Q: I wanted to ask you what the difference is between having purity of heart and having a pure heart.

John: It’s the same. A pure heart is a heart that doesn’t have a self in it: when your heart is not full of your self, when you are not full of your self, when you don’t take your self to heart. When your self isn’t taken to heart, your being fills it.

Q: The being can only fill the heart if the self is completely out of it?

John: The being can only completely fill the heart if the self is completely not in the heart. A mixed heart or a divided heart is when you have both in it – some of each.

Q: So your self doesn’t have to be completely clean to have a pure heart? Your self doesn’t have to be embodying realness.

John: Not at all. If you have a mixed up self that you don’t take to heart, then your heart is clean.

Q: What do you mean “take to heart”?

John: Bothered by your self. Hard on your self. If your self is affected by something and your heart is gentled and quieted in the midst of that effect, you’re clean.

Q: I really get what you mean when you say it’s a jewel.

John: Purity of heart is the finest jewel in all of existence. It doesn’t matter what condition your self is in, what condition your life is in. What matters is what condition your heart is in; that you don’t take your self to heart because something affects it.

Q: What does that look like in the self? Just not a reaction?

John: Yes. You might be a little stunned because of something affecting your self. A clean heart is where you have no judgment about anything that affects your self, no internal dialogue when something affects your self.

Q: And so what does purity of heart have to do with the levels below the heart?

John: It means concerning everything deeper within than your self, the door is wide open. It means that you are all “yes” within. All “yes” to your deeper interior, regardless of what affects your self. Purity of heart means that your whole heart is sensitive, fundamentally, to anything within or anything outside of your self that is just delicately real.

Q: And would that purity of heart be the base?

John: Yes. Where purity of heart shows the most is when your life and your self are affected by something. Purity of heart shines the most under pressure and in the fire. When your self is in the fire of life.

Q: What does that have to do with weakness?

John: Where there’s purity of heart you’ll be at home in weakness: weaknesses in your self, weaknesses in your life; that in it all you are gentled and quieted in your heart.

Q: So your weakest weakness is in your self?

John: The weakest weakness isn’t in your self. The weakest weakness is knowledge. Knowing. The truth within has no power in you except for the power that you give it.

Q: Giving power to knowledge is weakest weakness?

John: Particularly when your self feels affected by something. That on a heart level, while your self is assaulted by something, there you are, just lying down in the truth within.

Q: That wouldn’t be a cognitive thing, right?

John: It can show up cognitively, but no it’s not. When you are under pressure you’ll give to your deepest heart instead of giving to your self. The giving to your heart is quiet, giving to your self is noisy. Giving to your deepest heart while your self is under pressure is what develops depth of character in your self.

Q: Depth of character has to do with weakness?

John: The kind of weakness in your self where, as soon as your self is under pressure, that you don’t use what you perceive as strength: using your will, your emotions to compensate for your self being affected, using will and emotion to compensate in your self and outside of your self where there is injury and insult.

Q: If someone insults you and you just take it?

John: You just quietly receive it; you don’t do anything with it. Where you do give something back then it’s goodness, just delicate goodness that you give back. When someone throws their dirt at you, then you give something back that’s clean.

Q: Someone once asked what’s most important to you, and you said something like “simple quiet beingness.”

John: What matters the most to me, in life, is for me to be more delicate, more tender than ever before.

Q: That is what matters to you most every day?

John: Not every day. In everything. In the big things, in the little things.

Q: Is that humanness?

John: Yes. Delicateness, tenderness, dearness, kindness. All of it is fruit of being. Fruit in your self growing just because of how it is only beingness that fills your heart.

Q: In the world you see a lot of self-created kindness.

John: People in themselves can behave in a manner that’s of humanness, that’s delicate, tender, kind, but then it’s to get something. It’s a modified behaviour that has a result in mind, a result for oneself. Humanness would rather give than live. Humanness is the flow of being in your self.

Q: And why is it most important to you?

John: Any touch of humanness matters more to me than my self.

Q: What does it have to do, for you, with what’s deeper, like your calling?

John: The calling doesn’t mean anything if it can’t land in your humanness.

Q: Are you talking about you? Are you talking about your self?

John: My self. Anyone. Right where everything seems to matter so much, the littlest touch of dearness matters more.

Q: What is the littlest touch of dearness? Is it purity?

John: It’s a tiny, tiny little movement of beingness, the connectivity of love even while someone is unkind to you. Humanness is the connectivity of being, alive in your self, regardless of anything that affects your self. It’s the only thing that makes the self of value. Without humanness in your self, your self has lost its value. It wouldn’t matter what you gain for your self if. If it’s at any expense to humanness, you have fooled your self.

Q: In relation to that there’s a fire in me, a fierceness in response to that.

John: That fierceness, if it isn’t inspiring to your self, is a deeper level of being. A burning in your heart, because of the truth within, is a deeper level of being.

Q: Can a burning and humanness coincide?

John: Yes.

Q: So whatever you’re in, humanness is there as well?

John: Yes. Humanness means that if you are the sun, that you shine upon someone else’s face equally if they are kind to you or if they are unkind to you. You existing as a being in your self, in life, regardless of anything. Anything.

Q: So what matters to you most is being the flowers of that?

John: Towards someone – anyone – regardless of what they are like. Being that way, more than ever, toward anything, anyone. More than I’ve been before. I’d rather be a petal falling off of a flower than to save the whole flower.

Q: Then what is the falling petal?

John: Openness and softness, without result and without return.

Q: And what would be saving the whole flower?

John: Saving my self from damage.

Q: So if someone offends you or if someone does something to you, you are just like a petal falling?

John: Inside, yes.

Q: And why is it a jewel?

John: Humanness isn’t the jewel. Purity of heart is the finest jewel in all of existence because there isn’t anything else like it. It shines the most under pressure.

Purity of heart can be there in contrasting environments: your self, your genetics, not being like what you really are, a household that isn’t like what you really are, a world, and then you still being what you really are, right there in the midst of that environment. Being what is delicately real at any personal expense.

Q: Why are all the meetings about what’s deeper than that?

John: It’s because of what I’m bringing.

Q: Is that to do with purity of heart?

John: It’s through purity of heart and it lands in humanness.

Q: So purity of heart is the door for it to come in?

John: Yes.

Q: So it’s all about the door?

John: In life, it’s all about the door. If the door stays open at any personal expense, that’s it.

If I were in a concentration camp and part of the weirdness of the camp would be that the only way that you’ll be given food is if you show some hardness, bitterness, hatred, reactivity, upsetness, irritation, frustration, then I’m going to enjoy dying.

Q: Are you in that all the time with everything?

John: It’s there in everything. It isn’t that I would choose to starve: I’d rather open than eat.

Q: So you’d rather die than harden the tiniest little bit?

John: I would rather die absolutely any kind of death than harden.

Q: And that’s purity of heart: that giveness to that little bit, that you won’t cross that line, no matter what.

John: The littler it is, the deeper it is.

Q: Is that what you live for?

John: Practically speaking, yes. Right in the middle of the nitty gritty of life.

Q: Can purity come in many different forms, or is it one?

John: So many forms. All of them mean the same thing.