Originally published in Movement Newspaper May 1980 Vol.  V Iss 5

People say to me, “Teach me to understand.”  And I tell them, “Understand the teachings.”  They ask, “How do I do that?”  The answer is: understand the teachings the best way you can, at anytime, wherever you find yourself.  The way you understand the teachings is to apply yourself to that understanding.  To do this, you may find that you have to wake up from your sleep.  You see, even though you may be walking around physically, you may be sleeping.  So, wake up from that sleep, that trance, your self-hypnosis, and your unconsciousness.

Often when you are with people, and the focus of the group is to awaken spiritually to the greater reality, you will hear something said that will spark something inside of you.  At this time you may feel the pressure of your heart inside of you, moving, opening, stretching …  and you feel the energy of Spirit moving inside of you.  That energy often feels unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable in its quality of bursting free of previous limitations.  And so, out of nervousness, you may seek to disperse that energy, to dissipate it so that you can return to the more familiar sensations.  You can dissipate the energy by talking, moving, shouting, sex, eating, drinking, and drugs.  Know that when you involve yourself in these distractions, you are choosing that rather than sitting with the energy of Spirit and experiencing it as it is.

Far too often, I see people who are right on the apex of insight talk themselves right out of it, out of nervousness.  When you are experiencing that energy that is the Spirit moving inside of you, experience that to its fullest extent.  Don’t talk about it.  Don’t distract yourself from it, even if it’s uncomfortable for you.  When you feel that awakening inside, go for it.  You don’t have to have words for it.  You don’t have to identify it.  You don’t have to know what it is.  You don’t have to know what you are feeling about it.  Just let it reveal itself to you, without any preconceived notions about whether it is good or bad or anything.

Far too often, you want to KNOW way ahead of time what your experience will be.  You don’t have to KNOW; you can just be present with your reality and let it occur in its own timing.  Sometimes when people are going to hear me speak, they will say to a friend, “I’m going to hear John-Roger talk.”

The friend says, “What’s he going to talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are you going to go?”

“I’m going to go and find out what he’s going to talk about.”

“If you don’t know what he’s going to talk about, I don’t see why you go.”

If you look at that conversation from another point of view, you might wonder why anyone would listen to me talk if they did know what I was going to talk about.  If you already KNOW something, you don’t need to hear it again.  Often in seminars, I will talk about things that you already know but have forgotten or pushed aside in some way so that they are no longer present for you in your life.  But the moment those things are explained to you, you say, “I knew that.”

Often I explain what is presently happening at the time the seminar is given.  And since you are experiencing the same moment of reality that I am, when I explain what is happening, you recognize that reality within yourself, and you catch the truth of my words.  Now you can go out later and with your mind doubt what I said.  Through this you may attempt to validate it by doubting it — and that’s a backwards approach.  You don’t validate very many things by doubting them.  You destroy them by doubting them.  You may say, “But I want to test it.”  Who are you to test?  You may not have passed a test in a long time.  You say, “Well, I want to evaluate it.”  With what?  What tools do you have for evaluation?  Do you know?  Maybe you just want to judge it.  That’s easy.  It doesn’t require any tools.  You can just say, “THAT’S NO GOOD!”

If something is no good, how can it be present?  If it is present, how can it not be good?  In the Scriptures it says that there was darkness, and then God created heaven and earth, and when He was through, He looked down and said that it was good.  If God says that it is good – all creation is good – how are you able to look at any part of that and say that it’s bad?

Perhaps you say that you never heard it was good.  And perhaps you are always so busy in your mind, with your opinions, and your judgments, that you never give yourself a chance to listen to God’s voice.  Yet you say, “When God tells me, I’ll listen.”

Try quieting and attuning yourself to the place inside where God is speaking.

“Where is that?”

Inside of you.

“It’s my mind; it won’t leave me alone.”

Why don’t you leave it alone?

“You mean, I can leave my mind alone?”

It’s yours; you can leave it alone.

“It’s mine!?”

Yeah.

“It’s my anxiety.  I just can’t get past my anxieties.”

It’s your mind that creates your anxieties.

“Well, that’ just the way I feel.”

You choose those feelings.

You can feel anything you want to.  Why feel that?

“You mean I’m choosing all this?”

Right!

”I’m doing this?”

Right!

“By myself?”

No.

“Thank God! Who can I blame?”

Why blame anyone?  Why make it wrong?  Why not say you don’t know what’s going on?

“I have to KNOW.  How can I say I don’t know?  What will people think?”

Try it and see.

“Okay, I don’t know …  Nothing happened.”

Right.

“You mean, it’s okay not to know?”

Often it’s healthy not to know.

“What if I feel like I have to know.”

It’s called PARANOID.

Paranoid is caring too much, far too much.  Those who are expressing paranoid are caring too much what other people are thinking, what they are doing, what feelings they are having, caring that they may “get me”, caring that they are wondering what is going on, etc.  Eventually if you are expressing paranoia, you may start thinking that people are out to get you, and that’s bad news.  Or maybe the bad news is that they aren’t out to get you; they don’t even know you exist.

Part of the paranoid pattern that you create in your life is “editing” what you tell people, in an attempt to control and manipulate their thoughts toward you.  Instead of just living in the present moment and loving your life, you attempt to “orchestrate”  your life.  You deceive people, consciously and purposely.  You don’t tell them all of the truth.  And then you want them to function as if it were all of the truth.  You tell them just so much, but not the whole picture.  And you justify that by thinking that you are saving yourself the “hassle” of having to deal with their reactions to the whole truth.  That’s judgment, my friends.  However you look at it, it’s judgment.

If you tell them the whole truth and they “hassle” you, guess what?  You’ll build strength.  And you’ll build trust.  You will trust yourself more and they will trust you more.  Sometimes you may turn away from the truth or the full truth because you are not sure that you can handle the end result.  But the end result will be the end result, and you will be able to handle that the same way you handle your life today.  Sometimes you handle things okay and sometimes not so okay.  And you’re here.  Sometimes, in my various lives, I’ve handled situations by crawling on my knees through dirt and garbage.  And sometimes I’ve handled my lives magnificently.  And I’m here.  Sure, I could look back and make it all wrong, and I’m here.  Or I can look back on it and make it all magnificent, and I’m here.  And it was neither wrong, nor magnificent.  There may be things that I wouldn’t want to do again, and I would be willing to repeat any of it, if that was the thing to do.

As soon as you can just do the things that are present with you, the things that are there for you to do – and not do anything as a thought or a feeling, or with any consideration or concern of what you might get out of it, or what you deserve or what the neighbors might think – then you are beginning to live in the freedom of your own consciousness.

When you can live your life in the moment that it happens, not looking for anything in particular to take place, just being open to the present, you are living in Spirit; and you will find yourself experiencing so much joy and so much freedom.

In that moment of NOW, you begin to know yourself and that is the beginning of your knowledge of God.

John-Roger, DSS