Q: About a year ago I started questioning everything about the reality I see and experience around me. Sometimes it seemed not real, visually. There is a feeling that comes almost every day that something is wrong, like on a very fundamental level there is an underlying feeling of wrongness. It’s not related to anything on the personal level and I’m not sure what to do with that.

John: Beneath the surface you know that there’s something wrong. It isn’t that there’s something wrong beneath the surface. Beneath the surface you know that there’s something wrong with what’s taking place on the surface. The world, your self and the world are not real: very actual, substantial, but not real.

For you to be in the real, the beginning of that is you being in your heart. When you’re gone into your personality, full of thoughts, feelings, emotion, in this world, toward others, from others, with others, then what you are being isn’t real. It’s actual. So much form but so little in it. As soon as you are gentled and quieted in your heart, there you are: the real. As soon as you leave your heart for anything in this world, for anything in your self, for any relationship, as soon as you resort to being your self and your personality, you leave your heart and you cease being real.

The real begins with you, awareness, without any use of your self, your personality, the world or your life, that you are just relaxed in your heart, gentled and quieted in your heart. That’s your door to what you really are, the real.

Q: Are these perceptions just something that I manifested or tapped into because I was looking for something?

John: You didn’t just start to look for something. You started to be honest within, not honest to things as they appear in your self and in the world but honest to something deeper within. It’s from within that honesty that you started to know that something is wrong, or something is seriously out of balance with your self, how you presence in your personality, how others also do, and the nature and function of basically the whole world.

Q: It feels more real than anything I experience on the surface. It feels much, much deeper.

John: If you move about in your self, the self in the world is not bad. It’s just not real. If you move about in your self and in the world gentled and quieted in your heart, you start to register all the little things around you, outside of you, in others, that are real.

When you are seated not in your personality, not in your self, not in the world but just seated nurturingly in your heart, your seeing changes. You see differently. How you register reality shifts and as you’re in that, you also naturally love. You naturally move as beingness, beingness aflow. As you stay in it, you may notice a streaming within you, streams of being, nurtureful streams, and that you also naturally stream toward others and in any little bit where someone is being real, coming from their heart, that there is a streaming of being, of nurture between you and the other. It can be subtle, but also powerful. That’s your being moving, through your heart, filling your self, moving through your self, through your personality to any little bit in anyone that’s real.

When the real is covered up in someone because they’re preoccupied with themselves, preoccupied with their personality, preoccupied with their position in the world, as you are streaming, beingness streaming through your heart, through your self, through your personality, even though the real may be covered up in someone else, you’ll still see it and you’ll stream right into the tiniest little bit that’s there in everyone. And you’ll start to find joy and kindness in meeting everyone.

Q: I wonder if this feeling is because my awareness is just focused on that. Is it out of choice that I experience it?

John: That you experience the real or that you experience something is wrong or really out of balance?

Q: That I experience something is wrong.

John: That’s you knowing that it is out of balance. The way that that translates in your thinking and your feeling in your self is that something is wrong. The impetus to the thought and the feeling is that you know. You don’t understand what you know but you directly know. If you reference your sense of self in the translation of that knowledge in your thinking and feeling you’ll be troubled. You’ll be troubled with what you know and what you see. But if you’re not referencing your self, then you just quietly know and you see.

Q: When you say not referencing your self, you mean just to go into my innermost core?

John: Not your innermost core, even just quieted in your heart. It isn’t far away, within. It’s right there, within. It’s not in your self, it’s not in your personality. It’s there in your deeper heart. It’s right there. If you reference your self then you’ll experience what this knowledge and this seeing does to your self. It can make your self feel uncomfortable, insecure, displaced, disoriented, not fitting in. All of that isn’t real.

The real is you nurtured within. Not for any reason in the world; you nurtured within not because of anything that you experience in your personality or from others; you nurtured within not for any reason in your self, so it’s you nurtured within without a reason. That’s you. As soon as you feel nurtured within for a reason, you’ll perform for that reason and that’s not real. That’s your return to innocence. You, settled within, nurtured within, warmed within, happy within, without a reason. It isn’t because of something, so what you really are, you being it, isn’t affected by what self you have. It isn’t affected by your patterning. It isn’t affected by your past. It isn’t affected by circumstance. It isn’t affected by any state, any state of mind and any state in others or in the world.

Q: When it comes up it feels so overwhelming, like it’s everything. It covers everything and then I find it really hard to be… I guess I’m trying to find okayness in that

John: It is okayness. If you look for okayness, you’re not okay. If you’re looking for okayness you’re not real. As soon as you relax you naturally turn into okayness. That’s real.

Q: So even this feeling can shift as I relax into the heart?

John: Yes. You don’t need the feeling of it. The feeling of okayness is the result of you being okay. But if there’s any kind of weather system in your nervous system, in your self, in someone else, or in the world, that will affect your self but it doesn’t need to affect you. That’s like you being profoundly okay in the midst of something within or without that doesn’t feel okay, that doesn’t look okay, so you are okayness in the midst of all manner of not-okayness. As soon as you shift to address something that doesn’t feel okay you are not okayness anymore. You are not okayness addressing not okayness. There’s no end to that.

Being the real is profoundly simple, and if it is okay with you that it is that simple, then it’s easy. But if you need for it to be more complicated than that, you create the difficulty. The difficulty isn’t real. It’s actual, it has form, but it has nothing to do with what you really are.

Q: Sometimes I find it hard to believe that these feelings will pass. This feeling of wrongness often comes with hopelessness that I will be forever stuck with this, basically. But that’s just another feeling. It doesn’t hold true.

John: Yes. It isn’t real. It’s only actual.

What you really are, gentled and quieted within, the real, is able to move in and through all of your self, all of your personality and in all of the world. If you leave this deeper heart for anything that affects your body or your self, for anything that affects any relationship of yours, for anything that affects your position in the world, you separate from what you really are. Your walk, then, will be actual, actual form, actual substance, actual experience, but none of it is real. So you’ll become lost in your self, lost in your personality, lost in the world.

When you are in the quietude of your heart, given within – just given, within – there isn’t anything in your self, your past, others or the world that can take you out. When something affects your self, that doesn’t take you out. But as soon as you take seriously how your self is affected by anything then you take your self to heart. As soon as you take your self to heart you’re believing substance of your self that is actual but it’s not real. As soon as you take your self to heart you move as an ego. You’ll take your self seriously. You’ll believe what you think and what you feel. You’ll believe everything that affects your self. And you’ll be doing all you can to adjust that effect so that you can be okay. The okayness doesn’t come because of a change in your self, a change in others, a change in circumstance. Okayness comes from you being okay. You can’t do something to be fundamentally okay. As soon as you do to be, as soon as you do to feel okay, you can’t stop doing. You’ll be on performance.

Let absolutely everything nurturefully stop, within. Let everything stop. What remains is you, the real, profoundly okay. The fruit of that, of that flow into your self, is peace, joy, happiness, and none of it is for a reason. That fruit doesn’t hinge on anything that you’ve done. It hinges on what you are, what you really are, if you’re quieted in it, being it, aflow. As this is your walk, your deep inner presence and your walk being the same, there will be no more anxiety within. All performance orientation has ended. You won’t move for what you think and feel. You won’t move for others, for anything in the world. You’ll move because you love. You’ll do, in your self, with your self, in the world, because you love. You will do and do and do, none of it so that you can be, none of it to achieve something within.

You’re streaming. That’s deeper than your heart. That’s your being moving. Your being moving is movement of you. That movement is independent of your self and is able to move through thinking, through feeling, through emotion, through personality. Your real life is your being life, your streaming life, your flow life. It isn’t dependent on your self, others or the world but will flow into all of it.

When someone doesn’t like you, you flow. When someone likes you, you flow. There’s no condition or state within or outside of your self that can prevent the streaming, the flow, the nurture, the love. But as soon as you are disquieted within because of anything that affects your self or your life, you separate from this real beingness within, the real beingness within cannot comprehend not-okayness. It knows only nurtureful okayness in the midst of absolutely anything. That’s the real, and that’s you.

There is nothing out of balance in this. There’s nothing wrong in this. There’s no kind of separation in this. What fills the interior of your face and your eyes is the same as what you were when you were really little and when you were a baby. This is you and you are so there.