Q2: This is my second day in the meeting and I feel the energy’s quite loving and intense over here, however, what you say seems more theoretical to me, whatever you say to be the love or open, what’s the way to do that when I really feel closed inside or someone says something to me that hurts. How do we open at that time, when it all feels shrink and closed inside?
John: Really enjoy that all that you are feeling in such a moment represents just your self and not at all what you really are.
Q2: And what I really am, my mind knows it’s the nothingness. I know intellectually … from all the spiritual teachings that I’m not the body, mind, … conscious awareness but that’s not my realization. It’s what my mind knows, so there’s a gap between this intellectual understanding and the realization. How to fill that gap and be all the time in that realization?
John: When your body and your mind is weary, as soon as you lie down and your head reaches the pillow, you begin opening. You’re not using concepts, thoughts and feeling to open. You are opening because you, awareness, are relaxing.
Q2: It’s weird to say that but even when I lie down or am trying to sleep, from many years, my mind remains so restless and something or other keeps on going and it’s hard to sleep, also. It’s like I usually listen to some soft music or some discursive from some saints to quieten down my mind, and then I go in sleep.
John: You use something external that you, openness, in form, relate to, so while you’re listening to soft music there’s a little bit of you that relates to the effect of that. You’re relating to the openness and the softness in the music, and that’s because that openness and that softness relates directly to what you are really like. As soon as you realize what it is, what kind of beingness deeply touches you and reaches you, such as a certain kind of music, or physical relief, or a look in someone’s eyes to you, whatever it is that deeply touches you and reaches right into you shows you, right there, how you open.
As you see these tiny little openings throughout the day, as you’re consciously in them, you realize that that openness facilitated through things outside of your self is your love. And then, once that begins to become clear to you, that kind of delicate opening that naturally occurs when someone’s kind to you, that shows you how to open when someone isn’t kind to you. The openness is the same, the circumstance is different.
Q2: It sounds so simple and when it really happens, when someone is kind to you you feel open, but when someone is not kind to you or a circumstances is not that kind … you become closed or resist them, and at that time that understanding goes somewhere in the sky! That’s when the mind asks how to be centred and be responsive rather than reactive.
John: Then begin with every little moment in your day where there’s a little touch of kindness to you: any little thing that takes place in your day, that makes it really inviting for you to open, that with every little touch of that in your day you speedily open. You love opening. You love responding. If that’s what you’re consciously living within any little thing in your day that touches you, you’re being conscious of beingness that is real to you. As you move in that, when it’s easy and available, you will next begin to be that because it is your love. You’ll next begin to be that when little things offend you or hurt you. Let that openness come into you when really little things offend you: the silliest little things. There, you realize what opening is like. When something just a little bit doesn’t feel good.
Q2: Another issue which I have been facing in the last 5 – 7 years is during my spiritual practices I’ve had openings of kundalini and changes and symptoms of that, kundalini, and my body has become very sensitive for external energies, so I have not been able to talk to people, go in the crowds, or even do my work. I am a doctor and I go to hospital, and I feel in a few minutes that my body starts feeling ill or I start having a fever, and all my energy … drains out. So the last many years I have left my job and am not able to do any other job. My mind feel blank as to what I want to do or like to do. I just don’t get any answer within, what I need to do, so I don’t find joy in anything, or even if I try to do out of duty the body starts hurting, so remain at house, or, so how do I deal with this?
John: You have become very sensitized to what is not okay and you’re registering all of that in your body, and you’re relating to all of that in your body, which is making you, in your life, dysfunctional. When you are gentled and quieted within, realize the okayness that’s there. What you’re turning into is a warm okayness. That warm okayness is beingness of what you really are. And then, little bit by little bit, relate directly to that warm okayness in the midst of something that doesn’t feel okay. Little bit by little bit. And slowly you realize that not okay feelings don’t take you out of you, quietly within, being warmly okay.
When your body just a little bit doesn’t feel well, you are able to be warmly okay within in the midst of your body feeling like that. Love being like that more and more in really little things that don’t feel very okay. Begin with the little things: the really little things and not with anything big. If you try to do it in something that’s big, you’ll prove to your self how difficult that is. When you be this warm okayness in the midst of tiny little things that don’t feel okay, you realize how delightfully easy this is.
Q2: How do I deal with my body that keeps on hurting all the day? The flow of energy is so much in the body but the body’s not able to cope after that and it’s like contracting here and there, sometimes paining or burning sensations.
John: That’s a big thing. Don’t try and work with the big things. Don’t try and help the big things. You be this warm okayness within in the midst of tiny little things that don’t feel okay. Be this in the really little things. Don’t go right to the big things. If you go to the big things, you will prove your patterns right.
The little things, the really little things, are not patterned yet to convince you of your pain. That’s all confined to the bigger things. The really little things are the tiny little doors in your life that are easy to open. Get to know those little doors by you being warmly okay within as you move through them. Leave all of the big doors alone.
Q2: Thank you, John. Thank you so much.
