Q: I guess in listening I’m wondering how you hold it and lead from the heart and keep it there, keep that space and feel safe in that, because it’s very vulnerable, right? To stay in your heart space and lead with that space.

John: The beauty of vulnerability is that it doesn’t need to feel safe. Being in your heart isn’t so that you’ll feel safe in your self. When you are being in your heart, what that brings up in your self is anything of lack or inability in your self, which transfers to vulnerability, a sense of vulnerability. The reason for you to be in your heart is that’s what’s real, and being in your heart doesn’t need to make you feel better in your self.

You can be gentled and quieted in your heart without needing to feel better, without needing to address any sense of lack or inability in your self. Being gentled and quieted in your heart is, for you, home. In that way, you don’t return to your heart for results; you return to your heart because that’s home. That’s what’s deeply, quietly real and true, and you’re able to remain in your heart unconditionally, regardless of how someone treats you, regardless of what life brings your way. You’re able to open and soften in your heart regardless of what comes your way. In that way, your depth of meaning doesn’t come from the outside in; it comes from what you’re quietly being, within. You’re not dependent on your circumstances for you to be in your heart. You’re not dependent on others for you to be in your heart. No one needs to be kind to you or to love you for you to be in your heart.

As soon as you’re quieted in your heart, there you are being what you’re easily looking for outside of your self. Your deepest sense of meaning in life isn’t going to come from what you do with your life or what you do with others. It comes from what you do with your heart. As soon as you’re rested in that, then your sense of meaning comes from beingness within and that naturally flows from the inside out.

Q: Is there, like, some kind of practice to help you get there and stay centred in that without all the outside..? Like, how do you get rid of the distractions that tell you..

John: If being in that is based on something that you do, then you’ll have to keep doing just so that you can be. What most reaches you within is when you open. As you open, you are being what you really are. When you realize that, then opening means more to you than closing to acquire anything. Then you’ll live opening. Opening is what you really are.

There are so many things in your day that touch you in your heart, that cause you, invite you to open. As soon as you step outside and the sun is shining and the warmth of the sun comes into your face, as soon as that occurs, you open and there’s a little bit of movement of you dropping more deeply within. When someone is kind to you, you open. The first moments when you’re in a hot shower, you open. In the first moment when you have a drink of water and you’re thirsty, you open. There are these moments of opening that are all throughout your day, these tiny little touches within that, for a moment, easily bring you back to what you really are. And these most quiet moments within, that are all throughout your day, are able to be your life. Then, in living, what you realize is that you are happy without a reason, that your happiness is beneath the surface of your experience. You’re not dependent on your experience for you to be quietly happy within.

That brings a level of presence into your experience that doesn’t come from your experience; it comes from you. In that way, you become the source of meaning into your self that you easily have when someone is kind to you, and then you’re not dependent on anyone being kind to you. You’re not dependent on it coming from the outside in. You realize it deep within, and then it moves from the inside out.

When you feel a little cold and you put something warmer on, as soon as you put it on and you feel the warmth, you open. You’re able to be that openness without having to put something on. You can modify your experience by doing something. What really matters is for you to be what you really are in the doing of that.

When you’re tired and you lie down, the moment that you lie down, you open. That openness that you come into when you lie down, that’s what you really are and that’s your real life. When you’re being that, then that’s your inward life in the midst of your outward life. There, you have returned to your innocence.

Q: Thank you.