Q: You were talking yesterday about accepting violence and accepting. I don’t see how to accept all these things that it seems like nature in me to reject. It’s like sometimes when darkness comes and just seems to overtake you, and just don’t know how to do it.

John: When you have, when you have an issue with some kind of violence outside of you, then you’re having a connection with violence. Your connection with that violence is your resistance to that violence affecting you. When you have such an issue, then you with a similar kind of energy as to what that violence is, you’ll use the similar kind of energy to keep that violence away, and the closer that it gets to you the more you would turn into it. You would use what it is to keep it away from you. When you have an issue with war, it is only because there is warring within you that you don’t like.

When you have no issue with violence outside of you, then violence that is outside of you, melts you. It doesn’t make you strong against it. When you have no resistance toward violence then your way of relating to violence is through compassion. Then you feel within for what that violence is instead of you feeling against it, which makes you like it – that makes you be just like it.

When you have any kind of issue, any kind of belief, that issue and that belief start within you a seed of violence. That seed shows up when someone disagrees with what you believe. There’s something within you that comes up to meet that with an energy other than what is love, so then you find your self being disagreeable.

If you believe that everyone should be loving, that belief will make you violent. If you believe that everyone should be loving, then that is an issue that you have with love. You have an issue then with the lack of love in this world. Then, when someone is not loving toward another or not loving toward you, you’ll be hard on them, which is a mild form of violence. If you have any fear within you, it is at that place where the fear is that you are violent. It’s at that space of fear that you would hurt something outside of you to protect you from what it is that you fear. If you’re argumentative, that is violence within you.

Anything other than love is violent. If you try to be loving, that makes you violent. It is
only love itself that has no violence. If you have a need to be loved, that makes you violent. When you have a need to be loved, then you’ll hold someone outside of you responsible to love you, and when they don’t you’ll be upset. That upset is your violence toward them in not giving you what you’re wanting from them.

Anything within you that is tight, that tightness is violence within you. Anything that crosses that tightness within you, then you’ll use the energy of that tightness and you’ll manifest that tightness outside of you. The way that that shows is the use of force. When you are arguing with someone, you’re using force to convince them of something that you have a need within your self for that person to see the way you do. And because they’re not seeing it the way that you do, when you simply explain your self, then your tone changes, you add more energy to your explanation, and then you’re arguing. You’re being violent. If you have an issue with any kind of violence it is because you are violent within and you don’t want to see it and you don’t like that it’s there. So then you’ll judge something outside of you that is within you and just like you. Then you’re dealing with violence but not the violence that’s within you.

Q: How to deal with the violence within?

John: Letting your self see it. Letting your self see how much it’s there, and how much it’s everywhere within you; letting your self see how much violence is actually a part of so much of what you and why you do it.

When you do see it, then it’s not doing anything with it; not trying to change it. The need to change the violence within you: you would use violence to do so. When there’s a need within to change, the energy of that is coarse. It’s not gentle. It’s not soft. When you have a need within to change because you see that there’s violence within you, then you’ll be hard on your self. Being hard on your self is being violent with your self. It’s letting your eyes open to simply see what you haven’t wanted to see within, and with whatever you see, you just relax and do nothing with what you see.

When you see your aggravation within, when you see your resistance within, your tightness within, your hardness within, and when you relax while you’re seeing that, then that hardness and that tightness and that violence that is within relaxes, just like you. When you see that tightness, when you see the hardness within and you don’t like it, and you wish that it wasn’t there, then you’re being just like that tightness and that hardness in response to it. So then the tightness will be more tight, just like you.

Having an issue with violence outside of you means that you fear violence outside of you. That’s why you have an issue with it. If you fear violence that’s outside of you, it’s because you’ve adopted a core belief that violence outside of you can take something away from you. When violence outside of you can take nothing away from you, the most that it can do is cause pain. It cannot rob you of what you really are. If you fear violence outside of you it’s because you fear the violence that is within you.

Instead of resisting and having issue with and fearing violence, enjoy tenderness. Tenderness is what you are. Violence is what you are not. If you fear it, or have issue with it, then you’re being it. What you have issue with outside of you in others, that is what is within you that you have not dealt with yet, and that you don’t want to see.

Q: Thank you.

John: If you’re being gentle with your self, if you’re being kind with your self, then without effort you’ll be gentle and kind with others.