Q: I’ve had teachers who have told me that I am the vastness. They know they’re truthful. I can take them at their word and look into that. I hear you talking about lessness and being the littlest part and the experiences that that keeps me in the heart, but there’s the question that comes up: how can the vastness fit into something so small that it’s nothing?

John: That’s where all the vastness is. You look for more and you find less. Look for less and you’ll find more. It doesn’t work the way your mind thinks. Nothing really works the way your mind thinks. Things can appear to be the way that your mind thinks, but you have this knowing that everything is actually other than how your mind thinks of it. You may respect your mind but you don’t have an honest trust in your mind.

Q: How to trust honestly that which can’t see?

John: You can see it – just not with your mind. You can see it with your heart. You can’t see tenderness with your mind. You can assess what looks like tenderness but it is only your heart that knows what it is. It is only your heart that knows when it’s in you. It’s only your heart that knows when you’re being it. Through your mind you can wonder about tenderness but through your mind you can’t be it. You have eyes in your mind and you have eyes in your heart. Use the eyes that are in your mind to function in this world and use the eyes that are in your heart to be in this world. As soon as you confuse the two, you’re lost.

Q: The eyes in the heart, they see only through lessness?

John: When you see through lessness, you always see more.

Q: The eyes in the mind, is that just perception? And how does the will play into that? Since there’s no control and we accept some divine will, how do we really see that?

John: When your will softens, the experience of that within is always sweetness. When your will tightens, the experience of that within is always misery, even if you’re getting what you think you want. Using your will for your self is living for what you want. Being in your will is giving up what you want so that you can be what you truly are. You cannot live for what you want and at the same time be real. Your wants only disappoint you. Your wants only make you miserable. Your wants always make you unhappy.

The gentle opening up and the letting go of what you want always makes you happy because then you’re being real. You’re being what you really are. When you manage to get what you want, that only makes you want more because that wanting didn’t satisfy you yet. So you’ll make it bigger. The larger that wanting gets the more profoundly disturbed you’ll be. The more that you’re content within with even less that what’s presently there, the more you’ll overflow within.

Q: Can I be content with less than nothing?

John: You cannot be content with less than nothing unless you are first being nothing. You can be content with less than being something. That lets you be nothing. Then you can be content with being even less than nothing. Vastness is too big and too much for you to be. Being less within is easy for you to be. All that takes is letting go. When you relate to vastness that puts you in your head. That just makes you think. It’s that kind of thinking that you’re tired of because it’s not helping. It’s not accomplishing within what it is that you’re truly yearning for.

What you yearn for is to return to what you came out of. To return to the source of you. The return to that source is in your own heart being gentled and quieted and stilled. The return to it is not by you relating to something that you perceive in your mind. That takes you away from what your heart most yearns for. You are not vastness unless you’re genuinely being it. Vastness opens up within the heart from lessness. When you’re content within to be less, when you’re content within to have less within, then within your heart there’s an opening up and an expansiveness, so then there’s just a little bit of vastness. More space. More space that is not filled with something; just nourishing space that your mind cannot comprehend but that your heart loves.

Q: The mind is just tempted to despair here because it knows it can’t do that.

John: You are. You’re tempted to despair when you can’t have what you want, even by using your mind. When you let go of needing to have what you think you want, despair melts. Despair happens only when you, through all of your power, cannot get what you want. Your mind doesn’t despair. Your mind thinks in support of whatever it is that you are presently being. When you’re being a want, because you’re taking want to heart, then your mind will serve that want. Your mind will serve you and show you all the ways that you can try to fulfill that want. Your mind is not your enemy. Your mind is your beloved servant; it’s always working for you. Even if you’re wanting something that’s not real, your mind still serves you. Your mind doesn’t forsake you just because you’re not being true. Your mind serves you for better or for worse. It is only when your whole heart serves what little bit you know that your mind then serves your heart in bringing that out in form in a way that you experience as being truly good. Your mind can only manifest what is real when you are serving what is real. When you are serving what you want, then your mind will work for that. Your mind will always bring into form what you are presently being. That’s what the mind is for. If you’re not experiencing your mind as being nourishing and totally wonderful, it is because your mind is reflecting and bringing into form how much you are not being real.

When you, your whole heart is being nectar because you’re giving everything that you are to what little bit of nectar exists within, then the flow of that takes that nectar and fills your mind with it. Then your mind is just like nectar. It all works from within out, not from without in. When you start with your mind you get lost in your mind. When you start with what little bit that you know in your heart then you get lost in what you know. Then everything that you actually know fills your mind. When that comes into form within your mind then you have true understanding, true wisdom. When you live being not real, what you’ll value is information because then the more information you have, the more equipped you’ll be to get what you want.

Q: So should there be no concern at all as to what the world looks like on the outside?

John: If you have concern from a place of unrest then you’ll live to change those things outside of you. True concern of those things outside of you is the movement of compassion that has no need to change anything. So then there’s no personal agenda in anything that you do in this world. Then it’s just love that moves, love that freely gives itself away without that having anything to do with you, without that giving you something. Love doesn’t see itself. It just is itself.

Anything that someone that appears to be a teacher, anything that such a one would tell you or teach you, if it doesn’t nourish your whole heart don’t believe it. If you’re impressed by what you hear and you take it to heart just because it sounds impressive, then you’ve just adopted another belief and that belief will make your work very hard. As soon as you believe in something just because you’ve been told that it’s true, without you knowing that it’s true, then your whole subconscious mind will move on your behalf and be influencing you to prove that what you believe is real and true even though it’s not. When you hear something that sounds true, don’t believe it unless you know it’s true. If it doesn’t nourish you, you don’t know it’s true. When you hear something talked about truth and it just impresses you then that is only putting you in your head. So then you’re being taken away from truth.

When you tell a little child that it is vastness, it won’t be interested in you. It won’t be impressed because it’s not looking for anything. But when you touch a little child’s heart because you’re being something that is real, it will climb up into your lap and soak in you. Little children can see; it’s adults that have become blind, so then they listen to what impresses them instead of what nourishes them. Just because someone sounds like a teacher of truth doesn’t mean that they are. If they are not profoundly nourishing, then they may not be what you think they are. Someone’s mind can be awakened. Someone’s mind can be massively awakened so that they can perceive so much higher but that doesn’t mean that their heart and that their will is as opened up as their mind is. Then they can speak of those things that are much higher. That doesn’t mean that they’re being what is much higher.

The mind is relatively easy to awaken. The mind can be opened up so that you can perceive more than you’ve ever perceived before. Those perceptions can be clear enough that you can even communicate them but unless the will is opened up, then you’ll still be mastered by perceptions, even though those perceptions are higher.

Q: Can they happen together or is there any point at all to opening the mind without the will?

John: The only thing that’s worth opening is the heart. When you remain with that opening up in the heart, the will automatically opens and the mind automatically opens. When you meditate or use techniques to awaken, then you’re awakening from the outside in. That is a misuse of power. That is awakening to get something. It is an awakening, but not for your good. The more that you awaken from the outside in, the more you have to lose. When you awaken from the outside in then you’ll think that you really have something and you’ll dread losing it.

Awakening from the outside in only makes you a more sophisticated somebody. When you awaken from the inside out that leaves you being a wonderful nobody.