Q: I’m kind of stuck. I feel like there’s this new version of my self arising, that wants to come out in some way, but somehow I am inactive and I’m not sure about my desires.

John: What do you mean by a new version of your self?

Q: Because of the pandemic I’ve been home a lot, I’ve been doing a lot of inner work, spiritual work. I’m just so in my mind all this time. I know that there’s a very strong intuition in me as well and I just keep on switching.

John: Your inner work that you’re doing is predominantly for your self and about your self, so that keeps the activity of mind circling, even in your spiritual work. The real that you know, the truth that you know that inspires you to enter a spiritual work isn’t about your self’s sense of truth and spirituality. It is about the truth you know within. It isn’t a work, even though all the work that you’re doing has the truth in it. But it isn’t actually, then, about the truth within; it’s about your sense of self and what the truth within offers your sense of self, which keeps your sense of self at the centre of it all.

The truth within doesn’t begin in your self, with your self, for your self or about your self. The doorway to the truth within is your heart. It isn’t your self, it isn’t a path, it isn’t a work. It doesn’t require your use of mind. It requires just you, awareness, rested in your heart; you, awareness, gentled and quieted, stilled, in your heart. That stillness means that you’re not using your self to be within. You’re not using your mind to be in your heart. So, in your deep inner dwelling within, it’s without any use of your self. It’s natural to you. It isn’t a doing. It’s an absence of doing. Without any doing, what remains is being.

It’s like when you lie down to go to sleep. Without any understanding, without you being cognitive about what sleep is, or going to sleep, as you lie down to go to sleep, you, awareness, begin to open, soften, relax without any use of your self, which brings you into your heart and deeper. As you go deeper, your past, your self, your mind with all of its conditioning, your whole life passes away and there’s just you, awareness, home. It’s so natural to you that it bypasses your mental processes.

That’s how to be within. That’s how to be you, but then in the midst of your mind, in the midst of all of your self, in the midst of all of your life, which means then that you can’t take any of it seriously because there’s something within that matters more than your self, your past, your life, your genetics, your relationships, and that’s you. You matter more than everything that’s yours.

Q: Should I see the mind as like a tool for ideas?

John: Your mind is useful for physical existence. It isn’t useful for spirituality. Spirituality, in its essence, is you in everything that’s deeper than your self. It will express through your self, but it doesn’t originate in your self. Its origin has nothing to do with your sense of self, nothing to do with your sense of individuality.

You don’t need your self, your life or your mind for you to go to sleep. When you lie down, going to sleep is natural to you. When you reach the tipping point to sleep you are way deeper within than even your heart. It’s home to you even though, as you reach the tipping point to sleep, your whole life has disappeared. Your self has disappeared. You don’t fear that. You don’t fear the disappearance. You don’t long for your self or miss your self, or miss your life. It’s restful and healing to you to be without it all.

That’s spirituality. It isn’t engagable through familiarity.

Q: And how can I live my life more from my heart?

John: By being in your heart, not for any result in your self, in your life, and in your relationships. Being in your heart, being what you really are, isn’t result-oriented and you’re not there to get anything. Only authenticity reaches it. It’s natural to authenticity – not the authenticity of your self, but authenticity of you, which comes only by awareness being at rest, awareness fundamentally relaxed, which means that it has need of nothing. It’s at home without a reason.

When you were really little you were easily like that: without an understanding, without any concept, without having learned it, without being guided into it. It was just natural to you, and being that made your self happy, but you didn’t connect that. So in your self you were happy without a reason.

Q: Oh, okay. Yeah.

John: Your happiness in your self had no performance in it. It was clean. If someone would have said to you that you’re being what you really are, you wouldn’t know what they’re talking about. If they were to say to you, “You are in authentic spirituality, untarnished,” you wouldn’t know what they’re talking about. You were naturally being it, from the inside out. It’s the only real way.

Don’t heal. Don’t work on your self. Don’t change. Just deeply, deeply, nurturingly return. It will naturally fulfill everything that you’ve tried to work on. In being that, your self, in time, will become the same, just like when you were really little.

Whatever it is that you are being, whether that is real and true or illusory and false, your self becomes the same. Your self turns into what you are being.