Q: Hello, I’ve been dealing with trying to change habits, habits that no longer work for me, you know, being lazy, indolent, stuff like that, and I’m just wondering if you have some advice or instruction on how to drop habits. Thank you.
John: Changing a habit is, in principle, very simple. As awareness, be and do only what you know the truth of in your heart. What immediately complicates that is efforting to do that for the sake of anything that you experience in your self. When you do it for your self you’ll use what is not integrated in your self to try and be and do what you know in your heart, for benefit in your self. It only really works if you’re being and doing what you know for what you know.
But what you know is unseen. It’s unseen in the sense that it doesn’t have form in your self, you can’t see it in your self. You can see it in what’s deeper than your self. For you to be and do what you know in your heart, that brings what’s true of your own being into your self. It’s what your self is for. When you try and do that for your self, that’s not what your self is for.
Q: I get the impression you use “the self” in a particular way. Could you say a little bit about that?
John: There are many levels to the self. But the one that we’re most accustomed to is the self in our experience. Our customary experience is the self that we’re used to. Most of that is to the neglect of what is deeper in the self, or higher in the self. The deeper and the higher isn’t representative in what we experience. When we’re coming from our heart, then we’re able, little bit by little bit, to manifest a deeper self. The deeper self or the higher self isn’t going to be representative in the experience that we’re most accustomed to. Your experience of laziness isn’t a reflection of your deeper self, but of what you’re most used to in what you’re accustomed to in your self. The laziness is a part of your self that hasn’t yet become like what you are.
Q: You know, one gets all these uncomfortable body sensations. When, you know, I’m trying to do something new, it’s just like, so uncomfortable.
John: Yes. And, it doesn’t stop you. When it doesn’t feel good for you to exercise, that doesn’t stop you from exercising. If the uncomfortable feeling of you bringing your self to exercise doesn’t serve you in your experience of your self, then you won’t do it, so what you’ll feel is, ‘too lazy to exercise.’ As soon as there’s something that you very simply know to do and you know it’s a goodness for you to do that, then do that.
Q: Thank you.
