Q: I’m listening to your words and answers from this morning, and I find myself with a lot of frustration and resistance from time to time. I don’t understand or I don’t have the tools. I feel like no one is really showing me or leading me how to really achieve this being, this connection to the heart, this deep truth that you’re talking about, this honesty. And the more I think I go deep and I’m connected to my heart, there’s more frustration and more pain. What am I supposed to do with the frustration I feel?

John: The frustration in that and the pain in that is because you’re using your self to access what’s deeper than your self. You’re using thought and feeling, will and emotion to enter what has nothing to do with that. It would be like when you lie down to go to sleep, for you to use thought and feeling, will and emotion to go to sleep. That will frustrate you; it will keep you awake.

The way that you come into sleep is that you’re letting what is there before sleep take you. You’re just surrendering to it. You’re given to it. As you’re given to it, it takes you. As it’s taking you, everything that you’re used to disappears. As you’re close to sleep, you’re not relating to your life or your personality, your past or your self. The closer you are to sleep, the more that you’re being what you really are, and at that tipping point into sleep you are being what you really are.

Q: Even to hear this word: I truly don’t understand, or can’t achieve, how to surrender, really, truly.

John: How to surrender to you being quietly okay as is. When you lose something, you’re able to be annoyed and frustrated. You’re able to be not okay, but you’re also able to be deeply, quietly okay. You’re able to be okay with having lost something. You’re able to just quietly let it go. You’re able to let go of your frustration in losing something, your annoyance in losing something.

Q: My body shakes. It’s like you’ll tell me “I’m cutting off your arm.” Would you give your arm for quietness and happiness and connecting to your being? That’s how I feel; it’s so deep.

John: If you let go of your pain,

Q: Or anger…

John: … your anger, your frustration, all of your tightness, you will be nobody and nothing.

Q: That scares me.

John: Not honestly.

Q: Something in my body is reacting to it.

John: Your self in your body. What’s taking place in your body is feedback, physical feedback of your self: how you move as a self, what matters to your self. It’s all physicalized in your body. You embody everything that you’ve invested in your self. You are an embodiment of your self, but when you lie down to go to sleep, as you near sleep, you let go of all of your self. You let go of your life. You let go of everything. It doesn’t scare you; it’s home to you. You turn into nothing and nobody. That’s because you know how to be that, and when you relax you turn into that.

The way that you fall asleep, what you turn into as you fall asleep, what all goes away as you fall asleep: that’s how to live. That’s how you be in your self; that’s how you be in your life.

Q: Thank you.

John: If you let go of your pain and your frustration, you’ll have no more sense of self. So your pain and your frustration serve you. It enables you to keep everything that you’re holding onto. It gives you a continuous experience of your self. It enables you to be something and somebody. But that’s a lot to carry around. It’s high-maintenance and it’s really hard on you.

The reason you like falling asleep is because you really like being you, without everything that you’re used to in your life. You like being nobody and nothing. The way for you to be what you really are is honestly: you being honest within to what you quietly know within.

When you are honest to what you want, you’ll be full of emotion and will. When you are honest to your heart, that fills you with peace. The peace is that you’re not having to be your self for you to be. You can be just gentled and quieted in your heart, and you are being. If you like being in your heart, it isn’t frustrating, it isn’t painful. As soon as you like being in your heart, there you are – in your heart.