Q: When my emotions come up, that’s something that I need to take care of. If my husband gets agitated and he’s lecturing me because of his own issues, I find that really compounds the difficulty. Is it alright to ask him to trust that I’ll take care of it?
John: Yes, you can ask that.
Q: He doesn’t feel like he can do that. He’s said that he can’t.
John: Okay, then he doesn’t need to cooperate with your self.
Q: It’s okay for me to ask and you’re saying it’s okay for him to say ‘no’.
John: It’s not quite like that. It’s okay for you to ask, but if he’s not comprehending what you’re saying in the same way that you are, there’s not going to be the response that you’re looking for, because he doesn’t have your kind of self to comprehend you as you see things.
Q: You were saying about me trusting that if he says he’s being open and soft when he’s lecturing me—
John: That doesn’t mean that he’s lecturing you. It does mean for sure that you in your self feel like he’s lecturing you.
Q: That’s such a fine line.
John: It really is.
Q: That’s a real difficulty for me because you’re saying that I’m feeling like he’s lecturing me but he’s being open and soft, so you’re saying I can’t trust what I know.
John: You can’t trust what you feel and what you think in your self. You can’t trust your own experience in the circumstance.
Q: So I’m always feeling; I’m not knowing! I’m confused.
John: You are knowing. When you are knowing within your self, that knowing is going to be informed by your kind of self, which is a different level of knowing than knowing in your heart. It’s only within a difficulty like this that you can begin to discern the difference between knowing in your self and knowing in your heart. It’s not going to come easily. For you to be working with this, it will feel like it’s tearing your self apart, but the greater the difficulty you’re in, the more gold there is underneath it all. You’ve already prepared for all of this. You’ve prepared to come into all of this. You’ve prepared to take on this level of difficulty in your self. You’re ready for this and dealing with it is not going to be on the terms of what you experience in your self, so it will really turn your self upside down.
The most helpful thing for you to realize is that he is not your problem. If it feels like he’s lecturing you, even if he is in fact lecturing you, that’s not the problem. If you had a different self, your husband lecturing you would not be a problem for you. It would be all right, and you would move with it in a way that is not difficult for you, so there is no problem there. When you don’t have the kind of self that can handle that, then you will experience other people's actions as a problem.
Your experience of what is a problem outside of your self is generated from within your self. It’s an enormous realization to really get that. Everything within what you experience in your self will fight getting that. When you let it in, you’re free. If you really get that, you will gain a stability and an equilibrium that is not based on anything you experience in your self; then you really are free of your self. You’re right at the crux of it all. That is where and when you will most want to run, but it’s a really good place to be.
Q: I was going to tell you how it feels and I realized it’s— (laughter)
John: The feeling of it has wonderfully no relevance at all.
Q: That’s what I mean!
John: And the feeling isn’t wrong and it’s not bad. It’s just not relevant.
