A Pure Heart is Worth its Weight in Gold

Having a pure heart is like owning an express ticket to heaven. You don’t really need rules to do the right thing because your heart is a beacon that signals your inner knowing.

While the ego lives in the mind it’s human nature to protect one’s self respect at all costs. So when some people have done wrong and are having trouble facing the fact, they stubbornly reason with their mind to form any excuse to justify their wrong-doing.

But they can’t do this with their heart so the heart becomes heavy. That is why “God weighs the heart” and is why lightheartedness is always seen as a good thing.

A person may think their own ways are right, but the LORD weighs the heart.
– (Proverbs 21:2)

The amount of load on a person’s heart is also a measure of the state of their conscience. For some, to be lighthearted means a clear conscience, for others, it’s an attitude that no matter what wrong there is in life look for the blessings and rest on those.

Faber, Virginia, USA.

True salvation comes from the state of a person’s heart regardless of what religion they are or whether they are unbelievers. The Egyptians believed the heart was the ‘seat of the soul’ and it was left untouched inside the body during the embalming process, while the brain was removed by pulling it out through the nostrils.

Jesus tried to teach the people that only sticking to law and rules (mind) has a weakness. You can flout a law, ignore it, or even change it to suit yourself. Law only requires obedience while your heart can be elsewhere. This is what the bible tried to communicate:

But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law’. – (Galatians 3:10)

But if you come to love God through the heart this is the only way that can’t be subverted. It is intact, it is whole. A person who follows the heart can see that Jesus’ crucifixion opens us to the reminder of the death of a loved one. I think this is more conscious than only regarding him as a sacrifice, the Lamb of God “who took away our sins”.

The problem with the idea of a human sacrifice is that it distances us from the heart in the same manner as animal sacrifices project badness onto the animal which can then be killed heartlessly. It is a primitive mindset – to attempt to absolve sin through blood or blood sacrifice.

It completely misses the point by externalizing instead of internalizing. If anything, one should turn the torch on the inside of themselves and scorch the sticky ugly things that pervert their natures and make them impure. (see the Violet Flame).

But we can’t be too judgmental as in the ancient days people had a very different mindset and were presumably less psychologically evolved. Their daily conscious existence was more oriented towards survival. But this over-reliance on Jesus ‘dying for our sins’ has carried on in the Christian faiths today because it’s declared as such in the Bible.

If you go and just once follow the footsteps of a person (New Testament) who was willing to be killed for their message, it begs the question what was it that he was so willing to die for? There were times Jesus could have backed down as he knew his life was in danger and he did suffer the knowing. He did warn those he healed at first not to tell others but only the priests. But of course they could not help themselves and word of Jesus’ miracles spread quickly.

When you fully realize his personal sacrifice and suffering on our behalf it tends to open the heart. It only comes about if you are willing to suspend all modern skeptic leanings and instead let yourself believe that Jesus was purposefully sent by God to help us evolve from the Covenant of the Word (Law) to the Covenant of the Flesh (Heart conscience). After finally reading the New Testament cover to cover (only recently), I can come to no other conclusion.

Also, in the Old Testament there is this promise:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. – (Ezekiel 36:26)

In fact it would seem religion boxes people into a narrow belief system that is based on man-made rules. Yet in the case of Jesus of Christianity, in non-religious spiritual teachings he is respected as a master and always credible and worthy of great respect.

Jesus who preached “Ye shall know them by their fruits” actually did not want to overturn religious law but to point out the hypocrisies. And aren’t we all painfully familiar with hypocrisy?

In some heretical spiritual works there is more emphasis on how a person can optimize their nature to become more conscious and purer of heart. At least that is the ideal, but you need to be discerning when studying these works. Still, it is quite a departure from merely obeying rules. But that is another story.

Ten Traits of a Pure Heart

1. Do good without bragging about it or expecting to be noticed
2. Do not expect payback when a favour is done
3. Refuse to hold grudges or bitterness
4. Not inclined to force your will on others
5. Appreciate the simple things in life
6. Curious and like to learn, and can stand being corrected
7. Humble – appreciate what you have, give thanks to God
8. No duplicity and mercenary tendencies
9. Self awareness – honest appraisal of self and able to appreciate good traits in others.
10. Discerning instead of judgmental (a biggie!)

If you have some of these qualities already, you are well on your way to developing a 100%-proof Pure Heart, if that is your sincere will.

The Bible Qualities of a Pure Heart

There are four clues in the Bible of what makes a sincere-hearted Christian:

1. In whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:2)

2. A sincere heart is willing to come under a trial. ‘Search me, O God, and try me’. (Psalm 139: 23)

3. But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’ (1 Samuel 16:7)

4. A pure heart is a single heart without mixture, a heart that seeks only the Lord and takes the Lord as the unique goal. (Note 3 on 1 Timothy 1:5)

A Pure Heart is like a work in progress, there may be a few who seem born with it, but for anyone it can be a conscious loving change for the better that builds on itself. The choice is yours.