Q: John, could you say something about why we’re all here in the mountains?
John: Why are you here?
Q: I’m here because we’re all here! Why did you initiate this for us?
John: It’s a different environment for all of us to be together.
Q: Is there something in the beingness of nature? When I’m in nature it’s much easier for me to drop, to connect to this beingness and I feel the nature. Can you talk about that?
John: It does make quite a difference for a lot of people, particularly being in the mountains.
Q: Why mountains?
John: It inspires a similar thing that the meetings inspire.
Q: Is there something special about these mountains?
John: You can work with anything.
Q: John, does being in nature as we are, as a group, help us ground and integrate more than when we’re in the city environment?
John: Not necessarily. It does ground what we are as a community because we’re coming together in a way that’s really different. We’re very close, we can’t walk anywhere without encountering each other. So we’re here, almost like being in a hive. It’s a very intense community experience.
Q: You mentioned technology, so I’m wondering whether in going back to basics, we’re with the earth and in nature in a way we don’t normally feel when we’re in the city. It seems that we humans are fascinated with technology, and there’s an aspect of technology that is evolving. It’s as if we change through technology, how we interrelate with each other, how we’re able to be connected around the world that wasn’t possible 50 years ago. On the other hand, a lot of us love to be simple. So I’m wondering how our love of what’s basic fits with the newness that involves technology. Is there goodness in technology?
John: Yes, it points everything forward and higher. It has us relating to what is forward and higher, but it doesn’t have us relating to wholesomeness.
Q: You mean intrinsically as well? So as we know and relate more to goodness, we can use technology for for what we know?
John: That takes a lot of integration. Technology is so far ahead of the general beingness of everyone, which is good. It’s still pointing everything forward and higher.
Q: I’m glad you say it like that because I can’t say I love technology. I see the positive side of it and also I see how people are badly affected.
John: To improve and move into technology propels the mind forward. It’s good, but it doesn’t reach a fundamental goodness.
Q: What about the effects of the electronic frequencies themselves? Are they disruptive or enhancing?
John: That’s a stress for the body, but we’re also living longer.
Q: Here we’re in a little cocoon, but everywhere else you’re in that frequency. If it’s enhancing in some way, that would be great to realize.
John: It’s enhancing if the stress factor in it can provoke an opening.
Q: How would that happen?
John: Stress tends to provoke a closing, so under stress people tend to become smaller.
Q: So would that be like an unconscious opening?
John: It would be a conscious opening. If you’re opening regardless of what you experience in your self, then any stress factor provokes an opening. But that’s not what is common. If conscious stress for you produces an opening because of how you’re being in everything, then unconscious stress is also going to bring about an opening. Your whole relationship with stress would be different.
Q: So how does nature respond to that stress? Does it open as well?
John: Nature adjusts. There’s an intrinsic openness to the beingness of nature, but that’s different from what we’re able to be which is a conscious openness within an understood pressure.
Q: One of the highlights last year, for me, was when the back of the tent was opened and I could see the forest behind you and relate to the beingness of nature. I was aware of being able to touch and move on another level, and yet come back to a working life. Is connecting with that another reason we come here?
John: That’s a deeper level of what’s possible in being here. That’s a level deeper than appreciating nature. If the frame of reference is our selves then even being aware of the beingness of nature still in some way separates us from being the beingness of nature.
Q: So you’re talking about relating from rather than relating to?
John: Yes, staying with the beingness of a goodness, rather than being distracted by the experience.
