Q: As the years go by, I find that I am more in my being. I find more tenderness. I see people as they really are, but I don’t find joy or love in my day-to-day life or when I’m in my being. I find my mind more absent. My physical health is deteriorating and it’s harder for me to actually live my daily life. I find that anxiety grasps my heart and makes it harder to feel, and so actually when I’m in my being, I don’t feel anything or I don’t connect; I don’t love.

John: What this means is that your self is in a state that is a little bit like your being, and that state requires maintenance. It’s that maintenance that drains you and affects your health. Energy is going to something that isn’t real. 

What you’re in is a mixture. Instead of addressing that mixture from anything that you can understand in your self, address the mix by the mixture of beingness that’s in it. There you can’t use thought and feeling. All you have is what you know directly, as awareness, of depth and quality that isn’t about thought or feeling; it isn’t about an experiential state. 

Whatever you are being in your self determines the state of your self. When you’re being the same as your being, that alters the state of your self. Your sense of what’s different in your self, that’s not you and it isn’t your being. It’s the result in your self of what you’re being in it. The misunderstanding, then, is when you shift into being that different state. Maintaining that state is hard on your body; it’s hard on your self. It’s like making the goodness of a child dependent on its behaviour. 

Q: Why, then, even if I am in a state of being, I still don’t feel love? Just some sort of remote emotions toward others without the connection of mutual feelings.

John: You don’t need to. While love is not a feeling, it does produce, in its movement, depth of feeling. What hampers that result is any lack of development in your self. The lack of development isn’t a problem, but it will feel like one. 

You’re able to be, as awareness, what love is. That’s like you being rested, within, in the absence of you feeling that. Then you are love without a face. Love needs no face, but as your self heals and develops, love then has a face, enabling you within your self to experience accurately what you’re being in it. That reflection isn’t you. It’s the result of you being within your self. 

Q: So I just need to be in my being regardless of what happens to the self, and just let things unfold?

John: You being quietly within okay as is, regardless of anything that you’re experiencing. So you’re not consulting what you think and what you feel. You’re not consulting your experience as to how you are being. 

Q: So if I think that the being is changed, that means that I’m not really in my being because my being is stillness and is not affected by anything?

John: You can’t trust what you think and what you feel to tell you the truth of anything, that’s deeper within than your self. Your experience won’t tell you the truth; you do. 

Q: I’m not sure that knowledge is always accessible.

John: That’s like saying that the deeper levels of you are not always accessible to you. When you are being purely you, all of you is available to you. 

When you’re identified with what you’re thinking and feeling, when you’re identified with a state in your self that is somewhat like your being, you separate. You, awareness, separate from the deeper levels of you. The deeper levels that you can’t seem to get to is because you’re adhering to your experience. 

Q: So earlier when I said I was in my being, it might have been that I was actually relating to a part of my self that is like my being and not actually my being?

John: It’s because of relating to a state in your self that is the result of you being something of your being in the midst of your self. You’re relating to the result. It’s pretty close but it’s not it. One tiny little step back to what created that state is it. 

Q: It might sound like a tiny step. I’m not sure it’s such a small one!

John: The more that you love the subtlety of it, the easier it is. 

The best that you can do for the health of your body is not what you put in it, and it’s also not what you move in it, such as thought and feeling. It’s what you’re being in it.

Real beauty is for you to be what you really are in the midst of any kind of physical health, mental health, or emotional health. It wouldn’t really matter if all of them would be sick, as long as you’re not.

Q: Well, I’ll just have to make sure that I am in my being and not in my self.

John: That comes by you quietly dwelling in your heart.

Q: Thank you.