Q: I would like to speak about two feelings that have a lot of influence on my daily life. It is like drama, a battle that I participate in from time to time. It is like controlling me, and the feelings are fear and anger.

John: When you feel a drama in your self, when you’re in an emotional story in your self about your self, about a circumstance or about someone else, your focus as awareness is, right there, centred on your self. It makes awareness self-centred and the power of awareness, right there, is given to your self. When your self is empowered, you’ll relate to control in your self. When control in your self doesn’t get its way, you’ll feel frustrated in your self and next you’ll feel angry. It’s the result of your self being empowered, a self that isn’t able to move as power yet, because it is a self that isn’t the same as your own being yet.

When you open and soften in your heart in the midst of your self and something doesn’t go the way of your self, what you’ll first relate to is the openness and the softness. If you leave that openness and that softness for what’s occurring in your self, you’ll empower your self as your self presently is. Your self empowered is then your self in control. When your self is in control, it can’t handle very much. When openness and softness of heart is in control, it can handle anything.

When you give your power to softening in your heart and to opening, right there, you become the same as your own being, and your being in the midst of your self can handle anything. There isn’t anything that’s too much. When you’re coming from your own being instead of coming from your self, the pressure that your self is under draws your own being right to the surface of your self. It draws out the openness and the softness that you’re coming from, whereas if you give your power to your self, the pressure on your self, the pressure of life, is going to draw out what you’re coming from. What you’re coming from is that you empower your self. When it’s your self you come from, you can’t handle any pressure. You can’t handle the pressure in your self because the self is full of lack. It isn’t complete. It isn’t complete like your own being is complete. When that lack identified with comes under pressure, you’ll very much experience the lack.

When you’re frustrated in your self it’s because there’s pressure on your self and you’re identified with your self. The frustration is your experience of your self empowered while it’s under pressure. The lack in your self is exposed and in the midst of that exposure your self has power. That power is then transferred to your will and you become willful.

Where there is openness and softness of heart that’s in your self because you’re coming from your heart in the midst of your self, and your self comes under pressure, instead of being willful you’ll move as willingness. The willingness, right there, is your self becoming a little bit like your own being, because you’re being the same as your being in the midst of your self.

If you’re feeling frustrated, or annoyed, or angry, your self is mastering you. When you are feeling touched in your heart it’s because, right there, something of your own being is mastering you. When you’re coming from your own being, anything outside of your self that is even a little bit like your own being will touch your heart. When you take your self to heart while your self fills your heart instead of your being filling your heart, anything that affects your self is going to bring up an unintegrated power that is there in your heart, because your self is in your heart. That unintegrated power moves as annoyance, frustration, anger.

When you feel that, that’s a lovely thing. It’s lovely that it’s there because it exposes your orientation as awareness. When that’s there, you have that immediate feedback that you’re taking your self to heart, that you’re believing your self to be important instead of what you know is true in your heart being your love and what’s important to you.

When what you know in your heart is important to you, you naturally love. When you’re opening and softening in your heart, your beingness there is love. When you feel frustrated, annoyed or angry, that is meant to send you back to your heart. If you’re listening to it, if you’re listening to what you deeply know within the annoyance, the frustration and the anger, it tells you that you’re not home. It tells you to go home. Your real home is you, awareness, rested in the little bit that you know is true in your heart. The innermost message of anger is that it tells you that you’re not home. It’s a lovely message because, right there, when you realize you’re not home, you’re free to open and to soften, and there you’re home.

The surface of anger tells you that you must have your own way. When you’re even a little bit quieted in your heart, you know that you don’t need to have your own way. You know better than the surface information within anger. As soon as you’re listening within frustration, annoyance and anger, you realize the truth. You realize that you’re taking something to heart that separates you from what you really are.

When you’re really listening, within, regardless of the anger, you are invited to soften and any time that you soften in your heart and you open, you love softening, you love opening because it’s your true beingness. Frustration, annoyance and anger aren’t your true beingness.

When you’re angry – lovely. That tells you that you’re not home, and right there you’re free to return home. You let go of the control you don’t need, because you’re returning to openness and to softness. The anger’s gone and love is there.

Q: Thank you.