Q: I used to believe that I had some idea of what it meant to be enlightened, and at that time I wanted to be enlightened. Now I feel that I don’t have any idea at all what it means to be enlightened, and so I’m not sure if I want to be enlightened! And along with that, lately I’ve been more and more accepting of my patterns which have reemerged quite clearly. Being okay with these patterns as is, is starting to feel like going back to sleep. I’m just wondering if you could comment on either or both of those.

John: It’s not just being okay with all of your patterns as is. It is the sweetest tenderness that is okay with all of those patterns as is. The sweetest tenderness is something that you cannot do. You cannot muster it up. You’re able to shut off within and call it okayness with all of your patterns as is, but that tiny little sweet bud of tenderness within you cannot do and you cannot muster it up. But you can find it. As soon as a quieted heart drops just beneath the present issue, that sweet little bud of tenderness is there. And when you’re letting that touch you, there is no falling asleep. There is the sweetest waking up.

Q: I do find that sweetness, and it seems like it’ll just come to me from time to time to remember to find that sweetness. And it feels like I’m doing something which also confuses me, because there’s a thought that I oughtn’t be doing anything.

John: You know the way that a baby roots for its mother’s breast? It knows by feeling what it’s looking for. The side of its mouth and its face start to go sideways, and it’s like it’s searching. And it knows exactly when it finds it. In this same way, you can root for that sweetness as long as you’re not doing so to escape a problem, to escape discomfort, as long as you’re not doing so to achieve something; that the only reason that you are doing so is because you are responding to your first love. That sweetness is there to be found but it is only the genuine heart that can find it and be in it.

As soon as such sweetness is viewed as something that can alleviate pain and difficulty, that it can be used to accomplish something, that it can be used to protect your self or to achieve something, then it is not the sweetness of what you know that you’re looking for. We may call it looking for the sweetness, but it is really looking for pain relief, for protection. When it really is looking for that sweetness for its own sake, so that as soon as we see it and find it and we give our hearts away to it, then you cannot help but find it. And you discover then that it is always just beneath what you’re presently in.

Q: Is it possible to be aware of being and not have that sweetness present?

John: It’s possible to be aware of being, to be in being, to be aware of sweetness without feeling it at all. And it’s just the knowing of it that is enough, and giving your heart away to something you know is sweet without having to feel it first.

Q: Is that being who I am? What is the relationship of innermost to that being?

John: That being is of your innermost, beyond your mind or not within the grasp of your mind. Your being is the true everything that you know, and what is beyond your being is more of the endless everything that you know exists but have never touched. It has never touched you, whereas your being that you know, it has touched you and you have touched it.

Q: When I’m touched by being, it feels that being is beyond mind. What I’m hearing you say is that it’s something beyond being? Well, that could take a real long time! There’s something beyond being.

John: It’s only when you are being a being that you can then navigate into these unchartered areas of consciousness that have never been touched before, never been opened, never been seen, completely unawakened to the being.

Q: You say “the being” rather than “being” – is that individual?

John: It is both individual and non-individual. It is within each individual body and the depth of it within each individual body is not individual. It’s not like your personality, which is individual. It’s through the personality that the being can express individuality. It’s through the personality that the being can individuate but the being is not an individual. The being knows itself and recognizes itself in the being of everything else in the universe.

What is beyond being is what the being has not yet awakened to. A tree is a being. It moves and flows within as a being. The consciousness of this being is not a full spectrum of consciousness like it is with human beings. For a tree to awaken to what it really is, it must merge with a full spectrum of consciousness, it must merge with a human consciousness that is fully being.

When such a consciousness merges with the consciousness of a tree, then the being of that tree is moved and it moves through the more of this full spectrum of consciousness, and through this full spectrum of consciousness the tree experiences itself as though it had a full spectrum of consciousness. It has then the capacity to self-reflect, to see itself, whereas before it could only be itself. But it can only see itself when a human consciousness that is fully being is merging with the consciousness of this tree, being with it. Then this human being is knowing itself within the consciousness of what a tree is, enabling the tree to know itself in a way that this human being knows itself. So then the consciousness of this tree expands. Its beingness realizes itself to a breadth and a depth that it never knew before. Its potential was always there, but it is dormant until it’s touched.

There is also within our selves an endless consciousness that the being within has not yet been awakened to. The potential of what we really are is absolutely endless. You have only tasted of your own being and your own being has only tasted of its full potential that lies dormant in the rest of consciousness. You are like the iceberg that is floating in an ocean of water, that is floating in an ocean of being, wondering why you’re so separate from it. The iceberg knows that it is of the water; it’s made of the same properties and yet it experiences itself to be separate. What you’re familiar with is you experience your self as being that iceberg. As you melt, you can be in all of the rest of the water, but there is still much beyond this ocean of water; there is a whole universe of consciousness that this being of water has not yet awakened to. Awakening has no end. Its potential is infinite. The iceberg experiences life to be all about itself, but there is this deep knowing that life is really about what it is floating in, and it can’t figure out how to turn into what it is floating in.

Q: Are you going to tell me how to turn into what I’m floating in?

John: How to turn into a water fountain?

Q: I guess that would do for a start!

John: You start out as an iceberg and you let your self most tenderly pass away by letting your self melt into something that you know you’re floating in. Then as you melt into that and you become one with that, then you let your self go somewhere where you have never gone before. So it is a passing away all over again.

You let your self be sucked into the middle of the earth and you let your self reach boiling point and you come under tremendous pressure, and you find your self brought into a flow, being rushed through the rock. And when it finally breaks the surface, others will call it a water fountain. It’s continually letting everything that you are to be transformed and taken deeper, losing your familiar, not needing to keep it.

A water fountain is the okayness to die being expressed in life.

Q: Thank you.