Q: Well first off, John, It’s great to have you here. And I do have a specific question. When one is entirely in their being and when they’re deep in the recesses of their heart, is there a need for preparation for the things in the world or interacting with the world?

John: If you address that too quickly you’ll leave that deeper presence and you’ll identify with thought and feeling, will and emotion because that’s what you use to interact with this world.

Q: And if you don’t leave it too quickly?

John: If you’re open to quietly see, without the use of your usual experience, while you’re in this world, you’ll drop into a deeper space and you’ll see differently. That deeper seeing isn’t so that you can function better within this world. It isn’t to make your life better. It isn’t to help you in anything. All that it enables is you being what you really are, and that you’re able to be that while you’re in this world and while you’re interacting with others and with situations. But if you try to apply it too quickly, you’ll revert to what you’re accustomed to and you’ll abandon your deeper and initial presence.

Q: Is a sign of being fully immersed in your heart that there’s not an emotion, a feeling of fear?

John: It’s that what you are being within doesn’t relate to fear: it doesn’t relate to fear, it doesn’t relate to want or need, it doesn’t relate to any kind of negativity. It doesn’t relate to being closed or hard. It does relate to what you easily see in a baby’s eyes. It’s a fundamental level of meaning. It isn’t the meaning of something. It is that within which directly recognizes meaning. What you really are is meaning, and we tend to do something to acquire a sense of meaning. If there’s a deep restedness within, what we are being directly is meaning that requires no doing. So in that way, we can’t do something in order to be.

Q: I feel all that, because it seems like when we’re in our personality, in our personal self, that all the doing and the achieving in that is to establish “I have meaning in the world.”

John: Yes.

Q: I know that’s not what you’re saying there, correct?

John: The reason that we do anything to acquire a sense of meaning is because it is meaning that we really are, and we’re not realizing that. So then, through realization, we realize that real depth of meaning doesn’t come by doing anything, or acquiring anything, or having anything; that a real sense of meaning doesn’t even come through thought or feeling, or the use of will or emotion. The direct meaning that we’re looking for comes from what we’re most deeply, quietly being within that requires no doing.

Q: Beautiful. So I consider this a doing …

John: Yes.

Q: Okay. In the past year I have totally stopped doing a lot to really reside in that being, and I have broken away from a lot of the external judgments that have come my way regarding, almost like, “you’re being irresponsible” and so that’s why I’m pursuing this.

John: We really have these outward levels of form of mind and emotion, will and feeling, manifested in our bodies. As we leave what we really are, as we leave our innocence even when we’re really little, then what we embody is our unintegrated selves, so we establish a nervous system that’s based on want and need and polarization, whereas all of this form is really for is what precedes any kind of doing, so that what we really are within is able to have that much form. But as soon as we begin to experience that form we easily abandon or separate from what is unseen but known within, because the doing with these forms is so accessible, and then we become lost in that doing. We equate meaning as something that you do for, instead of what you come from, which then manifests in your doing. And in that way it doesn’t matter much what you do. The richness of your doing comes from what you’re being in it. The level within that you come from while you do. It’s easy to see in a small child that’s still in its innocence. The richness and the magicalness that it’s in isn’t because of anything that it’s doing, but rather what it is, and doesn’t realize yet in what that child is doing.

Q: If you, or anyone who has reached that level of being that I sense very strongly you have, if they choose to simply enjoy life and live life, even though they possess an awareness that many in the world don’t have, is that considered irresponsible at some level?

John: There isn’t a particular responsibility to take on based on a teaching or a learning. When we come from our deep interior outwards, what governs us isn’t thought or feeling but just a deep, quiet knowing within. So it’s a knowing of the truth that moves us. As that knowing comes further out into form and into thought and feeling and into will and emotion, then we integrate our selves from within our being. Any sense of responsibility is something that we then integrate from the inside out instead of adopting from the outside in.

Q: Just another question here: just recently I heard you say that it’s very rare to meet someone who fully lives from that space consistently. With you being where you are, do you easily recognize someone else who is in that same space? Is there an instant recognition?

John: There is for anyone! It’s easily seen within the innocence of a small child, where you see a radiance of meaning that isn’t based on holding something together or having acquired something. It isn’t based on any sense of personal control or the use of personality, and yet it shines through all of it.

Q: Just like a baby. Thank you for answering my questions, and before I leave is there anything you have more to say for me?

John: Like being in your body, without quickly being busy with something, and as soon as you realize what it is that you first love within, realizing your first love which is you being what you really are, then as that, enjoy moving about in whatever it is that you do.

Q: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.