Q: You once said that when you die you’re indebted to the difficulty, and it’s really stayed with me.
John: If, if you’ve been what you’ve known in your heart. If you’ve lived in your heart, after you’ve died you’ll know a sweet indebtedness to all of the difficulty you had, because when you’re in difficulty and you stay in your heart, that brings out the depth of your heart.
Q: And one, one of the thoughts that I had was that, when you talk about when you’re dead, as if you actually know what it is to be dead, and then I thought, is that because in some way, because you are oneness, that you’ve completely embodied your being in your physicality – that in a sense there’s already the experience of death, but somehow you’re still in a body.
John: Yes.
Q: Ok, and that’s why you can talk about ‘when you die’ with a complete knowing of what you’re talking about.
John: It is what you’ve said, that I’ve already died – not physically died, but gone through what dying is – many times over, which is what has given me a dual citizenship, so I have direct access to reality that isn’t limited to being in this life, so I come and go through both sides, so to speak, seamlessly and fluently.
Q: So the indebtedness would be in the depth of the heart, which would still be what you would experience when you die? The deepest part of the heart.
John: I’ve evolved, as awareness, because I’ve lived being one with what I know in the midst of my self while being in the midst of my self, or while being in my self. It’s only within my self that I can even comprehend difficulty. Deeper than my self, difficulty doesn’t exist. Openness and softness cannot comprehend difficulty. It comprehends only openness and softness. Being openness and softness within my self enables me to comprehend difficulty in my self, while still being that openness and softness which does not comprehend any kind of difficulty. So what that brings out, being that within my self, opens up a depth of what it is that I am one with, that opens up because of the difficulty.
The more difficulty that I’m in, the more that I naturally, as awareness, draw from deeper resources, because deeper resources are required for awareness to be within the self while being one with its own being. If you were to be one with what you know in your heart, without any kind of difficulty, which is what naturally occurs when you, when you lie down to go to sleep, your day passes away, your past, your future passes away, your person, your self passes away and then you’re just quieted in your heart. You won’t easily be realizing a depth of your own being because you don’t need to. The resources available in your being aren’t needed, but when you are in great difficulty in your self, for you to be openness and softness of heart you’ll be naturally drawing from resources within that match the depth of difficulty. So if you’ve remained one with what you know in your heart and you’ve lived that way through your life, then you’ve been evolving as awareness in a way that you realize after you’ve died that you are indebted to all of the difficulty that you’ve been in. If you wouldn’t be one with what you know you wouldn’t be indebted to the difficulty because there was no benefit to being in the difficulty because you were not one with what you knew while you were in difficulty.
The opportunity that exists in being in life is dependent on you being one with what you know, you being one with your own being while you are in life. If that oneness isn’t there, then after you’ve died you will realize the immense opportunity that was overlooked and lost because while you were in your life you were not one with what you knew, you weren’t living in your heart and you weren’t one with your own being. You just spent your awareness on your self and on your life. If you move through life being separate from your own heart and from your being, the opportunity all the way through your life is squandered.
The real benefit of being in this life is being at one with what you know in your heart, unconditionally, in the midst of all of your life. Then for you to live, life requires of you that you draw from your resources. When you’re one with what you know, your only real resources are not your self; your real resources are the resources of your own being.
When you’re separate from your being and you’re in difficulty, difficulty points you to your self. Difficulty points you to your past and to your future so it puts you into thinking, thinking about your past, feeling your past, thinking about your future and projecting your feelings into the future. So then you live with dread and with hope. If you’re one with what you know in your heart and you’re in difficulty in your self, that difficulty points you to what you’re already in. It points you to your own being, so the greater the difficulty the greater the depth of your own being that you’re pointed to.
Difficulty sends you to your resources, so whatever you’re coming from, that’s the region of resources that you’ll go to. If you’re self-oriented and you’re in difficulty, you turn to your self. If you’re truth oriented and you’re in difficulty, you turn to the truth within. It’s law. Shift your orientation as awareness from your self to what you know in your heart and you’ve just shifted what your real resources are in difficulty.
484 – Your Real, Deeper Happiness
Have you ever felt the victim of a broken agreement? John explains the difference between the hurt that comes with broken trust, and the emotional reactivity in becoming a victim. He exposes the core belief that lies beneath and keeps us dependent on others for our own happiness.
475 – Warmly Okay Within: From Personal Pain to the Joy of Being
“While you’re in a body there isn’t an end to pain…” John explains why this is so, and shares the magical power in our own deeper levels that can transform the experience of pain to happiness and joy.
451 – The Beautiful Impracticality of Being Real
The woman in this dialogue senses that her experience of a fear of disappearing stands between her and what is real. John explains the supreme importance of this turning point in her life: it’s the door to the real, to what she was born for but didn’t understand.
447 – Clarity Within an Eating Disorder: The Key to an Uncommon Perspective
A far-reaching conversation exploring this woman’s fear of gaining weight, and the limits of her treatment so far. John’s responses take us beyond worldly norms and conventional therapy into the bigger picture, offering a radical shift of perspective.
442 – Out of Pain and Into Love
Why is it that love in relationship often comes with mental, emotional and physical pain? John describes the belief systems and sense of individuality this all comes from, and how to make a full return to the love that we were born to be.
439 – Finding Joy and Peace: A Return to Your Home Within
Finding home, within, is a painful struggle for this person. Even being in the world is difficult. John shows her an easy way to be genuinely at home, within, and live from a real, eternal quality of life.
“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
