Q: Hi John, I met you for the first time this week and it’s been very inspiring to hear what you have to say. I have a challenge in life. It’s hard to live fully. I enjoy life but it’s like I cannot invest in life – some kind of fear that stops me from doing things fully. I always end up on the outside, observing, not getting completely engaged, and I see this creates some kind of loneliness, not feeling fulfilled. Why don’t I go in? It’s like having money in the bank, but not wanting to spend any. Life is a limited time and I would like to be able to share more of my self, give what I have to give.

John: All the way through, into your personality, you are receded into your self, you live sitting back into your self. It gives you a sense of control, safety and a misperceived comfort. You live, in your self, relating to somewhat of a private space in your self, and you stay anchored in that private space. That separates you from your deeper self and your first self.

Your deeper self has to do with your humanness and what you have already integrated of your self. Your first self has to do with your heart being way up into your face, the interior of your face and your eyes. The first self is what you see in the smile of a baby, where there’s nothing concealed, nothing withheld, just a very direct, intimate, outward flow that doesn’t know anything else.

For you to come into life, it’s through your heart, your humanness, your first self and your deeper self that you need to come back into. That means, in your self you have no reserved, private space. You have no inner dialogue in your self, no reserved thoughts and feelings, no sitting back in opinion, but a very clear coming forward of openness and softness of heart. You let that come up into the interior of your face, and you let that communicate directly to others, regardless of how others perceive you, see you or judge you.

Because of how you’ve developed your nervous system, how you’ve embodied separation, embodied into your nervous system this privacy of internal space. As you begin to open, your nervous system will oppose you. Your nervous system will flare up as you behave in a way that’s contrary to how you’ve inputted your nervous system over decades. So, in this way, you can’t trust your own experience.

What you trust is what you deeply, quietly know the truth of in your heart, and you live that all the way through your body, regardless of what you have embodied, regardless of your nervous system, regardless of your self and your mind. In this way you are clearly leading your mind and your nervous system. You are being new within your mind, regardless of what your mind is like. Your mind is not your guidance: you are; you all opened and softened and coming out.

Q: I hear what you’re saying and I see it, but as I see the challenges being so identified with my mind, do I recognize my self?

John: You don’t need to. You don’t need to know your self or recognize your self. Your self is seen form that isn’t like your unseen forms. Your unseen forms are perfect and complete, all of the forms of your being. Your seen forms, your self, is genetic and over the decades you’ve imported beliefs and also constructed new beliefs. All of those beliefs are the fundamental subconscious influences to your self. So when you listen to what you think and feel concerning a deeper level of meaning, you are misinformed. In this way, your self doesn’t tell you the truth: you do. So instead of being your self, which is what you’re used to, be the depth you know that nurtures, and the quality within that you know that nurtures. Be that instead of your self.

In your life, like being openness and softness of heart that is forward, instead of you being your self. This open and forward beingness, the openness and the softness, in the midst of what self you have in all of its conditioning, as you live the openness and softness of heart, that changes your self. It opens your mind and your mind, over some time, becomes just like you are – what you really are.

It’s what you are being in your mind that determines your mind, that becomes your mind. What you have learned isn’t your mind. That’s the information that you have in your mind. Your mind is the substance of how you relate in your self. That substance can be illusory or real. As you live within belief systems, the substance becomes increasingly illusory until your mind is made of forms of illusion: your beliefs all supported by how you’ve empowered your beliefs, how you’ve made your beliefs physical in your nervous system.

Q: I know what you’re saying, but the challenge for me, still, even if I …

John: It’s not a challenge. If it’s a challenge it means you’re already convinced of your mind.

Q: So it’s like a leap?

John: If it’s a leap, then you’re relating to the strengths in your self; you’re relating to levels of confidence that you have to build up. Instead of a leap, instead of a movement of strength, it’s you relaxing in the midst of the weaknesses in your self. As you are deeply relaxed in your self, being what you really are instead of being your mind, there’s no leap, there’s just openness and softness moving forward. As soon as you relate to the challenge of it you are being your mind and your self instead of the openness and softness of heart. As you even use the word “challenge” you’re already convinced of your mind. That it is a challenge to you is nothing more than a narrative; it isn’t real.

If you’re being the openness and softness of heart, moving forward, you don’t relate to challenge, you don’t relate to difficulty. What you relate to is realness from deep within, quietly moving forward in the midst of anything.

In this way, nurture knows its walk. Your mind, your self, isn’t a contributor to your walk. This newness walk, this walk of what you really are is despite your mind, despite your self, despite your past, in the midst of your mind and your self and whatever comes up of your past.

Q: So when, as I’m used to, being the mind and the mind starts to want to be the leader, how do I stop?

John: By you liking being this instead of being your self, instead of being your mind; that you actually are settled into valuing this more than your own mind. Whatever actually matters more to you, that’s what you will be.

This is all a shift, a fundamental shift within you, awareness: you shifting to be what you really are from deepest within outwards, instead of you being your mind. So then you raise your mind and your self in the way that you would a child. You, nurturingly, lead.

Q: Okay, thank you, John.