Expanded Consciousness: Becoming Free of Illusion

Q: I was waking up one morning and, just as I woke up, a voice spoke…it was my voice… and it said, “You have a shell around you”. I instantly knew that it was true although I didn’t understand what it meant, exactly. I sensed that it was blocking some part of me from coming out. I also saw a different me, a more clear me, less burdened. I wanted to look at this shell to know what is it covering, what is it holding? And I could see the shell. It had a hard, polished surface and one end of it had markings: they were symbols, letters – alien, maybe. Could you see anything to help me understand?

John: The shell is made of intricate fibers, all of them relating to each other in a way that they’re completely dependent on each other. Every fiber in that shell is a form of illusion. It’s brought to a polish because your relationship with it is all worked out, and that shell protects your interests, your self-interests. It protects all of the investments that you’ve made in your self, and there’s been another consciousness guiding your workings, your workings with these strands of illusion.

Q: You said ‘another consciousness’?

John: That’s what the inscription is all about: that this consciousness maintains and has ownership of you. It holds the ownership. It has its own signature on the whole shell. It owns the shell and it owns you through your relationship to all of the fibers that make up that shell. Anything that you do to be free of that shell or any of its fibers, this consciousness owns all of those fibers and uses them, in your experience, against your own investments, so it keeps securing your participation in your investments.

Q: By what means?

John: Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your will. It has access into every little bit of your self that isn’t integrated from within your heart and your being.

Q: Well, I do know that it’s not doing me any good, that I’d like to be free from it.

John: You can be free from that other consciousness that has mastery over everything that’s not integrated in your self, and you’ve given it that mastery. You can be free of that consciousness only by you being free of your self. It isn’t controlling anything that’s real.

When you are gentled and quieted in your heart despite anything that you’re thinking or feeling, despite anything that acts on your self, this other consciousness has, there, no part in you. It cannot master you. It’s completely dependent on you leaving your heart and identifying with all of the little fibers that make up that shell.

Q: Did it take a long time for it to solidify like that?

John: Yes. You grew into it. In that way, on the level of your self, it’s like your skin.

When you are being your unintegrated self, when you are being your self and you’re not in your heart, you are being that shell. That shell is what holds your whole self together and keeps it safe from any of its investments being lost. The shell is an investment container. It’s only when you’re in your heart that the shell, and the consciousness that owns it, have no power.

Q: So it’s really not a shell, in a way. It’s not solid: it’s just everywhere.

John: It is all of your unintegrated self that is so not whole that it is really, from a different perspective, a shell. Because it has so much surface area, your experience in your body, when you’re separate from your heart, is governed by that surface area.

When you’re in your heart you move as a being. You have mobility. You’re not confined within the shell: you can move anywhere in it and anywhere outside of it. You’re able to see the shell for what it is. It’s not a common occurrence to see it.

Q: Are you saying that having a shell is not a common occurrence?

John: It’s what is most common. Anyone who’s not free of themselves has it, has a shell, and that shell has an owner, and it’s not that person. It’s an uncommon occurrence to be able to see it.

Q: I want it gone. That’s probably why I saw it.

John: It’s simple. Return to your heart, unconditionally, and at any personal cost, and then throughout your day and your life remain in your heart, unconditionally, and at any personal cost.

Q: In day-to-day life what does that look like?

John: As you remain in your heart while your self is accosted by something – by an appetite, by someone else, seemingly by your own frustration, annoyance, anger, tightness, hardness, irritation – that you’ll remain quieted in your heart. When it’s clear to you that it’s in your heart that you belong and not to what you’re experiencing, your seeing opens and you’ll see through some of the strands, the forms of illusion in your self; forms of illusion that are one with what isn’t integrated in your self, that you have empowered but is owned by something else. So, in that way, you are on its leash. As soon as you close or harden, as soon as you tighten, as soon as you leave your heart for any reason, you are back on your leash.

Q: Are we talking about what’s controlling this universe, this earth?

John: What controls what you give your power to, forms of yours that you give your power to, forms that are not like your being, and not like you when you are rested in your heart.

Q: The ownership doesn’t want to go. It’s not that simple.

John: And it doesn’t have to go. It has right over those forms of illusion and it has right over you as long as it is those forms of illusion – your unintegrated self – that you give your power to.

When you give your power through your heart to whatever it is that you actually know the truth of in your heart, nothing masters you but what you know. And it doesn’t matter what your past is. It doesn’t matter what shell you have. It doesn’t matter what level of owner has that shell, has command of it. When you are mastered by what you know, you have no other masters.

Q: So we can’t compare. We all have our shell.

John: That’s the illusion. All that anyone actually has is what they know, and they’re either being it or they’re being separate from it. Any separation from it means you are owned by something outside of your self. You are owned through what you empower of what isn’t integrated in your self, and by separating from your heart and separating from what you know the truth of in your heart.

Q: There are times when I see two of me: one of them is almost an aura of the other one but it’s not ethereal, and I’d rather be one of them than the other one. But I can see they’re also connected. Is the one self the one that’s owned, and the other self is the one that’s not owned?

John: Yes.

Q: So even our selves have differences.

John: When you’re being your accustomed self, you are not your own. You belong to something else and what you belong to isn’t at all like your being and it controls you, but it controls you only through what you give your power to that is separate from your heart and what you know in your heart. The control isn’t based on anything that is real.

You’re not a victim of that ownership. You empower that ownership, not the other owner. When you return to your heart and remain in your heart unconditionally, at any personal cost, this other owner is absolutely disempowered of its interests in you.

Q: I would welcome any assistance on this quest.

John: Anything that you’re in – that you perceive, that you think, that you feel, that you experience, that you think you’re entitled to, that holds your investments, anything that isn’t just like your being, anything that isn’t like openness and softness of heart that you experience in your self – you won’t work with, you won’t fix, you won’t talk to, you won’t argue with, you won’t defend.

As soon as it’s there, you open and soften. All that you are in your self is openness and softness. All that you are is beingness. All that you are is a being. It’s that or your return to your self-importance, and right there you’re also back on your leash.

It has power only through your misuse of power. While you are only in your heart belonging to what you know, all of your power goes into what is the same as your being. It all goes into pure you.

This world – not this planet, but this world – is controlled by billions of leashes.