Q: I’m questioning where I am on this path. Earlier today someone mentioned their addiction, and it struck me that for many years there’s always been a place that I can go to that’s before all this mind-chatter and it’s very peaceful. I’m content and as I think you said, you can’t really add anything to it. If anyone would have given me a chai, it would have been a distraction from this peace. And for some reason I’m looking for something more. Then there comes a thought in that, on top of this that can be very much seen as ‘not this peace’, there’s something else that’s coming in and I’m just wondering if it’s that easy.

John: Would you like it to be more difficult?

Q: I’m expecting it to be more difficult.

John: But you already know it’s that easy.

Q: Then why do I keep looking? Sometimes I will have these stronger experiences where there’s more intensity and I keep expecting the experience to be more intense, or something.

John: The deeper the level of your being that moves, that moves through your self, the stronger the experience. It isn’t the strength of experience that matters. What matters is that your being moves. Your being moves, because you are being what you really are. That’s what opens the door of your heart for you to enter your being and for you, as a being, to move through that same door, up into your self, into your personality and into your life. The nature of that experience isn’t what matters, so it can be so subtle or so powerful. It’s all good, a kind of goodness that has no opposite. It’s all real and pure, but as soon as you favor the stronger experience, which is there because of a greater depth of being that moves, you fool your self.

Q: Should I just sit with this peacefulness, then? Because when I hear all of these people talking about these extreme experiences, and blah, blah, blah, and god here and emerging here, and love here and there.

John: It’s good.

Q: It just sounds so extreme that I keep looking for something; that I think I’m missing the point because I’m looking for something more extreme.

John: It’s only that peace that you already know that can see it. And if it isn’t there, you don’t need it. As soon as it’s there you don’t need for the experience to be subtle.

It’s only peace that can see what’s deeper. It’s that peace that you already know, that subtlety within where you are so gentled and quieted within, that it’s real to you that you have need of nothing. You’re complete. It’s that which sees what’s deeper, and when you see it, it’s because you know it. And as you know it, it will move, and it won’t move subtly. And when it moves powerfully instead of subtly you have no need within for it to be subtle. So, if it’s so powerful that it feels strenuous in your body and in your self, you are beautifully at peace with that. You would have no need for it to be comfortable. It can move that powerfully, that in your self you would wish for it to end. You already know the depth of the quiet peace but in your self you wish for it to be stronger. When it’s strong, you might wish, in your self, for it to be subtle again. It doesn’t matter which one it is.

Q: Is it that then, when it’s subtle and I want it to be stronger, then it can’t be it, because I want it to be something else?

John: It’s only from within your self that subtle isn’t enough, but when you’re in the subtle and not referencing that to your self, the subtle is complete. Self-referenced there isn’t anything that’s complete or enough.

Q: You said that you only need one glimpse of this to understand, and I feel I had one glimpse of this, but still I’m caught into the belief of all this nonsense and then I fall back into not believing in it. But I’m caught up in the emotions and I believe them and I’m in pain, in suffering, sadness, and I want it to go away. Why can I not accept that it is just pain without trying to work it?

John: Because in your self, if you’re not in a pleasant experience or in a miserable experience, you don’t have a sense of self. As long as you’re experiencing something, from the perspective of your self, it doesn’t matter what that something is – whether it’s pain or pleasure. As long as you’re experiencing, it feels like you are eventful. In your self what you really don’t want is nothing. You want something, really bad or really good. It doesn’t matter which end of the pole, just as long as it’s something, while what you really are has need of nothing. What you really are is at home in nothing. What you really are is nothing and nobody. It’s only in self-reflection that that’s awful.

Q: Enlightenment is described as waking up from this dream, and even though I sit with peace of mind and completely content, I still feel I’m in a dream. I don’t feel that I’ve woken up from the dream at least.

John: That’s because you’ve made it real, in your experience, that experience matters. You’ve made it real that your self matters, and your self matters more than you do. When you’re deeply at peace within that’s because it’s real to you that you matter more than your self and than your life. You matter more than all form, all form of yours.

Q: But I still haven’t woken up from the dream.

John: That’s because you have this feedback from your forms that keeps giving you an experience of their condition, the condition of your forms. Some of it’s positive. Some of it’s negative. From the perspective of your experience you just desperately need it to be something. If there’s nothing from within your self, if there’s nothing positive happening, then you can centre your self in experience by being upset or angry. You can just fabricate an experience and then all is well.

What you have a self for is to not, from within your self, to generate experiences – positive or negative. What you have a self for is so that you, nothing and nobody, can have form. That form is neither positive or negative. It’s real and true. When you’re quietly at peace within it’s real to you, in that beingness, that you have nothing. That nothing that you’re in, you know is everything. Nothing can add to it and nothing can take away from it. That everything that you’re being can have all of your form. Your form belongs to that everything. Your form doesn’t belong to your experience of your self; it belongs to what precedes it.