Here the questioner asks about distinguishing between feelings and discerning more comprehensively, as a whole person. John reminds her to begin with honesty and employ her faculties on that foundation.
Q: I’m so involved in my feelings that I’m not discerning between me and them.
John: You’re able to discern the difference. You’re speaking of the difference. You just haven’t integrated the strength of emotion, so when you can use the strength of your emotion, you find yourself caught in it. You’re not actually caught then by the strength of emotion, you’re caught by your own orientation within the strength in your emotion. If you assess what’s happening correctly, you’ll be profoundly re-evaluating everything. You’ll be starting from the beginning.
Q: There would be opportunity to rightly redefine every relationship I have with my emotions?
John: Yes. It is real meaning then to no longer take yourself seriously while taking something integrated in yourself seriously. You’ve related to knowing as the experience of yourself, instead of relating to knowing as what precedes yourself.
Q: It was clear to me that I couldn’t “understand” knowing. There was always something coming up inside first. I’d get off track.
John: No, you just didn’t follow your point through.
Q: It’s about identifying knowing in a situation with pressure.
John: It isn’t even the pressure; it’s merely the un-integrated self. It is that that realizes pressure, that when you experience pressure, you refer first to what you profoundly know, instead of referring first to the self that you know.
Q: I tend to work things out in my head.
John: What is it that is working all of that out? The self that you’re accustomed to being is not authoritative; the feelings are not authoritative; what’s in your head is not authoritative. What is it then that moves through all of that, that you know is authoritative? It is that that is you. Your self isn’t you.
Q: I know feelings are not true. It’s about identifying. It’s like I’m blinded.
John: That’s because you’re ascribing value to meaning that doesn’t actually have the value you give it. That means you, as awareness, are not using knowing to discern. You will always, as awareness, use what you value the most, to discern. If you value your feelings the most, you will use your feelings to discern. You’re able to identify every part of you, distinguishing each part from the other and then putting them together rightly, each part then being congruent with the other. It’s on account of you. It’s all done by you. That doesn’t make it difficult; that makes it easy. How can you possibly know your self, if you’re not knowing you first?
Q: It’s so delicate, the knowing of me. I’m not accustomed to relating to it.
John: Without the delicate, there’s no value to meaning, but it is what is so profoundly delicate that introduces you to that much value and meaning. That then becomes reflected in your self, enabling you no longer to have a blended self.
Q: Mixed?
John: Everything being mixed together without known value or meaning.
Place loyalty where it first belongs, then follow it through to where it next belongs. Then the loyalty to your self is an accurate reflection of what is worth first being loyal to. If you’re loyal to what you know in knowing meaning, you’re knowing what is actually first you, then you’ll also be loyal in knowing that within your self, giving such pristine loyalty form, which becomes a self. You’ll be loyal to that self because you’ll know the value and the meaning that forms it. You’ll have a self that is then as noble as the authentic you.
Q: The tiniest in me.
John: Then take it seriously instead of taking your over-blown self seriously. The experience of that is all right; just love giving it real perspective. That is you being Grace within an un-integrated self.