Q: When you talked about honesty towards what I know, I realized I’ve been playing it safe all along. I’ve had opportunities and I fell back. Ten years ago you said that I was on the verge of becoming what I was born to be and there was a shift, but I know I held back. I keep hearing what you’re saying and I know that it’s true. It’s not belief. It’s just clear and I still go on doing the same thing.
John: That will be all gone after you’ve died.
Q: So this is really about dying.
John: And letting live what you know isn’t going to die.
Q: It’s as easy as that?
John: It’s as simple as that. Living that will bring you into great difficulty, and none of it is too much.
Q: The thing is that I do know that.
John: Living that means that you live growing up.
Q: Letting go of the childhood tantrums.
John: Being and doing what you know in your heart consistently, regardless of what that feels like in your self. You being like that in the midst of any part of your self that isn’t like that yet isn’t going to feel good. It just simply is good.
Q: I’ve just seen that it’s belief that what is good is uncomfortable, but it is not that, is it? It’s what you just said.
John: What you know is good has no opposite. Nothing exists on its own outside of goodness. Anything that isn’t goodness, that simply relaxes, returns to goodness. It’s what occurs in you when you die. You perfectly return to what you were able to be all along.
When awareness does that while in a body, awareness evolves. When awareness doesn’t do that while in a body, the opportunity to evolve while in a body passes away. It is what you are in a body for. It’s contrary only to what you experience in your self.
The value of awareness evolving while it is in a body exceeds any perceived value of pain relief, regardless of what that experience is. That truth is absolute. It’s equally true in anyone, anywhere.
The integration of pain and pleasure is in awareness evolving in it. The integration of pain and pleasure is not in what you do with pain or pleasure. It isn’t even about the pain or the pleasure. What you really are is only all about what you really are in the midst of anything.
Nothing can distract you from that. No one can distract you from that. Your experiences can’t distract you from that. Your body can’t distract you from that. The only thing that can distract you is if distraction of any kind, painful or pleasurable, serves you. Distraction exists only if illusion serves you.
Awareness in a body has the power to make real in a body what is not real. What that power comes from is the power that awareness has in a body to make its own being real and physical in its body. Nothing else accomplishes the evolution of awareness in a body.
You have a body so that you can configure your nervous system to your being, but you’re able to configure your nervous system to anything that you need to be true or wish to be true. You’re able to configure your nervous system to something that isn’t even real; you’re able to configure it to an illusion. Whatever you configure your nervous system to, your self becomes. That works for better or for worse.
Whatever your nervous system is configured to, your nervous system belongs to pure you; it belongs to oneness, whether you give it to that or keep it from that. You have a nervous system so that pure you and oneness can have a nervous system. Oneness is at home within any nervous system, regardless of what made it what it is.
548 – Right Side Up: No Longer Taking Your Stress to Heart
The responsibilities that come with working in the world can feel stressful. Is there a way of moving more lightly in it all? John explains how it’s all dependent on what we belong to, within.
547 – Profound Honesty: Being Okay When You Don’t Feel Okay
Shame, fear, anger … is it really possible to be okay in any circumstance, even when feeling attacked by others? There is transformative potential, and John explains.
546 – Less and Even Less: Why Weakness is Your Way Home, Within
Contrary to worldly conditioning, weakness isn’t something to conceal or avoid; it’s actually key to embodying a full spectrum of awareness. John describes the journey, and what it requires.
545 – From Fighting to Flourishing: A New Way Forward with Your Teenager
For this mother, who is struggling in relation to her teenage daughter, what begins as a hard lesson to learn becomes a beautiful crossroads that will deeply change them both.
544 – Evolving as Pure Awareness in War and Peace
An epic conversation that reveals what we’re here for, how to help people suffering the effects of war, what can change the planet, and why it’s up to us.
543 – Rebuilding Your Relationship For a Higher Purpose
Entering a sexual relationship too soon has created suffering for this couple. Is it possible to start over, and build the kind of commitment that will survive the inevitable difficulties?
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
