In this dialogue with John a question is asked about how to understand a woman’s mystery.
Q: I wanted to speak with you about my connection to women in my life. Getting in touch with women, meeting women, connecting with women had been hard for me to do, even in childhood days. There was a shift in this a couple of years ago which made me experience my self much more open, which led to a lot of encounters, experiences on my side which were quite hard to digest for me, like hitting a wall or being in a cage or something like that. I’m curious about your point of view on this topic.
John: Instead of referencing your self while you’re close to a woman, which doesn’t tell you what a woman is, your self won’t tell you; your self doesn’t help you in this. Referencing your self when you’re close to a woman brings pressure into your self because it isn’t in your self that you know about womanness. It’s in your heart, and not you being in your heart so that you can understand in your self about womanness.
Go to your heart and, while you’re close to a woman, stay in your heart despite any of the vulnerability that you experience in your self. You can be close to a woman while you’re in your self and not in your heart, but it won’t satisfy your heart, and while you’re in your self you won’t be able to be close to a woman’s mystery.
It’s only when you are really in your heart that you can be close to a woman’s mystery and that her mystery has access into you, that her mystery is free to do whatever it does to you while you’re in your heart. You’ll not try to understand it; you’ll not try to cope in your self with it; you’re just there, in your heart, at rest, clearly affected by her mystery. In that, you get to know what a woman is.
Q: This sense of disconnection which I have experienced a couple of times in the recent five to ten years is a result of this sort of misalignment or misconception.
John: Yes. You can’t be aligned with her mystery without you being at rest, open and soft in your heart. Her mystery is how her being moves through her humanness. She doesn’t even really get her own mystery but, when you are at rest, open and soft in your heart and a little bit close to her, she gets her mystery because it moves to you. Neither one of you will understand it.
Q: So I’m like a mirror of her to see.
John: It’s a pretty special kind of mirror. It doesn’t just reflect, but it also draws and absorbs. As it does, that deeply opens you to your mystery.
Q: To my mystery.
John: Yes.
Q: What do you mean by ‘draw?’ The mirror draws …
John: When you’re transparent because you’re in your heart, what you really are is present and it registers her mystery. In registering it, it awakens it. In awakening it, it draws it, and it absorbs it. A man’s mystery is a little bit further from the surface than a woman’s.
Q: I guess I already know the answer, but I guess I have to ask: is there anything that I have to do or can do to support this development?
John: Nothing.
Q: I thought so.
John: When you’re in that, that leaves you vulnerable in your self, through your heart, to her mystery, and by that your mystery is uncovered.
When you’re close to a woman, don’t try to cope. Don’t try to understand her and don’t at all try to relate to her: you can’t. You can only relate to her if your mystery is moving. It’s only your mystery within, uncovered and moving, that can relate to hers. Without the meeting of mysteries it doesn’t matter how much you think you might understand a woman, or how much you think you can relate; you don’t really. Open to that and you are available to meet.
Q: As this sensation of disconnectivity occurs, it’s already too late, or …?
John: That sensation of being disconnected and separate has nothing to do with what you really are. It’s present there in your nervous system and it isn’t telling you the truth.
Q: So it’s literally nothing.
John: In reality, it’s nothing. In your nervous system it’s really something.
Q: So not coping with her, but how to deal with this situation knowing that this is inside of me and not real?
John: Toward those sensations and that experience, be kindly un-listening.
Q: Un-listening…not listening?
John: No. Un-listening.
Q: What is that?
John: Better than not listening.
Q: Okay, I get it!
John: Un-listening works; not listening doesn’t. Not listening makes you resist, which means you’re listening to it.
Q: I reckon, so I don’t have an idea yet how to do that, but knowing that it’s not real is a good first step, I hope.
John: Inside, this is how you be when you’re close to a woman.
Q: And being close, I reckon it makes being a lot easier for me.
John: In your heart this comes naturally to you.
Now you see.
Q: I’m confident, yes.
John: If I were your mother now, I would be kissing you all over your face! (Laughter)
After the pain and loss of a broken relationship, is there anything left of the connection? John speaks of being given to the unseen bond that remains. Over-thinking and analyzing is another way of trying to manage the difficulties of life, but it’s being gentled and quieted in the heart that works.
This woman is touched by John sharing what sexuality is really for and wants to know what it means to be a woman. John shares the subtle differences between man and woman, and shows her how to invite and move in her sexuality anew – this time aligned to the delicacies of its deeper mystery.
The great potential of our deeper sexuality to manifest in our lovemaking all depends on dearness, being given to the heart and our real humanness. This talk introduces the connection between a woman’s sexual anatomy, arousal, and the sexual fields that lie just beyond self-oriented, polarized sexuality.
A newly married woman is exploring how to give more outer form to her marriage, and discovering what it means to grow in realness, togetherness and deeper sexuality with her husband.
This interviewer wants to get at how John’s teachings can open the territory many of us share – the world of relationship and sexuality. What gives relationship a true foundation? How can sexuality go deeper than want and need? You speak of connectivity and dearness, John, but how can we relate to that when we don’t like each other? These questions and more are worked out in this dialogue.
Deeply loving someone and being in love… you start a relationship and then you wonder why, after familiarity has set in, the in-loveness is gone and there’s difficulty and pain. If you start from wanting and needing a relationship, you’re already relating in a way that isn’t like your being. So how to have a meaningful, pain-free relationship? Listen to this talk to find out!
A young man would like to be free of the conditioning and judgments he knows are present in his sexuality and asks for help. John explains in practical terms how sexuality can be returned to the heart, freeing judgments held in the body and bringing balance and healing.
The most powerful human engine is sexuality. The sexual fields are the magicalness of our sexuality, a magicalness that isn’t reachable and obtainable through anything that we can do in our selves. We can’t access them without deepening in our humanness: that our initial purpose of life comes from being within the heart and coming from the heart. Living from that is the revelation of our humanness. The mystery is all there in our sexuality, in the meaning of meeting and communion, connecting us to the beyond.
Real womanness needs no defence, isn’t able to be overpowered. There isn’t anything that can enclose it, confine it, or stop it. Real womanness is quietly, deeply inviolable. Real womanness is just like our being. There, we have the potential for real relationship, that isn’t based on want and need, that doesn’t touch into lack. In these talks from an Open Mic gathering in Netanya, Israel, John explains how to let real womanness grow in us like a new inner garden, integrating our sexuality and enabling us to really get to know our selves.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
