Q: Can you speak to the relation between manifesting deeper levels of being and the okayness with pain?

John: The warm okayness and being as is, the warm okayness is a result of awareness responding to what it knows. What it knows isn’t an intellectual kind of knowledge. What awareness knows is the simplest beingness. What awareness knows directly, as soon as it begins to relax even a little bit, is to open and to soften. What awareness opens into and softens into is a fundamental okayness. The kind of okayness, a quality and a depth of okayness that isn’t dependent on any experience. It’s present beingness.

Because you’re in a body and you have a self, a conditioned self, a self that isn’t the same yet as what your own being is like, for you to be in your body and to be in any kind of surface movement requires the use of your unintegrated self. That puts you into the experience of lack and vulnerability, because you experience in some way how your self is not yet like your own being. If you’re being that okayness in the midst of your unintegrated self, you’ll be manifesting the truth of that beingness on the level of your self, a level that is of much denser form than the density of your being.

When you bring your real beingness, such as okayness, into the level of your self by being that okayness, you are manifesting a tiny little bit of your being on the level of your self. The manifestation of that okayness shows up as a difference in seeing; that you’ll see differently in your self than what your self is like. You’ll see differently through your self than what your self is like. The manifestation of okayness, the manifestation of that tiny little bit of your being in your self, is that you are moving as awareness in a way that isn’t conditioned, straight through all of your self that is conditioned. Manifestation of your being occurs and you see differently.

The manifestation continues, and in the midst of your conditioned self you begin to think and to feel differently. You’re introducing form to your self, through your self, that originates in your being. As a tiny little bit of your own being moves in the level of your self, that tiny little bit of your being comes into the level of density that your self is of, without that tiny little bit of your being being conditioned by your conditioned self.

The manifestation means that your being comes into density by coming into your self, which transforms your self – a further level of density, a further level of manifestation of your being. As the manifestation continues into more form, the manifestation enters your person. As it enters your person, this most delicate okayness transforms your perspective, the perspective of your person. As okayness, by you being it, governs the perspective of your person, your personal perspectives open, soften, and transform.

Q: How do you define the difference between self and person?

John: Your person is the outer manifestation of your self and it’s the form of your self, your outward self, that you use to interact with others. Most notably, your person appears as your personality. Your person shows as your outward manner; your self shows as your inward manner. The two are intimately connected.

Q: My experience has been that the stronger I become as that okayness and as being, the more pain there is within my experience, and there is more capacity to hold it, but there’s also increasing levels of pain within the experience.

John: That’s because when you’re being fundamentally okay and you’re being that within your self, and your person that isn’t yet like your being, you directly experience its lack. The experience of lack in your self and in your person is painful. The lack registers as pain, but as you’re being that unconditioned okayness in the midst of that pain, the pain opens. Your experience of that might be more pain, but if you stay with that unconditioned beingness, the pain isn’t endless. The unconditioned okayness is endless and, as it moves in the midst of the lack in your self and in your person, that which is painful transforms. The okayness manifested in the place of that pain, with that space of your self, your person and pain transformed, you come into an unconditioned happiness in your self, as a self in your person, and as a person, that shows as joy.

Q: I’m coming more and more to a place of just accepting that the pain is going to be there forever. I just do that as an internal movement and just being okay with that.

John: What manner of acceptance? It’s critical. Is it warm or cold?

Q: It’s cold.

John: Then it isn’t genuine.

Q: When I manifest that level of acceptance in the midst of very intense pain, it feels…I would describe it as defeat, but in a very enjoyable sense.

John: Where the acceptance and the okayness is cold, you’d be disassociating from something in your self and something in your person. When you disassociate, you close down. Something of your self and your person closes through the use of acceptance.

When the okayness is warm, whatever that warm okayness is in the midst of… if it’s in the midst of pain in your self, your self opens; in your person, your person opens.

Q: I find it challenging to have the acceptance with warmth without there being hope of my person and my self transforming as a result of it. That’s where I have the cold acceptance instead.

John: The warmth replaces hope. Hope, in the way that you’ve related to it, is cold.

Q: So the warmth you’re speaking of is a direct coming into being.

John: And when you’re being that in the midst of your self, it’s a direct coming in of your being into your self, which in some way makes your self a tiny little bit more just like your being.

Q: The cold acceptance is a sort of defense within the self to buffer the pain.

John: Which separates you from your being and makes your self worse. Openness in the midst of your self frees you, and softness of heart in the midst of your self warms you.

Q: Does the experience of psycho-emotional pain continue for as long as there is a body and beingness grows to such a level that it dissolves immediately, or does it stop at some point?

John: There isn’t an end to the coming into your self and to the development of your self. While you’re in a body there isn’t an end to pain, but the more that you manifest your being in your self, the less that pain has anything to do with you. Pain ceases to govern your experience.

Q: Is it the teaching and the movements that have to develop within being in order to make your self like your being?

John: Your self becomes what you’re being in it. That’s for better or for worse. If you’re being your conditioning, the conditioning of your self, if you’re being that conditioning in your self, your self will worsen and the conditioning becomes harder. If you’re being even just the tiniest little bit of your own being in the midst of your conditioned self, just by virtue of being that, your self transforms. It’s a magical transformation. It doesn’t require effort.

Q: So the value of that transformation is just because it’s true…because it’s just being your own being.

John: The value is to you as a being, experienced in you as a self. The value is that you’re working out your own being into your self. The value is that your own being comes into the density of your self. Your own being comes further out into form. Your own being has more form.

The value to your being coming further out into form while you’re in a body is that, when you do die, your being is so much more for you having been in a body. If you live a life and when you die your being hasn’t developed while you were in a body, that is great loss because the opportunity of being in a body has been spent on the conditioning in your self. When that same opportunity of being in a body is spent on your being, your being not only comes into your self, but it develops. As it comes further out into form it develops by virtue of being it; being it through difficulty.

Q: So the value of this plane of existence is being embodying and having freedom within form.

John: The value of being in a body is that you’re able to embody your being. As you embody your being, you prove your being on a level of form that your being didn’t have.

Q: So it’s the opportunity to realize new forms.

John: As a being, yes. When that same opportunity is spent on gain and loss in your self, if you live that way throughout your life, you’ve missed the opportunity of your lifetime. The opportunity is then spent on illusion: the wastage of life, instead of it being spent on what you know the truth of, the introduction of your being to more form.