Q: Perhaps I could ask you for personal instruction in moving from the person to the pure awareness, or to oneness.

John: It’s not possible. There is no personal truth that can bring you in. A universal truth is what brings you in. Your person cannot come into oneness. Your self cannot come into oneness: only you can. When you completely, without your person and without your self, go within, you’ve returned to oneness. Take even just a tiny little bit of your self with you as you go in – something so tiny as a wish – and you cannot come into oneness.

The wish doesn’t exist in oneness. When you have a wish, that which is not in oneness cannot come into oneness. If you could bring a wish with you into oneness, it wouldn’t be oneness any more.

Q: Can there be direct knowledge between the oneness and the wish, such that there is a discrimination?

John: Yes. It’s within the wish. That’s why there is a wish, because awareness wishing for oneness has direct knowledge of oneness but is separate from being that direct knowledge. So, instead of awareness directly being what it knows, it wishes to come into what it knows. The wish is indirect, making it separate.

When awareness, within the wish, turns directly into what it knows within the wish, awareness is oneness and the wish is gone. The wish wasn’t let go of. It wasn’t separated from. It wasn’t dissolved. In an instant it is simply not, as though it never even existed. In that there is no process. It requires no time, nor any change of space. The space of wishing isn’t even looked at.

When you long, deeply long to return home, you have everything you need. The direct knowledge you have within the longing is the direct meaning of the longing. The feeling and the movement of the longing is the packaging. That packaging has no connection to you being home. Your direct connection is the direct knowledge within the longing. When you simply turn into that direct knowledge, you are home. When longing holds that direct knowledge, the longing is fueled. It’s all about the longing. Then, as awareness you have what you want. You would rather be in longing than for you to be that which you long for.

If you put this picture into physical reality, if you are terribly hungry and there is a plate of good food before you, and you were longing for some food, longing to eat just about anything, and this plate of food is put before you … and your longing becomes even stronger … if you don’t simply eat the food, your longing for it when it’s right in front of you is absurd. If the food is there for you to eat, eat: have.

When you long to be home within, the longing means you know. You’ve already realized what you know. You’re even able to put it into a form by wishing for it, longing for it, wanting to have it. Leave out all of the packaging. Without any of the forms, have. If you keep the forms and if you could have, while keeping the forms, coming into oneness would only fuel the longing. If you could take the longing with you, in you longing for your own being, if you could accomplish that, you would corrupt your own being. Your whole being would turn into longing. Your being wouldn’t be a being anymore.

It’s wonderful that anything other than the truth doesn’t work. The truth of how your own being works protects you from within your self, as a self, entering your own being and corrupting it. It’s only as you fulfill the direct truth you know that you can enter your own being. You can’t enter your own being without being the same – the same as your being.

When awareness within the self is, without the use of the self, enfolded into the truth it knows within the heart, awareness in the self has entrance to its own being.
It is either immediate – without a process and without effort – or you simply can’t have it. You can’t come in. You cannot come into your own being. The entrance to your being is conditional, so when you do enter your being, you are your being.

If you take anything that is of your self while entering your being, you are not your being; you are your self. Leave your self out of it and you may enter. Anything that is not in your being, you cannot take with you. Look into your being, and anything that is not there that you have, you don’t need. You enter your being without the use of your past, without the use of your conditioning, without your day, without your self, without even the slightest longing or wish. If you take time, you can’t come in. Only you may enter. You being that is you directly home.

If what you have is your self, your past, and your life, you cannot have your being. You having your own being means that your being has you. If you have your self, your past and your life, your being isn’t able to have you because your self has you.

If you have a cup and it’s full of dirt, and if someone says to you that you can have some water of theirs, all you need is to bring a cup. As long as the dirt is in your cup, you can’t have any water. It wouldn’t even work. There’s nothing wrong with the dirt in the cup. Put a seed in it, put a little water in the dirt, and you’ll have a plant. It’s all good, but it’s only good for planting. If you’re dying of thirst and the only one condition to your having water is that you come with a cup, if that cup is not only full of dirt but it has the world’s most famous plant growing in it, you can keep the plant.