Q: I have the feeling I came to this earth for a purpose and I have to fulfill a destiny. Sometimes I feel restless because I don’t know how to get there and I’m wondering if you can speak to that from your point of view.

John: That you are restless is good. That restlessness means that you haven’t covered up your own sensitivity.

You can’t find your purpose in the way that you think. That deep, quiet underlying sense of purpose doesn’t come from anything that you’ve learned. It doesn’t come from your past. It doesn’t come from your upbringing. It doesn’t come from your conditioning. It doesn’t come from your thinking. It comes from deeper than everything that you’re already good at. For you to come into that purpose, you cannot consult with familiarity. In consulting with familiarity you’ll be using your own strengths; you’ll use what you’re already good at. That only makes your strengths stronger. Your deep, underlying sense of purpose doesn’t come from anything that you’re used to. Rather, it’s there; it’s always there, despite everything that you’re used to.

The knowledge that you have of this most quiet, underlying sense of purpose comes from your heart. You can’t come into that purpose without you warmly and completely returning to your heart. That underlying sense of purpose doesn’t come to you as an understanding. You’re not going to fulfill it or come into it by any kind of understanding. You come into it in the same way that it already is.

What you know it already is is in your heart. If you try to observe it and understand that, then you’re not in your heart. For you to come into that underlying sense of purpose that you know – and you do know it in your heart – you need to completely return to the same place that it is. That underlying sense of purpose is free to come into your self and come into your life, as long as you, from within your self and your life, are moving freely into your heart. The pathway is the same. Without you unconditionally, in the midst of your self and your life, moving into your heart, the underlying purpose of your life has no path by which to come into your self and come into your life. Your unconditional movement into your heart is its unstoppable movement from within your heart into your self and into your life.

Q: How can I turn towards my heart? What does it look like in daily life?

John: When you turn to your heart, the littlest bit that you know the truth of in your heart will matter more to you than your self and your life. You’ll live supremely loyal to any tiny little bit that you know in your heart.

The complete return to your heart is the beginning of the integration of your self. The beginning of the integration of your self is that it is so warmly real to you that your self does not matter as much as your heart, and you live that. That is more your life than your self is your life. That’s what frees your heart to have your life, without which it’s your self that has your life.

You’re a self who has a heart. Your underlying sense of purpose begins to open when you return to being a heart that has a self. The ingredients are the same; it’s only the order that’s different. Reverse the order and you lose your authenticity. Your authenticity doesn’t come from your self. It originates in your heart.

Q: And that is what you call being, right? When like and dislike goes away?

John: It doesn’t go away. It’s there to be integrated by you being in your heart. You being in your heart in the midst of likes and dislikes, changes them. It opens them. Opened, you realize in them an unseen depth, a depth that was covered before, enabling you to be within likes and dislikes as a kindness. You’re a kindness in them. It’s that kindness that gives you a depth of perception within likes and dislikes, a depth of perception that is all different from the surface of the like and the dislike, enabling you to move deeply and freely as an opened and a softened heart in the midst of likes and dislikes. Neither one confines you. You’re not held by either one; you’re free in both.

The return to your heart isn’t the return to your being. It’s the return to the very beginning of your being. You cannot enter your being without you having returned to your heart. When you are at home in your heart, there isn’t anything at all that prevents your entrance to your own being. When you are at home in your heart, unconditionally at home in your heart, you are free to enter and have your being.

The more deeply you access, enter, and have your own being while you are in your self and in this life, while you’re in your body, the more deeply you enter your purpose.

Q: What is it that might stop me from turning to my heart?

John: Real or not real. There isn’t anything that is real that stops you, and there is endlessly a source of what is not real. Any little bit of it taken to heart stops you. If you believe what you don’t know the truth of in your heart, you’re stopped. As soon as you believe what you don’t know the truth of, you turn into what is not integrated in your self. The more that you invest in that, the further away you will be from your own heart.

When you believe only what you know the truth of in your heart, nothing can stop you from being home: not this world, not your self, not your past. When you believe only what you know the truth of in your heart, you are turning into your own heart. You’re returning home. For you to be at home in your heart is for you to unconditionally love what you know in your heart.

There’s no use of mind that can help you return to your heart. The heart precedes the mind. You don’t need anything that follows for you to be in that which precedes. You don’t need your person, you don’t need your personality for you to be in your self and you don’t need your self for you to be in your heart.

Q: What about pain? What if pain comes up when I open my heart?

John: When you open your heart, everything that comes your way takes you deeper. When your orientation as awareness is to your self, everything that comes your way takes you even deeper into your self. It will take you deeper into a self-orientation. When you are oriented to your heart, everything that comes your way takes you deeper into your heart. Everything assists whatever your orientation is as awareness. Pain helps those who are self-oriented to be more self-oriented. Pain helps those who are heart-oriented to be even more deeply heart-oriented.

When you are at home in your heart, unconditionally, every manner of pain has you drawing even more deeply from your own being.

Q: Are we afraid sometimes to open our hearts?

John: In your self, yes, and it doesn’t stop you. When you are, as awareness, oriented to what you know in your heart, you being afraid just simply makes real that your self is not yet like your own being. Being afraid is all right. It’s all right for you to have a self that is not yet like your own being.