Q: When you were talking about the light shining from everywhere without any preferences, I know that’s true and it’s what I saw in you the first minute I saw you; it was just like being out in the middle of open sunshine and I could see my inner face in the mirror. I know that this is what this life is for, but it’s like the parts I gave away went to sleep. I don’t know how to awaken them all. Is there a way to see your shadows?

John: By seeing the shadows in others; not seeing such shadows with criticism or judgment, but tenderness seeing them. It is only tenderness that has the honesty to see. If someone else’s shadow can in any tiny little way find the same thing in your self, then the shadows of others, instead of being an attraction for irritation, judgment or criticism, then the shadows within others, are for you a love reflector. It is only surrender that is nourished only by grace that can know such a delicacy.

The moment you judge someone else’s shadow, then the same thing within your self becomes calloused over. If you ever encounter within your self blame towards someone else, then it is only you that are to blame, without being able to see it. Anything other than love destroys everything.

Being annoyed by anything is an anesthetic to grace and goodness. If you wish to know your shadows, you can find the shadow behind every little thing that ever annoys you. If you ever get angry, you’re creating a total eclipse. When others are angry or annoyed with you, then let such energy very gently open all your doors instead of you pulling down the shutters. Then everything that could ever aggravate you, annoy you or make you angry is, for surrender, an incredible source of grace.

It is you loving the sun within, not just when it warms you but while something else that acts on you that is not the sun makes you feel cold. Loving the sun, within, in the cold. Enjoying the tiniest flower in someone while they are hurting you, while they make you feel uncomfortable. It is your enjoyment of their tiniest flower within themselves; it is your enjoyment of that in them, while they make you feel uncomfortable. It is such enjoyment that removes what is of their shadow within you. As long as you are justified in absolutely anything that bothers you, that is you not just you not being able to see your own shadow but you protecting your self from seeing it. Let annoyance be love that kisses you with broken lips. It is only your tenderness toward it that is ointment for it.

What you truly are is grace. Without your absolute surrender to being in your heart and that being what it knows, then your true nature will not show. Without total surrender to what tiny little bit you know, you will never be truly gracious. It is only graciousness – you being grace – that is grace blossoming. It is only total honesty within that enables you to see the door within to grace and it is only total surrender that can fully open that door. Then it is no longer about feeling good in what you know is true.

Surrender enables you to be the goodness in what you know is true. Even if being the goodness seems to be only in tiny, tiny measures, that is the space in which your heart goes, however little seems to be there. You not just fully drinking in goodness when you feel it, but when you cannot feel it; you letting goodness drink you. That’s what surrender is. It is such a relationship with goodness that turns you into it. Such a relationship with goodness makes you very gracious.

It is only goodness and graciousness that is free. Freedom doesn’t exist anywhere else. It is only love that is free. It is in knowing love that gives you the taste of freedom, but it is only in being love that you are freedom. It is one thing to know it. It is again another thing to really feel it, and it is very much another thing to be it. Each comes with a price: varying degrees of you relating only to what you know regardless of the experiences within your mind, regardless of what you feel and think about anything; through surrender, letting love completely slay you; letting every little annoyance in your life turn into an invitation for love to slay you.

That is what dissolves every core belief within that blocks out the sunlight within you.