Q1: When I’m feeling lonely, I often find diversions – watching movies or doing housework – to keep my self occupied. Can you say something about this?
John: If you’re lonely, it’s because you are coldly alone.
Q1: Coldly alone?
John: Yes, instead of warmly alone. As soon as you are not just alone, but warmly alone, you’re incapable of loneliness. When you are warmly alone it’s because you are presently nurtured by your own deeper presence.
Q1: I understand that.
John: Within that deeper presence it’s real to you that within your interior you have need of nothing. You’re at rest within. There it becomes real to you that it doesn’t matter much what you do. In anything that you do on the surface, this deep inner warmth is coming through, and what you’re doing becomes an expression of your own warmth. Your doing is no longer used to satisfy your self, your doing is then an expression.
Q1: Absolutely.
John: When you’re lonely, you fool your self into believing that deep within you have need of something.
Q1: Yes, I recognize that pattern.
John: As soon as you start with that, then anything you do, or anyone you meet, you’ll exploit what you do and you’ll exploit whom you meet. So instead of expressing deep, inner warmth within what you do and towards someone you meet, you’ll use the circumstance or the meeting to have something.
Q1: To have something?
John: Yes. You’ll use an activity or the time you have with someone to fill a space inside, instead of to express a complete space inside. Realize how to be within in such a way that you are then happy without a reason. That relieves you of doing all that you do so that you can be happy.
If you are being what you really are within, you are happy without a reason, similar to what you easily were when you were really little, when you didn’t have to do something or be with someone for you to be happy. You were happy because you were within your innocence. You were warmed within, having need of nothing, so you were freely happy.
Q1: That’s true. I remember.
John: And anything that you did on the surface, or whomever you would be with, you would be expressing that deep inner warmth. So as soon as you were with someone, you naturally loved and it wasn’t to get something because you already had it within, so you expressed your happy completeness without needing more. Nothing could make it better. Whatever you did or whomever you met, your deep inner movement was that of giving.
Q1: Thank you. That’s a good reminder.
Q2: I’d love to hear more about this warm and cold loneliness.
John: If you’re warmly alone, loneliness, for you, doesn’t exist. If you’re coldly alone you’ll be lonely. When you are warmly alone you are in such lovely company.
Q2: But I’m getting a bit afraid of this. Something is holding me back.
John: It isn’t real that you’re afraid of that. That’s a story.
Q2: When I open my heart I think I get very hungry for more love.
John: When you are warmly alone, you have no need of love. You won’t be hungry for love.
Q2: Even if I’m alone?
John: Yes. When you are unconditionally warmed within while you’re alone, that means that you are being what you really are, that you are being what love is without that being dependent on a feeling. When you’re profoundly rested within, you are warmed. Being profoundly rested within means that you are residing in nurture without doing something for it. You’re not afraid of that. You love that. When you lie down to go to sleep, as you begin to fall asleep, you are warmed within, alone.
Q2: Otherwise I couldn’t fall asleep.
John: Yes. As you begin to fall asleep, you are not only alone but you’re nurtured in it. You’re nurtured in being alone. As you begin to fall asleep you lose your habituated relationship with existence. You lose your habituated relationship with your self and you are simply being what you really are. Being that deeply warms you, so for you falling asleep is nurtureful.
As you fall asleep you’re not focused on any kind of lack in your life, in your personality, in your self or in your relationships. As you fall asleep, you return to being complete. Your beliefs fall away, leaving you free. If you’re not being in your waking life the same way that you are being within as you’re falling asleep, that means that you live your life through your beliefs which means you’re not really there – you’re being your beliefs. That covers you, and you’ll look to satisfy what you’re missing. You’ll look to satisfy that in everything you do and in everyone you meet.
The more beliefs you have, the more empty you are, ‘empty’ as in empty of meaning. As you are relieved of all of your beliefs you return to most simple completeness. You return to goodness.
As you return to your self, you also return to your whole belief system, which puts you into performance mode – that you cannot be happy without doing something – which isn’t a fundamental happiness.
Q2: I understand. Thank you very much.
