you need to put on some sort of front.

Q: I understand you to say that there’s this point right at the moment of going to sleep that was potential opening?

John: The tipping point. It’s not sleeping; it’s when you lie down to go to sleep and you reach the tipping point where you fall into sleep, so you are still aware but you are no longer aware through your personality or your heart, your past or your day, your relationships: it’s just you, aware. That’s pure you, unaided by anything.

Q: Does it last very long? Because I’ve done things like track the time it takes me to go into a deep state of sleep.

John: It doesn’t help to track it. Then you believe that using your self is going to help you. It’s crippling. It’s crippling you. Your mind is not a benefit for you to be. Intention is not a benefit. The only thing that works, and it works absolutely, is you being you, not held together by any familiar form. Where you see it so beautifully is in a newborn baby. So much presence, so clear, so much power and nothing is being done. It’s not using its mind, it’s not using its emotions, it isn’t using its will. It isn’t doing something.

Q: So is this a daily practice, then, of waking and being in the moment with nature, come back and then be with people in that day?

John: No. It’s not a daily practice. You make it a daily practice, you’re using your mind, your will, you are using your self. You are doing to be you. Use your self to do, but not to be.

Q: Can I be right off the bat from the cushion or from nature and then look for being in my interactions with the world and with people?

John: If you look for it you are doing to be. You’ll be, as soon as you find a seed of being in someone, instead of you unconditionally being. You don’t need to look. You will see. Seeing doesn’t come from looking.

Awareness in a newborn baby, the being, without any focus, without any impetus, sees you. It’s not looking. Instantly sees the real regardless of how much that’s covered. It doesn’t see the covering; it sees the real because that’s all that it’s being. It isn’t consciously being real; it isn’t held together. This leaves you with absolutely nothing but you. No familiarity, no form, even though it abounds in your experience and all around you, it’s not what you are being. That’s not you. Yet you’re there in it all.

Q: The world, surrounded by form from opening a cover, to eating fruit, to everything.

John: Yes. And it all appeals to your senses which is a feedback to your self. If what you are being is exclusively what you really are, then your senses transform and they feed back to you. They enable you to see you, to experience you within the wondrous field of your self.

Q: Let go of all that’s history.

John: Absolutely. And then you being you, exclusively in everything that you have let go of. You’re not dismissive of your self; it’s just clear that it isn’t you.

Q: So a baby does this automatically. Where do animals fit into the world of this? I had two dogs and lost one. That dog and I used to communicate being to being. I never had to talk, she never had to say anything. She could look at me. I knew what she needed and I would do it. I have one remaining dog. Is this a way that I could bring my being to my dog?

John: You do it naturally, so it isn’t a way. As soon as it’s a way for you, you are doing to be. All you have to do is be with your dog and you’re being again. That point isn’t real.

Q: And is the dog always in this state of being naturally?

John: It depends on its choices. It’s like with people. They can feed off of their environment which is a level of choice that isn’t real, or they can just remain within, not mindfully, not consciously; it’s just natural.

Q: This is wonderful. Is there anything you can tell by looking at me, being to being?

John: You focus on being because you have come to understand. You’ve awakened to being and holding that together is an understanding of being. You’re leaning on that understanding, and that is not being.

When you first awakened to being, it’s because you knew that there was something deeper within and you didn’t understand what that is. But you opened to it, only because you knew. You know deeper within than the being, so the being does not suffice for you because you know more. So instead of responding to being, which you are familiar with, respond to the deepest that you directly know. It offers you no information, no understanding, no form. It’s unknown to your self yet you know it’s there, you know the truth of it, it’s all you need. Into that you are then given, taken by it and gone.

Q: I take it that this is all not a matter of time but it’s instantaneous with opening and being.

John: When you are being what you really are, there are two rhythms and it’s like the tide. There’s a rhythm that draws you within. You don’t mindfully look for the rhythm. When you are being what you really are, you will go out with the tide to what you actually come from. There’s no mindfulness in that. As you are drawn within, you lose your form but because the form isn’t you there is no tension in that. It doesn’t cost you anything. You naturally return to what you really are. It’s greater depths of you that’s bringing you back to the source. And there’s another flow, another rhythm and that’s the tide coming in. It comes into the land, inundates the land and that’s you manifesting newly the depth of what you just came from. This rhythm is like a breathing. You don’t think to breathe. When you relax you breathe.

Q: I have an abnormality in my heart that is scheduled for a procedure and does it matter one way or the other if I do that or just be with that?

John: First, it absolutely doesn’t matter. Once that’s clear to you and that’s settled, then just lightly do whatever you think.

Q: I feel like we’re brothers. You speak to me, in a different level to anything I’ve ever experienced. So kind.

John: There’s only one way, and this is an absolute. It’s a universal truth, and that is you being mastered by the unknown, the unknown within, and you being that in all of your self, all of your life.

Q: Is there any detraction made by communicating with others through zoom, for example, or courses that I communicate with others on, learn from others on, about things like chi gong and movement of energy? I have a communication with many through electronic media that speak to me and I speak to them. Is that a detraction or is that weakening, or is it strengthening the self?

John: If it’s rooted in a belief, you’re fooling your self. But if you move in it like what you see in the innocence of a child, that it isn’t connected to belief, then it’s real. The reality of it isn’t because of any doing. It’s not because of a conclusion that you’ve drawn. As soon as you conclude the truth of something, you fool your self.

Q: Just being me as being.

John: Unknown you, not familiar you. The familiar you is like the skin of you. Then there’s everything of what you really are that is so much more, that the skin of you is completely dependent on. But as soon as you’re being the skin of you, you lose sight of the more that enables this familiar you.

Q: I understand on a very deep level what you’re talking about.

John: In all of your interior, be unknown. The known that’s real you will see. The more that you are being unknown, the more you will see. Don’t look to see. You’ll be reduced to being what you already know. That’s just the skin of you. It’s a difference between awareness and consciousness. Awareness is like the skin of consciousness. Awareness is nothing without consciousness, and consciousness does not need awareness to be consciousness. In being consciousness, it will naturally be aware. In a self it will naturally, beautifully, think, feel and do – just not to be. In that way the self, the personality, turns into a garden. It will all flourish until you start to do to be. Then you will be the garden instead of what made it so. The garden doesn’t come of its own: it comes in your self, in your personality, because of you.

When you’re with people, don’t talk about energy. Don’t give what you see. Don’t give what you know. Don’t talk about the truth. Don’t help people. Just, as the unknown, flow. Until you are weaned of your self, saying it is going to make your self stronger. It adds to your sense of self. It isn’t a wrong. It isn’t bad. It’s just not real.

Bye for now.

Q: Thank you, John. Thank you.