Q: I love this. I love the quiet. I love the deep. It seems sad to me that in my life I’ve looked so many places, and gone to so many schools and so on, and never been told what I’m feeling here. I’m glad to be here. I’d like to speak about results, because at least at my conscious level, my personality, my whole life I’ve been very focused on results, and still, when I think about it, they seem to be very important, an important way for me to evaluate or discern. But I also see, from what I’m hearing, that there’s an inquiry inside me where results don’t count. I don’t know how to look there or to practise that.
John: What you really are is depth and quality. It isn’t personal and it isn’t individual. So in what you really are, there’s no sense at all of a “who.”
When you’re being what you really are there is no “who.” Who you are doesn’t exist in what you really are. What you really are has no sense of individuality. It has no sense of what you have in your self and in your personality. The sense that you have in your self and in your personality isn’t integrated yet, so it misinforms you. It doesn’t tell you the truth.
For you to know the truth, you need to really listen, so to speak, deeply, directly, within, where thought and emotion, feeling and will have no existence. As soon as you don’t use anything that doesn’t help, you’re there. What remains is beingness, and you’re being it.
What you are then is depth and quality, such as deep-reaching openness that has no relationship to your self or your person – at least, not yet – until you are unconditionally being that openness; being what you really are, such as that openness, that deep reaching openness and softness, and being that quality in the midst of what self you have, in the midst of what personality you have, not for results, and not to change anything. You’re just being what you really are in the midst of who you are.
The “what” is perfect. The “who” is imperfect. The one doesn’t need to make the other better. But when you are being the “what” in the midst of the “who,” the “who,” in time, becomes just like the “what” simply by virtue of you being it.
Your self, your personality tunes to whatever it is that you’re being in it. That’s for better or for worse. If you’re being the beingness of your conditioning, your self will get worse. If you’re being any little touch of beingness that is the same as your own being, your self eventually becomes the same, and that’s without you working on your self.
The change occurs because your self is then in perfect company.
Q: Thank you.
548 – Right Side Up: No Longer Taking Your Stress to Heart
The responsibilities that come with working in the world can feel stressful. Is there a way of moving more lightly in it all? John explains how it’s all dependent on what we belong to, within.
547 – Profound Honesty: Being Okay When You Don’t Feel Okay
Shame, fear, anger … is it really possible to be okay in any circumstance, even when feeling attacked by others? There is transformative potential, and John explains.
546 – Less and Even Less: Why Weakness is Your Way Home, Within
Contrary to worldly conditioning, weakness isn’t something to conceal or avoid; it’s actually key to embodying a full spectrum of awareness. John describes the journey, and what it requires.
545 – From Fighting to Flourishing: A New Way Forward with Your Teenager
For this mother, who is struggling in relation to her teenage daughter, what begins as a hard lesson to learn becomes a beautiful crossroads that will deeply change them both.
544 – Evolving as Pure Awareness in War and Peace
An epic conversation that reveals what we’re here for, how to help people suffering the effects of war, what can change the planet, and why it’s up to us.
543 – Rebuilding Your Relationship For a Higher Purpose
Entering a sexual relationship too soon has created suffering for this couple. Is it possible to start over, and build the kind of commitment that will survive the inevitable difficulties?
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
