Becoming a parent is a joyous experience, but for many it can be quite overwhelming. Anxiety can quickly replace joy as we struggle with our own uncertainty and reactivity. How do we set boundaries and say ‘no’ in ways that don’t trigger a power struggle with our child? In this talk, John gives practical advice about how to give your child what your child really needs by coming from quiet clarity and warmth – the ‘juiciest’ kind of parenting.
How can we find joy in life? Isn’t that what life is all about? In this dialogue, John explains that when you believe the noise in your self, you’re fundamentally unhappy because you’re not being what you really are. Joy is actually the beingness of the real you, and the manifestation of that is as simple as falling asleep.
How to be free of past hurts and conditioning? Is there a method that can help, a spiritual practice? Can meditation help? John explains why methods and spiritual practices ultimately don’t work. Spiritual practices can help bring you to the door of your being, but they can’t take you through the door. It is only a shift of orientation that can take you through the door, into pure you and into freedom from past hurts and from the conditioning in your self.
What is our life for? What happens after we die? The questioner feels that he is making compromises in his life in order to function, work and make money. John explains that everything we do in life influences our life after death. Using practical examples, John guides us in how not to miss the wondrous opportunity of this life.
The questioner had an experience where the structure of himself dissolved and everything was love. But when the experience dissipated, old structures returned. John explains that the experience is a beloved messenger. Instead of wanting the messenger to return, we can abide in the message it brings. When the knowing in the experience is enough, we become the same as the message.
What to do when wonderful awakening experiences fade away, and resistance, fear and suffering return to our experience? John reminds us that we know something much deeper within, which is different than our self. Suffering is in the self, it comes from what is familiar. There is no suffering in knowing, in being in what knowing is in our heart; and there is no suffering in the purity of liking. Liking knowing the deep within removes the suffering. It’s easy, natural, direct and immediate.
John explains the nitty-gritty of loving without expectation, and what it is that nurtures real togetherness in a relationship.
“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
