How to be free of past hurts and conditioning? Is there a method that can help, a spiritual practice? Can meditation help? John explains why methods and spiritual practices ultimately don’t work. Spiritual practices can help bring you to the door of your being, but they can’t take you through the door. It is only a shift of orientation that can take you through the door, into pure you and into freedom from past hurts and from the conditioning in your self.
What is our life for? What happens after we die? The questioner feels that he is making compromises in his life in order to function, work and make money. John explains that everything we do in life influences our life after death. Using practical examples, John guides us in how not to miss the wondrous opportunity of this life.
How to truly nurture your child? What happens when your child is discovering their power and testing yours, causing reaction? In this conversation John gives direction and guidance on how to sustain direct connection with your child and give them ground, stability and clarity in what is deeper, enabling them to know about what they really are and find it in you.
The questioner had an experience where the structure of himself dissolved and everything was love. But when the experience dissipated, old structures returned. John explains that the experience is a beloved messenger. Instead of wanting the messenger to return, we can abide in the message it brings. When the knowing in the experience is enough, we become the same as the message.
How to be open when someone is unkind to us? The invitation is to open in the little things in life: tiny doors in your life that are easy to open. You will discover a warm okayness, even in the midst of feeling not okay.
What to do when wonderful awakening experiences fade away, and resistance, fear and suffering return to our experience? John reminds us that we know something much deeper within, which is different than our self. Suffering is in the self, it comes from what is familiar. There is no suffering in knowing, in being in what knowing is in our heart; and there is no suffering in the purity of liking. Liking knowing the deep within removes the suffering. It’s easy, natural, direct and immediate.
The questioner experienced an awakening but finds it difficult to stay in it because of stress and pain. John explains that this is because she is relating to her awakening from her self instead of relating directly without “keeping an eye” on her self. John speaks of the stream of what we know; when we merge with what we know in our heart we are in the stream. Then, instead of emotion and experience moving, it’s our heart that is moving, which is deeply transformative to our self. The awakening is newly found and the stress in the self dissolves.
The questioner describes having been awakened to a deep energy of pure love within, and yet suffering still continues. John explains that the suffering is in the self, while the love is not. The love is your home. Your self suffers because it is not complete. You are complete. You don’t need to suffer. That puts your self in your care. Then, every difficulty that you have in your self will have you coming more deeply from the love that you’ve awakened to, within.
When you awaken to more than this mundane existence, how can you make that real in your life? How can you let it have more form in your life? How to get out of the matrix? The answer, John says, is in letting the roots of your awakening go to your being. Then, like a tree, you become planted in what you really are, planted in your source.
Think of the splendor of The Canadian Rockies – beautiful right? Then there is beauty that cannot be imagined, and that’s the awakening deep within us. If awakening is your love, then you will find it at the annual camping trip with John de Ruiter, at the David Thompson Resort.
This is a gorgeous way to introduce yourself to John and his teachings, with two meetings with John per day, interspersed with open mics. You may find yourself at a meal with John and Leigh Ann discussing meaning in life with friends. Otherwise roam the campground and meet hundreds of other people who are living for the same essence. Relax among the trees or go for a swim in the glacier lake down the mountain trail. There will be bonfires, parties, dancing, even a movie night!
What is love? How do we find it? Do we really need it? In this dialogue the questioner asks John to explain his statement “love is not an experience, love is what you are.” In response, John expands on the different kinds of love and how to go beyond the surface and discover a deep and subtle, unconditioned love not based on experience or need.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
