Q: I would like your assistance in taking me deeper into my knowing. I’m longing to rest more in my heart, and I notice that there’s a guardedness that arises, and a mistrust, and fears, beliefs around rejection. I’ve done a lot looking at that but somehow it just comes in through the backdoor, and even though I know that it’s a projection or it’s a thought, I can’t seem to cut the pattern.

John: There’s no pattern that stays with you that isn’t serving you. You wanting to be free of it pulls it in tighter. What does work, however, is you enjoying being in your heart at all costs. The first part means nothing without the second part. When it is at all costs, there is nothing in the way. When it is at all costs, you’re free. Add to that a single condition and you are back in the game.

Q: Can you elaborate on “at all costs” and what I get out of holding onto a pattern?

John: When you relate to a pattern, you use that pattern to be grounded in your self. Your relationship to the pattern gives you an artificial sense of your self. It’s an artificial relating. It isn’t a real relating. As you relate to a pattern, your way of being in that relating isn’t at all like your own being, so it’s that manner in your relating that separates you from your heart.

As soon as you enjoy being in your heart, you’re there. The longing to be in your heart doesn’t bring you into your heart. The longing to be in your heart means that at that moment you’re facing your heart, while still being separate. Enjoying being in your heart brings you right in, but you won’t be able to sustain it unless enjoying being in your heart, you enjoying that your heart has you, is at any cost to your self.

When it is at any personal cost, that means that you being in your heart has no competition in you; that you, awareness, are not divided or split; that you, awareness, are all in your heart; that you won’t sell out on your heart for absolutely anything in your self and in your life; that nothing else has purchase with you; that you won’t leave your heart for someone to like you; that you won’t leave your heart for love, for someone to love you. You won’t leave your heart for you to have any kind of control in your self. You won’t leave your heart to be right about something. You won’t leave your heart for you to be right or wrong.

Q: I’ve left my heart already by wondering how I can sustain this! It seems so enormous.

John: In your self you’re not capable of sustaining it. In your self you’re not able to return to your heart. Use your self to return to your heart and you go even deeper into your longing self – love your heart. It doesn’t matter how and when you leave your heart. What matters is, as soon as you see that, that you directly enjoy being in your heart without addressing anything in your self.

Q: Does that mean without paying attention to the patterns or…?

John: Yes. If you work with your patterns, you feed your self. If you enjoy being in your heart, you are watering your heart. Working with a pattern makes your self more important than your heart.

Q: So, when the feeling of not belonging in the world arises, I find it very difficult to enjoy being in my heart.

John: That’s because you value that feeling more, in a negative way, than you being in your heart. What it means is that you would rather struggle than love. Struggling with your self makes your self important. You enjoying being in your heart makes what you know the truth of in your heart important.

Q: The struggle is still happening. I seem to be struggling with letting go of the struggling!

John: While the monkeys of struggle are running about in your self, enjoy being in your heart.

Q: So to include it all.

John: You don’t need to include any of it. All there is that is included in your heart is you. There, nothing else is of any consequence to you.

While you’re struggling in your self, hold the hand of your heart and listen.