Living as Profound Honesty – an exclusive Interview with John de Ruiter by Leo Drioly for InnerSelf: an Australian magazine Issue 10, Dec-Feb 07/08 page 6.
John de Ruiter is a Canadian born author and spiritual teacher, who addresses audiences worldwide from “core-splitting honesty” and the oneness that began as “unconditional, innermost surrender and servitude to Truth”.
During the following interview there were large gaps of silence and stillness between virtually every sentence. To really understand John’s profound responses, it is best to try to read through each answer from the same silence and stillness that the words emanated from, by attuning not only to the words and their meaning but to the energy behind them. I have purposely left the interview unedited, just as it was transcribed, trusting that those who have tasted of the Truth will resonate with what John has to offer, just as it is.
InnerSelf: You had your first awakening at 17; how did this happen and what took place ?
John de Ruiter: Nothing obvious on the outside at all, but inwardly everything changed. My entire experience became what seemed infinite and no difference between within and without and it was profound, it was qualitatively intensely real – it was not even intensely meaningful, but it was meaning itself. There wasn’t any ”thing” that was meaning.
IS: What led up to it?
JdR: The most I could possibly say is I just had a thought of what God is. I had a “wondering” about that and a thought about that and then all of this very naturally opened up.
IS: I understand that this opened up for you and lasted about a year, after which you tried to returned to it. What took place in that time where you tried to “move back into it”?
JdR: Well, it was a process of trying to do and trying to accomplish what didn’t require any sort of doing or accomplishment in the first place – and running out of all the different possibilities until realising how it is actually doable or accomplishable in that sense which was basically awareness being meaning and not trying to do something.
IS: Was there a point or a moment where it all just fell into place again ?
JdR: Yes. Not really a strong moment, it was over a period of time and yet at the same time definitely having the realisation of how to do what was there in the very beginning and then over a number of years learning how to apply that so that it was real in my life and not just real within an experience, but real as awareness.
IS: When there’s an awakening like this, what actually wakes up ?
JdR: It’s not just awareness that wakes up, because awareness is always there anyway. Without awareness you wouldn’t have awareness of anything. So it’s more than awareness just awakening: it’s really what awareness is without that even understood on a “self” level or a “person” level. It’s sort of like awareness being able to separate in a wholesome and real kind of way, to separate from the identity with the person, and from the identity with the self, and even the identity with the being. What remains then is awareness just being meaning.
IS: Who or what did you discover yourself to be? Was there still any form of self? I mean who are you?
JdR: There’s still a self and a person and a being. There’s everything that there ever was before. The difference is now everything is inverted. So instead of being a person that has a self that has a being and that deep within somewhere there’s a vast expansiveness, everything becomes inverted and the other way around and now what you are is that you are meaning itself. Not even the meaning of something, just meaning itself. That having no end and no beginning and that has a life through which to express everything that it is in the first place.
IS: Did you have any teachers at all through this period that lead up to the point where you became this totally?
JdR: I didn’t have anything of books or people, it was basically a self-discovery. For that first year it was all natural and it seemed inconceivable that it wouldn’t be there, and that I wouldn’t be that until all of a sudden it ended. Then at first there was somewhat of a confusion and eventually somewhat of a panic, realising the importance now that nothing really matters until this is all found back, realised and lived in and lived as.
IS: So you’re basically saying that a teacher isn’t necessary to awaken into this beingness and yet you teach?
JdR: It makes a big difference when you hear from outside of yourself what it is that you are in the first place within yourself besides from any of your own understanding of what you are as a person or as a self, so it really does make a huge difference. Like anything you can learn something on your own, but if you’re spending time with someone that already understands the skill of something, to be with someone like that the learning curve is completely different than when you’re on your own. So, in that sense everything, any kind of help does make a real difference.
IS: So a teacher is extremely beneficial?
JdR: As is a teacher on any level – it’s extremely beneficial. You’re not trying to reinvent the wheel…
IS: What about forms of practice like meditation? Do you recommend that in any way or not?
JdR: t really comes down to a person’s level of integrity within. So then it comes down to a level of integrity as awareness. If that integrity isn’t there then you can work with every conceivable technique and all that will be really established is what you think you are as a self. So in that sense you’ll be your own undoing in trying to find out who you are and trying to raise your level of awareness. If that integrity is there then any amount of focus that you put into realising what you are brings you to that. So it’s not so much the technique anymore or even using techniques, it’s being what’s real within and on a profound level.
IS: You talk about the often painful entry into Truth through the realisation of what’s real; why is there so much pain associated with awakening?
JdR: Because there’s in a sense the turning upside down of the self, the identity within the person. And the self is accustomed to a certain way of relating to reality in this life, and then, when you start to realise as awareness that you’re not that, then there are, in a sense, shockwaves that go through your form as a self and as a person. And that is also a part of the self constructively coming apart and then coming back together in a way that suits what you are in awareness instead of suiting what you wish to be as a self, and conforming to something you perceive outside of yourself is worthwhile becoming.
IS: What would you say is the most important requirement for those who yearn to awaken into Truth completely?
JdR: Profound honesty. Profound honesty as awareness and that also enters in as a person and as a self – it does affect every level that, mostly importantly within being profound awareness that isn’t separate from honesty. It comes down to being undistorted awareness within. And not compromising that.
IS: How does this relate to one’s daily life in the details of each moment?
JdR: As awareness opens up there are always and immediately implications to that. As soon as awareness awakens to what it really is there are natural and surface implications to how that will now affect your life. Then as awareness you can walk into that and meet those implications and work with those implications.
If you’re not liking those implications then you’ll start to identify with what you are as a self because of being in the place of “not liking” something, and then there’ll be a profound compromise within and you’ll lose that cutting edge awakening and you’ll be a self now trying to keep what you had, trying to have it on those terms in your life, so then there’s a really profound split (which) starts to appear and develop.
IS: This idea of absolutely no liking: does this mean that you have no preferences at all, no likes or dislikes?
JdR: No, it means that there’s the personal preference and personal wanting or not wanting something, but it’s all held in a much greater context than what the person or the self is in the first place. And when I say the self, that would be the accustomed self that a person has been in experience with.
When you’re living from a being, from a much greater context, everything becomes integrated – your capacity to feel, your capacity to think as a self and as a person in this life working with personal preferences and personal likes and personal dislikes – all of that becomes integrated from a level within that isn’t ruled by likes and dislikes or personal preferences – in that sense the everything matters, everything is sorted out from a deeper place than what it is that’s been sorted out.
IS: Many people would struggle with that and just couldn’t believe that it would be possible to live in this world without some degree of choosing what you want – from the intellectual level. How do you make your decisions from that deeper place?
JdR: Honestly.
IS: (laughter) Honestly – ok, who decides?
JdR: Whatever level of awareness is in their lives, it’s that awareness that decides. So, whether a person is aware only what they are as a person that it is and hardly even of what they are as a deeper self, whatever they know as real to be or not to be, they can live by that or they can deviate from that and become a distortion of what they know to be.
Instead of being the real being, they’re some sort of aberration of that. And for a person that has a deeper awareness the same principle follows through. It’s still awareness knowing what to be and knowing what to do and being and doing that or deviating from that. As soon as there’s integrity of awareness everything becomes choice-less, you’re not choosing to be something or not to be something, you’re following through with something that’s already clear. So it really is being meaning.
IS: This issue our paper has a “Pathways to truth” feature: what are your thoughts about paths and pathways – do they have a place for you or not?
JdR: Everything does actually have a place. Being on a path has a place because a person in a coarser way begins to realise what doesn’t work. And in realising what doesn’t work, which is a very long way around, as soon as there’s honesty throughout that and especially toward the end, then they know to not do what wasn’t working. So in that sense failure brings the success of realising of what you are.
So it really comes down again to how honest is awareness on the level that is presently awakened. If that honesty is there, everything helps. If that honesty isn’t there then everything helps to confirm the distortion that’s already there until that distortion becomes defiled and deformed that it’s difficult not to see it. And that in itself provokes a seeing and an honesty within. And as soon as that’s responded to then awareness begins to awaken to what it could have been and seen and known all along.
Ultimately as soon as that profound honesty is there as awareness, there is no path. If that’s not there then there needs to be a path to realise what could have been known without working on anything.
IS: If in truth we already are, always have been this awareness, what is it that drives us toward its deeper awakening, no matter what level of awareness we are presently in?
JdR: The impetus to that is that there’s a resonance within everyone actually, at the very least unconsciously, knowing what they are, where they’re to return to and it is a ‘what’ and not ‘who’ – And if that’s not awakened to them, that resonance will be misunderstood and then people start to aspire outwardly to become something.
And it has something of the resonance of returning to what they were before they were even a self as they understand a self to be. Or in that sense there’s the resonance of where we came from or what we came from that provides that drive. Formlessness needs to come into form and everything that’s in form needs to know where it came from.
IS: As this realised beingness that you obviously are, do you see yourself as one with everything?
JdR: There are so many different levels of oneness – Being one with everything is one thing to come into awareness of, and then how to apply that, how for that to actually become a skill so that oneness has skill as a being and as a self and as a person in a way that applies to all the many real and fine details in this life.
So the further the oneness manifests itself into the form the more intricate the really profound problems are of solving something that as soon as you drop back from that outward manifestation that problem doesn’t even exist. So in moving forward there’s always something more to apply, more skill that’s required for oneness to be able to move in a way that it didn’t move before, in a way that has form and really does accomplish something in this world. It’s a oneness making sense of itself, with form and through form.
IS: I wish you the best and thank you so much.
JdR: You’re very welcome.