Q: I feel out of control in my life. Something seems to affect my work and personal life and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s as if I’m influenced by an archetype and keep becoming a scapegoat. I find it difficult to belong to the human race, to be a part of mankind. What happens, for example, is that I start a new job and I’m friendly with everyone, then things start going wrong. I’m ostracized and then fired. Now it’s happening again and I love my job! I’m being ostracized and I’ve been warned not to put a foot wrong or I’ll be fired. It shakes my foundations: I don’t want to lose my job and have no money coming in, but unconsciously I must not want to belong to this group. I don’t want to keep doing this to my self, John. My life feels so fragile. It's as if there’s no safe place; I have nothing to hold onto.
John: Accept enjoyment. There’s always a safe place within enjoyment, the enjoyment of settling in your body whether you have a job or not. Beingness is enjoyable. It is profoundly nurturing, profoundly safe.
Life may not seem safe to you, but within life there is something that’s higher than life. Instead of you being confined by life in the midst of life, you can be in where life comes from: you enjoying the source of life. You have limited your perspective to your past experiences, so you are controlled by what has been.
When what you most deeply know within controls you, then there’s peace. If anything else controls you, there is no peace. Let what you most deeply know within receive you. Let tenderness within receive you. Regardless of what corner you find yourself pushed into, the innermost of that corner is tenderness. Let tenderness rearrange your perspective. Let tenderness change how you think.
First, get it right with tenderness by letting tenderness receive you. Then get it right with work. Don’t neglect the little, the little that is in everything, everywhere. Remember the little and you’ll remember where you came from. Remember the little in everything, and you won’t be caught by anything big. Let your perspective within come from the little while you are within what you think is big. The big in your life is just unrealized little. You alarm yourself with the capacity to alarm yourself.
Q: Do I need to understand all you say, John, or just let it in?
John: Has any of this warmed you? Then it’s already in, warming you. You cannot get it out of you; you can only neglect it. Enjoy the goodness within. It is in abundance everywhere. Find that goodness in your work. When you find it, work for that. When you are walking, find the goodness in your walk and walk in that.
It is the goodness in life that you belong to. That is the tender little that fills everything. Remember the little.
