Q: Hi, John. My question is I feel that there is a big gap between my potential – between what I know as my being, as my essence – and the manifestation of it in my life, and this gap as I feel it causes me pain and frustration. I feel that in the daily life I deal more with surviving than being in my heart, than being connected to my higher self, to my essence.

John: The disparity that you see between your self and your being – what your being is like and what your self is like – is not only understandable, it’s real, and your self doesn’t need to be any different. Your being is made of unseen levels and forms that perfectly represent you, so with any little touch of your being, you immediately come into a sense and a direct knowledge of completeness. There isn’t anything that can make it better, and as soon as you come into a sense of your self, you recognize incompleteness, lack, and beautiful potential. Your self is also made of levels and forms, and they don’t represent you. The forms of your self are not yet like you are, whereas the unseen forms in your being are forms of you.

As you come into this world and into a body, your body is inherited as is your self. Your self is made of what all of your ancestors have been in response to of what they knew or what they’ve been in reaction to of what they knew. Everything that they’ve really dealt with or haven’t dealt with is all passed down to you. It’s what makes up your self, so your self, for you as a being coming into a body, is like a starting package.

The forms of this package are in some ways similar to you, but they’re mostly not like you are. It’s a little bit like putting on clothing where all of it just doesn’t quite fit right, so it mostly works but everywhere a little bit not. Your self is like living clothing: whatever you’re being in the midst of your clothing your clothing starts to change. It changes in colour, design, fit, and function, all according to what you’re being in it.

When you’re being true to what you are in your unseen forms, when you’re being the same as what you are as a being in the midst of this clothing, the clothing begins to match you. It takes time. As soon as you become frustrated with the clothing, the clothing matches that frustration; it matches the beingness of it. When you’re frustrated with it, the clothing becomes increasingly more difficult.

The way that your self suits you or not has really nothing to do with what you really are. It does have much to do with your experience. Your experience of your self comes from the condition of your self. Your self is also much like a child; not yours particularly, but anyone’s. It is like a child of yours that’s yours to raise. It doesn’t matter the condition of your child. It doesn’t matter what lack there is in your child. What you are being with your child is how you’re actually raising your child, so in that way it doesn’t really matter much what you say to your child. What your child really watches is what you’re being.

It doesn’t matter very much what you say to your self. You can talk your self into doing something different, you can talk your self into behaving differently, but you can’t talk your self into being something different. You can’t talk your self into being like your being. While you explain to your self what your being is like and how your self can be the same, while you’re giving such explanations your self will be just like what you are being while you’re speaking to it, so it isn’t really listening to your words. It isn’t listening to your intentions. It’s listening to what you’re being in them. It’s a change in what you are being that brings about fundamental change in your self.

Q: I see in my story signs that reflects my being, that my essence here is to be in service, to bring what I’ve been through in the last 50 years since I was born to the surface to other people, and the other sees my creativity, my connection to nature, to beauty, to colours, and this side tells me you should just fly and paint and draw and dance and enjoy…and I feel stuck. I need your help.

John: Neither of the two is it. Both come from your sense of your self. If you move in the direction of service, it will give you within your self a sense of meaning and purpose, which strengthens the conditioning in your self. The impetus to serve doesn’t come from your being; it comes from the need of a sense of purpose in your self. There is some direct knowledge in it, but that direct knowledge doesn’t tell you to serve. That direct knowledge tells you that there’s something much deeper and much higher than your self, which gives you a sense in your self to serve that. As soon as you go into service, then what you begin with of that direct knowledge is referenced to your self, which will make much of your self. Serving will give you a sense of self importance. It will give you a sense of meaning in your self. The truth, within, is in it, but the service itself isn’t it; it’s the subtle knowledge that’s within it. If you’re not distinguishing between the two, you’ll side with the part that you’re able to recognize in your self, which has to do with you doing something: serving.

The creativity is similar. What gives creativity its depth of meaning and beauty is that its movement, the depth of its movement, originates in your being. It begins with your being subtly moving in your heart and in your self, which gives you an experience of the richness and the depth of that movement. It makes you love creating.

The movement of creating isn’t, in and of itself, it, just as serving, in and of itself, is also not it. What inspires serving is it and what inspires creativity is it.

Q: I would like to know this ‘it’. I feel that I don’t know it.

John: Without this touch of being, the more that you would do anything, the more that you would serve or paint or dance, the more empty you would be. Any sense of richness and meaning in your movement as a person doesn’t really come from your self. It comes from the little bit of movement that is directly there from your being. Because that inspires you within your form, you experience that in form and you attribute it, the richness and the depth of meaning, to that form.

You experience a touch of being that moves in your creativity, inspiring you to create, and you believe then that the real depth of meaning is about creating and moving, but without that touch of your being that’s in it, all of that movement would mean nothing to you. It’s so easy to project onto your forms that you can see and your movements that you can see, the depth and the quality of being that you have in it. What you really are is that depth and that quality that you can identify within service or within creativity.

When you see that it isn’t about the service or the creativity anymore, it’s about you directly being that depth and that quality which has been inspiring everything of meaning in you, then you realize that it doesn’t really matter much what you do. It’s the movement of your being that gives your doing all of its richness and depth of meaning.

As you really land in that, in ‘it’, then you return to being what you know within the innocence of a small child. Within that kind of a child, you can see that it doesn’t matter much what that child does. Its magicalness isn’t because of what it does, but because of the innocence that’s there.

When the child separates from its own innocence, then in whatever that child does there’s an intrinsic lack, inspiring the child to perform for meaning because it’s no longer being meaning. The child then has to work for meaning. It has to do to be.

When you introduce that child to service and creativity, you increase the child’s misunderstanding. The child will use that doing and that movement to come to a sense of deeper meaning, but as soon as you, without any kind of doing, without a use of creativity or service, that you are simply in your heart, the child sees, knows and remembers and is invited through that beingness to the innocence that it left.

Q: I long for this connection to my innocence. I really want to feel it again.

John: You don’t need to. You don’t need to feel it again and you don’t need to long for it. All that there is for you is to be quietly rested in any little touch of being that you won’t find in your self by doing something. This beingness, any little touch of it, is what you know in your heart. Your being quietly rested in a touch of being is you being the same. As soon as you’re being the same, you’re home.

Q: I find it very difficult to stay in that state of being that doesn’t have to do anything, that should stay calm and relaxed. As an idea, what you say is wonderful and I really accept it. When I come to daily life, I feel that I am almost attacked by a lot of issues that need my doing.

John: While your self is attacked, you are not. It’s when you love that difference that you live that difference. When you, awareness, are fused through belief with your self, when you are fused to your self, anything that touches your self affects you. When you, awareness, instead, are one with your being, anything that touches your self draws up into your self what you are one with. In that way, whatever affects your self, love moves. The deeper the troubles in your self, the deeper the love that moves.

In your existence what you’re familiar with is being fused to your self, so anything that touches your self, your sense of you is determined by how your self is affected. That puts you into a polarized existence. You experience reality from the perspective of what you like and what you don’t like because of how your self is affected.

Instead of you, awareness, being fused to your self, you have a self, and, while you have whatever kind of self you have, you are the same as your being. You’re not fused to your self. You are the same as your being; you are one with your being. Then, anything that touches your self draws your being up into your self. The greater the pressure that your self is in, the greater the depth that your being comes in, up into your self.

You can’t undo being fused to your self by altering your thinking and your feeling. That makes the fusing more sophisticated; it takes it deeper. What undoes the fusing is that, instead of you being your self, you are being openness and softness of heart in the midst of your self as it is, without any focus of result. Your self isn’t what you are. Openness and softness of heart is.

When you’re identified with your self and you, awareness, are fused with your self, you’re caught in an illusion. What that’s like on a physical level is your skin having third degree burns where your clothing, where the burn is, is attached to your skin. If you try to separate the material from your skin, you’ll pull your skin off. Once you’ve fused as awareness to your self and you try to pull your self off, you’ll hurt your self. Leave it all as it is. By you being the same as your being in the midst of that condition, all there is for you in the midst of that fusion is openness and softness of heart, without any focus on results.

You don’t need to serve. You don’t need to create. You are free to return to your heart without doing something. Then, within your innocence returned to, you’re free to express what you are in doing whatever you like.

Q: Thank you.