Q: I’ve got a very destructive force in me. I can’t allow happiness with.. I just can’t let anything in that’s good. It frightens the life out of me. I destroy it. I’m very unaware that I’m destroying it, I think, most of the time, however good it is and obvious to everyone else. And also I think I’m addicted to pessimism. Even when there’s nothing to worry about, I make it up in my head and it’s real. I can’t just be at peace, I can’t be at rest. I can’t just be. The fear of loss is so profound in me. Why am I so self-destructive? Why can’t I allow the good in and feel secure enough that if it does leave that’s cool, too?

John: Destroy it before it works, because as soon as it works you know that you’re responsible for it. You know what works. You don’t necessarily understand what works in your self, but you do know in your heart what works in your heart. What works perfectly every time is you, in your heart, opening.

Q: I’m too scared so I hurt myself.

John: You’re afraid of being vulnerable in your self. When you open in your heart, that kind of openness makes your heart bigger than what your self is, which makes your self vulnerable. Your self naturally stretches to you. You can alleviate that vulnerability by closing. You manifest closing by destroying something. When you open in your heart, your self is vulnerable, it feels vulnerable. You feel and experience that vulnerability. To regain control of that experience in your self, you close. You have the control back as soon as you destroy something.

There isn’t anything that you genuinely love as much as opening, but when you open that will cost you your comfort zone in your self. When you open in your heart, that beingness of openness translates into you not needing the ceiling that you have in your self, that you don’t need its comfort, and that you don’t need the floor in your self. You don’t need its comfort. The confining experience of your self – your experience of the ceiling in your self and the floor in your self – is a comforting kind of restriction. That restriction gives you a sense of safety in your self, even though in your heart all there is that is actually safe is you opening.

Q: But how do I do that? What are the tiny, tiny tiny steps of getting rid of the ceiling, getting rid of the floor? It’s so ingrained that I don’t even know it’s there.

John: You open when opening suits the comfort in your self. Any kind of opening that is within your comfort zone you always respond to.

Q: Do you think maybe I seek comfort in the wrong places?

John: When your body feels a little tired, and in response to that you sit down or you lie down, you open. It doesn’t threaten the comfort zone in your self when you open in ways that suit your self, in ways that don’t threaten your self. Within your comfort zone you demonstrate in your life that you love opening. When you’re thirsty and you drink some water, you open. As soon as the water reaches your body and you swallow it, you open. With openness you respond to your body. Where it doesn’t threaten your experience in your self, you respond to your body; you respond to opening in your body. When the sun reaches your face, you don’t close; you open.

There are many predictable ways where you manifest your openness, but where that openness disrupts an experience in your self, as soon as it moves past your comfort zone, then you’ll close. When you close, you feel that you regain control of your self. When in your heart you open, as soon as that openness moves past your comfort zone, it will feel like you’re losing control in your self, that what you are in your heart is then moving past your self. It’s overcoming your self. It gives you a feeling in your self of loss of control.

You regain that loss of control by destroying something, by closing in your heart and manifesting that closing in your self, right through to the surface. You have the control back but you’re also not happy because you’re no longer in your heart.

When you respond to being in your heart, you open. When you open, your sense of heart exceeds your sense of self, making you feel vulnerable in your self. Stay in your heart despite how you feel in your self. When you do, you love it.

Q: I’ll try.

John: When you want to know you, simply open in your heart and you’re there.

Q: Really scary! It’s so powerful. It’s like a flower or a Venus Flycatcher. Joy comes along and then it grabs it and it closes. It’s all open and it’s wonderful, but when truth or something really touches, comes near, it shuts and contracts.

John: When you close, it’s because you can. You close because you’re able to, and when you close in that experience in that moment, it seems to be without a cost.

Q: Oh, it costs!

John: It costs you your openness. As soon as you close in your heart, you are no longer really you. You’re caught in your self. You’re not really you unless, in your heart, you’re opening. Open at any cost. When you open in your heart at any cost, you will love without control. In that, you fulfill what you really are in the midst of a self that isn’t like that, making you experience its vulnerability. You are able to be what is really you anywhere in your self, in any circumstance.

When you sustain openness of heart unconditionally, your own being will absolutely, in some way, come into your heart and fill your heart, and that will overflow into your self.

Q: Thank you.