Q: With my mother, it’s sometimes very painful to feel that I’m still kind of fixed in a role of being the daughter and her being the mother, and not being able to meet as friends. And since I’m coming again and again to this point I feel like asking you if you can tell me something about it. For example, sometimes I feel I don’t fulfill her expectations and then lots of tension is taking place between us. I’m not like she wants me to be and maybe she also is not like I want her to be.

John: That comes from you as awareness remaining identified with your past experience. That always takes place when awareness identifies with the self. When there is something finer than the self, the very finest within you is not the self; it is what you as awareness knows. When you are being what you know then you will not be a daughter. You will be openness.

Q: But it feels so difficult not to react when I feel there is lots of emotion.

John: That is because you as awareness are anchored in the self, instead of you as awareness being anchored in what you know. You cannot be cleanly within the self without being able to cleanly separate from the self. Awareness letting itself cleanly, completely come out of the self; awareness being able to distinguish between being in what it knows and being in the self.

Such distinguishing within awareness creates a pull to completely come out of the self – not because the self is bad, but because there is a knowing that there is a difference between awareness and the self. That creates a pull for awareness to come out of the self, to be separate from the self, awareness being something that is absolute instead of awareness being something that is definable. It is not for awareness to come out of the self and be separate from the self and remain that way. It is to come out because it knows what it knows, and in being able to distinguish between awareness and the self. Giving in to that pull to come out of the self, there is a cost within the experience of awareness having to let go of wanting to remain identified in something that’s comfortable.

When awareness is being what it knows then it is being pure clean openness, which enables a living distinction to take place between what it really is and what the self is. That enables awareness to be that openness within the self. That brings the self to true life, without distortion in it. That is what makes the self trustworthy. The self becoming patterned after what awareness knows instead of awareness becoming identified with the self, and the self becomes patterned after what awareness wants from the self. Then there is a distorted awareness that is actively distorting the self, distorting the thinking, the feeling, the doing, the living.

Q: Can you explain a little bit more about distorted awareness?

John: Awareness is able to distort itself. I’m not speaking of awareness distorting the self, but awareness distorting itself – awareness distorting awareness. As soon as awareness tightens it becomes distorted. As soon as awareness opens, the distortion becomes undone and there is a return to pure awareness, the kind of awareness that has no distortion in it, that has no tightness in it, no holding in it. Awareness that is completely relaxed. Awareness that is content to just be aware without needing to use that awareness to have something. As soon as awareness relaxes in knowing that it doesn’t actually really need anything then awareness itself is being authentic.

Q: How can I come to this place of being open awareness? It feels there is lots of fear and contraction going on in my life.

John: There are patterns of contraction in the self, those patterns are triggered by others. Those patterns are triggered by thoughts and feelings. The patterns are also triggered by the awareness that is in the self. Those patterns are also triggered by you, because of you wanting something from the self. That contraction can take place within the self because there is a momentum of energy in the self, but there doesn’t need to be a momentum of energy in you while you are in the self, which means that you can have the experience of a contraction while you as awareness are not contracting. That would make you very vulnerable within your self. Then you would be subject to the effects of your self while you are remaining very sweetly unaffected by the contraction that surrounds you.

Openness in the midst of a contraction: that is how you be with your mother. Then you are not being her daughter, in which there is an aspect of truth, but the very deepest, finest truth is something that is true before you are her daughter, and that is that you are openness. You being that first. It is not you eliminating being a daughter; it is you being what comes before being a daughter. That enables you to realize the real value of being a daughter. Openness in the form of a daughter. That enables you as awareness to integrate your relationship with your mother.

Q: Sometimes I also can feel there is a strong bond of love between us, but it’s only in very rare moments, and yeah I would love so deeply if it was more there, that I could be open to this. Still it feels so hard or tight.

John: Then let go of your issues that you experience within the form of being a daughter. Let go of the issues that are in your self by being openness within your self, without needing to identify with those issues that pull on you. Then instead of connecting with your mother through those issues you’ll connect with your mother through what you most deeply know: openness.

Q: I feel that sometimes I try to give this more space, to connect with her from this deeper level, but still it feels kind of I try to make it nice between us.

John: It doesn’t need to be nice, you just want it to be nice because that feels better.

Q: There is a strong identification that it has to be nice and friendly.

John: That is purely your way, but it is not the way that you most deeply know. The way that you most deeply know is the way of profound openness that isn’t connected to anything needing to be nice. It isn’t connected to an effect. There is no orientation to a result. It is just you, as awareness, being openness because there isn’t anything deeper that you know. That is you in your finest simplicity.

Q: Still there is a fear like when I would follow my innermost in being with her that maybe she wouldn’t talk to me for years or…

John: Why does she need to talk to you? Why does that need to be connected to your openness?

Q: It feels like this is the right way to be with her, with a mother as a daughter. And yeah, I can see that there is something learned in it, that it’s not spontaneous, but I’m afraid she wouldn’t understand this way of being and it brings up a lot of pain and fear like she’ll withdraw maybe forever.

John: There is very much that you are wanting from your mother.

Q: Yeah I think it’s true, there is still the need there.

John: Most gently enjoy that there is really nothing that you need from your mother. When you are enjoying such a knowing, that won’t separate you from her; that will let you as openness be with her.

Q: Is it also in such a way that I’m becoming a mother to my self, or is this just ideas too? Like not needing the mother from the outside but mothering my self within.

John: That would be you resting in the finest tenderness within. That begins to open, a very little bit, your capacity as openness to be your mother’s mother that comes in the form of her daughter.

Q: It would feel very much in the past that I felt responsible very much for her moods, and that she is well, and so in a way I know these aspects of…

John: That is different, that is you being controlled by what she wants, and you being controlled by what you want.

Q: But how can I learn this?

John: You don’t need to learn this. There isn’t anything for you to learn. There is something for the simplicity of openness to learn. For you, all there is is to be that simple openness.

When you are being the openness that you came from then there is much for you to learn. Until then there is only much for you to return to. There is no learning without there first being returning. Everything that you learn without first returning is something that when you return you will have to first unlearn. Learning without first returning creates a misunderstanding of reality. Then you’ll misunderstand what a daughter is, what a mother is, what life is all about. You’ll misunderstand everything.

You returning to your original awareness is the healing of all of that misunderstanding. You cannot get anything right until you first return. First return and then learn. Don’t try and learn anything without first returning.

Q: Thank you so much John.