Q: I’m very happy to meet you and amazed to be able to connect with you like this. My question is about relationships. I would like to know more about what happens in a couple and especially after a break-up. I broke up with a boyfriend almost two years ago, and even though psychologically I feel healed, I can feel in my body that there is something still there and I don’t understand what it is. It’s taken me a long time to let go with other break-ups, too. I would love to know what you have to say about that.
John: What stays in your body is your bond with him. The bond is not the relationship itself, but what connectivity of being that there was between the two of you, the level of connectivity that is deeper than your selves.
What also stays in your body is any and all judgment that you’ve made, any conclusion that you’ve drawn and given emotion to just because of what has affected your self, affected your experience; any judgment that you form, that you make, that you sat in toward him, toward your self, toward relationship – toward even the idea of relationship.
All judgment made stays in your body and it becomes a part of a very complex subconscious mechanism. It’s like a machinery. That subconscious machinery controls your sense of your self. What judgments you make, the substance of that judgment, will control you for the rest of your life.
These judgments, this subconscious machinery, can be dissolved, can be undone, but that undoing will go against your nervous system. It will confront your nervous system. All of that subconscious machinery manifests in your nervous system and forms your experience of your self.
Its undoing comes by you opening and softening in your heart in the midst of the workings of that subconscious machinery, in the midst of how you experience your self, in the midst of your sense of your self, in the midst of everything that affects your self.
That subconscious machinery – much of it you’ve inherited from your ancestors and the rest of it you’ve created in your self – comes apart and ends, but only in you. It doesn’t end or go away on its own, in your self. On its own, it will pass on, and it will pass on, from you to another. It ends in you as you unconditionally open and soften in your heart at any personal expense.
The dissolve of that subconscious control over your self comes by your deeply rooted sense of independence dissolving, because of you belonging to your heart instead of belonging to your sense of your self.
Return to your heart. Live from your heart, and don’t leave your heart for absolutely anything. When you leave your heart for anything, you’re fooling your self. This will cost you. For you to return to your heart and to unconditionally remain gentled and quieted in your heart comes at great cost to your self. It’s an actual cost. It’s all embedded in your nervous system but the cost isn’t real. The cost really has nothing to do with you. You won’t lose the real. The real is in you. The real isn’t in your self. You won’t lose any more than what you are going to lose when you die.
When you die, you lose everything that is actual but not real: all of your illusory investments in your self, all of your investments in your sense of independence, all investment that is made from a self-importance, a feeling, a consideration of the importance in your self. All of that self-importance isn’t real. All of the makings of positivity and negativity are centred on your sense of self, the negative and the positive importance of your self. None of that is real.
As you live from within the quietude in your heart at any personal expense, your self comes back into balance. In it coming back into balance, anything that wasn’t real but you made actual in your self – forms of illusion – all of that will pass away. Your self, because of you being quieted in your heart, is cleaned. That cleaning of your self is the cleaning of your conscious self and your subconscious self. The two together is your self.
Your conscious self is the least of your self. Most of your self is subconscious and unconscious. It’s only when you live from the quietude of your heart in the midst of your self that you let, consciously, your subconscious self up into your experience, up into your conscious self, which is not a pleasant experience. Everything that you’ve turned away from, that you didn’t want to deal with, that you turned your back on, that you threw away into oblivion, that you’ve made judgments against; anything where you’ve hardened your heart and you’ve stuffed away into your self, you’ve just pushed it away: all of that adds to your subconscious machinery. The greater part of your self isn’t conscious.
As you live your life quietly in your heart, you come into awareness of your subconscious and your unconscious self, which is confusing and chaotic in your experience. On a self level it’s a little bit like you getting sick. Everything that you have been sick of in your self, any time where you’ve formed a judgment, making emotionally clear within your mind what you are sick of, what you’re tired of, what you don’t want anymore, what you are going to just push away once and for all: all of that creates a sickness in your subconscious self, and that sickness governs your self.
As you unconditionally relax within and are just quietly at home in your heart, all of that sickness is coming back to you. It’s a necessary part of the healing of your self. If you don’t want anything to do with that sickness, you’ll live adding more and more to it. As you warmly relax within, and that is enough for you, your subconsciousness will finally be free to be a conscious part of your self. The experience of that is that your self is getting worse and worse.
The more you are quieted within, the more you start to experience the actual condition of your self, which is far removed from your self-image. Your self-image is something that you’ve manufactured and that you hold together, that you insist on, that you defend in your conscious self, and it’s not real.
Your self-esteem is based on how you like to see your self, how you like to feel in your self, and everything that you do in your life to hold that together and to defend it. That includes you being sick of others, which protects you from seeing how sick your self is.
All you really have in all of your life is the quietude of love. Return to it and your self will heal.
Q: I feel I am living now all of what you are saying. I choose to be in this quietude, in this love, and then I feel it’s so difficult. There is something pulling me back to the easier way. Sometimes I feel that I’m lazy to be in my heart, that I'm agreeing to feed the sickness again.
John: Do nothing to save your self. Do nothing to save your self from the sickness in your self. Don’t retreat to your comforts. Invest nothing in pain. Invest nothing in any little touches of self-pity.
All you are is quietly at home in your heart, taking full, quiet responsibility for all that you’ve done to your self, for your self, and that you are absolutely ending your addiction to your self. You’ll remain in your heart unconditionally, at any personal expense, and the expense is high. It’s not too much, and after you’ve paid it you’ll realize that it was all an illusory expense. It was really a self-created expense, all based on forms of illusion that you’ve constructed in your self and held to.
Everything of this world appeals to your addiction to your self. The only thing that directly appeals to you, what you really are, pure you, is what you quietly know the truth of in your heart. It’s the only real voice in you. All of the others are false.
You’ll heal, but not without you experiencing in your nervous system, in your experience, how sick you actually are in your self.
Heal.
Q: Thank you, John.
