Q: Can you speak about the connection between lovemaking with the one that you deeply love, and opening and softening of the heart?

John: When you open and soften your heart toward her, your past with her becomes obscured by your own realization of what is just a little bit beneath the surface of what you’re familiar with, with her, and that’s the beginning of your capacity to make love with her. The real lovemaking comes from you moving in the deeper levels of you, in being together with her – levels that are deeper than your self. First, you know them but you can’t feel them, but as you’re more given to knowing them, than you are given to the familiarity between the two of you, then these deeper levels in you become registered in your body. So instead of just having the deeper levels in you that you know but can’t see and feel, you become acquainted with the deeper levels of your body. As you open and soften in your heart, despite all of the familiar past that the two of you have together, you know her in a way that’s new.

It isn’t through the use of your self that you know her; it’s from within deeper levels in your body – deeper levels in you that are physical – that you know her. When you’re coming from that, then when you’re physically together you move by those deeper levels in your body. When you’re moving by those levels, you’re not moving by any kind of appetite in your body. When you’re coming from the deeper levels in you and you’re present in that within your body, the deeper levels of your body open and then, with any kind of touch, deep in your heart, you are in awe, because wherever you touch, you find her. Everywhere you touch, mystery opens … and you are in love- amazement of her.

In lovemaking, you can find all of the levels in her. You’ll find them in her body, and you’re able to find those levels through all of the levels in you, and all of those levels in you, as they move with your awareness through openness and softness, move through your body. In that way when you are making love, you are making what you first are, together with her, physical.

Q: Is there a different role for the man and the woman?

John: At first, yes, and it’s counter-intuitive. The way that you would naturally move, because of being a man, is that you would want to provide for her and as a woman, naturally she wants to receive from you. All of that needs to come undone. When you open beyond what’s familiar, instead of you giving and she’s receiving, she opens up into the deeper levels within. She opens up her mystery and she pours into you, and as she does, you know her – you’re reading her. You see her, and you’re receiving her.

Without openness and softness of heart you won’t do that, and without openness and softness of heart she won’t do that. It is her most tender undoing, and it is also yours. She moves the unseen and you are in awe of being able to see it … and you receive it. So then you are, together, through the use of the deeper levels, making what love is.

It’s like baking bread from scratch. You go into the kitchen and you start with nothing, and you have to work with what you know are the right ingredients – the right proportions. It’s all to code. If you don’t get the code right, it won’t work. If you get it right, the whole house will know what the two of you have made. (Laughter) Your kids, they see it in you. When that’s there, they know everything is good.