Q: For some time now I’ve experienced strong bipolar episodes. I don’t want to be a victim and I do accept responsibility, but their impact is so intense and they throw me so far from my self, I feel that I don’t have my independence anymore. There’s a relentless inevitability and I wonder what to do about it.
John: You suffer from what, in a tropical climate, is called hurricane season.
The seasons that you pass through don’t stop you from being what you first are. They don’t stop you from being in your body, as is. You’re able to be, as awareness, stillness in a hurricane. You don’t need to be troubled by what you’re experiencing. You are the equanimity of being, despite what experience you’re in, despite what’s happening in your body and how that affects your self.
Q: During the episodes it’s such an altered state. When I come out of them I wake up in a far field somewhere, so much of my life is about repair and the journey back. I can’t seem to hold on to any momentum in what I’d like to live from in my self.
John: Because of the extreme changes in what you experience, you keep losing your ground. You do what you can to regain your ground for your ground to be lost, over and over. Don’t have your ground in what can be changed. Don’t have your ground or your grounding in anything to do with what you experience.
What you have, as awareness, is what you know the truth of in your heart. That knowing isn’t subject to what you experience. That knowing in your heart is subject only to your belief or your disbelief. If what you know the truth of in your heart is subject only to your belief, then, as that, you are not anymore what you’re experiencing. The experiences are what you have, and you no longer have your ground in what you’re experiencing. You have your ground as awareness in what you’re knowing, in what you know the truth of in your heart. Knowing is your only ground.
What you’re experiencing and what you suffer from in your body invite you to no longer have your ground in what you experience in your body and in your self. What remains for you is only what you know the truth of in your heart. You don’t need to see it. You don’t need to feel it. You don’t need to experience it. And regardless of what storm you’re in, you are that knowing in your heart. What you’re in is the invitation to realize what you really are, to realize what doesn’t change and isn’t subject to what you’re suffering from. You’re able, as awareness, to be coming from what is deeper within than you suffer in.
Q: There’s such a price!
John: The way that you suffer in it reveals that if you wouldn’t have this happening to you, you would most easily be lost in your self and in your life. If you won’t be what you really are in difficulty, you really won’t be what you really are, within, in ease. In that way the difficulty is, for you, a gift. You’re not in this world to have an easy and a comfortable life. You’re in this world, in your body and in your self to be what you first are, within, and to evolve and develop as that. The difficulty and your suffering make it clear. You don’t have the option of being lost in ease.
Q: I have a struggle with it and find it so difficult to accept as a gift.
John: Your real ground, within, is ground unshakable. Have no rest in what is shakable. Have your rest, as awareness, only in what is unshakable. This you can be and you can do because the unshakable, within, is what you are. The shaking and the turbulence point you, as awareness, to what isn’t like that, within. When you are, as awareness, being what you know the truth of in your heart, you are what is unshakable and you have, then, the beingness of that: most quiet love, love that is also not subject to what is shakable. You’ll have the second when you are actually at home in the first. Then you’ll also be genuinely okay, as is, with your condition. You won’t be wishing for a change. What you’ll be coming from has need of nothing. That you are grounded in knowing, and evolving as awareness will matter more to you than anything you’re experiencing. From within what you know the truth of in your heart, you don’t need anything to be different.
You are then the tiny little bit that you know the truth of in your heart. You are unwaveringly that: the tiny little bit within, repeatedly imprisoned, cast away, returned for apparent recovery over and over again as that tiny little bit … evolving. Your own beingness is your home.
Your packaging is entirely suitable to what you are as the tiny little bit, within. It’s only unsuitable to your experience as a self. As you evolve within your packaging, your self will change. Your self will become as you are. Your forms will slowly transform and be as you are in them. As long as you are disquieted within what you are experiencing, your self continues to be the same. Your self becomes as you are.
You have your seeing from what you’re experiencing, and your seeing is not representative of you and what you know the truth of. Your own seeing will not be representative of you, of what you really are, within, until you are being what you really are, within. When the little that you know the truth of in your heart means more to you than anything you’re experiencing, your seeing will come from what you know and not from your experience anymore.
The shaking ground, the most unstable ground in your self, sends you, as awareness, to the unshakeable ground within – your ground of knowing. Your self is no longer the ground of your heart. What you know the truth of in your heart is the only ground of your heart. Instead of having a somewhat uncommon experience in your self, as awareness you’ll have most uncommon seeing.
Q: You mentioned “quiet love”?
John: A depth of realized love that needs no voice: the beingness of dwelt-in living knowledge, beingness that is indomitable. It is not subject to even the harshest of weather systems. Your condition is your beloved personal trainer.
Q: “Beloved”?
John: When it’s gone, you’ll realize it. When you are, as awareness, being what you know the truth of in your heart, great development occurs within great difficulty.
Q: Why not in great joy and light?
John: Because it’s so suitable to a little self. As a little self, you will work joy into your shakable ground. You’ll work joy into familiarity. You’ll spend the newness of what you are as goodness.
In facing your own evolution as awareness, there is nothing in it for you in your little self, in your shakable self. As awareness in your little self you relate to convenience and to inconvenience. In your little self you live by short-sighted want and need. The development of your bigger self, your deeper self and your higher self comes by your evolution as awareness, by having your ground only in the little bit that you know the truth of in your heart.
Q: It doesn’t feel like such a little bit. It might be a small jewel, but it’s very, very precious.
John: When you’re outside of it, it’s most little. When you’re in it and coming from it, it is absolutely everything. It’s what you are. It even comes with a personal trainer: unhappiness. When you know how it works and you’re at home in how it works, it all works. You don’t choose your difficulty. Your only real choice, as awareness, is knowing, despite any kind of difficulty.
