Q: I don’t feel love for my self nor for others or nature or anything else. I feel negative feelings like anger, but I don’t really feel love. I want to open and soften my heart but I don’t know how.

John: Instead of immediately applying what you’ve realized in your heart to your self or to others, do what is first natural to you concerning realization, and that is you applying your heart to what you’ve realized. You’re accustomed to what you experience in your self, so when you come into realization and awakening, your point of reference, out of habit, is your self, what you experience in your self. Naturally you’ll try to apply your awakening in a way that’s immediate to your self. The application matters but not as much as the realization itself and the awakening.

You need to give to what you’ve awakened to, instead of using what you experience in your self to register the lack, the lack of how your awakening has come into your self. When you focus on the lack you feed your self and you strengthen your self. You’re using the same patterns that you’re accustomed to.

In physical reality it’s like planting a little sapling, planting a little fruit tree. As soon as you see the little fruit tree and you plant it, it’s easy to realize the value that’s there, but from within your patterned self the first thing you’ll notice is the lack of fruit and that it isn’t offering you much shade.

In realizing enough of a value of a sapling fruit tree to plant it, continue giving value to the meaning that’s there, you taking care of the tree. Take care of the tree for the sake of the tree. Time will pass and later that tree will offer you shade and fruit, but it isn’t about the shade and the fruit. It’s about the intrinsic value of the tree. When you love the tree for its own sake, you won’t be focused on what it isn’t offering you. You won’t be immediately looking to what is next after you’ve planted it, such as “where is the fruit?”

When you come into realization and you awaken, love the truth you’ve realized in the realization and the awakening. You don’t need to love others and your self. You don’t need to love nature. You do need to love what you know you do love. Begin with what you already have. You were realizing and awakening, and you loved it. Live in that love. You know no lack in that love.

As your awakening continues to grow and develop, it will naturally grow into your self. As it does, it will bear fruit in your self. You don’t need that fruit, even though it is of real benefit to your self. All you need is what you know the truth of, and for you to be in what’s there, what is there concerning the truth that you have awakened to. What is there is your love of it.

Your love of the truth that you’ve come into isn’t for your self. When you loved it, you were not loving it for your self. You were loving it for what it is. You were genuinely pleased with it for its sake.

Q: I’m afraid I’ll never really awaken.

John: You already have. A seed of profound reality has sprouted in your heart and you’re looking for a big tree. You’re looking at what isn’t there. If a tiny touch of awakening is enough for you, you’re full. You already have it and you’re already in it.

When you love the little, it isn’t so little. When you love the little, it is so much. When you love the little that’s there, you naturally live giving your heart to it. You’ll be giving your whole heart to that little that is sprouting in your heart of awakening. As long as your heart’s attention is given to it, it flourishes.

Begin with giving it your whole heart. When it has your whole heart, your self in how you experience your self matters little to you. It is not a distraction to you. When your awakening, however little it is, has your whole heart, your self doesn’t have your heart any more, so in that way you’re free of your self. Being free of your self isn’t dependent on you first mastering your self. You being free of your self is completely dependent on your heart being completely given to the truth that you know in your heart. A tiny little bit is enough.

You didn’t come back because of how little is there in your experience. You came back because of how much is there, how much you know is there. You came back not because of what you’re experiencing, but because of what you know. To your knowledge this is it and it’s everything.

Q: My ego doesn’t want to awaken.

John: But that doesn’t matter because you know better than your ego. Your ego doesn’t know; you know.

Your ego is made of what you experience in your self. Your ego comprises all of your self-importance that is able to move as one point, and that one point, as powerfully as you can experience it and as powerfully as it seems to matter so much, doesn’t compare at all to that little bit of the truth that you’ve already awakened to in your heart. You love what you know despite your ego. Your ego won’t be a problem unless you make it a problem. When you make it a problem, you make your ego important. Your ego isn’t worth a problem.

The importance that you’ve given to what you experience in your self belongs to what you’ve awakened to. When you redirect the flow of importance to what you’ve awakened to, you won’t experience the fruit of that redirection. The reason that you redirect is because of the meaning that you know of what you’ve awakened to. It doesn’t need to come into your experience. It needs only to have your heart.

By the time that this little sprout in your heart grows up and offers your self shade and fruit, you won’t need it anymore. You feel in your self like you need it now. That’s because of how you’ve grown your self. You already know that your self doesn’t inform you of what is real and true. What you know in your heart informs you of what is real and true. You need only to live letting what you know in your heart inform you. That information doesn’t need to change your experience: it changes you. It changes you because you let it have your heart. You live giving it your heart.

When your awakening has your whole heart in your life, your awakening, your continued awakening, is unstoppable. Everything that you experience in your life will cause your awakening to flourish, but only if your awakening has your heart. If your self has your heart, despite your awakening everything that occurs in your life will cause your experience of your self to flourish with all of its pain and suffering. You already know that path, and you deeply know that that path isn’t it. The little bit that you’ve awakened to in your heart you know in all of your heart is it.

That little sprout can survive any hardship, any amount of pain, any kind of storm, as long as the little sprout in your heart has your heart. It’s there that you do love how much there is in the little.

It doesn’t matter how much in your own experience that you’re sick of your self because you know in your heart that your self isn’t it, and you know in your heart what is it. In that little bit, in that tiny little bit, you know you have it and you know you have it all.

Your self is full of lack, is out of balance and is a mess, but when your self no longer has your heart, that matters little to you. What matters so much to you is the truth that you’ve awakened to in your heart. It’s by that that everything of your self, in time, will come into balance and change. The fruit of that you’ll be happily giving to others because your heart is already full. It’s full of your awakening. It remains full because it is by your awakening that you live.

Your self is like your child. It’s like a child of yours. It’s in your care and as awareness you’re its parent. Your child has a different parent now. The parent is still you. What makes it a different parent is that it is an awakened parent. The condition of the child matters little. What matters more is the condition of the parent. The child, in living, will naturally become as the parent.

Whatever you, awareness, are being in your heart, your self becomes. When you are being what you have awakened to in your heart, it is only a matter of time and there will be a big tree. If it’s such a result that you’re focused on, it will be the lack of a big tree that will have your heart, and your awakening will be covered by that.