Q: You told me I must bring up touches of being to my eyes and to my face and I have experienced much pain and shock and memories of behavior towards others that’s really hard for me to carry. I started to bring up the memories in order to feel and get that face back, as a sort of technique. Is that a good way to get my true face back up?
John: It helps. But when you were really little, you didn’t have these memories to draw from. You had an innocence of heart, and because of the openness and the softness and the clearness of your heart, your own door, the door of your heart to your being was as open as your heart was, so there was easily a direct flow from your being, bringing up touches of being and delicacies of being into your heart. And you did let the expression of that come up into your face and come up into your eyes. It wasn’t something that needed to be explained to you. It was a natural flow of beingness from within your heart and it showed in your face. It was clear in your eyes.
You can access some of these memories. It helps you identify something that you knew when you were little and that you know now, but you don’t really need the memories. You are able as awareness to let your heart open and soften. It is the most fundamental truth that you know in your heart. It is what you always knew. You may not have had words for it but, when you were really little, you very easily lived it.
You easily lived it because you were very sensitive, sensitive and delicate. You didn’t have the strength of self and you were not strong in your person. That was a weakness of yours, without that in any way at all being a bad thing, but it did make it easy for others who felt stronger in themselves to project their weakness onto you and hurt you. Within your openness and softness of heart and your own tender beingness showing your face and in your eyes, you were confused when others would hurt you. It didn’t make sense to you and you didn’t know what to do with it.
Eventually you began to protect your self by closing your heart and hardening your heart. When you did so, you would feel less pain, but you were also shutting down your heart, which stops the flow of beingness that comes through your heart into your self. That has you developing a tighter self and more reactive self.
When you begin as awareness to open your heart again and to let your heart soften, that will be reacquainting you with early memories of being hurt by others and not knowing what to do with it. It would be bringing up all of the pain that you tried to stop. Everything that you’ve been avoiding in your self, that you’ve closed your heart toward, will all be slowly coming back up again. It is going to hurt. The pain you experience, as you are present in openness of heart, isn’t going to damage you. It isn’t going to damage your self. On the other hand, closing your heart and hardening your heart to keep your self from feeling the pain – that does damage your self.
For you to be returning as awareness to being open and soft again despite the pain and the hurt, the flow of being, the delicacies of being, the touches of being that begin to come up again into your heart, will move into your self, enabling you in your self, from within such delicacies, to feel again. With that comes much feeling of vulnerability, but that vulnerability isn’t going to damage you.
These touches of being that are free to move through your heart into your self, up into your face and into your eyes, provide healing. The healing isn’t separate from the pain, the healing comes through the pain. The pain is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. The delicacies of being that come up through your heart, that move into your self, and fill your face and your eyes with tender and delicate awareness, make you whole.
Dwell within the okayness, the profound okayness that touches your heart when your heart opens and softens. Be at rest in that profound okayness in the midst of the pain, the memories, the hurt, and you’ll be realizing that within your most delicate weaknesses, there is a lovely, lovely tender living of your heart.
Q: I have experienced new things in my life, but I suppose I’m not doing enough because when I raise up memories of things that I have done, I sometimes feel the pain is suffocating. Is this the experience I should have ongoing? Some sort of that experience?
John: The joy or the suffocation? It doesn’t matter. The suffocation is because of a conditioning in your self. The experience of that suffocation isn’t something for you to give your heart to. When you’re experiencing that suffocation in your self and you take that experience to heart, you’re giving your heart to the experience of suffocation.
While you’re experiencing such suffocation, notice the tiniest, tiniest subtlety of being that is there in your heart. The littler that it is, the better. The littler it is, the more exquisite it is.
When you notice in the midst of the suffocation the tiniest touch of being in your heart that is almost indiscernible, take that touch to heart. Believe that touch. Let your heart respond to that touch. Your experience of the suffocation is incidental to the tiny touch of being that is there at the same time in your heart.
If your attention goes to the suffocation, your heart will go to the same and you will close your heart to protect your heart from what’s occurring in your self. You don’t need to. Your heart heals when it is open and soft in the midst of a negative experience in your self. When you sustain being that delicacy in the midst of the suffocation in your self, your self heals. It takes time, but your self does heal.
These touches of being, these most subtle touches of being that you know the truth of in your heart – give them your heart and your time despite what you’re experiencing in your self. You need to let these touches show in your face and in your eyes. When your heart is opening and softening, these touches naturally come up into your face and into your eyes. Love not resisting or stopping that.
Q: Am I right wanting to bear everything and not have any sort of relief?
John: It isn’t a right or a wrong. It’s okay. There are many different ways that you can move your self. What matters the most within the many ways in your self is the way in your heart, in your heart opening and softening instead of closing and hardening.
Where there is an openness and a softness of heart, when you have a strong thought in your mind, a strength of perception about what’s happening to your self or person, the tendency is for you to believe what you’re thinking. In that regard, you need to believe only what you actually know the truth of.
Strength of thought and perception isn’t equated with the truth within. To think and feel strongly doesn’t mean that you know the truth of it, nor does a mild feeling with little strength of thought mean that you’re not knowing the truth of something. You need to discern what you’re actually knowing the truth of, within any feeling and any kind of thinking, within any perception. That puts knowing, your knowing as awareness, in control of where your belief moves.
Your belief as awareness is your power. Where the belief of your heart goes, your power goes. When you give your power through your belief to a strong perception, one that seems clearly thought-through and strongly felt, if you’re not knowing the truth of that feeling, that thinking and that perception, then don’t give it your power; don’t give it your belief. But when you do know something, even if it is within a subtlety, a feeling, or a subtlety of thought, if you’re discerning real knowledge within the feeling, within the thought, believe what you know you’re knowing, without needing the thinking or the feeling to have the discernment.
What will occur is that you will slowly begin to move in your awareness as knowing. Real knowledge within that you have in your heart will mean more to you than your feeling and your thinking. As that becomes clear to you, you will be able to identify and discern more easily and more strongly what it is that you’re actually knowing within your thoughts and feelings. You will be able as knowing to make your way through your perceptions. As awareness, you will have your ground in real knowledge, instead of having your ground in what you’re experiencing in your self.
The experiences in your self will always be like the weather; there isn’t real ground in it. The real ground of any experience is what you’re actually knowing the truth of within that experience. It’s your own knowledge, your inner knowledge, the knowing in your heart, that gives you depth of stability within your self, within what you’re experiencing in your self. The tendency is to believe what you’re experiencing, giving your experiences your power, which makes you unstable. Your real stability within is within the much deeper stillness.
The stillness isn’t an experience; the stillness is the knowledge within. When you know something in your heart, it just simply is. It isn’t going to be helping you or providing something for you. It’s just simply what you are knowing.
You need to believe what you know. When you’re believing what you know, your own heart is not just connected to what you’re knowing the truth of in your heart, but your heart opens. You become connected in a living way to the touches in your being, to the delicacies of being. The knowledge follows through from within your own heart, through your own being, into what you first are: living knowledge. The knowing of the truth is what you are. As awareness, you’re able to be the knowing of the truth.
You can’t choose your truth. Either you honestly know the truth of something or you don’t, but what you do honestly and quietly know within, in the midst of a feeling or a thinking or a perception, you need to believe. It’s what gives you your rootedness while feeling and while thinking, instead of having your rootedness being the feeling and the thinking.
When you give your belief to knowledge, when you are believing knowing however little that knowing seems to be, when you live believing knowing, your self becomes the same. Your self becomes as your heart is. If your heart is rooted and grounded in knowledge, the knowledge of the truth, however little that is, your self slowly becomes experienced in that. As your self becomes experienced in that, you begin to gain stability as a person. You will slowly gain stability in your relationship with your environment and with others. It needs to begin in your heart.
As your sweet relationship with knowing comes up into your face and into your eyes, meaning that it is free to move in your self, your person will then slowly become the same. You won’t be modifying your behavior. Your behavior will slowly transform because of what is occurring in your heart and what you’re letting occur in your self.
The first that you will be liking and loving in this are the tiny touches of being within that you know the truth of. In identifying with that as awareness, you know what you belong to, despite the condition of your self, your person, and your life. In belonging to what seems so tiny within, belonging to that in your heart, you do know your way.
When you are rooted and grounded in what you know the truth of within, as tiny as those touches are, your self will slowly also become rooted and grounded in the same. Your self by that transforms. It develops and it grows. You won’t be rooted and grounded in what you’re experiencing in your self any more, but in the midst of everything that you’re experiencing you’ll be rooted and grounded in what you’re knowing within. That enables you as awareness to give tender guidance to your self. You will know what you’re doing. In your heart you will be clear. You don’t need to be able to understand all of it, but as you’re living this, you will slowly in your self understand more and more what it is that you know you’re being.
Your first liking and loving will be the love of the truth within, the love of what you’re knowing of the tiniest touches of being. As that begins to have your self, you will slowly begin to like your self and you will slowly begin to love your self, not because you’re needing to or trying to, but you will see the touches of being growing in your self. As the development of your own being takes place in your self, that’s what you will be liking and loving in your self. As your self slowly develops that way and there is slowly a oneness, little bits of oneness of your self with your being, you will like and you will love your self.
As you continue in that, there will be tiny little bits of touches of being that have solid form in your person and in your living. As that occurs, you will begin to like your person. You’ will begin to love your person, to like and to profoundly love your living and your life, not because you’re holding to anything at all in your life, but because you’re having your being in your person and in your living. It’s your own presence of being that, in your self and person, will accomplish your love of life. It won’t be the love of life as life is perceived on the surface. It’ll be the love of life because your own being fills it. Then when you seem to lose something in your life, there will be no depletion of being , no lessening of your love of life. The love of life flourishes as much in what you gain in life as in what you lose.
Your being is your life. From within the tiny touches of being in your heart, you are able to move and live as this, despite what kind of self you have, despite the history and conditioning of your self. You’re able to be this and to move as this within such a self, within the person that you are and have become so far, within this life that has been yours.
Love being rooted and grounded in the tiniest little bit within that you know the truth of in your heart. You must live by this tiny little bit in your heart, and as a result, slowly your self and your person and your life will flourish, without that needing to be a result. This isn’t result oriented. This is tiniest little bit within oriented, your whole heart planted in that. The results will come even though you know within that you don’t even really need them.
The experience of pain and hurt doesn’t hinder this at all. Pain and hurt are an occasion within which to have your heart in the tiny little bit, to come from that, even in the midst of pain and hurt. When you’re in the pain and the hurt, believe the tiny little touch of being that may be almost indiscernible, that you know the truth of. Believe your knowledge within that touch of being and you will have your being in the midst of pain and hurt. Having your own being is a tiny little bit at a time. If the tiniest little bit of your own being is enough for you, then you can have your being in the midst of anything that you’re experiencing in your self.
As you encounter your own perceptions in your living, each time you have an experience of something, positive or negative, evaluate that perception to see what it is that you actually know the truth of in that perception. You begin to discover that you’ve been living by your perceptions instead of living by something that you really know the truth of. If that knowledge is in a perception, you will believe that knowledge. Don’t believe the perception on its own.
You begin to realize that you’ve been living as a self that is made up of an entire structure of perceptions. Some of them you know the truth of and that they’re worth believing, but in most of them, you will realize that you’ve given your belief to something that you didn’t actually know the truth of. When you encounter such perceptions, you need to let them go. You need to release them from within your heart. You will begin to live by real knowledge, your own real knowledge.
Q: A false perception, when I discover it, I see it and it can come again with the feeling that it’s true, and I have to do it over and over again?
John: Yes. The reality presented by that perception has become a part of the fabric of your self. It has become structured into every little part of your self. It doesn’t matter how often it comes up. All that really matters in the experience of that is what your heart is rooted and grounded in.
Even if you fall a hundred times in your self , be the tiny little bit that you know the truth of that gets back up a hundred times. It doesn’t matter what it is that falls. It really does matter what it is, in you, that gets back up.
To listen to John de Ruiter Audio Podcast 34 – Your Being Is Your Life visit the John de Ruiter YouTube Channel
