Q: I have a question about ADD. When I’m studying, thoughts come and I can’t focus any more. I am able to go within and be in my heart whilst it’s happening, but I am still not able to study.
John: Then you’re going into your heart but you’re not bringing your heart into your thinking. It’s easy for you to go into your heart. To bring your heart into your thinking is difficult.
When you bring your heart into your thinking, that brings you into your present development in how you use your mind and your thinking. You’re confronted with your actual state of development; the actual developmental stage of your own mind. When you bring your heart into your thinking that makes your thinking developmental.
Q: Otherwise they’re just separate?
John: Yes. Then you’ll use your mind by way of its strength and when you’re not in that strength you won’t use your mind. Gaps remain in the development of your mind and when you bring your heart into your thinking, you’re faced with that. You’ll face the lack of development in your mind.
Q: Does that mean I can’t study because there’s something I’m afraid to see?
John: When you’re in your heart and you bring your heart into your thinking, you’ll encounter the blocks in your self to deal with your thinking. You’ll encounter your mental blocks. Within each mental block there’s a developmental lack in your self and in your mind, areas where you haven’t grown up in your thinking.
When that is so, you’ll think through the use of force. You’ll think because you want to or you have to. You won’t be relaxed in your thinking. As soon as you’re relaxed in your thinking, you come into inability in your mind. You don’t like the inability, so then you’ll use force in your mind, whereas depth of thought requires relaxation in your thinking. If you use force within your thinking you can’t have depth of thought.
Profound thought requires thinking in the same way that your own being is. You can put your mind to work through the use of force, but then your mind will work in the way that your self is, but not in the way that your being is.
Through the development of your mind by you responding to your heart and being your heart in your mind, you slowly come into the subtle use of your mind; you realize your subtle mind. There’s more power in the subtle mind than in the surface of your mind. If you’re only used to the surface of your mind, then you’ll use force to think, whereas the clearest kind of thinking is within your subtle mind where the use of force and power isn’t needed.
Q: So, speaking practically, if I’m sitting studying and see my surface mind working, how would I bring my heart into my mind? How do I deal with this lack and be able to study?
John: Most of your studies don’t require anything more than a surface use of your mind; they don’t require a whole use of mind. When you’re in a whole use of mind, then as you study, your mind is much more expanded than the subject requires, for you’re able to perceive the depth of what you’re studying, which has little to do with what you’re actually studying. Then the information opens up in its depth and it becomes applied to everything, so whatever you’re studying applies to everything on every level. That won’t help you with your marks.
Q: I can study for hours but never finish – I seem stuck in some part of it. But I need to finish the work! How can I bring myself to finish it?
John: That has to do with the mastery of your self, by what you know in your heart. If you try to confine the mastery of your self so that you can get your homework done, then you’re applying a self-discipline.
A self-discipline is only an aspect of your self being mastered by what you know in your heart. You can apply the aspect of mastery through self-discipline so that you can achieve good marks in your studies, but that doesn’t mean your self is mastered by what you know in your heart. That means that you’ve mastered something in your self so that you can have good marks.
Q: Actually, I don’t want the good marks; I just want to keep studying so they can’t throw me off the course!
John: You need to master some aspects of yourself for you to be able to fulfill the course, but you need to master all of your self for you to fulfill your life. Fulfill your whole life while you’re fulfilling the requirements of the course.
