Q: Hello. When you spoke about the difference between the knowing of the being and experience of the self and the personality and the life it gave me an immense peace, because I always have felt that I know my being and have experienced it over and over again, but I don’t feel that it matches the life, the story, the personality, the self.

John: It’s good for you to see that it doesn’t match, because it’s true that they don’t match.

Q: Can you guide me to move towards their matching?

John: You have different levels of form. Before either level of form, the seen levels, your self, your personality and your unseen levels levels, the levels of your being, deeper within than either of them is you, pure awareness. You don’t need your personality or your self. You don’t need your heart. You don’t even need your being for you to be awareness.

Without any of the levels of form you, awareness, have no form. You don’t exist. You are not the same as existence. You are not the same as seen existence. As soon as you move, as soon as awareness moves, that engages your real forms, the forms, the structures, the levels of your being. That movement is not the same. It isn’t of the same as the movement of your seen forms, your thinking, your feeling, your will and your emotions. When you separate from your heart, the disparity goes away, then all there is is just your self, in you, in your thinking, your feeling, your will, your emotions, and also an unaddressed, deep sense of lack. The lack is that you’re not present within your unseen levels. You’re not present in your being because of being separate from your heart.

When you’re gentled and quieted in your heart, that gives you, awareness, rest, where you are just okay as is and the disparity between your heart and your self is not that great. The real disparity is when you open deeper within than your heart, when you awaken to your being. Your knowledge of deeper reality, what it’s like for you to be in your being is so far removed from what it’s like to be in your thinking and your feeling. Your capacity to do in your self, that movement is so unlike the movement of your being. The movement of your being is love. If you move in your self without coming from what’s deeper in your self then you’re exercising being able to do with your thinking, your feeling, your will and your emotions, but doing in a way that is devoid of love.

The deeper the unseen levels of reality, the levels of your being, belong in movement in your self. When you are being the same as your being, but up into your thinking, your feeling, your will and your emotions, the disparity is extreme, because you’re being the one while fully in the other. In your self it’s confusing, because when you’re given to your self you don’t have the presence of being. When you have the presence of being, what matters in your self all dissipates, making it difficult to make sense of your life. Your real life is what you are in your unseen levels, the levels of your being, the movement of love. That belongs up into your self and it isn’t for you to sort out the difference. When you work on the disparity, that separates you from the presence of being and confines you to the forms of your self, your mind and your doing. All of your doing in your self doesn’t enable you to be, and you being that presence of being, up into your self, doesn’t immediately change the condition of your mind and the condition of your nervous system.

What works is when you’re being the presence of being in the midst of your mind as it is and your nervous system as it is, without trying to fix your mind or your nervous system, without you trying to make it the same as your being. So you freely move as love within forms of yours that are not like that yet. As you engage the doing in your self and in your life, which you’re not able to stop because there is no function in this life without you functioning in your self and in your person, the function must move forward but without you separating from your heart and the presence of being. And from there you’re able to be the presence of being while moving forward and doing in your self and in your life, holding it all very lightly. As you hold it very lightly, you’re fully in the doing without compromising the presence of being. The presence of being is the nurture within all of the doing. The doing doesn’t matter much, but it still does really matter. The presence of being matters more, without you using that to cancel out what doesn’t matter much, but still does really matter.

As you are living from within your heart, that opens you into your humanness, and it’s the presence of being that moves your humanness. The presence of being will move your humanness through your thinking and your feeling, your will and your emotions. It will move your humanness despite what condition of mind you have and despite the condition of your nervous system, and you’re able to hold the disparity lightly and softly. Being in what matters in having a self and a person, but really living in the midst of that, what matters even more, the presence of being that moves your humanness.

Your humanness is the manifestation of goodness. Your self, your thinking, your feeling, your will and your emotions, are like the raw resources that are really good, but they’re not the same as you, goodness. You being the presence of being that moves your humanness within these raw resources opens the resources, and the resources, by virtue of what you’re being in them, open them, move them differently and these resources shift and change, becoming the same as your heart and your being. That takes time.

Q: And I can trust that just by opening and softening the heart that will take me there?

John: Yes. Opening and softening in your heart, and you letting that openness and softness of heart have your thinking, your feeling, your will, which turns into willingness, and your emotions, which settle and become nurturing. The openness and softness of heart in the midst of your self makes your self nurtureful.

Having a self and a nervous system is like raising a child. If you give in to everything of your child you empower the child in a way that the child can’t handle, giving it too much power. The child in its development through you raising it needs to see what works and what doesn’t work. That’s the parenting. It’s all very delicate, but moves easily if you live from within your heart. Then in your parenting of a child you’ll make many mistakes, but if you’re coming from your heart the mistakes are all quite sweet. They’re all self-correcting. Having a self is the same. It’s your responsibility to raise your self in the way that you would raise a child. The way that you are being with your child or the way that you are being in your self and with your self is what raises it. It’s the openness and softness of heart that is key in both, while at the same time, in the case of a child, moving your child forward, and in the case of your self, moving your self forward through all of its development. But it is openness and softness of heart that moves it forward.

When you’re coming from your heart a child responds to you. When you’re coming from your heart, your self, as you move it forward, responds to you. Your self becomes whatever you are being in it. That works for better or for worse. The feedback shows you what you are being in your self and that is ultimately what is responsible for the condition of your self.

Q: There’s a feeling in the last few days that for the first time I can be soft and nurturing with my self in the midst of an aspect of my self that I previously haven’t liked. So I really understand that and I thank you. I feel that’s the way.

John: As with a child or your self, it’s you letting nurture address what works and what doesn’t work. It isn’t about a right and a wrong. It’s about nurture revealing what works and what doesn’t work. When it is about a right and a wrong that takes you out of your humanness. It takes you out of the presence of being. But when it is nurture that reveals to a child or to your self, clearly delineating what really works and what doesn’t really work, that’s all a kindness: a kindness to the child that the child responds to and loves learning, and a kindness to your self that your self opens to and responds to. Slowly, your self turns into nurture and kindness and your self turns into what really works. There, your self will be a lot more like your being – much less of a disparity – and you will have come into a real bond with your self.

When you hear something, when you’re listening to something that isn’t making any sense to you and that you’re not understanding, instead of referencing understanding or not having it, reference a resonance. When you’re gentled and quieted within your heart in not needing to understand, you’re available to register if there’s a resonance. If you’re busy with not understanding you’ll overlook what resonance may be there. Where you don’t have understanding, go right to the possibility of resonance, so then you’re listening differently. If there’s no understanding and no resonance, then there’s nothing in that information for you. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be later. That leaves you at rest in realizing that on some points there‘s nothing there for you yet, and what you are is openness that doesn’t have anything within those points and doesn’t need anything.

Q: Thank you. That’s very helpful. I’ve understood so much over all the years of listening and reading and learning, teachers and books and meditating etc. But there’s a sense of going right back to the beginning with you at the moment. It’s a little scary, but I’m just trusting that.

John: Trust the nurture that you are knowing. You’ve collected a lot of information concerning spirituality and deeper reality. Having that information isn’t the same as you knowing all of that. Anything, any information that you’ve come into that you don’t directly know the truth of, don’t discard and also don’t believe. Believe only that information that you directly know the truth of. When you directly know the truth of it, it’s because the essence of the information has a living continuity all the way through your heart and your being, and it registers in your self.