Q: I feel like I’m carrying a well of sadness and pain inside, and it seems to surface when it will, through a circumstance, a train of thought. I just feel overwhelmed, feel a pointlessness, and there’s a darkness that’s without end. And I’ve tried to get a sense of when it started, if there was a starting point, and feel like it might be something that I absorbed, certainly before there was a self there to protect my heart. It leaves me feeling very sad and helpless and devastated. And I’ve been told that maybe I am creating it my self and acceptance is how to make it go away. I was hoping to hear your thoughts or what one can do with pain and sadness that seems to have its claws in you and won’t let go?

John: The sadness is quite simple. Any time that you begin to be a little bit honest to what you know, when you begin to relax as awareness in a way that has nothing to do with your self, the sadness comes in. The sadness is there because of what you’re intuiting, and what you’re intuiting is correct. You’re intuiting that your self isn’t it; it isn’t what you’re looking for, even though it is what you’re holding.

When you begin to be, in your heart, honest to what you know, the sadness is there because you intuit that you don’t like your self and you also don’t love your self, and that what you do really love principally has nothing to do with your self. The sadness has to do with your investment in your self, that as soon as you begin to be honest to what you know in your heart, you intuit that your self doesn’t matter very much. It doesn’t matter in the ways that you’ve invested in your self.

The sadness is that when you begin to be honest to what you know in your heart, your inflated self begins to deflate. When your self deflates, your investment in your self loses value.

You have invested in your self, in a self that isn’t like what you really are. The investment in your self is that you want to be in control of your happiness. That means that you’ll be happy for a reason, for a reason in your self. What you really are when you are at rest in what you really are is that you are happy without any reason and you’re at home in that and you don’t need anything else. When you are at home in you, you are not only happy without a reason, but you are also at rest in having need of nothing.

Anything that is promised in your self, you don’t need. You don’t need anything in your self for you to be you. When you are at home, within, you have no dependency on your self. When you invest in your self, you become dependent on your self for you to be you. You’re dependent on a self that isn’t like you, for you to be you. It never works.

Q: Is it possible to be selfless, to live selflessly?

John: The truth of that is that you are able to be what you really are without any use of your self. You don’t need your self for you to be you. For the investment that you’ve put in your self, that’s deflating; it takes away from any of the importance that you’ve put in your self. Any use of your self doesn’t help you be you, and you’re able to be what you really are in the midst of any part of your self. Your self doesn’t limit you.

Q: How does this self I’ve created serve me, or does it only get in my way?

John: It satisfies you. It doesn’t make you happy, but it satisfies you. Your nervous system is configured to your self because it’s your self that you’re attuned to. So you have trained your nervous system to be just like your self, making your experience of your nervous system not like you. When you’re upset, that upset-ness satisfies your nervous system. When you’re under pressure and you become annoyed or irritated or angry, that satisfies your nervous system. Your nervous system easily comes under pressure, and when it does you resort to negativity because that’s how you’ve trained your nervous system. That negativity satisfies your nerves. For you to not respond to that negativity, you experience the pressure that’s in your self. That makes negativity your pressure relief.

Q: Is there actually a contradiction between being satisfied and being happy?

John: There are levels of happiness. The most surface level of happiness offers you very little. Even in your self, it offers you very little. It is so short-lived that as soon as you have it you’re looking for what is next.

A deeper level of happiness is the happiness that is there in your self because you are being you, and you love being you, regardless of the kind of pressure that you experience in your self when you are being you. When you are really being you in the midst of your self, you will experience your self for what it really is – full of inadequacies and inability – but that inability, the shortcoming that you experience in your self, doesn’t stop you from being you. Inability or shortcoming in your self doesn’t inhibit you.

When you’re being what you really are in the midst of your self, you get to experience what your self is really like and usually that isn’t pleasant. When you’re being honest to what you know in your heart in the midst of your self, you experience its shortcomings.
That puts the experience of your self under pressure. That puts your nervous system under pressure. You can relieve that pressure by moving into your nervous system in a way that satisfies the shortcoming in your self: you’re able to be negative in your self.

When you’re being negative in your self, you empower what is not integrated in your self. You put your self to use in a way that isn’t like what you really are. It enables you to use the power in your self that is not yet like you. The use of that power alleviates you of your experience of your self, the experience of inadequacy. Negativity puts you back in control in your self. The manifestation of that control is that you have so many ways that you’re really good at closing and showing that to others. But in being that, you can’t be you. In being that, you’re being the shortcomings in your self; you’re being the conditioning in your self. You’re being what isn’t like you.

When you are being what you really are, honest to what you know in your heart, you are openness and softness of heart in the midst of an inadequate self. In the inadequacy that’s in your self, it doesn’t inhibit the warmth of your own being, and that you love being you even in the midst of your kind of self; a self that isn’t like your own being, a self that isn’t yet like what you really are, a nervous system that isn’t yet like what you really are.

Q: I’m wondering if there are people who have a self that reflects who they really are, in this life?

John: When you were really little, you had it a little bit, when you would smile without even a reason. You wouldn’t smile because you were happy or because someone else was smiling or because goodness was in some way happening. You would smile without any understanding of why. You were happy without a reason, and as soon as that showed in your face, your self in that moment was just like your own being. When your open and soft heart is free to come up into your face, your self in some way in that moment becomes just like your own being.

Q: Why do we mess our selves up so much, whatever ages that transition seems to take place?

John: Because of using your power for pain relief, instead of unconditionally using all of your power for you to be what you really are in the midst of a self that isn’t like that yet. You do that because you’re able to.

Q: So without the self we wouldn’t be able to relieve our pain?

John: Without your self you couldn’t comprehend pain.

Q: My pain is a construct of my self?

John: Your pain is a misunderstanding in your self, a construct in your self that doesn’t match you. Any construct in your self that perfectly matches you enables your being to move in a way that is completely uninhibited in your self. You’re able to develop constructs in your self that perfectly match your being. Your self is what you have for you to give form to your own being that you don’t have yet. When you use your self to give more form to what your self is already like, you leave your heart and you separate from your own being. You invest in your self in a way that isn’t true to you.

When you begin to be a little honest to what you know, you beautifully intuit that you need to go back to where you left off, and all the time that you’ve invested in your self, you’re sad that it’s all lost and that everything that you’ve given into your self has been a lost investment; that when you go back to where you’ve left off, everything that you’ve invested in your self isn’t there. The sadness is that your self, correctly, isn’t what is it and, despite how long you’ve tried to make it what is most important, all of that hasn’t worked.

What is really important is what you really are, and your self isn’t a reflection of what you really are. Your being is, and you come into that reflection as soon as there is openness and softness of heart.

Your self doesn’t offer you, you. Your self offers you opportunity, the opportunity for you to give further form to what your being already is. You’re able to build a self that is just like your own being. You’re able to construct its form to beautifully reflect you, to reflect what your own being is already like.

The sadness is that you begin to intuit that you have wasted your self, your life and your time, but when you be what you really are in the midst of that realization, the sadness is gone because you are resuming where you left off. When you resume where you left off, you love learning. You love learning from how you have wasted so much, and you flourish as a being. It shows first in your heart and then it shows in your face, despite what kind of life you have. You begin to live again with your open and soft heart visible in your face.

You love, regardless of how shy that makes you feel in your self and regardless of how embarrassed that makes you feel in your self. You love, because it’s what you are.

The way that your beingness changed the hue of your mother’s face, when you were in her body will do precisely the same to your self just by virtue of you being what you really are in the midst of your self, just like you were in the midst of your mother. What worked for you when you were in her body works just as perfectly when you are in your self.

When you are being what you really are, you are as transformative in your self as you were to your mother when you were in her body. When she would respond even just a little bit to what you were being in her, what you were showed in her face. Her response to you also showed in her face.

Q: Thank you.