Q: I remember you once speaking to me of the value of just one word and how far it could take me. Would you say more?
John: When you’re really listening and very gentled within, there will always be one word that represents what you are most learning, one word being birthed in you. Then, what is being birthed with that one word is the depth of its meaning. One word slowly turns into a whole universe.
There is a whole gestation period in realizing just one word, in you slowly turning into the meaning of one word. You cannot come up with such a word. Such a word is conceived within your being, and slowly arises within you. Then you live cupping such a word within your heart, holding it as you would a baby, and that one word teaches you, just a holding a baby teaches you … taking care of that word in your heart until it is fully formed, and until you turn into that word.
If that were to happen fully with only one word per year, that would be tremendous inner growth – more than would happen with most in a lifetime.
Q: How could I take care of a word I don’t know, in my heart?
John: When you are entirely gentled within and really listening within, there will be one word in which its meaning speaks what you know, and then you just keep drinking of that one word. That one word then becomes your mother and your father.
Q: Thank you very much. For now it is ‘love.’
John: You can’t pick the word! A real living word chooses you – you cannot choose one.
A real living word chooses only a very gentled listener because it comes within you so gently and so delicately that if you are not gentled within, you won’t hear it. It is only when such a word is spoken within you that the whole universe responds, and then you see the meaning of that word everywhere. Then the whole universe is, to you, like a mother and a father teaching you.
Even if only one word lives within you for a lifetime, then you have not wasted your life.
