Q: We were driving home and I realized my heart was opening and I felt so much pain. I felt I didn’t want to go to meetings anymore because I was so scared. I felt I was naked and everyone had a knife and could cut me at any time. I was just scared and I’m still scared.
John: It’s easy for something to hurt your body. It’s difficult for something to hurt your self, and it is isn’t possible for anything to hurt you. Your experiencing that you can be hurt is really your experience of your own nervous system. It isn’t your experience of your self and it isn’t your experience of your heart. As your nervous system changes, your experience of what hurts you changes. When you really come to know what your heart is, then you come to realize that, within, you are not damageable even though you can feel everything and it is okay to feel everything. For you to feel more involves more of you. That makes you feel more vulnerable. It doesn’t actually make you more vulnerable.
When you protect your self in the way that you’re used to, when you protect your heart in the way that you’re used to, you’re not actually protecting something. You’re actually limiting you and stopping you. You’re closing down your actual capacity, your actual capacity to receive what seems that you’re not able to receive. You have your experience and you make a judgment based on your own experience of what your capacity is within. You misinform your self in that.
Trust something deeper within that you’re knowing a little bit. Trust that more than trusting your experience to tell you everything of what is actually occurring. The more trust, the more you open, the more you feel.
Q: But I trust my body.
John: When you don’t want to feel hurt, you’re trusting your nervous system. Your nervous system won’t open if you’re not opening within your own body. You can open in an instant within all of your body. As you’re being that in your own body, it takes time, perhaps even a long time, for your nervous system to open and change as much.
When you open in your body beyond what you’re comfortable with in your body, you’re moving past the comfort zone of your own nervous system. You’re stretching your nervous system. When you stretch it, it grows, it opens, it changes. When you stretch a muscle, it isn’t comfortable. It hurts. You need to stretch, even though it hurts. You understand the value of stretching. Apply that understanding to stretching your self, to stretching your own nervous system, to stretching the openness of your heart. All of it hurts and it’s all good.
If you’re uninformed and you stretch your muscle somewhat and it hurts, it will be easy for you to think in an uninformed state that you’re doing something wrong and you can make a judgment within. Then never stretch any muscle because it hurts when you do it; therefore you’re doing harm to your body when you stretch.
Q: But it’s all good?
John: You know that opening is good. It’s only when pain and hurt accompany the opening that you easily draw the conclusion that that’s damaging you. If you believe what you’re thinking in that, you’ll secure the conclusion and you’ll act on it and you’ll stop opening. You’ll stop stretching and everything becomes tight.
When you first realize the goodness of opening and you’re knowing it, you’re knowing the truth of it. That knowledge is worth more than the experience that follows. Experience doesn’t inform you. Knowledge informs you. There’s knowledge that is in the experience, but don’t just believe what you experience. Don’t take it all at face value. Discern what it is that you’re knowing the truth of in the midst of your experience. Then, when you experience something, that has you coming into realization. You begin to realize what you are knowing in the midst of your experience.
Q: So when I felt I was opening, I really stretched my self?
John: And before you felt the pain in that, you knew the truth in that and you loved it.
Don’t believe everything that you experience just because you experience it. Discern what you know the truth of in the midst of it. What if you have never worked out before and you decide to work out a little bit and it hurts and you’re somewhat confused, so you tell someone that it hurts and that person tells you it’s quite all right, keep going. You’re unsure but you’re trusting. The next day your whole body is really hurting and really sore. It would be easy for you to draw the conclusion that you are a fool. You shouldn’t have done what was hurting and now you have the proof of it to never do it again.
Stretch your self and be always giving your self work-outs. Stretch your nervous system. Stretch your mind. Work out your nervous system and your mind.
Q: How?
John: Open, within, and as soon as it hurts don’t recoil just because it hurts. Get to know how things actually work within and then live by what you have come to know the truth of.
When someone isn’t moving along fast enough for you and you have to wait, if you feel impatient, impatience hurts. It’s uncomfortable. It’s another level of hurt. If you listen to the hurt, it will be easy for you to draw the conclusion that the other person is doing something to you and that you need to stop what that person is doing to protect your self from that hurt.
Carefully examine every little way within everything in your life. Carefully examine hurt and you’ll realize how much of it you already understand and you already have perspective in, that you already know the truth of and that you’ve grown from. That you have grown immediately tells you there is much more for you to grow in. Then based on what you have already realized and learned, love realizing and learning, and you won’t stop the moment something hurts. You’ll realize instead. The truth of it is that you love realizing and you love learning. Have that on every level, within, that you’re capable of having awareness of.
Q: Do I just grow by stretching?
John: Yes, while really listening, within, while stretching. There’s a lot of information to take in while you’re stretching. Really open, within, and love really listening.
Q: I don’t know how to show more that I’m not a little kid.
John: Part of you is a little kid. There are aspects of that that need to never go away, and there are other aspects of that that you know, within, to let go of, that you know to move past. There’s a sorting out in that also hurts. Don’t not sort it out just because there is some hurt in it. Within every stage of your development there’ll be more that you come into that needs to be sorted out. Some of it you actually know to keep and some of it you actually know to let go of. If you’re being really sensitive, you’ll keep the good of every stage of development, including that of being a baby.
When you find the baby and the little child and the kid in your dad, you love him the more for it.
Q: Yes. That’s true.
John: In knowing that, keep the same true for you. Being seventeen years old, if you are all there, really all there, then you are not seventeen, you are one going on seventeen.
Listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 45 – Working Out Your Nervous System or visit the John de Ruiter YouTube ChannelÂ
