Part 2; continuation of Part 1 Podcast 597 

Q: Where does the term ‘ego’ fit in with person and self and being?

John: The ego is the distortion of awareness moving within the self it has. The ego is awareness investing importance in the self, in the thoughts and feelings within the self and of the self. If you move with self-importance, you have an ego. When you let go of your own self-importance and you no longer do something out of self-importance, then your movement is real and it’s without ego. The ego is not some mysterious thing.

Q: How to drop self-importance?

John: Honestly. If you try extremely hard to drop self importance, that’s just foolishness. That’s just a game. If you make up a choice of words and you chant those words and you add to the use of those words a lovely sound, and you’re doing this to get rid of your self-importance, that’s foolishness. That’s introducing a game. All of the chanting and the tone makes your self feel important in getting rid of its own sense of importance. If you walk bent over on purpose to give self-importance a knock on the head, that’s foolishness. That’s just adding a sophistication of self-importance. It’s just a game.

When you are honest in letting go of self-importance, it’s done right there. There isn’t a use of form to spin something to help you. When you’re genuine, when you’re sincere, when there’s depth to it, it’s done. That’s because you are actually in charge. That which creates self-importance can, in an instant, drop it all. It doesn’t need help.

Q: So, if one stands in one’s integrity, there is no room for self-importance?

John: Yes. Eliminate the mystery. There’s no mystery to integrity. There’s no mystery to oneness. Integrity is immediate to awareness within the self, within how it’s being in the self and how it uses the self. If there’s integrity within the self, it’s because awareness is being clear with what it knows in how to move in itself and how to move itself, and it’s being true to what it knows.

The principle of that follows-through the same in much deeper levels where there is no form, no form of the self. Awareness is able to be in full response to what it knows; not what it knows as a person, as a self. Just what awareness, on its own without the use of anything, knows. If it moves as that, it’s one. If it separates from that, it’s separate.

You know how to move in your person with integrity or separate from integrity. It’s that direct. There’s no mystery, but if you don’t want to see and you don’t want to know, you introduce mystery where there isn’t.

Q: In my experience, knowing seems to be always with limitations. As long as there’s limitations in the knowing, then yes, there’s that ‘beyond’ which would be mystery.

John: Where you are clear in anything, where you are clear, there isn’t a mystery. You can introduce a mystery. In physical reality, where you’re clear, you’re clear.

When you see a doorknob on a door and you approach that door to go in and it’s your door, there’s no mystery how to open that door. But you can spiritualize the opening of that door and you can introduce a mystery.

In physical reality you won’t be that foolish because it looks so stupid, but in your interior you’re able to do that because you can turn away your internal eyes from what you’re doing. You can shut off a part of your self where you would feel foolish and where you would really see. Just turn off the seeing and you can have whatever you like. You can turn what you wish to be true into a personal truth. Add feeling and thought, give it the right kind of spin, and it feels real. It’s not less foolish and stupid than for you to do the same thing in physical reality, but in physical reality you can’t get away with it. In your interior, you can.

In physical reality, if you’re at the top of a building, you can go into a deep meditation, go into a completely different space. Then while you’re in that space, you can walk toward the edge of the rooftop. You can have your feelings and your thinking all congruent, and you’re just going to walk off the end and walk to the next rooftop through midair. It won’t work.

But in your interior you can do that. In your interior, you can start with the teaching of oneness, the whole concept of oneness. You can give that thought and feeling. You can add to that a physical gesture, put it all together, and on your interior you can say, “I am one”. And you can really feel it, and it feels so real. And it’s foolishness.

Q: Does it not also make some sense to realize that there’s always limitations to my knowledge and there is something that is beyond concepts, beyond ideation, beyond…?

John: Yes. Then don’t use ideation and concept. Use that which precedes. You’re able to do that.

Q: So mystery as a term to point to that doesn’t work?

John: Instead of pointing to the part that looks mysterious, point to the part that’s clear. It doesn’t matter how tiny that is. Start with what you do know, however tiny, instead of beginning with what you don’t know. When you start with what you’re not sure about, you’ll be not sure.

Honesty goes directly to that which is clear. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Honesty goes to the part that’s clear. Dishonesty goes to the part that it wishes to be clear, or that it needs to be clear, but it won’t go to the part that is clear.

When there is a core-splitting honesty, right there awareness knows, and awareness is able to be what it knows, but if there isn’t the core-splitting honesty, awareness is able to be honest to a subsequent level. It can be honest to something that it knows doesn’t matter as much. You’re able to be honest to what you feel because that serves what you feel, even if it goes against what you know.

When you see a little bit of money sticking out of someone’s back pocket and you need some money, if you have the really strong feeling of having that money, if you’re completely honest to what you feel, you can take it. But you know better. If you’re honest to a deeper level, the feeling doesn’t count.

You can be honest to what you think, enabling you to rationalize. You can be honest to what you feel and turn it into an emotion. You can be honest to your self, but not to what you know. You’re able to put the honesty where the honesty belongs and you’re able to cross the levels, enabling you to get away with what you want to get away with.

Q: What is the core in core-splitting honesty?

John: Your forms off of you. Not necessarily literally off of you, but your forms being of no influence on you. It’s like clearing the entire table. When you have investments on the table, things that matter to you on the table, you can’t make a clear decision about something without putting aside all of your personal investments. A core honesty functions in the same way, but right to the core.

When it comes to being what you really are, that requires a core honesty that goes much deeper than personal integrity. Personal integrity won’t bring you to what you really are.