Q: You recently said that eternity was a being. What is love?
John: Expression of eternity.
Q: What is that in relation to truth?
John: Truth is the stillness of it and love is the movement of that.
Q: How do they become one?
John: They are one.
Q: How can movement and stillness be one?
John: Stillness moving. Stillness moving is true movement, quality movement. That’s what makes a tree so lovely: the stillness that is in its movement, its quality of movement; the stillness that is in its embrace.
Q: I wanted to ask you about listening.
John: You are more used to seeing than listening. When you have more seeing than listening, it makes you experience-oriented. That opens up the loveliness of experience with a lack of stillness. It is listening within that is at the leading edge of stillness within. With seeing there is already a coming out. In listening within, everything stops. With real listening within you can’t be coming from anything that you can already see. In listening within you are able to know something that you cannot yet see. There is not yet an understanding of what you know. It is the listening within that connects you with such knowing, even though you cannot understand or see.
With listening, real listening within, all seeing becomes still. As all the seeing becomes still and the attention of awareness is on something that it knows, in the hearing of what it knows, the knowing fills the heart. It is after the knowing filling the heart that awareness is able to look at what it knows. Then the looking is from the stillness, the kind of stillness that awareness was listening with. That enables the eyes of the heart to see what they have never seen before. Such nourishing seeing fills and heals the mind, which gives understanding.
The quality of seeing within is determined by the degree of listening within. Listeners will be able to see better than seers. Listeners can see, but seers don't necessarily listen. If there is an inclination of awareness to see rather than to listen, then awareness becomes experience-oriented. Seeing becomes limited by experience.
For the finest listening there is a release of all that one sees. It is such listening that improves seeing. With such seeing, there is then an authoritative knowing within every experience that comes from seeing. There is a seeing that is no longer guided or limited by an experience, but a seeing that is guided by real listening within.
Stillness in seeing comes from listening within. Let awareness distinguish itself from seeing so that it can listen. Real listening within precedes real seeing. It is the listening within that purifies the seeing. Love listening within and you’ll enjoy seeing more clearly. There is surrender in listening. There isn’t necessarily surrender in seeing. It doesn't matter how much one can see. It doesn't matter if there is a vastness of seeing if there is not the most delicate listening.
Seeing means that there has been virtue living in the heart. When awareness is really listening within, that means that there presently is virtue living in the heart. Without virtue living in the heart, all value is an assumed value. When virtue is living in the heart because awareness is really listening, living value permeates everything. Eternity is present, which isn’t necessarily so with seeing. With seeing there is past credit. With real listening within, there is present credit. Seeing shows you the truth of what was. Real listening within shows you what newly, presently, is.
A seer can still be a taker, whereas a true listener within is an authentic receiver, an authentic receiver of newness. It is that which makes for such clear seeing. It doesn’t matter how much you can see. It does really matter how dearly you listen within. Then it matters how much you let yourself see, and most importantly how much you’ll do what you can see. You can get away with having excitement in seeing, but in real listening within there is only stillness, being able to hear something within that you have never heard before.
Love listening within more than even seeing, and more than any kind of doing. Love listening within more than living. It is really listening within that lets eternity come into form, virtue. Virtue in the heart is eternity in form. Without that, everything that you think you have, including the seeing, is perishable. Real listening allows for an infilling that is imperishable. That enables you to see what is imperishable, to live what is imperishable. When you are living what is imperishable, then you have an eternal life: a real life that isn't perishable.
A heart that can see but that isn't really listening is a heart that is shortsighted. The seeing is only as reliable as one is really listening within.
Love really listening, more than seeing or doing or living. It is that which lets you really see and live, and live the eternal. You can see without having love. You cannot really listen within, without having love.
Really listening within is the beginning of love. Quieted willingness.
