Q: Since I left the house to come here it started, knowing that I would sit here. You once told me to follow your voice. Is that …

John: Don’t follow my voice. Concerning the deep, follow what you deeply, quietly know. It’s only in that that you can know anything. Without you being grounded in what you know, how would you know the truth of anything I say. If it isn’t knowing within that you use, what will you use? If it’s thought or feeling, concerning the deep, that will easily be all conditioned. Whereas if you’re dependent on knowing, that requires only your honesty, a deeper core kind of honesty where you’re open to know the truth within regardless of how that may affect your self.

Q1: When someone or me is grounded in knowing and that goes away …

John: The feeling of it. The feeling and the experience of what you know may go away.

Q: So just to know it and not experience it viscerally, or the feeling of it, is that, if I made that …

John: How do you know when you are honest in the use of your intellect? Do you go by your thinking? Do you go by a feeling? Or is it something you know?

Q: What would be an example of intellectually honest?

John: Using your capacity to reason to justify your self, or using your capacity of reason to see if your thinking is actually clear or not. If you rationalize a position in your self, you’ll be intellectually dishonest. If you use reason in an emotional pursuit, you’ll be intellectually dishonest.

Q: So if you know something not intellectually but you just know seemingly without context or conversation….

John: That’s direct knowledge.

Q: Okay, so when you have that, direct knowledge of something, sometimes direct knowledge can be like something you know to do, and then it involves the intellect.

John: Yes.

Q: So could it become intellectually dishonest when you involve the intellect into something you know to do?

John: Then you use your intellect to do what you know to do.

Q: So in answer to your question, I’m not sure what I use for being intellectually honest. What I described to you was when I experience direct knowledge.

John: When you experience direct knowledge are you sure that it’s direct knowledge? Much of what is referred to as direct knowledge is a depth of feeling together with a clear thinking.

Q: It just came, and maybe I’m, I don’t, it just came.

John: That doesn’t on its own make it direct knowledge. Direct knowledge is also not an intuition. If you have an intuition you wouldn’t stake your life on it. Direct knowledge, because it comes from the deepest, it isn’t conditioned. When you’re in direct knowledge it’s clear to you that you would stake your life on it.

When you stake your life on something there’s no room for error. So when you’re honest right to the core of what you’re talking about when you say you know something, if you stake your life on it and you’re clear that there’s no room for error, that leaves room in you to realize that maybe you don’t quite know. It feels like you know, or you think you know. But there’s some room there for error, in which case you would soften in your choice of words.

Q: There’s often a lot of weight in my choice of words.

John: As soon as you say you know, there’s an inherent weight to those words. The tendency in the self is to dismiss that weight, making it easy to use such words, making it easy to use such words where they don’t actually belong. But if you’re in tune with the gravity of the words, you won’t easily use them because they mean so much.

Q: Like when I said that I knew this morning that I would sit here, but that wasn’t accurate, it was that I had a sense that I would sit here, or an idea, or whatever that’s called.

John: Lovely.

Q: Just because it’s happened it would be easy for me to say I knew because it’s happened, but I didn’t know this morning. I whatever-that-is that I just, I don’t know what to call that: a sense of it?

John: Then don’t.

Q: Okay.

John: Or speak about it in a way that’s less descriptive, such as you think maybe you’re going to be sitting in the chair.

Q: And then it actually, when it is something that I know, it has its proper weight.

John: Yes.

Q: I’ve wanted to ask you for quite some time if the bond that we experience with each other is the bond of you? When I hear you speak about the bond, and to come from the bond, with some people I have a physical experience of the bond.

John: When I say to you to come from the bond, what really matters in that is: what is touched in you that you immediately know, that isn’t a thought or a feeling and it doesn’t put you into thought or feeling?

Because of having a self, when you hear something and you ground in your self, even concerning the truth you know, you’ll create of that, you’ll make of that, a narrative: using your self to package with thought and feeling something that you know. The packaging isn’t real, but the packaging does offer immediate closure, emotional closure and mental closure, when you hear something. It’s a use of the self to protect your self from the feeling of being in the unknown, the feeling of having no ground. Having a narrative about the truth of anything offers you an instant but artificial grounding in your self.

If I say to you “be in our bond”, and if you don’t go quickly into thought and feeling, you deeply know, but without a safe feeling form of that in your self. If you don’t move quickly into thought and feeling you may feel ungrounded in your self as soon as you relate to our bond. That’s because the bond is deeper than your self. You can feel the reflection of it in your self, but if you move too quickly in the thought or the feeling, you’ll manufacture a reflection. You’ll circumvent the natural movement of being into your self; you’ll short-cut it by just moving into a narrative. It’s the first tendency in having a self.

Similarly, in meaningful conversation, if you’re given to speaking too quickly it’s likely because you’re not really listening within. If you’re given to speaking too quickly you’ll be using the old pathways of thought from which to speak. The tendency in conversation is to use previously personalized thought, the endless ways of grounding into the sense of one’s self to circumvent the feeling of lack and vulnerability.

Q: So this would be a meaningful conversation right now.

John: When you started out speaking of our bond, when you hear that from someone, or when you think it, for how long are you in the deep of directly knowing it before you moving into a narrative of it, or a story of it; before you move in it in your self in a way that’s characteristic of you? When you hear it or when you think it, it requires containment in you to be in the direct meaning of it without quickly referencing your self, or making it about your self.

It’s a little bit like someone is saying to you that they love you. What measure of containment are you in when you hear it, or do you have an emotional need to say the same thing back? Are you conditioned in your inner response or do you hear it for what it is, and it goes in and in and in, without you quickly moving into action?

I’m not saying that you do all these things. I’m helping you to see.

Q: I can see.

John: When you are in containment, so when you are seated in you – not seated in your self, but you – that means that in your living you are fundamentally attuned to meaning. If you’re seated in your self, you’ll be attuned to what you think and feel in your self to everything that comes your way.

If you want to know if you’re seated in you or in your self, just look at the level of inner dialogue. If you live without an inner dialogue, it’s because you are seated in you and you are, in your life, clear. The inner dialogue means that you are not clear: you’re seated in your self and your self is its own frame of reference, which is what creates the dialogue.

When you’re seated in your life in you, you won’t be full in your head of thinking. You’ll only think when you use your mind. It’s not automatically on all of the time. For most people that would be unusual, to not have thinking going on. When you are seated in you instead of in your self, your thinking won’t be on automatic. Your thinking works clearly as soon as you use it, and when you don’t use it, it stops. It’s like being in conversation. Your mouth doesn’t move unless you speak. When you’re seated in you, your thinking doesn’t move unless you think. But we become so programmed with self-narrative that we can’t stop thinking anymore, so we become busy, which offers us some free time from thinking. If you’re seated in you, you are free of your mind and your mind works well the moment you use it. And it only works when you use it.

I’m offering that being clear isn’t an effort. Being clear is your enjoyment.