Q: I cracked wide open today with a lot of flooding of emotion. I see clearly how self-indulgent it is to waver in that place of being in presence and being invited to go there completely but still playing in the mind and emotions. I consider myself a victim of separation, but really I think it’s just choice, that the play of life is more interesting. I can play the role of being unworthy or living a tragic love story with my self and when there’s a fall from grace, it's just a confirmation of my humanness, which is pathetic.
John: Tricky.
Q: Is there any truth in that play of life?
John: Not for you. There’s truth in it for you if you’re coming from what matters more. If you’re separating from the greater meaning within, then you will exploit the meaning you do identify with, so you won’t be in such meaning for the truth of it. You can’t be in it for the truth of it unless you’re coming from the greater truth within.
Q: And then when that play is with another, when you’re cooperating in their drama, which is also my own, it’s easy to blame others for their behavior.
John: Projecting onto others what you’re coming from is a distraction from being able to see what you’re coming from. By believing your self in it, you make it all real. You make it your reality.
Q: Sometimes that play happens almost as if it’s not even me doing, like something’s moving through me making me act in a certain way with another.
John: You give your self the power that belongs to you. That empowers the patterns in your self. Those patterns move on their own because you need them to. Subconsciously it relieves you of responsibility, having someone else for you to deal with instead of dealing with your self, having your self to deal with, instead of how you’re being in your self, and having how your being in your self to deal with instead of you. Reinforced level upon reinforced level to protect you from being meaning, conditioning your self to be in relationship with the lack of meaning outside of you and in your self. So then you live with being stories protecting stories.
Q: But seeing that is not enough.
John: Knowing the truth within doesn’t make you what you’re knowing the truth of within. If you’re knowing the truth within and you’re not being and coming from what you’re knowing, you’ll create a story around that, a story that protects you.
Q: But really that’s more danger.
John: It puts you in danger of you. Dishonesty continues to graft new distortions into your self. Core honesty in your heart, core honesty in relationship to your own real deeper knowledge, takes you to the root of what you’ve created and it takes you deeper than that root. It takes you into what has no distortion. Then you’re coming from that, sustaining being that at the personal cost to everything that you’ve created in your self that’s separate in its function and its beingness from your own real knowledge. As soon as there is a profound liking of growing up, you’re at the beginning of being free. Liking taking responsibility for all of your powers ends the distorted use of them. Knowledge within is freed by your surrendering to it, freeing the beingness of deeper knowledge: love.
Q: There’s a lot of confusion around discerning what is taking responsibility. What is the right path? That’s a place I can get lost in and wrap stories around.
John: That’s an exploitive use of your own power. You’re using what you’re able to be confused about to cover and conceal what you’re not confused about, using confusion to conceal your clarity.
Q: All in the name of wanting to do the right thing.
John: It all reveals your dexterity in maneuvering away from your own real knowledge. Your being is impervious to all your difficulty and confusion. The use of your self, in all its complexity, isn’t enough to completely cover your own Being. Within all of that complexity you still know. Knowing doesn’t end. You’ll exploit your self to cover that, to put a callous over that, even though it never does really work. It keeps leaving you within your self with what you’ve created.
Q: And so I watch my self slipping away from that and moving back into the complexities of wanting to ask you questions about free will and is it worthy to create anything here. So if I’m creating this, is it worthy to create a better “this?”
John: More dexterous maneuvers. It all reveals your underlying genius in it all, the misuse of wonderful ability, using insincerity in an effort to make your self sincere, instead of just simply being sincere at any personal cost. You will be facing everything within that insincerity refuses to face. Until you get that right, you will make everything wrong.
Your ability as awareness within your self to exploit and distort is originally your ability to be clear, but being clear makes you completely responsible, responsible for all of your own beingness, responsible for all of your doing, for your patterned condition. You will know your responsibility for clarity despite all of your history. You will face every discomfort in your self that you’ve been avoiding. Instead of being true to the self that you’ve conditioned, patterned and created, you’ll be true to you. You’ll be true to pure you. Your somewhat wild attractions and aversions won’t have the loyalty of your heart any more.
Q: Could you speak to my very subtle unconscious fear of harming others?
John: It’s insincere.
Q: The question or the dilemma?
John: All of it. If you’re not letting yourself see your own condition in your self, seeing from within your own living knowledge, then you are living separate from the ultimate source of your own life. There isn’t anything more worthy of your own knowledge than getting right what you’ve come into this world for, and that is for you to realize you, to realize what you are: living knowledge with all of its beingness having a self and a life with which to manifest all that is deeper.
Q: I feel like I’m wasting this life because I am stuck in this place of not finding my self. There’s a world out there that maybe I’m missing and maybe I’m supposed to be in service to. That’s another one of my confusions.
John: It’s a rouse. It’s a rouse of yours. It isn’t real. You don’t need to find your self or realize your self. You don’t even need to know your self for you to know you and realize you and be what you first are in the midst of whatever kind of self you happen to have. You don’t need to understand for you to know. Putting any focus on what you’re not understanding is a maneuver away from your actual clarity. It’s a maneuver away from knowledge. It’s a maneuver away from your being what you do know the truth of. It’s story-making. It’s your power of clarity that you use to make the story.
If you look at it from its root, it reveals your own genius. You don’t give credit for the depth and the breadth of your powers and your abilities. If you did, you would know how clearly responsible you are. You wouldn’t have anything to blame. You would be liking how true it is that you are wonderfully without excuse. Instead of trying, you would love.
It all seems to you that it continues on its own because you’ve created the sophisticated patterning that accomplishes that. You make your self a victim even of your own being because of how unreachable your own being is and how overbearing your self is.
As awareness you’re highly accomplished in everything that you’ve created in your self. You’re highly accomplished in your use of all of that to keep you separate from what you actually love the most within. When you’re profoundly honest within, honest to the core, you have not a speck of ground from which you can feel sorry for your self. You’re able as awareness from within your own living knowledge to turn everything around. You’re able, more than anything, to be free.
When you’re not sure what to be or what to do, be and do completely the tiniest little bit of your own present and available clarity. You’ll have much to be and much to do. You’ll be engaging your deeper powers of realization instead of running to your powers of thinking. From within the depth of realization, you’ll be loving thinking. Your plate is somewhat full. You need to own it and you need to own that what is on your plate isn’t you. Everything that’s on your plate is yours. It’s all in your care.
To listen to audio podcast 35 – The Dexterity of Consciousness visit the John de Ruiter YouTube Channel