Q: Do you remember that day when you were talking about eternity, that eternity was a being? In the way that eternity is a being, what is love?
John: The expression of eternity.
Q: What is that in relation to truth?
John: Truth is the stillness of it. Love is the movement of that.
Q: How do they become one?
John: They are one.
Q : How do you have movement and stillness as one?
John: Stillness moving. Stillness moving is true movement. Quality movement. That’s what makes a tree so lovely, the stillness that is in its movement, its quality of movement. The stillness that is in its embrace.
Q: I wanted to ask you something about listening.
John: You are more used to seeing than listening. When you have more seeing than listening, that makes you experience-oriented. That opens up the loveliness of experience with the lack of stillness. It is listening, within, that is at the leading edge of stillness, within. With seeing, there is already a coming out. With listening within, everything stops. With real listening, within, you can’t be coming from anything that you can already see. With listening, within, you are able to know something that you cannot yet see. There’s not yet an understanding of what you know, and it is the listening within that connects you with such knowing even though you cannot understand or see.
With listening, real listening within, all seeing becomes still. As all the seeing becomes still and the attention of awareness is on something that it knows, then in the hearing of what it knows, the knowing fills the heart. It is after the knowing filling the heart that awareness is able to look at what it knows. Then the looking is from the stillness, the kind of stillness that awareness was listening with. That enables the eyes of the heart to see what it has never seen before. Such nourishing seeing fills and heals the mind, which gives understanding.
The quality of seeing, within, is determined by the degree of listening, within. Listeners will be able to see better than seers. Listeners can see but seers don’t necessarily listen. If there is an inclination of awareness to see rather than to listen, then awareness becomes experience-oriented. Seeing becomes limited by experience. For the finest listening there is a release of all that one sees. It is such listening that improves the seeing. With such seeing, there is then an authoritative knowing within every experience that comes from seeing. Then there is a seeing that is no longer guided or limited by an experience but a seeing that is guided by a real listening within.
Stillness in seeing comes from listening, within. Let the ‘I’ distinguish itself from seeing so that it can listen. Real seeing comes from real listening, within. Real listening within precedes real seeing. It is the listening within that purifies the seeing. Love listening within and you’ll enjoy seeing more clearly. There is surrender in listening; there isn’t necessarily surrender in seeing. It doesn’t matter how much one can see. It doesn’t matter if there is a vastness of seeing if there is not the most delicate listening.
Seeing means that there has been virtue, living in the heart. When awareness is really listening within, that means that there presently is virtue living in the heart. Without virtue presently living in the heart all value is an assumed value. When virtue is living in the heart because awareness is really listening, then living value permeates everything. Eternity is present, which isn’t necessarily so with seeing. With seeing there is past credit. With real listening within there is present credit. Seeing shows you what there is of what was. Real listening within shows you what there is of what newly, presently is.
A seer can still be a taker, whereas a true listener within is an authentic receiver, an authentic receiver of newness. It is that that makes for such clear seeing. It doesn’t matter how much you can see. It does really matter how dearly you listen within. Then it matters how much you let your self see what you can hear, and then it matters how much you’ll do what you can see. You can get away with having excitement in seeing, but in real listening, within, there is only stillness; being able to hear something within that you have never heard before.
Love listening within more than even seeing, more than any kind of doing. Love listening within more than living. It is really listening within that lets eternity come into form – virtue. Virtue in the heart is eternity in form. Without that, everything that you think you have, including the seeing, is perishable.
Real listening within allows for an infilling that is imperishable. That enables you to see what is imperishable. That enables you to live what is imperishable. When you are living what is imperishable, then you have an eternal life – a real life that isn’t perishable. A heart that can see but that isn’t really listening is a heart that is shortsighted. The seeing is only as reliable as one is really listening within.
Love really listening, more than seeing or doing or living. It is that that lets you really see and live. You can see without having love. You cannot really listen within, without having love. Really listening within is the beginning of love. Quieted willingness.
597 – The Person, the Self and the Being: Identifying the Many Levels of You (Part 1)
Person, self, being … what’s the difference and what is real? Using different analogies, John explains how our different levels connect and shares the code to being what we really are.
596 – Beyond Sadness and Pain: Happy Without a Reason
John reveals the source of the deep well of sadness and pain this person carries, and shares how she can reconnect with her original happiness.
595 – When a Crumb of Truth in Your Heart is Your Home
John responds to a spiritual dilemma: a desperate longing for realization, coupled with the fear of nothingness that seems to come with it.
594 – Fully Present in Your Body, Fully Present in Your Heart
Closing down to the experience of vulnerability can mean dissociating from the body. John shares a simple way to become more present however uncomfortable we feel.
593 – Honest to the Way of Your Heart
An exploration of how honesty and an open, soft heart are connected, taking us ever deeper into the unseen roots we could remain in forever.
592 – Beyond Self-Acceptance: The Way of Deep, Inner Healing
An experience of misplaced anger has raised the question of what real healing is. John takes us beyond simple self-acceptance, deep into the source of the finest healing of all.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
