This is from John-Roger’s upcoming book The Wayshower. The book will be released along with Jsu Garcia’s new movie, The Wayshower.

I remember one lifetime when I was being tested by Spirit. In that life, people would say to me, “You really have everything. You are part of this spiritual path, and things are nice.” I said, “Yeah, it really is nice,” and suddenly it all started being taken away from me. Transportation went, friends went, all the loved ones went. Job’s situation in the Bible was easy because he knew the Lord was involved in it. I didn’t know. Job knew he was being plagued by the devil; I hadn’t seen him yet. It’s easier when you know what it is. When you don’t know, it can be “hell.”

I fought tooth and toenail against people who tried to take my loved ones from me, hitting them in the head with all sorts of paraphernalia: “Leave my loved ones alone!” Those people just took my loved ones anyway. I’d hit them again, and they’d take the things out of my hand and hit me with them. I’d think, “That’s not fair.” They’d hit me again—and I’d get out of the way. They were just telling me, “You’re not going to be able to take it with you, buddy, and don’t forget it. And here’s a lump for good measure.” So, everything was taken from me—everything. The nice thing is that it didn’t cost a lot for clothing because it didn’t take much to cover me. I also remember when all the clothing was gone. At nighttime I’d go to find a mudhole and put mud on myself so it would dry and keep me warm at night. Then in the daytime I had to get up soon enough to get the mud off so I wouldn’t be baked in it. I used to spend a lot of my time looking for a nice mudhole, to get some clean clothing. I also learned that if you put on mud that has lumps and other things in it, it hurts your skin when you put it on.

At times, though, I enjoyed putting that mud on. I was taking the mud and caking it and watching the different designs I could make that would make it really work. But forget it; it wouldn’t work for long. If the mud has dried, as soon as you stretch a little bit, it cracks and falls off, and that’s a cold spot. Then it hurts to put on cold mud at nighttime, so it’s best not to, believe me. I couldn’t work or get work, and I couldn’t have anybody help me because I was the scourge, the outcast. Most people wouldn’t talk to me and would leave me alone. And there was no one who would take me in.

I was even fighting the dogs for scraps of food and losing regularly. And, eventually, to eat food would make me sick because there was no stomach to hold the food. I would chew it up and spit out what I could because there was nothing there. Digestion, constipation—I didn’t have to worry about those things because there was nothing going in except a little mud once in a while. It had some minerals and a few other things in it, like a lot of viruses and bacteria and a lot of droppings from animals. There was only one thing I would keep saying over and over, and that was the Lord’s name. People would tell me to get out of the way so they could run their cattle through the mudholes to get flies off them and to put mud on them so the flies wouldn’t bite them. I would keep saying this name over and over and over, so they called me that.

That went on for a long, long time, going from mudhole to mudhole. Learning to live like that, at the level of just breathing in and breathing out, is called survival. People would sometimes come to me and say, “You know, you had so much and it’s all been taken from you. What did you do wrong?”

I said, “I don’t know if whatever it was, was wrong. But I do know that there is no way they can break me, because it’s all being done for me even in my ignorance.” Even in the ignorance of not knowing and the ignorance of the whole situation, I would not blaspheme God or anybody around me. And I would not say, “Look, Lord. Other people have all these camels and horses and wagons and all this food, and I’ve got nothing. Why them? Why not me?”

I lived a long, long time in that kind of condition, and some people would ask me, “Why are you so happy?” I said, “If this is the worst that can happen to me, if this is the worst that they’ve got to show me, they might as well stop because I’m not going to give up no matter what Spirit, or God, or anybody else does.”

They said, “Maybe it’s black magic or witchcraft.” I said, “I don’t care. If that is the worst they can do, they are shot down.”

Was that being an optimist? It was either that or be a pessimist, but why be a pessimist? I was as low as I could go. There was only one way for me to look, and that was up because I was lying down on my back all the time. Everything was truly looking up. And to get up was often a waste of time because I would be back down as soon as I got up, just from having no strength. One day, I said, “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, but if you are going to keep me here for a long time, that’s fine. And if this is what you want to do, that’s fine. Whatever you do, that’s fine, so go ahead and do it because you are going to do it anyway, and there’s nothing I can do.”

Then it said, “You endured it.” I asked, “Is that the end?”

They said, “No, but you endured the end of this.” And within a period of three or four days, monies that had been owed to me, things that had been taken from me, were being returned to me. I would look at the people and say, “I have no need for this. Give it to others. I have my mud and my mudhole. Why do I need all this that you’re trying to give to me?”

It amazed them that I gave away those things and also gave away riches. I did move to a little better situation because winter was coming, and there is such a thing as being practical. And I don’t mean for anybody to try and prove something by going around naked, because they’ll throw you in jail. I’m not saying to prove something by not eating. But I am saying that the worst thing that could happen to you is nothing because you will exist, though you might think it is at a level where you couldn’t do it.

In that lifetime, pigs were the lowest form, and I’d move them over or try to cuddle up close to get some body warmth. Some people now are sitting in the lap of luxury in this world, and if they don’t eat three meals a day, they complain. If somebody doesn’t recognize them immediately, they feel resentful. And if others don’t recognize them for the great light that’s inside them, they think those people must be devils or something like that, and that’s not so at all. A lot of the people who are sitting in high places now will be pulled down, and they will get to “wallow with the pigs.” I hope they can handle that as well as they can handle the glory they are sitting in now because it must all be treated equally. That becomes one of the hardest things to do: to take success and failure equally. People come to me and say, “J-R, I really love you, I know who you are,” and I say, “Okay. Next.” Somebody else comes up and says, “I really doubt who you are,” and I say, “Okay. Next.” They ask me if it makes any difference, and I say, “None. It’s in you. It’s not in me.”

This planet is the “crazy house.” There is nobody here who is sane; if they were, they’d leave. But when you can leave your body in consciousness and just walk your body through this level, that’s when it really tastes nice. That’s having your cake and eating it, too. That’s being able to have everything in the world that you want, and want nothing. Then it doesn’t matter inside you whether a person says hello to you or never sees you again, because they are part of the process of purifying you. You can make your hell, your animosity, inside of you by your whole approach to what you think life should give to you. The old adage that “life owes you a living” is nonsense. It owes you absolutely nothing.

And Spirit owes you nothing. You must take from It, but you can’t take in a consciousness of poverty. It states in the Bible that man was created to have dominion over all things (Genesis 1). But first you must be a “man,” a human, and that’s a very beautiful thing to be. This is not an animal masquerading in the human form. It is being that one who can truly handle whatever comes their way, even the mudholes.