Q: The last couple of years I have been mainly into Vedanta, and what I do as a spiritual practice is bringing awareness to my mind, just seeing where it wants to separate, to see all the little judgments it makes and let it go. The Vedanta has given me so much mental clarity but I’m also longing to connect with my being and to live from that, having gone up so much in my head.

John: For you to connect with your being, first connect to your heart by relating directly to your heart in the midst of anything. Regardless of any thoughts, opinions, or judgments, instead of addressing anything that’s occurring in your thinking and also in your emotional thinking, relate directly to your heart.

As you’re relating to your heart, you become gentled and quieted in your heart and there you realize simple nurture. The nurture is direct. It’s not dependent on thoughts or feelings. It isn’t dependent on dealing with anything in your self. Then, as you are gentled and quieted in your heart, begin really listening to what you know in your heart. When you’re really listening, within, while you’re in your heart, what you know is beingness. The beingness that’s directly available is an openness and a softness in your heart, and in your heart you also realize that you’re also able to close and to harden. But when you’re gentled and quieted in your heart, what you know the truth of is openness and softness.

Q: There still seem to be so many layers inside, old defense mechanisms, which make it hard to connect with the heart and being.

John: First not with your being, but with your heart. So as soon as you say that it’s difficult, what that also means is it’s available. It’s there. It is within reach. While it’s difficult, and you’re being interrupted in your experience by all of the layers of your mind, be available for your heart to reach you.

It is the tiniest touches within your heart that reach you, and with any such touch, right there, you have your way in. Follow through with such a touch, a subtlety of heart. You follow it through by listening to it and responding to it. In that way, you’re giving to it; you’re giving your power to it.

The power that’s given to it doesn’t go to what you’re familiar with in your emotions and in your thinking. The power that you’re giving to a subtlety of heart is power not being given to your past. Power given is connectivity being nurtured. That connectivity that you give your power to opens your heart and softens your heart.

Your heart is the entrance to your being. As your heart is opening and softening, the entrance to your being is opening and softening. That openness and that softness is you turning into a beingness that is in tiny little bits the same beingness as your own being. It’s that beingness that brings you, awareness, into your being.

Don’t overlook the tiny little bit of it. That tiny little touch, the tiniest opening and softening is the entrance to your being opening. When you’re in response to that, relating directly to it, enjoying it, quietly enjoying it and responding to it, right there you are entering your being.

This doesn’t need to take place powerfully. This occurs in weakness. It is in weakness that you have entrance to your being. When you’re relating to what you’re accustomed to as your various strengths, these strengths have no access to your being because they are of a beingness that isn’t the same as your being. That doesn’t make them bad or not good; they’re just not the same as your being. That makes them not entry points.

The entry points are very close to your most delicate weaknesses. You’ve given presence to your strengths because it is through your strengths that on the surface of your existence you experience the power of being able to do, but when you give presence to your most delicate weaknesses, your presence there inclines you to be listening, within, to your heart.

As you give presence to your weaknesses, particularly the most delicate weaknesses, you begin to relate differently to others. Instead of strengths in others affecting you, bringing about various levels of challenge or offense, you begin to see their most delicate weaknesses and because you’re relating from within yours, your heart moves toward them.

When your heart moves, that is also beingness moving. The more delicate the movement, the more that you are really listening, within. It is as your presence is given to this that you naturally open, soften, and love. And there, little bits of your being through your heart move into your life and have presence in your life: the movement of your being through your openness and softness of heart.