Q: My question is about child development and my self, somehow. With my children, I have the impression when they were born they experience everything, and somewhere on the way they lose their delicacy of feeling, might somehow get back to finding out again the delicacies. And in the same time with my children they are put so much under pressure, right now. By society they are so much pushed into performing. This is very painful for me to observe this and it’s also painful for the children. I don’t know how to be with the children so that they can see that.

John: If it’s painful to you that it is painful for them, you’re helping blind them. If you are directly enjoying them without any focus, without any reason, that brings them back to intimacy. If you see their difficulties, you don’t see them. If you see their pain, their problems, their pressure, you don’t see them, so then you are a part of what is covering them.

Performance orientation that is pushed by this world, and most everyone in it, doesn’t blind anyone until it’s believed; believed not on a mental level or even an emotional level but at a fundamental level, which then quickly turns to thought and feeling, will and emotion – the beginning of being lost. It isn’t the fault of this world that anyone is lost. This world is just an influence. It can’t take anyone out of intimacy. A child in its innocence moving about in this world moves as intimacy. That’s the beauty and the magicalness of its intimacy, its innocence. If you’re relating directly from within what isn’t polarized, that’s fundamentally attractive to any child. As soon as a child sees that in you, it knows. It loves what it sees if it sees what’s real, and if it doesn’t see what’s real on its own, that’s an influence to perform for you.

If what you’re coming from within isn’t authentic and real, if it isn’t the original you, then that’s an influence on any child to perform. As soon as you’re coming from what is authentically you – which doesn’t originate in your self, it originates in you – when you are profoundly relaxed within, all that remains is you. When a child sees that it doesn’t bring them into performance; it brings them into intimacy and love. It appeals to the same in them.

Q: When my child tells me that they have these exams at university to collect 50% of students out of the system and the child feels the pressure to perform, what can I do then? When I ask you this question I see my self and I see the children, but I think a little bit deeper that’s me. That’s somewhere the point in me I don’t catch – getting out of the performing mode and having the performing mode at the same time.

John: A child still in its innocence, when it’s called upon to perform, likes performing. It doesn’t get caught by the performance. When a child starts to step away from its own innocence and it’s called upon to perform, it’s quickly lost in the performance.

What you do in your life, first doesn’t really matter. So what marks you have, what marks anyone has, what career you have, what job you come into, what money you make or not, all of that doesn’t really matter. What you really are matters and it’s everything, and there isn’t anything else that is worth being. It isn’t worth being what matters in this world. Things in this world can matter – just not much. Everything matters; everything doesn’t matter the same. So then what really matters is what do you deeply, quietly within know matters first? And what matters after that…and all the way down the line. So then, yes, marks matter, but not much. If it’s all held in perspective then everything matters and you’re able to hold all of it and move in all of it because what you are being first within is what matters the most.

What matters more than marks is what you are being in having poor marks or good marks. What really matters is what you are being in anything that you do, and if what you’re being is an equanimity of being in the midst of failure, in the midst of success, and it’s so deeply stable within that nothing actually makes any difference to you, that frees you into all levels of doing and you’ll never be lost in what you do. What you are fundamentally free of, you’ll be free in.

Q: I just get a glimpse of it. Somehow I feel it but I cannot word it.

John: When you are in your heart, not for any reason outside of your self, in your heart not because someone smiles at you, in your heart not because the sun is shining, in your heart not because things are going so well, but in your heart because there isn’t anything else that’s real to you, so then you are, regardless of anything that’s happening in your self or outside of your self, you live gentled and quieted in your heart. What is real in you, in that, is then your source in all of your doing. You don’t get from what you do; you have because of what you are.

Q: Thank you. I think it was painful too because I thought I could be of help for the children. And now I see that I somehow cannot be of help the way I thought I could do.

John: First, don’t help children. (laughter) If you’re there to help them, what they see is your helpfulness and your concern and you’re not seeing them.

Q: Now we’re getting to the nitty gritty of it. If this is my job, how do I change my attitude?

John: That when you are around children your job is wonderfully secondary to you. If your job is primary to you, you are a worldly influence on the children. By what you are being, by what you are then falsely being, you are telling them what to live for. What touches someone the most when they are dying in bed, what kind of visitor is most delightful to see? Not those trying to help, not those full of concern and worry, but the innocence of a child that walks in and doesn’t see anything wrong, doesn’t see what others see.

Instead of taking your job seriously, which just makes you worldly toward all of these children, when you’re coming from your deepest heart you are happy in your work not for reasons about your work. That comes right out into your work, and that does better than anything you can do.

Q: Thank you.