Q: When is the nature of our truth the real truth and not an illusion?

John: When it is profoundly nourishing and it frees you of your self.

Q: And is that what surrender is as well? I can feel it, and I can hold it for a certain length of time, but then the situation changes and emotions become involved and that feeling of surrender seems to have dissipated. Can you talk about holding surrender, how you live surrender?

John: You can’t hold it or maintain it; you cannot use your will. It’s more like letting surrender sustain you.

Q: If there is a situation that’s of dissent, what would be the process of surrendering to that?

John: It’s the love of remaining completely undone within your heart in the midst of that dissention.

Q: So is it a process of bringing your mind back, of reminding your self on a continuous basis of that?

John: If you have to remind your self then your heart is not there, whereas if you are in love with it, if you’re in love with it more than anything in your whole life then your heart is always there and you never need to remind your self. You would then never have to use your mind.

Q: How do you attain that state?

John: By letting your self realize what it is that is truly worth living for; letting your whole heart fall in love with that so that your whole heart is totally consumed, that it is in love with being completely mastered by whatever little bit you know is true to the core. It’s you letting your whole heart be completely possessed by what you know is truly worth more than life itself.

The only difficulty with that is that will not help out any of your hopes or any of your personal dreams; that that which you would be completely in love with is not there to help your life, that it is there then to just simply fully live in your heart and that it can have your whole heart and your whole mind and your emotions and your body through which it can express itself. With that, there is the most profound letting go of all of your agendas, anything that you would ever want for your self. If it wasn’t for the perceived loss and the perceived cost, everyone would do it. It is only because there is the perceived loss of all of your baggage, all of your collectables that you will not forfeit that to have your first love back. So then we sacrifice and abandon what we know to keep something that we actually know is of no true and deep value. Then we end up living and serving this little bit of personal baggage within that we treat as being dear, and yet we know it’s not. And when our heart is set on that, then we take everything personally.

Q: So essentially it’s giving up the personal, the personality, and any sense of gain.

John: The personality itself is completely wonderful. The living for personal gain is not. When we live for gain then we use and abuse our own personality. We’ll live and exist in different aspects of it just because we perceive that there is in that an advantage, instead of existing in the whole of the personality without having any preference of which aspect shows. Then innocence lives in the personality instead of a personal agenda.

Q: And it’s loss of that personal agenda that causes fear? Or maybe it’s the fear of giving up what is familiar for the unknown.

John: We think that, but that’s not what we know. That well of goodness that is within is completely contrary to our own personal agendas and it is truly much more deeply familiar. It is the only place within that there’s rest. It is only unfamiliar to that personal agenda, but not to your heart. It’s unfamiliar to what you’ve learned and what you’ve been taught, and yet it is all that your heart really knows. You may not understand it and yet it is still truly your first love. There’s nothing else that can truly win your heart. It is the realization of that and letting your self fully recognize that, and the surrender then is letting your whole heart lay down inside of that; letting everything that you are acquiesce with that first love, and then living being that regardless of what that may ever cost you.

It is so profoundly simple. All that there is that you cannot keep is your own way. You cannot ever have your own way. The more that we try, the more that we hurt ourselves and others. No one can ever have their own way. One can try and insist and force it, and the more that it is forced, the less they have it. All the energy that you put into having your own way, it requires the same amount of energy to keep it and to protect it, and the moment that your whole heart relaxes, it’s gone. We can think that we’re getting our own way but we’re not.

The more that we insist on living to have our own way, the body tightens, the mind tightens, the emotions tighten. Everything becomes restricted and then we wonder after so many years of living why we are still lost, why after so long we are still incomplete, why there is still so much that has to be held together. Wondering how it is that we start out so innocent and after so many years that we have still not attained what we started with: that innocence, that total transparency of heart, living in such a quality and a purity of heart that there is no need for self protection, no need for hiding from oneself or hiding oneself from others. We yearn to be that innocence again, and we view that as being a place of arrival, when that is the beginning. We left our beginning, and what it is that we are here for cannot unfold. It cannot blossom until there is, once again, innocence. Then the unfolding continues. Without the innocence we force an opening up and unfolding that is according to what we would like to have, what we would like to be. It’s all self imposed and that only turns us into something that we’re not.

Q: So in that, you drop being somebody that knows something. In fact there’s no identification. You’re not a beginner and not a knower.

John: There is a knowing, but one that has no identity of being that, and yet you are being that. So there’s no self-consciousness. The being of it moves from the inside out. It manifests itself, it flows, it expresses itself without any thought of the self. Then it is just truly fully being oneself. Within that, there are no opinions. Within that, opinions have absolutely no value. Within that, nothing is ever acquired; there is no attainment, there is nothing to keep, there is not anything to lose. What you are then is intimacy being profoundly nourished in the midst of anything; that what you are is not governed by your own patterns or the patterns of others; that this intimacy is simply free. It is not constrained or limited. It doesn’t even watch itself.

Q: My previous teacher loved intellectual discussion, delving behind the meaning, which was exhausting. His message was one of truth and love, and oneness, but it was difficult to get to behind all the words.

John: Then it’s not the same. Then understanding is a distraction. Value is given to understanding when understanding, real understanding, is a fruit of being. It isn’t something that you can get to or hold.

Q: I have felt in the past that I was starting in ignorance and I was going to get to wisdom. And what I’ve come to understand is that there is an unfolding of understanding. I realize that I was a seeker, and in seeking I’m not being present.

John: Wisdom is the absolute and the warm okayness of being ignorant, so much so that there is no need to change, there is no hope of learning, there is no view of attainment. When that quality of energy goes into life, then it learns everything of the heart within the mind at an astronomical rate because there is nothing in the way. Then it’s love that learns, love that understands without anything ever being held. Honesty and surrender is the only way back in. Everything that helps also makes it just as much difficult.

The only thing that can ever make it impossible being what it is that you came out of, is you’re helping it. Then you’re maintaining something that isn’t needed. Honesty all by itself, right to the core, followed with a complete surrender to what honesty knows. That is the merge back into what you left, and in being that there is not even honesty and surrender anymore. Honesty works when you’re not being honest. Surrender works when you’re not surrendering. Honesty and surrender is the way back in. Once your whole heart is being what is real, then there’s no longer even honesty and surrender; there is only the transparent sweetness of being. Nothing holds it together, nothing helps it.

Q: Most of us only come to this when we’re facing death, when there are no more doors, no more trying.

John: Then just before they died, that is when they really began their life, and everything before that is much of just a lie – the maintaining of something that isn’t real, that is not worth living for. It’s not worth being. It is dying well before your body ever dies. Then life begins. That is a wonderful condition of fulfillment. It is in such a way that no one can cheat it. The most practised thief within can never get around it. Being on a spiritual path only makes it worse.

It is only being it now, and very gently losing and letting go of anything in its way so that it can be what you really are instead of you. You lose your whole life, and what is really your being lives it instead of you. Then what lives it is the real you instead of a made up imaginary one that exists by way of hope and fear, protecting itself, ensuring that everything goes its way; living in one’s own blindness even though the real gold of what is your own innermost is always, in the most gentle way, knocking and asking if it can have your space.

Q: Thank you.