Q: Bonjour John. What I want to talk to you about today is about relationships. I was very touched in the past few days of having couples sit here in the chair. What you said to them brought me a lot of contact to the knowing I have, maybe gave me a path to get there. I think what I realized in the relationship is that I was very ill-equipped, ignorant of how to be in a relationship with a woman. In the past few years I’ve learned about all my patterns. I realize that it’s not enough; it’s now to really live with them, accept them and really love them, and know where I’m going with all of this in my life. I’ve always taken a role in the relationship out of a pattern and I’ve heard people say that you spoke at one time about the man being the person who holds the space in a relationship. Would you please tell me more about this?

John: It is really for both to hold the space, but it’s easier for a woman to see that in a man and then find the same within herself.

Q: So it has to come from the man first?

John: Both, but it’s easier to see it within a man. It’s a softened masculine energy that builds a nest and it’s a softened feminine energy that feathers the nest. When each is softened, then it begins to see the other movement of energy within one’s self so then both become one.

A softened masculine energy can only build a nest as well as it can also feather a nest, and a softened feminine energy can only feather a nest as well as it can build a nest. For each, one naturally comes first and then begins to see the other, and then each become both, turning into the very finest that each sees in each other.

When the masculine energy moves with the feminine, the masculine becomes softer, and the feminine energy that it sees outside itself, it begins to finds within itself. Each energy becomes wonderfully round in finding within itself what it sees outside of itself, until each becomes an integrated masculine and feminine energy.

An unintegrated masculine energy controls through force. An unintegrated feminine energy controls through manipulation. A masculine energy coerces with sticks. A feminine energy, unintegrated, coerces with feathers. When each doesn’t work, the masculine energy sees the feminine and it tries to coerce with feathers, and the feminine energy, in seeing the masculine when what it’s doing is not working, learns how to use sticks. It is all about no longer using power within of each to attain something, to get something, to keep something, to protect one’s self, but letting the power of each within oneself only open up. Then a nest within comes together; a space that’s held within and feathered within just for truth to grow, for truth to have a home instead of building such a nest within made of expectations to serve what you want. Want within is a nest builder, but such a nest is so different from the kind that love makes: the one is a thief building a nest within, the other is grace making a nest within.

A true relationship is all about nest-making: not to have what you want or what you think you need; not made by the thief, but made by grace from within each for truth to flourish in – the making of a nest to dearly hold something much more wonderful than each other. It is that that enables the two within each to become one and for each other to become one. Each very gracefully becoming androgynous; each very gracefully turning into both. Such an energy moves differently than each. Such a movement of energy is complete in itself. It lacks neither energy because it is both.

The two opposites start out not understanding each other, but when each is soft, there is the most wonderful subtle relating to each other. Very slowly and through all the pressures of life, each being its true, softened self, becomes as the other, then each being both. Within each, then, not only so fully relating to one’s true self but beginning to really understand the nature and the movement of one’s true self. Then a man is able to be the energy of a softened, rounded woman, and a softened woman is able to be the energy of a softened rounded man, each together as one, being both. Within such a wonderful and round, complete-within-itself movement of energy, want and need within cannot exist. As soon as that exists, then each gravitates to its own perceived strength, covering up its own perceived weakness. Then as a relationship there exists one hard castle, miserably containing two camps, with the integration of the two within each of them and the two integrated in the relationship as one. Then the energy of one hard castle contains within itself a very soft and lovely energy: two different energies softening and enjoying being with each other.

As such interaction of grace takes place within such a castle, slowly the castle itself softens. The structure and the walls come alive and begin to turn into what they contain. The structure itself begins to soften and to flow. It begins to move outward and the whole castle melts and flows and merges with all the land. First, the flow of grace within the castle of each enabling the flow of grace within the castle of the relationship, ending the separation that exists within the mind of each castle, and within the mind of the castle of the relationship. Then such flow of oneness ends the separation between the castle and all the land. All the stones that make the castle soften and come to life, and return to where they came from – returning to the land. That awakens the land. Everything returns to being oneness of home.

A relationship starts out as being terribly good, and if grace can reign then the relationship becomes only good, each being mastered by grace: the grace that each sees as the very finest and most touching within one’s self, seeing the same in the other, and each being mastered only by that.

Q: And what is grace?

John: Love moving in such a way that it knows itself to be: moving only out and having no need for such outward movement to move back in. The outward movement takes place within oneself and the inward movement comes only from the other, each very gently giving one’s whole heart to the other and each very gently within receiving one’s whole heart from the other.

Such a relationship, as it grows, looks like glory. It emulates glory – the energy of no separation – the two within the two becoming one, as the two become one. In such a relationship there is no castle; only God in the land, unhidden and increasingly manifested.

Without such graceful, effortless and very much paid-for transformations, there are only castles in the land containing separation and misery. In such a land there is war within and war without, and God is there but hidden and much more unmanifest. Then everything is as everyone thinks it is and very little is then as everyone actually knows it is. The stillness within is then the ignored seed, while mind and will create their own reality for awareness to hide in.

Q: Thank you, John, for showing me the way.