Q: Hello, John. I would like to talk about silence teaching. When I’m here in the presence of you, this is to me very obvious, but I have the impression that when I’m at home this is also happening. During the day sometimes sentences you spoke come up and give me a tremendous sense of deepening. But there is a very tiny movement of hesitation or doubt which immediately stops the movement of going deeper, much deeper. Can you say something about that?

John: Your use of doubt prevents you. If doubt didn’t serve you at all, you wouldn’t have it. Doubt doesn’t honestly serve you.

Q: I keep it alive, you say. Why is that? What purpose does it have?

John: It saves you. That little touch of doubt saves you from completely disappearing into what you know.

Q: Is that fear?

John: When you are profoundly honest, you not only have no fear, you can’t even relate to fear.

Q: The doubt has a voice. Sometimes it says, “Are you worth this?”

John: That’s silly. The last 1% that isn’t surrendered to what you know…anything that that last 1% can say is silly.

When you surrender, completely surrender the last 1%, that doesn’t make a 1% difference. It makes about perhaps a 90% difference. What is condensed within that last 1% is enormous. It’s when you are in the last 1% facing complete surrender that you’re facing everything. When you surrendered 90%, there’s a great deal of comfort that’s left over. 10% to play with is a lot. When you’re down to 1%, there’s only a tiny little bit that’s left over and in that tiny little bit everything has been invested. The let-go of the last little bit is the biggest because, in that, there is no return.

With 99% surrender to your heart, to what you know in your heart, to your being, you only need about 4% of the use of your brain. When you surrender that last percent, you are in great need of the more of your own brain.

Q: How do I mobilize that?

John: By you directly living in what you know is the more of you. That comes through that last percent.

With 100% surrender, you no longer have loyalty to familiarity. Familiarity is then no longer your safety. When there is 100% surrender, knowing is your safety. As soon as you know, you’re in. Within any tiny awakening to knowing even a tiny little bit more, it doesn’t matter then what you know, how foreign what you newly know is to your self. The moment you know, you’re gone. You’re completely gone in. With 100% surrender, it is true, even in all of your experience, that there isn’t anything that is in the way.

Q: I find myself looking for some sort of safe space.

John: Safe is real only because of the truth. It exists purely and only in the truth. It only really exists in what you know. It is absolutely safe for what you are to be one with all you know. 1% separation from that isn’t safe.

For oneness, everything is safe. It’s profoundly safe to live and it is as safe to die.

Q: This is a huge compression I experience.

John: You don’t need it after you’ve died. After you’ve died, it won’t exist. It doesn’t help you live.

Any part of you that isn’t surrendered to what you know will be gone after you’ve died and, while you live, whatever part isn’t surrendered doesn’t help you live; it introduces only an illusory complication. Any way that you try to deal with it fuels the illusion. All of the energy of that, all of the energy that is used in that, belongs to oneness moving in form. Its movement in form isn’t possible without that 1%. With as little as 1% not completely given over to what you know, you are not one. The difference that that 1% makes is enormous. It accomplishes a self-created trip hazard.

It’s like a little half-inch difference in the floor; you’ll catch it every time, and as awareness you’re genius enough to be able to move that half inch difference wherever you need it most. As soon as you are really onto what you know, you get that half-inch little difference in your floor to come up and save you from being completely absorbed in what you know. It will keep you from being gone.

Q: Being gone gives me impressions like getting lost in things I do not know what, as if my life turns completely upside down and I’m going to do things I’ll maybe regret, I don’t know.

John: You just made that up. In surrender, you don’t lose control; you gain control. What you are gains complete control of everything that’s yours. You come into real control of your self. You won’t be using your self to trip you anymore. You don’t lose facility in your self. You come into new ability in your self, so much more that your brain will open. You’ll need more of your brain than ever before. When you’re in the more of you, the more of your brain opens. Your brain opens as you do. Everything that is real exists by openness.

Q: So the moment this happens to me, the surrender has to be totally and when there is doubt coming up, I leave it there.

John: When it comes down to the last little bit of doubt in relationship to what you know, anything that you give it is too much. It’s not real. When it comes down to that last little bit that’s left over, you won’t be leaving it alone. There isn’t anything there that’s real to even leave alone. The energy that is in the doubt is simply and beautifully given to what you know. It isn’t taken from the doubt and given to what you know; it is simply available energy within the packaging of doubt. The packaging doesn’t belong to anything. The energy that’s in it belongs to what you know.

That last little bit, in its return to oneness, doesn’t turn away from anything. It doesn’t turn away from doubt or fear. It simply and beautifully turns to what it knows. All that there is, is what it knows. There’s no effort in the return. There is love in the return.

Where there is in awareness core-splitting honesty, you are incapable of doubting or fearing what you know. Where there is core-splitting honesty, what you are is pure response – pure response as awareness to what you know. The movement of that response is love. That doubt can be sustained within an interior reality kept away from physical reality and it causes a separation from oneness, a tiny little break from profound reality.

You wouldn’t entertain that little bit of doubt in physical reality because the feedback within physical reality would leave you impaired. You wouldn’t even be able to do simple physical things. You wouldn’t even be able to go for a walk, because as soon as that little doubt is there concerning physical reality, the obvious in physical reality won’t be obvious anymore.

Your ability to function normally in physical reality is the same ability that you have to be one. Physical reality is reliable for you, not all on its own, but because of your entire response to knowing concerning physical reality. As soon as you know, concerning physical reality, you realize and you learn and it moves so quickly.

You’re able to move with that kind of clarity: awareness in response to knowing within unseen reality, within non-physical reality. It isn’t more difficult in the unseen than in the seen. It isn’t more difficult in what is completely not physical than it is in the physical. What makes it work in the physical is your response to knowing. It’s the same, and it’s only the same that works in the unseen.

Q: Is the kind of feedback the same, because in the physical reality the feedback system is immediately there?

John: The feedback in the physical comes from the physical. What enables that to work is that you know. Without knowing you couldn’t be in the physical, and any physical feedback wouldn’t register for you. Without knowing you wouldn’t know it. The feedback in the unseen is as certain as it is in the physical. The difference is that it’s not seen, but it doesn’t register less in knowing.

Awareness isn’t able to move or be still without knowing. Its ability within what isn’t seen is within knowing. The ability is in the knowing, just as it is in physical reality. You adhere to knowing within physical reality because the consequence of not is physical. The truth within is so easily taken for granted because the consequence of not isn’t physical.

We are multi-levelled awareness, able to be one with what we know in physical reality while at the same time separate from what we know in unseen reality. The consequence of that, though not physical, is dire. The dire consequence is that you are then existing in physical reality not being oneness.

Your first and only real true love is love. When you entertain the guest of doubt or fear, you have given your freedom to love to doubt and fear.