Q: I had a question in me when you talked about being in your heart and talked about weakness and accepting. I feel often when I have a strong connection with a woman I really, really, like I need approval from her that she wants me, that she will accept me, and I start losing my confidence. I feel there’s a weakness and I want to accept it but it seems to control me. I start getting confused and to be scared. I start becoming this boy that feels weak and unaccepted.

John: That’s just symptomatic of you making your self the centre in all of your relationships. You making the focus on your change of experience in your self when you’re interested in a woman is you missing the whole point of the change in your experience when it comes to women. It’s really telling you about how you position your self in all of your relationships – your relationship to everything. You, just gentled and quieted within, and warmly no longer taking your self to heart about anything.

Q: So when I have a connection with anyone, I basically forget to be in my heart, be in the centre too much in my self?

John: Yes.

Q: I want to be able to see it when it happens and to know how to share the centre with someone else.

John: Don’t look to share it. That will focus you on your experience and your feeling. Just like being very quietly warmed in your heart, regardless of who you’re with, and it is first not about the interconnectedness of that. It’s just, all on its own, that you are quietly warmed in your heart regardless of who you’re with. So it isn’t any longer about who you’re with.

Q: It’s about doing it from the heart, being in the heart.

John: Yes: that your real life is within, and your real life within is you very quietly warmed in your heart. That makes you within, nurture. Nurture without any focus. Nurture that is not quickly connected to interest.

Q: So just feel it and be there. Just be present in the heart.

John: As a feeling, the quietest of that feeling, the most delicate of that feeling. So not a strength of feeling. The quieter it is, the more delicate it is, the deeper it is.

Q: How could I improve this ability? Should I sit with my self and try to just be there when I meditate?

John: You could, but where it really counts is in your life. So you being most delicately, quietly warmed, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of what you’re experiencing, regardless of who you’re with.

That weans you in your self of being object-oriented, you projecting meaning onto objects – a person, looking to change your self or something outside of your self because of you projecting a difference, a change, on a circumstance.

This is really you, very quietly relaxing within, without that being focused on something or someone. So you relaxed within, not hinging on anything, means that your relaxation within is authentic. It’s genuine. It really is you, unconditionally relaxed, in the midst of whatever. You, genuinely being gentled and quieted within.

Q: It brings me to a big understanding about my life. Like you said, it’s not about one relationship; it’s about all the relationships: the relationship with my career, or with other people. The more I care about it, the more I’m influenced, I feel it, and I lose my relaxation. I lose my self.

John: The more you care about it, the more you make your self the centre of it.

Q: And instead of being the centre of it, I need to be always the centre of my self.

John: That what is centre in you, is a most quiet, gentled warmth within. If you leave that for anything, your reason for moving is false. Then you’re moving away from the real.

Q: So in order to be that inside the centre of my self I need to be more present or aware of where I am right now?

John: Aware in the littlest bit of nurture, within. But it needs to be nurture without any reason. It’s not nurture because something feels good to you; it’s not nurture because of a favourable circumstance or a favourable person. It’s nurture because the way that you are there, within, is real. And on its own, it has need of nothing.

That’s you quietly being what you really are. It doesn’t come from your self, your circumstances, others, your life. You just are that way, regardless of who you’re with, regardless of what you’re experiencing, regardless of what circumstance you’re in.

Q: How do I practise in being there? How to do this and make sure it will happen?

John: Quietly enjoy that this is what you belong to. You don’t belong to anything else.
You don’t belong to your relationships, not to your circumstances, not to your self, not to your life, not to your mind. You belong to the quietude of this, within. Quietly like belonging to this, in the midst of anything.

See what it’s like for you, just in one day, for just one day, that you see what it’s like to be this, inside, while your circumstance changes, while your experience, your thinking and your feeling is changing, that who you’re with may change. But regardless of what comes up on the inside of your experience, or on the outside, that you are being this. So this is the constancy in you.

Q: I feel so relaxed now. I see what you are describing and it looks so light, so relaxed, so free, regardless of anything. The fact that it’s not dependent on anything makes it even stronger. Thank you John, thank you so much.

John: See you again.