Q: I know something needs to shift in me. I’ve tasted the truth of my being and it’s what I love the most, and nothing else outside of that gives me that fullness. When the patterns come up, for me, it tends to be guilt, shame, and it comes so overwhelming that I’ve been giving my attention to that…and I know what I’m doing, and the more shame comes because I’ll say, “You should know better.” I feel like, “Let them consume me…”

John: That’ll work. It will consume you, making it bigger. Everything that you can try isn’t and cannot fundamentally and completely work, bringing you as awareness absolutely back to this most, most subtle and fundamental shift, within. This shift, within, needs to be your only root, and it needs to be without result. 

You have not yet been conditioned in your forms by what knowing is. All of your conditioning in your forms comes from what you have inherited from your ancestors, and it has been furthered by your own experience, locking you into your self and into your experience, just as it has been so with your ancestors. 

The shift to no longer be held by that is as direct and as simple as it is profound, and it isn’t going to work in your experience. What works in your experience is only your past. Your past is true to your experience. For you to be freed of your conditioning is for you, as awareness, to be what knowing is; to be what you first are in the midst of your own really hard and closed conditioning. You will be openness and softness in the midst of everything of yours that is closed and hard. You will be informing your forms of what really is, without your needing any result from that. You’ll have no personal agenda in that. You will simply and beautifully have no agenda. 

You are what you first are, and being that, coming from that, is solidly and absolutely enough for you. Your patterns don’t need to change because of your own fundamental shift. Nothing needs to change for you. You’ve accomplished the only change that absolutely matters for you. 

Live being that and you will see almost everything change. It won’t change in front of you. It will change all behind you. It will change behind you because you’re not needing something from it. If nothing changes, that won’t change you. It won’t change what you are and what you are being. It won’t change your orientation. You shift your orientation by your own belief only in knowing, and nothing can ever again persuade you otherwise. 

In being that, you as awareness have changed what change is, and because of that you will see change, even though you know you’re not needing it. The greatest benefit of that change will be to others. They are your beneficiaries and not your self anymore. You’re not only one with what you first are, within, but you’re being that toward and with what everyone and everything else first is. You won’t be subject to the weather anymore. It no longer matters what weather comes or what weather stays. You know what you are. It’s your home, and you’re being it in all weather. The weather no longer informs you of what you are. 

You must, as awareness, solidly land this. If you don’t land this in your self and in your living, if you don’t land what this shift of awareness is, you will use what you’ve known and what you know; you will use what you’ve seen and what you see to effect change in your self. You will use knowing and seeing to fool your self and you will make what is simple, falsely complex. In that way you will make your self worse. 

Q: I think I know when I’ve done that and it’s just so horrible when you see your self when you haven’t given allegiance to the truth of being and I absolutely want to stop doing that. It feels like it needs the courage and the trust to just switch attention. But actually, I know it’s just that letting go.

John: That letting-go holds at first, until you’re not letting the letting-go have more form. The surrender needs to have a follow-through into your forms. What is at first a most profound, simple shift of awareness that is the very beginning of what choice is, requiring nothing done, eventually within all of your forms must be done by you. It’s the surrender of follow-through, following through in being what you know in the midst of all of your forms; the surrender to apply what you know to your self, even though being so and doing so will mostly not favour your experience. 

In being so and doing so, you are changing and altering by what you are being, changing and altering your own structures, your own structures that have provided safety; your own structures that have provided ground for you even though you haven’t loved that ground.

Q: So just by a switch of attention to truth, your innermost being, to keep doing that in the midst of this letting-go of the structures?

John: Without agenda and without result. That’s critical. Without that, you fool your self. You’ll be tricking your self into being something that you are not. You are being what neediness is trying to turn your self into what having no need of anything is. Instead of setting your own self free, you’ll be making your own self as tricky as you are. 

You don’t need to fear being and doing that. You don’t need to be afraid of your self. You don’t need to be afraid of continuing being and doing what you have been and have done. You have no real reason to fear because you know what you are and knowing that is enough for you. Being that is enough for you. Applying that is enough for you.