Q: Yesterday I had a kind of opening or an opportunity for new that I jumped into that. Today things opened up more. It seems more that my theme is to figure out my core patterns. I have a sense they’re coming very close.

John: You don’t need to figure out your patterns. Live with your heart opened unconditionally, in the midst of everything in life that brings up your patterning. It’s the opening and the softening in the midst of that patterning that life brings up for you, that opens the pattern for you to see. The pattern opens because you’re opening in the midst of anything.

Instead of figuring it out, your heart stays open in the midst of any pattern. Your pattern, because of that, opens and you come into heart understanding of that pattern. The understanding really comes especially when you don’t need it. Because you have a mind, if you open unconditionally in the midst of any pattern, you will live understanding. You don’t need to look for the understanding. The understanding naturally comes because you can see, and there’s nothing in the way of your seeing; that there is no closing, no hardening, regardless of the pressure.

All of the energy that you put into figuring out a pattern belongs to your being. When you’re in your being and coming from your being, you won’t be interested in figuring out your pattern. You’ll be moving as the levels of your being in the midst of that pattern.

There’s no understanding like love’s understanding. It’s a natural development in your self of you being the levels of your being in movement in the midst of your conditioned self as it presently is. You don’t need to change your self. You remaining in your heart in the midst of your self changes your self. It frees your self to open, while your coming from the levels of your being in the midst of your self transforms your self. It transforms a pattern from the inside out. By the time it’s reached the exterior of the pattern, love understands.

Don’t go figure. Sweetly, quietly, unconditionally go within. Any opening in your self is because you went within and there you rested, despite what self you have.

Q: I can find myself at times stuck in myself, so my heart or my being is not really in the picture.

John: If it’s not in the picture, where is it? Wherever it is, there you directly go.

Q: That’s a kind of figuring it out, too.

John: As you, awareness, without any use of your self or understanding, relax in the midst of anywhere in your separate picture, you end up directly in your heart and reconnected to your being. It doesn’t require an understanding, an effort or a focus; just you, awareness, relaxing because that’s what you first know.

Q: Part of being stuck in my self is a kind of freezing which looks very similar to relaxing.

John: But you know the difference. If your response is really to what you know in your heart, you’ll be what you know as soon as you know, and that knowing doesn’t have to do with understanding. It has to do with simplest, most immediate, direct beingness. It’s beingness you know. Being able to understand that beingness in your thinking won’t incline you to be what you know. It will incline you to think more.

Thinking instead of being disinclines you away from being. Thinking instead of being separates you from being. Thinking isn’t there so that you can be. Thinking belongs to your being. You won’t think from within your being if being there is conditioned on thinking.

You don’t need your use of mind for you to quietly, unconditionally reside in your heart. It isn’t the use of intelligence that brings you to your heart. It’s a deep, quiet honesty within, you being honest to your heart, that brings you to your heart.

You can work it all out, but that’s a really hard way of learning. When you are, instead, responsive to your heart, delicate and immediate learning comes easily. Make it easier than figuring it out. That brings you into your heart and into your love.

Your presence of mind, instead of coming from the need to understand, comes from your love. There’s no finer intelligence than love that has presence of mind. Love doesn’t need presence of mind, but it deeply knows how to move in it and it moves in it because it loves. There’s no finer way than you coming from the inside outwards. It’s unlike your patterning and it is so much the same as your love. You can figure it out from the outside in but it’s slow going and you don’t get that far in, but if you come from what you really are, within, as you move love figures it all out.

Q: I get that the mind figuring out things doesn’t work or is the long way, but it seems like I’ve arrived at a place now that my core patterns dusted under for many years are now dusted off and get visible.

John: That’s because you’re opening, not because of your figuring. There’s only one real key to opening and that is openness having all of you. There’s nothing held back, no energy held back so that you can be on the side as an observer to the openness, figuring. The need for that is what created the pattern. The use of what creates the pattern won’t dissolve the pattern.

Q: Just simply just stop figuring.

John: No. Open. Love letting openness master you. That level of openness then has a mind. It thinks differently from what you’ve been accustomed to.

Q: Figuring out different levels, all in the midst of, for me, being challenged in these patterns. If I could find that earlier I would probably just do it, and I’m just figuring it out. Talking with people, looking at things, digging…

John: Then you’re up to the challenge of a long, hard way.

Q: So you’re saying digging is not for me?

John: Openness is for you. Openness and softness of heart is for you. It’s your home.

Q: I made my home in this freezing and yes, I know it’s not my real home, so that’s my challenge. But there are moments that I see that I have a choice to drop in my heart, but that’s… not necessarily all the time.

John: When you’re honest, you do. When you’re honest to your heart, you see. It isn’t the use of your intelligence that brings you to that seeing.

Q: What comes up now is how to learn discerning?

John: By applying it.

Q: Yes!

John: First responding to it and then applying it.

Q: I call that, it’s a kind of figuring it out.

John: The simplest that you, awareness, discern is the difference between you, within, opening or closing. Live that, instead of trying to figure things out first. You be what you most deeply know and love will think instead of need thinking.

The most beautiful thinking, the most beautiful mind, is when love has it. Let understanding grow all behind you because of your walk, your walk as a being in the midst of whatever self you have.