Q1: I feel like my capacity to be angry has significantly diminished, and it is related to hearing you and seeing you and being in your presence, but I don’t know what it is.

John: When it is gone, then it’s like there is no problem of will within; not a self-generated will within that can easily give rise to frustration or anger. It is a freedom of will, instead of being caught by will.

When there is a freedom of will, it is like there is no will. The will is still there, but it is free. When it’s free there is no consciousness of it; it just functions. When there’s no consciousness of will, within, in regards to yourself – self-will – then the thought of having anger within is just like how can it be? That the thought of it isn’t there because within, the will is free. There is no issue of will, so then anger is something that is not. Grace knows no anger.

Q1: When I first met you in Lake Placid, the thing that really caught my attention for me was your getting attacked by lots of people, andI had the opportunity to ask you if you ever got angry, and you said that the first inkling of anger, that it woke you up to that you are falling into the delusion of separation, and I thought “wow, it is pretty good!” I like that a lot.

John: The moment that it touches, I find humour, or there is a grin inside.

Q1: It’s very cool.

Q2: I know if I ask you that you would say that it is never right to be pissed-off. Or is there?

John: The only right you have is to surrender to what you know.

Q2: Does that mean there is no such thing as a true anger? There is no truth in anger on any level?

John: What good is there in anger? It is just a reinforcement of beliefs, of personal issue.
It is putting a whole lot of energy behind one’s own personal rightness.

Q2: So what you are saying is that every time I’m angry it means that some line has been crossed. Just to let the anger be as is, and just to feel the pain of it, as is?

John: Being gentle with it, and not hard on it.

Q2: So then there is a connection between anger and will? You are saying will is useless as anger?

John: Will used within. Will used without is fine, but it’s not ever needed within.

Q2: For me, I have habitually used will on the inside as well as the outside to get my way. So is it as easy to let go of it on the inside, as it is on the outside?

John: You might get your way, but it is never the way that you are in love with.

Q2: The only thing that can really use will is the little bit.

John: To do something that ultimately doesn’t matter. To do those things that are wonderfully shallow. The deep doesn’t need will for representation.

Q2: So there is no will in the deep? And that’s why it stays out of the way until I give into it.

John: The use of will, within, is always abusive. It’s hard on yourself, it’s hard on others. There is no fineness in it. Anger isn’t to be pushed down; it is to be let go – not suppressing it but being gentle with it.

Q2: Does that mean it may be expressed?

John: If it comes out into expression, then it is being gentle with the expression. Being gentle with having expressed anger.

Q2: Do you mean after the fact, or in the moment of it?

John: Both. Then the anger is tempered by something finer. The more that you are standing on a personal right, then the more the anger is tempered with hardness. When there is a sensitivity to what it is that touches your heart or moves your being, then even when there is anger, that anger is tempered with a softness. Hardness that has some softness in it.

Q2: So even if the softness can’t be experienced or felt in the middle of the anger, it’s the love I have for the softness in the anger, in the middle of it or something?

John: The less softness there is within, the more that anger has an edge, a hard edge . One that seeks to hurt. Anger just makes you more dense.

Q2: Can’t afford that. (laughter)

John: It only makes you right, and it’s not worth being right. It’s will that uses rightness. When you are being right, one is just overcompensating for being wrong. It is worth being real but it’s not worth being right.

Q2: But if I’m real, I’m weak like a helpless baby, that is the reality of me.

John: Opened up within and having nothing to prove. A simplicity that doesn’t project the will. Instead there is just a simple doing, within this life, but there is no rightness of doing, or using the doing of something in this life to gain self-empowerment, inflating oneself with purpose.

Q3: I know that truth is everything and that’s all there is. Why is it then that something touches me and I struggle with it or don’t want to let go?

John: Your name is still on your will, even though you know the truth and you love the truth, and you love letting go. You wrote your name on your will a long time ago, and it’s still there.

Q3: Will it always be there?

John: Doesn’t have to be. Once you write your name on your will, then you become acquainted with your way, and it is not erasing your name or trying to take your name off of your will because then it just goes deeper in. It is just very gently seeing it. Very gently letting yourself see that everything that your will touches, your name is on it and it says “my way.”

Q3: Is it true that it is very painful, in letting my way go? The pain is wanting to still leave it there?

John: The pain is not in letting it go; the pain is keeping it.

Q3: There’s a mixture, though, in one specific issue of my way and letting it go on seeing what’s true, like in my marriage?

John: It is not your marriage.

Q3: The marriage? I feel like I’m still trying to have my way, even though that won’t work.

John: Your name is written all over it. And it is not taking your name off; it is just very gently letting yourself see how much your name is written all over that marriage.

Q3: What will that do?

John: Pierce your heart.

Q3: I was listening to you say that marriage is for my essence to express itself through this form.

John: The okayness that your name doesn’t ever have to be on it.

Q3: But I see that and I love it. Is it because there’s a delighted heart, that way?

John: There’s a love of truth that has pierced your heart, and how far will you let that piercing in? Where is your line inside? The piercing can pierce up to that line, but not past.

Q3: Lately I’ve felt that line.

John: It is just letting your idea of your life go.

Q3: In knowing that, being that and loving that, why is the line or the wall still there?

John: You built that wall, brick by brick. It can die and dissolve only in you, brick by brick.

Q3: So am I being hard on myself?

John: That, too.

Q3: What does tenderness do, watching all of the bricks, watching them fall through?

John: Whichever brick happens to be in front of you, tenderness just lays its head in the brick.

Q3: Why?

John: It doesn’t mind it. It doesn’t resist it. It doesn’t see the brick as something to change or move, or dissolve. Tenderness knows only the brick as its home, acceptance that has no boundaries. Then there is no issue with that brick. No issue with the whole wall.

Q3: There would be no struggle? Pressure but no struggle.

John: Pressure without struggle is a dying issue.

Q3: Is that the embracing of the death in life you are talking about?

John: If death were to walk into your life, would you have any anxiety as to what it won’t touch, and as to what it will touch? It’s letting newness of life touch whatever it does, and whatever it touches you let it be expressed.

Q3: What do you mean by letting it be expressed?

John: Through your personality. If you were to let tenderness and newness of life express itself in your personality, you will discover shyness, you will embarrass yourself. There will be those things that you’ll let be expressed that are outside of your comfort zone. Tenderness expressing itself in a way that you wouldn’t. Then it’s innocence that speaks. When innocence speaks, it doesn’t guard itself. Anyone that listens with their heart would love it.

Q3: Why?

John: Because it’s so simple and so clean, so fresh and real.

Q3: Why is it fresh and real?

John: Because it’s newness saying something.

Q3: What’s happening when we do that? When you just don’t stop yourself?

John: It’s letting be expressed what’s there, but that is also easy to use.

So it’s letting cleanness express what is there.

Q4: In weakness being to dissolve the will?

John: The being is not there to dissolve the will. It will never dissolve the will. The will is there to let itself dissolve into the being. The will gets to pay the price. It pays the price by no longer willing itself around.

We are used to using the will to bite into something. The will is there to let go of all biting.
Not biting into truth, not biting into anything of what it wants, but by very gently letting go of the bite into truth, into existence, into anything, until the biting of the will very gently opens up. Then the will is being. The will gets to enjoy its own undoing.

The will is our power to identify and to get. When the will is really there as your power to dissolve instead of having to have, the will then dissolves into the way, and what is let go of by the will is needing to have its own way.

The being is there for the will to dissolve into but the being will never take and overpower the will. The being is just wonderfully there and it doesn’t move in any other way but to woo you – never push you or take you.

It is the power and the will that lets itself be taken by pure weakness itself; the will giving up its own power in giving its power away to the being that it knows is more wonderful than itself.

The power that we are has no wonderfulness. It is just power. The wonderfulness of power is only realized when the power is relinquished into the being. Being has this power through which it can express itself, power supplied by you, power that is never taken away from you. It is you that gives it up. You giving away your power to your being.

Q4: Can I continue just to allow each moment to unfold, to welcome whatever comes?

John: Without you getting in the way of each moment, making each moment about yourself. The openness to let each moment be about the little bit that you know.

Q4: Thank you for helping me get out of the way.