Q: Since I was very young I have struggled with depression and acne and bowel problems and the more I question my thoughts and the deeper I go the worse it gets. It just seems my self is getting a lot harder and I don’t really know what to do.
John: First be okay with all of that just the way it is. Instead of just having some problems, you are absorbed by your problems.
Q: I’ve always thought that there was like a mind-body connection and the more the thoughts and questions, the worse it gets.
John: You’re looking for a profound solution within superficial problems. You’re taking your problems to heart. Then you don’t just have problems; you make you a problem. You have a problem with your problems and you have a problem with your self. That turns the problem into you. That makes you as awareness wrong. You need to be okay as awareness within all of your problems. Have an opening and a softening of your heart within all of your problems. That relaxes your relationship with your patterning concerning your problems.
Q: So is illness irrelevant?
John: To your self– no. To what you first are in what’s deeper than your self – yes.
Q: So what am I supposed to do when it seems like depression is taking over? I hear you talk about relating to that tiny little bit, but it seems like the depression just gets louder.
John: That’s because you care about your problems more than you. Your problems matter more to you than you. Even if you could make your problems go away, you will still have all of your patterning that demands satisfaction, so then you’ll remake your problems in something else.
Q: So how do I change my patterning?
John: Let go of your relationship with your problems.
Q: How?
John: By being honest as awareness. Do your problems honestly matter as much as you feel they matter? Instead of first addressing your problems, address your relationship with what you know in your heart. When you’re being true to knowledge in your heart, then there isn’t the issue of fundamental separation any more. If there is an issue of fundamental separation, you’ll project the profoundness of that onto everything that is superficial. You’ll be confusing levels. Other than your problems being difficult in your surface existence, there isn’t something wrong with those problems being there.
Q: If I stop relating to my problems and that patterning ceased, what’s underneath that?
John: You as awareness in real relationship with knowledge, in real relationship with what you do know the truth of in your heart. Or you as awareness not in real relationship with knowledge, which makes you separate in your heart from what you first are within. What does that feel like? In your experience, tenderness, with the beingness of that in your own heart mattering more to you than your problems.
Q: So when my mind is being filled with awful experiences or things I’m ashamed of, I’m just to not relate to them and to go to where the tenderness is?
John: Yes, but that won’t work unless a touch of being in your heart such as tenderness means more to you than all of your problems. Otherwise you’ll be accessing something of your being, exploiting your own beingness to fix your problems. An awakened being with acne is not less complete and less happy than an awakened being without acne.
Q: If you’re awakened does that mean you’re happy?
John: If you are true to your awakening, then you are essence of happiness. Essence of happiness has no need to experience happiness. Essence of happiness provides happiness.
Through your problems, you’ve become addicted to your self. Have your own being instead of having your own self. Your own being needs to matter more to you than your own self. The tiniest, tiniest touch of a quality of being needs to mean more to you than all of your self. Then you have a tiny little bit of real ground, a ground of being from which to build your self. You will have problems inside your self and outside your self until you’re dead. What matters more than all of that is that you do really have your own being in the midst of your self and its problems before you’re dead.
Your life has little purpose if you are separate from your own knowledge within. If you’re separate as awareness from your own knowledge within you will live separate from your own being. Even though the connection lives, you’re not living by that connection.
As awareness, your self matters more to you than your own heart. That makes you as awareness subject to the kind of self you have. On those terms there isn’t anything that can fix your issues. You need to belong more to your own heart than to your self. Then your own self will stabilize, but you cannot belong to your own heart for a result. You cannot come to rest in your heart just so your self will stabilize. To do that is to deceive your self.
Belong to your own heart instead of to your self. When you belong to your own heart then you will become acquainted with what you know the truth of in your heart. Then in belonging to what you know the truth of you will have real and immediate entrance to what is deeper within than what your own heart is. You will have free access into your own being.
Q: Does that mean ignoring the physical for now?
John: That means having a different relationship with the physical so that your own inner well-being is no longer dependent on your physical condition. Your self matters more than your problems: you need to take that heart. Your own heart matters more than your self: you need to take that to heart. Your own being matters more than your heart and you need to take that to heart. What you know the truth of, within, matters more than your own being. You need to take that to heart.
With all of that, you’ll be living by what matters most, including, from within that, everything that matters next. You’ll have perspective. In the way that you’ve configured your heart and your self, you don’t have real perspective. What you have is a patterned development of addressing first what doesn’t matter the most.
You need to take care of your self more than taking care of your problems, and you need to take care of your heart more than taking care of your self. Work on those two things and you will find your way into everything within that is deeper than those two things.
To listen to audio podcast 39 – About Acne and Depression visit the John de Ruiter YouTube ChannelÂ
