Q: My question is what is your definition of love and how we can feel immersed in it?

John: First, love is not an action, it isn’t something that you can actually do, and love is also not a feeling. As soon as you are quieted within, as soon as you are deeper than what would appear as any doing of love, your perception of love’s action, as soon as you are quieter within than any feeling of love, you come into the substance within of love. The deep, inner substance of love is you, and you can’t be in what love is, which is the same as what you really are, unless you are free of the doing of love, the actions of love toward others and also of others toward you. So you are just profoundly at rest within, not doing anything to be.

The substance of love within, as soon as you’re there, directly nurtures you and that’s without you doing something for it. It isn’t there because of an action. It isn’t there because of a feeling. It’s there because you are truly and fundamentally rested in it. It’s your home. You being that will change your actions. It will change your thinking. It will change your feeling. In that change, what comes out of you toward others and toward your circumstances is this substance that you’re rested in, this substance within that directly nurtures you. That’s going to come out of you toward everything. It’s a flow of being. Love is a flow of being. It’s a rested, nurturing flow of you that isn’t held together by anything.

When you lie down to go to sleep, you return to what you really are, and you return to love. It’s not an action. It isn’t held together by thought. It’s not a feeling: it’s you. As you lie down to go to sleep, as you near the tipping point to sleep, your past falls away. All action and feeling, thought and will falls away. Your day passes away. All your relationships pass away. Your whole life passes away and all that remains is you. It’s so profoundly natural to you and nurturing to you that as you reach that tipping point to sleep you don’t miss your past, your personality, your self, your life, your relationships. You’re returning to being what you really are, not dependent on anything that you’re used to. You return to being love.

You’re able to be this deep inner substance of you in the midst of thinking and feeling, will and emotion, in the midst of anything of life that engages your self, that affects your self. In whatever of life touches into your self and moves your self, this deep inner substance of you that you are at the tipping point to sleep fills your self, so it isn’t your sense of self that has you; it isn’t your day or your past, your future that has you. It’s this deep, inner substance of you that has you regardless of anything that takes place in your day. So it really is what you really are that fills your day: deep, inner substance of you.

You being what you really are, you being this deep, inner substance of love, that’s your life. It’s your whole inner life that fills all of your life. It isn’t an action, but if you’re being it, it comes out naturally in all of your actions. It isn’t a feeling, but when you’re being it you can feel it.