Q: My question is about how to be in the ending of a relationship. My partner has decided it’s not right for him to be with me and I’m ready to let go, to see the good in what is there between us and just to be with the pain as it is. Yet there is also the pain of desire and longing, and a feeling of not being good enough. This has happened lots of times in my life. How can I just have the goodness without having to prove that there is something wrong with the situation?
John: By being openness and softness instead of being your self. As soon as you’re being your self, you have a story. Your self is important, but it is not important for you to be your self. What’s important is to be like your own being, in the midst of your self. That adds a thickness to your own being instead of a story.
Q: This is something really new for me; I heard it for the first time today and it really resonated that I might connect to my being rather than to my self.
John: When you’re being your self you’ll have some kind of story about how you experience your self, whether that’s a happy story or an unhappy one. Either way, the story isn’t what satisfies you. It satisfies your self, but you’ll always need more and there’s an endless supply. If you're being your own being in the midst of your self, you're truly satisfied.
Q: This resonates, and I would love to be present enough to do this, yet I feel there’s such a fine line.
John: Yes. When you’re in your self, your self feels important but when you’re quieted within your heart you know that there’s something more important than how you presently experience your self. Be what you know is more important in the midst of what feels so pressing. That turns you right-side up. You’ll be manifesting your own being within your self, without a story. There's an experience to that, which generates a story, but there isn't first a story.
As soon as you have a story about anything, you are in some way separate from your heart and your being. When there’s an openness and a softness of heart, that relieves you of your story. The openness and softness of heart is fundamentally real and immediate to you. It satisfies you.
In a relationship ending, the story of it is “what about everything that was? And what about this pain? What about what I would like to have?” You can have stories when you’re in the relationship and you can have stories as the relationship ends, but when you are being openness and softness of heart there is no story – either to being in a relationship or to a relationship ending.
The relationship doesn't need to end, and if it ends despite the truth of that, openness and softness of heart doesn't end.
Q: I think I had a little glimpse of that earlier in the meeting. I felt connected to my being and didn’t have pain.
John: When you realize that the value of openness and softness of heart exceeds the value of your self, that it is what gives meaning to your self, live in that openness and softness. Don’t look for another relationship. Realize what is fundamentally meaningful to you, and it isn't your self that's meaningful. You use your self to pursue meaning but the meaning is in you being in your heart and connected to your own being.
From here forward, live in that openness and that softness of heart. Live quietly connecting to your own being and there you realize that you have need of nothing. You don’t need a relationship, but you are open to what may come. Don’t move into another relationship unless it’s really clear to you that your potential partner is coming from the same place and moving in the same direction as you, with openness and softness of heart meaning more than his self or what he's experiencing.
Because this is new for you, don’t move quickly into a new relationship because it will be a huge distraction; you won’t settle into just simply being in your heart and connecting to the quietness of your own being. Become established in that before you take on a new relationship.
Q: That’s good to hear, even though I thought I’d done that before this relationship! It feels good to take time for that.
John: And if he sees a change in you and he wants to stay in relationship, don’t be quick to resume what you had with him before. Set the terms of the relationship continuing based only on what you are newly realizing.
Q: What you say feels so true, yet I hope the temptation of the love that comes with a relationship doesn’t pull me to resume the old, or begin a new one.
John: It’ll pull you – as will every other distraction in life – unless you are fundamentally clear that openness and softness mean more to you than anything you can have in your self.
If you don’t make that clear, every distraction will come along and you’ll be tempted because of your investment in them. If you’re not invested, you won’t be tempted. If it’s real that you value openness and softness in your heart more than your self in the present, there isn’t anything that can entice you. It's real to you that you belong to openness and softness of heart.
Q: How will I know this is established? I feel it’s taken all of my life to develop this, and I still feel I have so far to go! I guess it’s just about doing it.
John: It’s really being it and really doing it. If anything distracts you, let go of that distraction … and more. It’s not actually what’s on the surface that distracts you; it’s that you’ve been selling out to the promise of something in your self.
Your real satisfaction is not from anything that comes from outside of you. It’s from what is present and quietly within. When you’re rested in what is quietly within, you are in your heart and connected to your own being.
