Q: I was in De Roos on Wednesday and I met you there, and something inside me was deeply touched and felt connected. How to stay connected in daily life with thoughts and emotions? Every now and then it’s there but it’s all covered mostly.

John: In your living it’s your self that you relate to. It’s your self that you use to function. Your function also keeps you relating to your self. You’re needing your self to function. And then there is what is deeper, within, than what your self is, and that in you isn’t like your self; it’s different. When you’re in contact with that in you, your heart is moved and your heart is touched. It’s because you are accessing something, within, that means much, much more to you than what your self means to you. It doesn’t offer you function. It offers you immediate, direct and most profound meaning. For you to remain connected to that in your living, you would need to be what that is, in your self, in your living. Your self in its present configuration isn’t compatible with that.

For you to function well in your self you’re dependent on tightening, within. For you to be connected to what is much deeper within, you’re dependent on opening, within. The two different ways of being are mutually exclusive. That has you being one or the other. The difficulty is that your self is patterned with the tightening.

For you to be a deeper beingness, within, a beingness that is compatible with your own being, for that beingness to fill your heart you won’t be being your self. You’ll be being in your self what is difficult for your self. For you to be openness and softness, within, you won’t be taking up the regular patterning of your self. You’ll be moving in your self as openness and softness. You’ll be moving in your self as most delicate meaning.

It isn’t difficult for you to be what meaning is with all of its beingness, in the midst of your self. It’s really just a shift of orientation in you, as awareness. The difficulty is that your self isn’t like that, so you’ll be moving against the stream of your self. As your own real beingness, you’ll be encountering every kind of weather in your self to make it difficult for you to be coming from what matters more to you than your self. While it is easy for you to be oriented in what is deeper and to be that in your self, you’ll be facing every kind of pressure in your self. You’ll be realizing all of the different mechanisms that have kept you in the way that your self is. You’ll be realizing why you have kept your self the way your self is.

For you to be what is authentic, within, in the midst of your self, in the midst of your living, instead of your self being rigid and pattern-filled, your self will become change. In your own self becoming change because of what you are being in it, your self will come apart and come back together in a way that is just like what you’re being in it. You’ll be growing a form. You’ll be growing and developing a self that actually suits and matches your own deeper beingness.

That will cost you the present makeup of your self, and you’ll register and feel that cost in a personal way. You will find every reason in your self to not sustain this shift of awareness. You’ll be encountering real discomfort, and what you’ll be in the midst of the discomfort in your self is a profound okayness; beingness in the midst of experienced difficulty. Very simply put, you will be growing up.

Conceptually this is easy to comprehend. It’s easy to see. As awareness, the shift is easy. The difficulty will be in your experience as a self. You’ll have every reason in your self to quit, to give your loyalty back to your self again just so that you can have your comforts back. But then you’ll also not have this most profound meaning, the meaning of your own being, filling your own heart and replacing the forms, the structures, in your self.

As you awaken to what is deeper within than what your self is, you quickly realize that you’re not in this life to have the kind of existence and the kind of life that favours your self. You are in this life to be what this most profound meaning is, within; for that to have you, and have your heart, and then have your self and your life. That has you knowing that you’re fulfilling what you’re in this world for. Then it’s clear to you in your heart that through ease and difficulty you are in your body to be this deeper meaning within, and to move as that.

For you to sustain this, you simply need to be relating to this while you’re in your self, instead of relating to your self while you’re in your self. What you are relating to is what fills your heart. What fills your heart then fills your self. For you to sustain this – not sustain the experience of this, but to sustain the reality of this – as awareness, you will need to be the little bit that you know the truth of in your heart instead of, as awareness, being what you think and what you feel in your self; being the little bit that you know the truth of in your heart while you are thinking and feeling in your self. Being so, slowly changes your thinking and your feeling in your self.