Q: What is purity of heart? Is it correct to say the way that you talk about – the way of being that expresses truth, and purity of heart are actually the same thing? When you talk about it, it feels that it’s just imperative to just do it and not wait for that.
John: When there is total genuine acceptance, being most gentled in the acceptance of having an impure heart, that is the beginning of purity of heart.
Q: It feels like the most precious thing imaginable to be able to accept that.
John: Purity of heart is your first nature. Impurity of heart is the willful development within away from your first nature. As soon as you stop within, where you are, as you are, and rest, purity of heart then replaces impurity. When you are at rest within, you, without effort, return to your first nature. Impurity of heart is very difficult to maintain: you have to do so much, you cannot stop, you cannot truly relax within, you cannot rest. When you agree, within, to take your hands off of yourself, purity of heart comes easily.
Purity of heart means that you have integrity with what you know. Purity of heart means that you are not in any way at odds with what you know. Purity of heart means that you’re not fighting your own innermost. Purity of heart means that separation within is genuinely of no use to you. Purity of heart means that you have no personal agenda. Purity of heart means that you cannot be purchased by something that is not real. Purity of heart means that the most simple love is your beloved master. Purity of heart means that your only agreement within is with what you know. Purity of heart means that you live loving only what’s real. Purity of heart means that you are being the love of the truth. Purity of heart means that all that there is that can have you is truth.
This kind of beingness is worth far more than the greatest awakening. Without purity of heart enlightenment loses all of its colour. It turns enlightenment into something worthless. Purity of heart is the very finest jewel anywhere. Awakening is only the setting for such a jewel. Just because one has the setting doesn’t mean that one has the jewel. Yet it is the setting that seekers are looking to become, missing the jewel. The setting that has no jewel is an embarrassment. A jewel that has no setting is absolutely wonderful.
When you find what you know is such a jewel, when you witness and encounter such beingness, then it is enough for you to be a setting for such a jewel. When you find such a jewel, when you encounter it and witness it, that means that it’s over. That means that you have found your first love. To live adoring what you know is that first love is for you to be the setting for it. Then, whether the jewel is within you or without you, it no longer makes any difference. That enables your first love to come into form within you: the love of the beingness of that jewel brings the same jewel into form within you. Then there is both the setting and the jewel. Don’t be enticed by other settings. Love only the jewel.