Q: For some time now I’ve experienced very strong episodes of bi-polar depression. For some time I’ve fought it and didn’t want to accept it. What’s clear is that it is exactly that: chemical, non-negotiable, and a very clear pattern of episodes. I don’t want to be a victim. I accept responsibility. They throw me so far away from myself. Their impact is so intense it seems to have taken up everything. I don’t have my independence any more. And while I recognize a surrender, that is bearing fruit for the spaces in between the episodes, there’s still a relentless inevitability to the next one, to living with it. Why? How? What to do with it?

John: You suffer from tropical candor; you have hurricane season. The seasons that you pass through don’t stop you from being what you first are. They don’t stop you from being, in your body, as is. You’re able to be, as awareness, stillness in a hurricane. You don’t need to be troubled by what you’re experiencing. You are the equanimity of being, despite what experience you’re in, despite what’s happening in your body and how that affects your self.

Q: When I’m in those episodes, it’s such an altered state, and when I come out of them, I wake up in some far field somewhere and much of my life is about the repair and the journey back. I’m not able to hold on or capture any momentum when I do access the places of my self that I choose to live from.

John: Because of the extreme changes in what you experience, you keep losing your ground. You do what you can to regain your ground, for your ground to be lost over and over. Don’t have your ground in what can be changed. Don’t have your ground or your grounding in anything to do with what you experience.

What you have, as awareness, is what you know the truth of in your heart. That knowing isn’t subject to what you experience. That knowing in your heart is subject only to your belief or your disbelief. If what you know the truth of in your heart is subject only to your belief, then, as that, you are not anymore what you’re experiencing. The experiences are what you have, and you no longer have your ground in what you’re experiencing. You have your ground, as awareness, in what you’re knowing, in what you know the truth of in your heart. Knowing is your only ground.

What you’re experiencing and what you suffer from in your body invites you to no longer have your ground in what you experience in your body and in your self. What remains for you is only what you know the truth of in your heart. You don’t need to see it. You don’t to feel it. You don’t need to experience it. And regardless of what storm you’re in, you are that knowing in your heart. What you’re in is the invitation to realize what you really are; to realize what doesn’t change and isn’t subject to what you’re suffering from. You’re able, as awareness, to be coming from what is deeper, within, than what you suffer in.

Q: Such a price – everything. The price!

John: The way that you suffer in it reveals that if you wouldn’t have this, have this happening to you, you would most easily be lost in your self and in your life. If you won’t be what you really are in difficulty, you really won’t be what you really are, within, in ease. In that way the difficulty is, for you, a gift. You’re not in this world to have an easy and a comfortable life. You’re in this world, in your body and in your self, to be what you first are, within, and to evolve and develop as that. The difficulty and your suffering makes it clear. You don’t have the option of being lost in ease.

Q: It’s baffling, therefore difficult to accept as a gift. Such suffering, such price.

John: Your real ground, within, is ground unshakeable. Have no rest in what is shakeable. Have your rest, as awareness, only in what is unshakeable. That, you can be and you can do because the unshakeable, within, is what you are. The shaking, the turbulence, points you, as awareness, to what isn’t like that, within.

When you are, as awareness, being what you know the truth of in your heart, you are then what is unshakeable and you’ll have then the beingness of that: most quiet love.
Love that is also not subject to what is shakeable. You’ll have the second when you are actually at home in the first. Then you’ll also be genuinely okay, as is, with your condition. You won’t be wishing for a change. What you’ll be coming from has need of nothing. That you are grounded in knowing and evolving as awareness will matter more to you than anything that you’re experiencing. From within what you know the truth of in your heart, you’re not needing for anything to be different.

You are then the tiny little bit that you know the truth of in your heart. You are unwaveringly that. The tiny little bit, within, repeatedly imprisoned, cast away, returned for apparent recovery, over and over again. As that tiny little bit, evolving. Your own beingness is your home and no longer what you’re experiencing.

Your packaging is entirely suitable to what you are as the tiny little bit, within. It’s only unsuitable to your experience as a self. As you evolve within your packaging your self will change. Your self will become as you are. Your forms will slowly transform and be as you are in them. As long as you are disquieted within what you are experiencing, your self continues to be the same. Your self becomes as you are.

You have your seeing from what you’re experiencing, and your seeing is not representative of you and what you know the truth of. Your own seeing will not be representative of you, of what you really are, within, until you are being what you really are within. When the little that you know the truth of in your heart means more to you than anything that you’re experiencing, your seeing will come from what you know and not from your experience any more.

The shaking ground, the most unstable ground in your self sends you, as awareness, to the unshakeable ground, within: your ground of knowing. Your self is no longer the ground of your heart. What you know the truth of in your heart is the only ground of your heart. Instead of having a somewhat uncommon experience in your self, as awareness you’ll have most uncommon seeing.

Q: You mentioned quiet love?

John: A depth of realized love that needs no voice. The beingness of dwelt-in living knowledge. Beingness that is indomitable. It is not subject to even the harshest of weather systems. Your condition is your beloved personal trainer. When it’s gone, you’ll realize it.

When you are, as awareness, being what you know the truth of in your heart, great development occurs within great difficulty.

Q: Why not in great joy and light?

John: Because it’s so suitable to a little self. As a little self, you will work joy into your shakeable ground. You’ll work joy into familiarity. You’ll spend the newness of what you are as goodness.

In facing your own evolution as awareness, there is nothing in it for you in your little self, in your shakeable self. As awareness in your little self you relate to convenience and to inconvenience. In your little self you live by short-sighted want and need. The development of your bigger self, your deeper self and your higher self, comes by your evolution as awareness by having your ground only in the little bit that you know the truth of in your heart.

Q: It doesn’t feel like such a little bit. It might be a small jewel, but it’s very, very precious.

John: When you’re outside of it, it’s most little. When you’re in it and coming from it, it is absolutely everything. It’s what you are. It even comes with a personal trainer: unhappiness.

When you know how it works and you’re at home in how it works, it all works. You don’t choose your difficulty. Your only real choice, as awareness, is knowing – despite any kind of difficulty.