Q: I want to fall asleep while I’m awake. I think I understand what you mean by that and I feel like I’ve gotten to the point a few times where I’m about to get into a kind of void. I feel it’s something I need to push through, but I get scared and then I fall back down.

John: When you lie down to go to sleep, you’re not afraid of letting go of your day, of your person, of your self, and you’re not afraid of letting go of your own heart, and you comfortably slip into what you really are, and at that point you have physically fallen asleep.

When you go through the same process of letting go of your levels of form while you’re awake and you begin to go into what is deeper than anything in your self, it’s understandable from within your experience of your self that that’s frightening to you. In your self you’re scared of being something that you’re not familiar with. Familiarity is what you’re most accustomed to in your self, even though the levels of familiarity are not what reach you the deepest.

What reaches you most deeply is that you know that there is deeper, within, than anything to do with your self. The more that you give your awareness to knowing that, the more drawn you are. As you’re drawn, identify with what you’re knowing. Identify with what you’re knowing, shift your identity as awareness to what you’re knowing while letting go of your identity, the identity you have in your self, while you are in your self.

For you to live in a waking state in this life, you need your self and you need to be in your self, but for you to be most profound meaning, your identity as awareness needs to be in what you most deeply know the truth of, without any need of understanding what that truth is. What you do understand is that you know that truth. Your identity as awareness needs to be in that knowing, while you are aware in your self and functioning in your self.

Q: You said to know but not necessarily understand?

John: Yes. When you lie down to go to sleep and right when you do fall asleep, you don’t understand what you’re entering, other than you do understand that you’re falling asleep. You feel secure in falling asleep when you lie down because you’re accustomed to entering that level of you without your self. When you fall asleep, your self is already gone and you’re in your heart. When you go deeper than your own heart, you fall asleep.

You understand that you’re comfortable in falling asleep when you lie down and go to bed. You really like it and you love it. You love it not just because it’s restful; you love entering what’s deeper, within, than your self. You don’t really understand what you’re entering, other than on the surface, to your self, you’re entering sleep. You’re so familiar with the process that you’re not identifying that what you enter you don’t actually understand. You know the goodness of it. You know the depth of it without understanding it. You don’t see what you’re entering. You don’t see where you’re going. To you in your self you are simply going to sleep, but you know there’s much more to it than that, and that part you don’t understand.

Love giving permission to entering that that you know but don’t understand while you are awake and aware in your self, in your life. When you begin to enter that and you become afraid and scared, don’t be set back by that. Love having a heart-understanding of you being afraid in your self, and you’ll get past that. You’ll get past the fear because you love what you know, and you love that you don’t need to understand what you know the truth of for you to enter and turn into what you know the truth of.

Q: I feel like I’m right there, but there’s like an internal back and forth: holding, trying to let go, and still holding.

John: Instead of trying to let go, love what you know you’re knowing. In loving it, you trust it and you step in. Trying to let go is a soft version of holding on. When you try to let go, you’re relating to what you’re familiar with.

When you are liking and loving what you’re knowing, in the direct love of it you’re taken by it. It is like falling asleep when you lie down. When you try to fall asleep, you’re using what you’re accustomed to in being awake in your self. When you love falling asleep, everything slowly goes away of what you’re used to and familiar with, and then you are just easily taken … and you’re gone. You’re so taken with it, you’re not even noticing what you’ve stepped out of. That’s the whole nature of being taken, being taken within.