Q: I know I’m supposed to know, but I don’t know. I know the answers are inside; strength is inside; knowledge is inside, and I don’t have direction.

John: What kind of direction are you looking for?

Q: I just sold my house. I had an offer in on a home to run a bed and breakfast and this morning I declined moving further. My life is on a U-haul parked on the side of a street. Am I going in the wrong direction? Have I not been listening hard enough to what spirit’s asking me to do? Does it have a different plan than what I think?

John: What brings you here?

Q: A history of watching your videos and coming and listening: the silence, the ability for you to direct and hold space and allow for processing, and the gifts I’ve watched you unfold in engaging with other people. I just knew I was supposed to come here. So I arrived and showed up, and I’m open for answers, clarity, wisdom.

John: What you do on the surface of your life doesn’t really matter much. Where you live doesn’t really matter much. What you are being, within, in the midst of whatever you do, matters everything and, given what you know is occurring here, matters a lot. Does that offer you some direction?

Q: It validates that I feel safe in the moment. It’s supportive that here and now is okay. I try and sit in courage and yet there’s doubt. I thought I had my compass pointed and now I’m not so sure if the effort needs to continue to go in that direction, with the same dream, or does the dream just need to change a little bit?

John: A dream doesn’t matter very much. Living out a dream is like doing anything on the surface. The dream is in your self. Your self isn’t bad; the dream isn’t bad. They’re both just really okay, and either one – a dream or your self – isn’t worth living for.

What’s worth living for is what you are being within in whatever you do, in whatever dream, without what you do or a dream really mattering much. The greatest value of your self is what you’re being in it. What you’re being in your self is what informs your self of meaning, which is something a dream won’t give you. What you are being within your self, and in whatever you do, is of the highest meaning and anything that you know outside of your self that speaks directly to what you’re being, within – such as what you’ve said of what’s occurring here – is the next of what really matters to what you are being, in your self, and in whatever you do.

Q: When you say “in your self” are you meaning such things as virtues, like kindness to your self or creative…?

John: Not anything creative. The creativity is a use of your self. Your self is secondary to you. The powers of creativity in your self are also secondary to you. What you are being within the use of creativity matters the most.

Q: Does that mean what I’m being within, what I am being inside?

John: Yes.

Openness and softness of heart that flowers, and it isn’t dependent on your self, on your thinking, on your feeling, on your will, on your emotions. It isn’t dependent on your intuition or your creativity. It isn’t dependent on anything that you do in your life. It isn’t dependent on your dreams. It isn’t dependent on where you live or what health you have. It’s first, before anything. It’s really everything.

If you’re flowering in openness and softness of heart, it doesn’t really matter what you do. You could replace one dream for another and it doesn’t even really matter, or you could just leave a dream alone and that also doesn’t really matter. It’s like what you see in the innocence of a small child. It doesn’t really matter what that child does: taking up a dream or laying one down. It’s that innocence that moves, the flowering within of openness and softness of heart.

Q: So it’s an ebb and flow of connecting the self.

John: Openness and softness of heart connecting with the self and how that beingness flows into the self and then recedes again: so, yes. What you do in the flow doesn’t really matter. What matters is what is it that ebbs and flows? Is it authentic beingness or is it mixed with measures of tightness?

Q: It’s mixed with fear.

John: Then you’re not really flowering and, whatever you do, the not-really-flowering is going to manifest. As you see the results of that you’ll strive more in what you do, as though what you do can possibly make a difference.

Q: Existing makes a difference and being kind of heart makes a difference.

John: Yes, openness and softness of heart flowering in any circumstance; openness and softness of heart flowering in your self, regardless of what self you have; that you really are being from the inside, out, and you’re not dependent on what you do for that beingness. Whatever it is you do is completely dependent on that beingness, so it isn’t really your doing that matters.

Q: It’s the being that matters.

John: It’s what you are being – openness and softness of heart. You don’t need your self or your past for you to be and you don’t need any kind of doing for you to be. Once that’s clear, then you are free, from within, to do and it won’t matter what you do.

Q: Because the ebb and flow is soft and from the heart.

John: Yes.

Q: It’s truth.

John: If you’re moving somewhere to a different location because that location clearly represents and offers you much more form of what it is that you’re already being, within, so it’s a support from the outside-in of your being, if that’s something that you know, then it matters for you to move because you’re responding to direct support outside of your self that you know the truth of, from deep within. Whichever location, then, that you’re aware of that reflects your being the most, that offers you the most in you being what you really are, move there, live there. Then you’re configuring your life in support of what matters the most: your heart, what you’re being in your heart and your being.

Q: Peaceful.

John: From the innermost, out; from your openness and softness of heart outwards and in response to whatever it is that most clearly and accurately, from the outside-in, reflects the same back to you, such as what you came here for.

Q: The direction and the navigation are still from within.

John: Yes.

Q: In combination with surrender?

John: Surrender to what you most deeply, quietly know the truth of in your heart.

Q: So it helps to take the analogy of what that heart really looks like.

John: Open and soft, and into your self and your life, flowering.

Q: It feels gentle.

John: When you are being it, it leaves you gentled and quieted in your heart.

Q: When you’re in that place of feeling that peace and that gentleness, is it from there that you choose your actions?

John: Yes.

Q: Then your actions are soft and loving, and your choices, because they are in synchronicity with the ebb and flow from the heart.

John: And anything that interferes or challenges your actions doesn’t interfere with you. It doesn’t challenge you, so in that way failure or success in your actions matter little.

Q: And that’s kind, and it’s validating.

John: Not to your self, not to what you do, but to you. It validates what you really are. If you’re not being what you really are, there isn’t anything that you can do to validate what you really are. There’s no action that will help you. Every action, everything you do, will make you worse.

Q: So it all stems from the quietness of the being.

John: Extending right into your heart, and that’s you.

Q: Does that require work or searching to just be me?

John: If it requires any work, you have just constructed and set upon a very difficult path. It requires only you, awareness, being gentled and quieted within. It isn’t a doing. It’s you – without any use of your self, or your life – being.

Q: In that being turning so inside my self is learning to embrace one’s self in a different light.

John: That’s already too much. If you are being openness and softness of heart in the midst of your self as it is, there isn’t anything for you to embrace. It’s your beingness that addresses your self. It isn’t a doing. It’s not an embracing. It’s not an acceptance. The embrace or the acceptance is a use of your self. It is a doing, in your self, so that you can be.

The embrace and the acceptance can have openness and softness in them, so when the acceptance opens you, it isn’t really the acceptance, the tool you use; it’s your openness and softness of heart.

Q: So, like a rose, the softness of what the petals hold inside, the seeing of my own light, will allow for the petals to open without searching to embrace it, but just allow it?

John: Resting in it. If you’re allowing it, then you’re very subtly coming from outside-in. The allowance has real beingness in it so it will work, but because it also has a doing in it, that doing will strengthen every time you allow, so you’ll slowly separate from that beingness, within, that is the meaning of your life.

Q: Is it wise to pray and meditate around that?

John: Not once you’ve heard this. Then praying and meditating are too much.

Q: So just remaining in the ebb and the flow and the softness of heart is sufficient.

John: Yes, and then be that unconditionally. The unconditionality really matters. Live opening and softening in your heart unconditionally and at any personal cost, and then separation in you doesn’t exist. You’re home without doing anything.

Q: A home is coming into self, and into my own heart.

John: You coming into authentic beingness. You’re not coming into your self. You are coming into your heart and you’re not stopping there. You’re coming to rest right into the beingness that you most know the truth of. You come to rest in pure beingness in your heart and that beingness, within, matters more to you than your heart, your self, and your life.

Q: It’s in that statement I find truth.

John: You won’t find it there: you’re being it. Truth isn’t conceptual. It’s beingness. It’s the same deep quiet presence and movement of your own being, and it isn`t dependent on anything you that can do in your self and as a self. It isn’t possible for you to do so that you can be. You can’t do to be.

Q: That’s where I’ve been going wrong.

John: You weren’t going wrong. You were misunderstanding what you really are. What shows that you were not going wrong is that as soon as you hear the truth and you know it, you open.

Q: So my direction is being.

John: Yes, and being in response to anything outside of your self that most represents the same as you’re already being from, within. That connects the greatest meaning that you come into, that is outside of your self in your life, to your heart. As you respond to that, you are bridging from the inside, out.

It’s lovely that you are so easily brought home.