Q: I would like to talk to you about a level-confusion. In first hearing about moving beyond the self, it seemed impossible, it seemed huge. I can see the goodness. In the midst of thinking about level-confusions a little jarring incident came up and I chose to defend my self, that level of my self, rather than to go deeper into an unknown and to see what was there. I thought that the level of my person and my self was the reality, and I responded from my perception of that and it was horrible … and yet I did it.

John: You experience that something is acting on your self. What it’s really acting on isn’t what you’re experiencing. It isn’t acting on your self as it seems. It’s acting on what you’re being in your self. It’s acting on what you are in your self. When there is, within your self, an openness and a softness of heart then anything acting on your self from outside of you is acting on that beingness, the openness and the softness. If your beingness is other than that, then it is that in your self that is acted on.

If you’re defensive in something acting on your self, then what is being catalyzed is your own beingness at present. That beingness then solidifies the kind of self you’re in, the kind of self you have. For you to be moving past your self in the midst of such an experience is for you to be a beingness, within, that is more than what your self is; a beingness that is of greater value than the value of your self. It is that value, then, that increases the value of your self.

When you’re being defensive, you’re experiencing that your self is being devalued. What’s actually occurring is that it is you who are devaluing your self by the kind of beingness that you are in it. If you judge what’s occurring by the experience of your self and the experience that you have in your self, you’ll be reflecting what you’re being in your self and it isn’t that that you’ll be seeing. What you’ll be seeing is what is acting on your experience of your self. You won’t really be seeing anything real.

Q: Yes. That was my experience.

John: Your being is worth more than your self. If you’re defending your self from the perspective of your self, then you’re not being the deeper value within. You’re not being the value of your own being. You can’t be using your experience to judge that. For you as awareness to be judging that, you need to go by what you honestly know the truth of, within, a truth that doesn’t come from your self, a truth that has to do with you, a truth that has to do with what you are.

Q: Yeah. I can see that I acted from the experience and then was wrapped-up in it.

John: What is of greater value than the experience is your being less than what that experience is; what you are, within, being less than what the experience is. When you’re being what is less, that has you being a greater value than the experience. It has you being what precedes the experience, the level within that is before the experience.

Q: Yes, I was confused by the levels.

John: Believing a subsequent level to be of greater value than the level that is before it, believing what you’re thinking and feeling instead of believing what you know the truth of, within: knowing that isn’t based on an experience … knowing, within, that moves as beingness.

When you’re in what you really know the truth of, a truth that precedes the level of your self, your own being opens. Your own beingness moves into your self, giving you a living perspective that doesn’t originate from your experience in your self, a living perspective that is able to lead the experience of your self. If you’re coming from what is deeper than your self, you’ll be able to lead your self. Moving past your self is you, as awareness, being what you know within that is much less than your self, opening your own beingness – a value that is greater than your self. In being identified with that, you’re able to move as that past your self. The experience of your self isn’t then what moves you. The experience of your self is then in your care. You would be guiding it and forming it instead of letting the experience of your self be you.

As soon as you take seriously the experience of your self then you’re believing your self to be you. That makes you as little as your self is, even though you are actually much more than your self. If as awareness you can be less than what your self is, coming from a level within that precedes your self, then what you are within is already past your self. You’re being the more than what your self is. In being the more, your self responds and your self becomes the real more – a bigger self with a little bit of a higher self. The little bit of the higher self is there, then, because you are past your self.

As soon as you’re believing the experience of your self, you’re giving the level of your self more credence than you. That makes you lost in your self. When you’re lost in your self you’ll defend your self as though your self is everything. If it were actually the everything, you wouldn’t need to defend it at all. In being you in what is deeper than your self, you know that you need no defense. That enables you to help what your self is without coming from the perspective offered by the experience of your self, helping it without getting caught in making it everything, without making it something that it isn’t.

In having an openness and a softness of heart in the midst of the experience of your self being acted on, what is really there is you: depth of you needing no defense, depth of you present within the experience of your self being acted on. That calls your deeper beingness up into your self. The pressure of the experience of your self being acted on brings up what you’re being in the midst of it. It brings up your being. It makes your being real in your self. If you’re being what is deeper than your self while your self is under pressure, that has you also being past your self. Your self is then in wonderful care.

Your self becomes what you are all around it. While you’re in the experience of your self, that has you a little bit being a higher self. A higher self isn’t governed by what it experiences. It’s governed by deeper beingness that is governed by awareness knowing. The more form is governed by the less form. The less form is governed by what isn’t form: you, being in goodness control of all of your forms. By you, your own self in whatever condition it is, is yours instead of you. ‘Yours’ means you are more than your self.

When your self is really yours, belonging to you, then you are more than what your self is, your self being a form of yours: form of you, belonging to you, taken care of by you. You won’t be governed by the experience of that form. You won’t be mastered by a form of you; you’ll be a master of form of you. Each previous level of yours is to govern the subsequent level. With that followed through, there isn’t anything less than you. There’s no form to you. Within all that is yours, within all of your forms, you are wonderfully less than all, less than all of your forms put together. Awareness mastering all of its forms, all forms being in the care-of.

As soon as you are identified with the experience of your form, the experience of your self, then the experience of form masters what isn’t of form – you believing to be something that you’re not, believing that the experience of your self is you. It makes the experience of your self an absolute, when the experience of your self is only an experience of your self, an experience of your form, an experience of something that isn’t you.

Q: Opening and softening is the key there when the awareness is that the self is being acted upon?

John: That has you knowing, as awareness, true beingness in the midst of what is yours – your self. That makes the deeper more than the form it’s in. It makes you within form visible instead of making the experience of that form visible. Being deeper than what your self is in the midst of what your self is gives profound purpose to what your self is. It gives it profound functionality: a self reflecting you instead of a self reflecting your absorption into the experience of it, your being taken by the experience of it.

Q: The self then, seeing a fineness in the experience of being acted-on, is impressed? Surrenders?

John: Being a fineness while it experiences being acted on. Being a fineness in the midst of your self in your experience being acted on makes you in the midst of your self more than what your self is, enabling the deeper within to be the fullness of your self, instead of the experience of your self being the fullness of your self when it isn’t.

Q: And then the result would allow the self in turn to surrender and become absorbed?

John: Your self doesn’t surrender. Your self will reflect what you’re being in it. When you are being open and soft as awareness within whatever your self is at present, your self becomes the same. You surrender, your self reflects it. Surrendering is your being the deeper within than what you’re presently experiencing. It isn’t something that you do as a self. Surrender is awareness believing the level that precedes the present experience, making what is actually first, most.

Let the nurtureful nothing – the perception of nothing, but what you know within is everything – gather all form. Then what is really the everything – you – gathers everything. The everything, by virtue of what it is, gives life to everything of yours. It’s a different you than what you experience, because your experience isn’t you. Your experience is yours, not you. Conceptually it’s simple, but contrary to your experience because your experience is yours. Be you instead of yours in the midst of all that is yours.

When you are open and soft, within, you know a value that exceeds the value of your self. It is the value of beingness that does, by you, give value to your self. When you’re not being open and soft, within, you are depleting the value of your self. That has you experiencing lack. Addressing the experience of the lack increases the lack. Being the level within that precedes the level of your self, being what beingness is in the midst of a depleted self increases the value of your self, resulting in the experience of fullness. The experience of that fullness isn’t you; it’s the result of you being the level within that precedes what the level of your self is. Defending your self, as in coming from being closed and hard within in the midst of the experience of lack in your self increases that lack and further depletes your self because of your being something that you are not.

Reality functions by laws other than how you experience them to be. The truth of that requires you being you: awareness being knowing. Knowing is deeper than being, and being is deeper than the whole level of your self, and meaning is deeper than knowing. Meaning knows. Knowing is meaning’s first awareness. Beingness is the result of that. In the midst of what self you have, despite its condition, despite its being in your experience depleted or full, in every case, you’re more.

Turn the self into more than what it actually is and you will have turned you, within your self, into an ego. Believing your self to be something that it isn’t turns you within your self into something that also isn’t. That makes you lost in the midst of a self that you have made lost. That has you being what lack is. Your being open and soft, within, in the midst of lack you’ve created heals it.

Like you more than your self. Your self will reflect what you’re being in it, and you’ll like your self without having changed anything. Like you more than your self despite any experience of your self, while your self is being acted on, and your self will survive it because you’re being within it what precedes it.

Q: Wonderful, John, thank you.