Q: I would like to ask you a question regarding my own physical health, as I have a large brain tumour. What I want to ask you is why is it here and how can I heal it?

John: It isn’t first why it is there and how you can heal it. It’s first really how you can be in it. You have the opportunity to be deeply, quietly, sweetly okay in it. It isn’t there for you to heal it. It’s there for you to be okay in it. It’s there for you to be open in it.

Q: So what does that mean? Should I not do something about it?

John: Do what you can about it without that being your first priority. You do what you can about it because that’s you taking care of your body, but aside from that, really it’s there for you to open in.

Q: How do I open?

John: By you being fundamentally okay, within, in the presence of something that goes against the conditioning in your self. As you open in it, you’ll be facing things that you haven’t dealt with in your self.

Q: I want to open. I just don’t know how to do it.

John: The way that you are after you lie down to go to sleep. As you relax and you near sleep, you’re opening. You’re opening in such a way that you’re not dependent on your thinking and your feeling; you’re not dependent on your self and its past. So there you are, opening into what you really are, and what passes away as you near sleep is who you are, and you’re able to live that way while you’re awake, where what you really are means so much more to you than who you are. Having a tumour doesn’t threaten what you are; it threatens your sense of who you are. What you really are isn’t going to die. Who you are is going to die.

Q: So do you mean accepting death? Is that what I have to do?

John: It’s what you get to do. You get to let who you are unconditionally open, enabling you to be what you really are in the midst of who you are; you being what isn’t going to pass away in the midst of everything that is going to pass away.

Q: So how do I handle that when I get afraid?

John: By being what you naturally come into when you lie down to go to sleep. What occurs is that you deeply relax. You relax right out of your forms, and you’re able to relax as awareness in the same way when you feel afraid. As you without the use of thought or feeling relax, that’s you, awareness, opening.

In our conditioning we open when we feel good; we open as soon as something goes well for us, and when we don’t feel good, we close. When something affects our experience adversely we close, and in that way we identify with our experience and sense of who we are. We align with what is going to pass away.

What you most love, within, is unconditionally opening.

Q: And what can I do? How can I act to get into that state?

John: By being sweetly okay with having a tumour, so that you having a tumour has no ill effects on you.

Q: That’s quite difficult.

John: Without that you can’t really live. Without that you’ll exist protecting your self. You’ll exist protecting your sense of who you are. Every little thing in some way will affect who you are.

Q: So what is the difference between accepting and giving up?

John: Giving up is closing. You can coldly accept, which is a sophisticated kind of closing that has some openness in it. Where you do move into acceptance, move into a deep, quiet, warm acceptance; you, awareness, being warmly okay in having a tumour. It isn’t to have and be a warm acceptance because you have no choice or because that’s how you deal with a tumour or that’s how you deal with your self. Move into a warm acceptance because that is what is really you.

It is real and true for you to be warmly okay, within, regardless of what affects your self and your body. That warm okayness is the beginning of your being, where it is no longer your experience that determines what you really are, but rather what you are being, within, that puts you into what you really are. If something scares you, quietly open, within. It’s that openness that puts you right into what is real.

Addressing a difficulty or a problem won’t make you real. Without a deeper beingness in the midst of addressing a difficulty, you’ll be separating from your heart. You being in your heart matters more than your health. Being in your heart matters more than anything that you experience; being in your heart matters more than your life. You being in your heart is the source of your inner life.

As soon as you step into fear or concern for your self, you leave your inner life and you treat your outer life and the life of your self as your real life, when your real life is much deeper than your experience and it’s much deeper than your self. The simplicity of your real inner life begins in your heart; you being gentled and quieted in your heart, unconditionally and at any personal cost.

Q: How do I know if I’m in my heart?

John: When you’re in your heart, you will sweetly see past your self, you’ll sweetly see beyond your own experience. When you’re in your heart, you like seeing, regardless of what you’re experiencing. You like seeing despite what you see.

When you’re in your heart, you begin to relate to what is outside of your self in a way that isn’t polarized. When you’re not in your heart, you relate to everything through want and need. You relate to everything as what you like and what you don’t like. When you’re in your heart there’s a deep quiet liking, within. It isn’t a polarized liking.

Q: So when I realize I’m not in my heart, what can I do? I can’t go to sleep all the time to get into that in-between state, so what is, what is for me to do to get back into my heart?

John: You can enjoy being gentled and quieted, within, regardless of everything else that’s going on, and that you don’t need to change anything first for you to be gentled and quieted in your heart.

Q: But I think that would probably be hard for me to do. Are we all capable of that process?

John: Yes, because it is what we first are. What we first are is beingness. Beingness has no relationship to polarization. It’s in our un-integrated selves where we’re polarized, where we relate to reality by how something affects our self, when reality is first beingness.

Reality isn’t first an experience. When you are being real, within, what you are is warmly okay. That warm okayness, within, is you. If something frustrates your self, you don’t need to ease that frustration for you to be warmly okay, within. In the midst of frustration or in the midst of something that annoys you, you can be warmly okay without fixing something first. Then it is warm okayness that addresses a difficulty instead of not okayness that addresses a difficulty.

Q: So do you mean I cannot change it? I cannot do anything about it, but I can accept it and I must just leave it there? Or do you mean that if I get into my heart and I am able to be okay with it, it can actually heal?

John: Yes, but don’t be in your heart for a result, such as to heal something. Be in your heart because that is what is real and true for you.

When it is beingness that you’re responding to, then there isn’t anything in your self, your past, your experience, there isn’t anything in life that prevents you. As soon as your okayness inside is dependent on your experience or the condition of your body or your life, you make you dependent on something that isn’t you.

For you to be what you really are, you have need of nothing. There isn’t anything on any level that needs to change for you to be what you really are.

Q: It sounds simple when you explain it, but I don’t find it simple in reality to be in that okayness.

John: That’s because you’re in the habit of relating, within and to what’s outside of your self, in a way that’s polarized.

Q: When I’m in that habit, how can I change it?

John: By realizing where you do open, and there realize the meaning and the value of that openness. When you’re honest to what you know within that openness, you realize that that openness is of greater value than what your experience is.

It’s through a deep, quiet inner honesty that you realize what actually means the most and that meaning isn’t dependent on your experience. It isn’t dependent on you having something. Meaning doesn’t come from the outside in. Meaning is really something that you rest as. There isn’t meaning for you to get. There is a deep inner meaning that is for you to be. Meaning is first a deep, quiet beingness. As you, awareness, relax, what you are being is meaning.

Q: Does it take a specific practice to get there?

John: A practice can be helpful because it directs you to what you really know the truth of, within, but a practice itself isn’t the same as what it points you to. The difficulty with engaging a practice is as soon it begins to work, you’ll identify with the practice instead of what it is that made the practice work. What makes it work is your own beingness. A practice gives you something in your self to focus on while you are opening and softening, within. It engages an artificial sense of what works. It’s your openness, within, that makes a practice work.

A practice will work because of your own beingness and as soon as you realize that, then you realize you don’t need that practice for you open.

Q: What would I do as my next step?

John: Quietly open, within, without addressing anything in your self first. Be quietly okay, within, in the midst of something that doesn’t feel okay.

Your deep okayness isn’t dependent on anything else. It isn’t dependent on your body doing well. It isn’t dependent on any feeling. When you feel sick in your body, that doesn’t prevent you from being quietly okay, within, and that quiet okayness doesn’t need to make your experience better. When something troubles you, feeling troubled doesn’t prevent you from being quietly and warmly okay, within, in the midst of feeling troubled.

You being warmly okay within in the midst of a trouble makes you, right there, deeper than your troubles. It’s your own beingness, within, that frees you of your troubles. Your troubles don’t need to go away for you to be what you really are. If you address your troubles so that you can feel okay, there’s no end to that. That is you pursuing okayness by addressing your experience, by addressing your body and your life.

Your real okayness comes from deep within, deeper than any experience. Your real okayness comes by you being still within. That stillness is that you have no fundamental need to address your self or your life for you to be.

Q: I’m still afraid that it might be easier just to accept what is happening and then not doing the best I can to regain my health.

John: If the best that you can isn’t from the inside out, it won’t be real; it will be a distraction for you. If the best that you can is addressing your health, then as soon as you have your health you won’t be any better. You’ll be separate from what’s much deeper, within.

It isn’t worth separating, within, to save your life. It isn’t worth separating, within, to feel better. It isn’t worth separating, within, to have something. It isn’t worth separating to protect what you think you have. As soon as you separate for any reason at all, you’re separate. If you leave your heart for anything at all, then you’re not in your heart.

The truth, within, is that your heart is worth more than your life. It’s worth more than anything that you can have. It’s worth more than any experience. It’s your home. It’s worth you being in your heart in the midst of anything in your life, and that you will just quietly not leave your heart for anything. That’s you being what you really are in your life. That’s what brings in depth of you in whatever it is that you do.

Your real presence begins with you in your heart. Remain in your heart unconditionally and at any personal cost and you’ll realize everything that’s deeper, within, than your heart. Your heart, open and soft, gentled and quieted, is like the door to your being, and that you live your life with the door to your being open. And it is the presence of being that is the deep value of your life.

Q: How can I make sure that I do things wholeheartedly?

John: By being honest to your heart; you being more honest to your heart than to what you think and feel. That’s what opens up the deeper levels of thought and feeling. Instead of feeling better you get to feel more delicately. The delicateness of feeling comes from what you really are; it doesn’t come from feeling better.

Q: What would I do to know that I’m heading in the right direction?

John: Start noticing how easily you open. When you’re hungry, you’ll easily close until you can eat, and as soon as you eat you feel better and because you feel better you open. That’s you conditionally opening. When you do conditionally open, notice the goodness of that opening. Notice how you open because you’ve eaten. Notice the beingness of openness while you eat and after you’ve eaten. Notice that every time that you eat, and then once you’re clear in that and you see it all the time and you’re no longer taking it for granted, then make a little change, and that is that you will open in the same way that you do while you eat and after you’ve eaten, but you’ll open just like that before you eat. Take a little bit of time to open before you eat so that you’re no longer eating for that openness, and you begin to value being okay without having to first feel okay.

Make that shift within little things in your life. What you’ll realize is that you are returning to your first love. Your first love is warm okayness, within, that isn’t dependent on anything. That is you being what you really are. Notice your okayness when you feel good and then quietly be the same when you don’t feel good. What you uncover in that is the source of you. What you come into is pure you.

Before you do anything to feel better, such as when you’re cold and then you put a sweater on, with your sweater in hand, be okay within while feeling a little cold. As soon as you come into that quiet okayness, then put your sweater on.

Q: And if I can’t get into it, what can I do to help it come?

John: By you liking being okay, without you having to feel okay.

When you stand in a shower and it feels so good with the hot water moving over your body, be in the warmth of that, the physical warmth of that, and realize your okayness. It’s connected to your experience. As soon as you isolate your okayness, then slowly turn the heat down on your shower. It won’t be as warm, but it feels all right. But as you lose some of the heat of the shower, notice how you’re still able to be okay even though it doesn’t feel as good and keep turning the heat down until the shower is cold and notice how you’re able to be okay while it really doesn’t feel okay. As soon as you lose it, add some heat. As soon as you realize your okayness, turn the heat down again.

What you realize is that being okay, within, isn’t dependent on your comfort. It’s dependent on you consciously being what you really are. As you realize that, you come to love you.

Q: How do I know who I really am?

John: You know how to be open in a hot shower and also in a cool shower.

Q: But how do I know that it’s genuine, that it’s real?

John: You already know the value of it, so engage that value. You don’t need to get it right. Just keep engaging that value. The more you engage it, the clearer it becomes.

Q: So is that by doing it often?

John: Any of it, all of it. As you engage it, you realize more and more that the less you do the easier it is. Before long you realize it isn’t at all any kind of doing. It’s like it’s a sweet beingness that is actually always there.

Start living it and you’ll see more. The more that you live it, the more you see. You realize that as you open within, you love. The openness and the love isn’t dependent on anything that you experience. It isn’t dependent on how others treat you. It isn’t dependent on your quality of life. It is dependent only on you.

Q: You said I don’t have to do it right, but if I’m the only one who can do it, then I have to do it right otherwise it won’t happen.

John: As you seemingly do what you really are, like making it simpler and simpler. Like making it easier and easier. You can’t really do so that you can be, but if you’re going to try to do so that you can be, then go ahead and do to be, but as you do, make it easier and simpler. What will happen then is that the doing will come to rest because you are relaxing in it and what remains is you being. Do to be, but continually make it easier and you’ll end up being what you really are, realizing that it never was a process even though you engaged a process. If you keep making it simple, you’ll get there.