Q: I have an issue about control in my self. I have this need of being in control of everything at all times, and when I’m not, I get angry very easily. When I do, I make a lot of people around me very sad because I’m mean to them, and I don’t know how to control that anger. It feels like it’s burning inside me and I don’t know how to not react to it.

John: When you have an issue, issues of control, that means you’re out of control. The more you need to have it, the less you’re in control.

You’ve become addicted to your self, addicted to want and need in your self, believing that you won’t be happy unless you have everything you want, and you have what you think you need when what you really are has need of nothing. Getting what you want may satisfy a positive or a negative sentiment in yourself, but getting what you want won’t satisfy you.

What satisfies you is you, awareness, being fundamentally at rest.

Q: How do I get there?

John: By being honest to your heart instead of being honest to what you think and feel. When you’re honest to what you think, you become aware of what you think you need. When you’re honest to your heart, you’re honest to a quality that you know the truth of in your heart.

Q: Right now that doesn’t solve the anger thing. I don’t know what to do with that, right now.

John: When you’re honest to your heart in the midst of a flow of emotion, you realize that your emotions are not providing you with what’s true. When you’re honest to your heart in the midst of a flow of emotion, you see differently than how you see though your emotions. When you’re honest to your heart in the midst of a flow of emotion, you relax; you relax in the midst of your emotions. That relaxation as awareness takes you deeper, within, than your emotions.

You’ll see your self as you would see a child, and you respond to your self like you would respond to a child. Your self is in need of your care. Your self needs to be raised by you. If you’re lost in your self, you can’t raise your self. When you are quieted within, you’re able to raise your self. You’re able to guide and to teach yourself. You are its clarity.

Q: I don’t feel like I’m very good at listening to my heart. My mind and my thoughts always take over when I’m trying.

John: When being at home, within, matters more to you than what you think and feel in your self, you’ll be in your heart despite anything you’re experiencing in your self.

Q: And then does it matter where I am or what I’m doing, when I’m in my heart?

John: It matters little. What you do in your life matters little.

If you buy into a belief, you’ll live for that belief. When you live for it, that belief traps you. You can’t be happy without fulfilling that belief, and as long as you live for that belief you can’t be happy.

Your self doesn’t matter as much as your heart, and your heart doesn’t matter as much as what you know in your heart.

Q: I often have trouble finding out what I know in my heart.

John: What you most know in your heart is a quality. What you know in your heart is a way of being. What you know the truth of in your heart is openness and softness of heart, and anything that you perceive in your self that you gain by being closed or hard, you fool your self. All that you acquire in that is hardness. You don’t actually get anything.

Love that your life doesn’t belong to anything that you can pursue in your self. Your life belongs to what you really are. What you really are isn’t like your self.

What you quietly realize in your heart matters more than anything that you can acquire in this world. If you pursue what you want to have and be in this world, you’ll become lost in your self. You’ll fool your self. You’ll be teaching your self that your self will be happy if it has what this world is and what this world offers. If you pursue what this world offers, you won’t be what you really are; you won’t have what you really are. What you’ll have is separation from what you really are.

Q: So what do I need to do, then?

John: Like your heart more than your self, and love your heart more than your self. If you lose heart, you lose everything. Love opening and softening in your heart. That’s what gives you your being. Openness and softness of heart is the beginning of your being.