Q: I see you and I feel you are living surrender, every moment surrendering, and I just wondered if you would speak a bit about what that is?

John: It is you letting the whole of your awareness return to its original way. A profound relaxation of awareness itself, so that awareness itself is no longer making something of anything.

Q: Well, I don’t know how to identify awareness.

John: It is the actual movement within your thinking. The actual movement within your feeling. The thought and the feeling enable you to see and experience your movement. It is then not about you making still the thoughts and the feelings, just the movement within them. As long as you’re focusing on a thought or a feeling then you’re addressing something that is not you. The movement within them is you.

Q: I’m such a doer and I, I hardly know how to allow any kind of way of being, how to give that space without my hands all over it, without me taking it in some way.

John: As soon as you see yourself as thought and feeling then you will do everything to, in some way, benefit thought and feeling. It is how you see that determines what you’ll do.

What you are is spirit that moves form. You see and recognize and experience the form, then you mistake yourself as being that form. You are the movement within that form. Your experiences are not you. You have experiences; that has you believing that you are your experiences. What you are is the manner of spirit within the experience… a very subtle manner within that moves everything. The manner of the hand that moves the glove. The very most subtle within it all: that is you.

What you really are is more like breath than flesh and bone, more like breath than thought or feeling. When you realize the most subtle within all of it, that is you. Surrender is letting that return to its original way. It is very simple and profound relaxation of that that moves everything. When that changes in the kind of way that it is, everything else changes. What you are is the knowing within the feeling and the thinking.

Q: Is that where it will naturally go if I allow it to?

John: Yes, but then you’ll go to that within thought and feeling, because that is what this manner that you are is always experiencing. So you’ll look for the kind of thinking and the kind of feeling that most resembles the way, within, that is original. But that is still not what is original. That is just the form of it in thought and feeling. There is an honesty in that, and there will still be a confusion in that because you are still believing yourself to be the thinking and the feeling. It is much closer but it is still very much not it. Then the form is closer.

The most relaxed form of thought and feeling is as close as you can get in form, but you will still be confused by that because your knowing is that as close as that is, that’s not it. Something about it is right and something about it just isn’t right, and you can’t distinguish what it is that you’re knowing by looking at the thoughts and the feelings. The knowing is that it’s not about the thoughts and the feelings; it is about the knower that happens to be thinking and feeling. You being the knower. Then the knower is able to relax and rest and be still in the midst of thinking and feeling. It’s not difficult to be. It’s not difficult to know it, but when you look at it through the form of thought and feeling it is simply unbelievable because you’re believing what you see instead of believing what you know. Being the knowing instead of the experience. It is so simple that it is no longer something. When that moves, form moves.

Surrender is the knower letting its way return to what it knows is the original way. What you are is the way, within, that you are being. That is you. Surrender is when you let that return to what you know is the original way. What that is is a different manner – the manner of your awareness. It is not different thinking or different feeling. It is not about changing your experience. It’s about letting what you are, letting what manner you are of, within the experience, change.

Q: Letting it change by not using it for me, or being the thought and the feeling. Letting it be what it is.

John: It is like the manner within the air that changes, and that causes a weather change. Every time you change, you notice and experience a change in your weather. You are not the weather. You are where it came from.

Q: But I feel like I don’t even know how to drink water in a way of being that’s true.

John: Kindness, drinking water. The kind of manner that you are, within, that drinks the water. It is about what manner of spirit you are that moves all of the form so that there is the drinking of water. Enjoying knowing. Then you are distinguishing what you are. Then letting knowing return to its original way. Then that is knowing distinguishing where it came from. The surrender is you remaining being that: the composure, within, that has no form. You letting that composure return to its original composure. When that changes, form transforms. Form changes because you do.

When you are confused, enjoy that it is more lovely than that. Then you are instantly closer, even though you don’t know how you did it. You’ll still know that it is not really that, even though that is, in such a lovely way, so much closer. When you are being it then you can do it, knowing what you’re doing, without doing something. Being the right manner of spirit without doing something with your thoughts and feelings.

It is not the hand that moves the glove; it is the manner that moves the hand. You can change your manners and that will bring you a little bit closer to recognizing your manner, or you can be your manner and let that completely return to what it knows is original, and your manners will change.

Enjoy realizing. It makes it easier.