Q1: I find I’m not a joyous person. What is joy? On cinema night, I walked in here and I felt just pure joy, happiness to be in that moment. Is that right?
John: That needs to come in. It has to come in. It’s introduced in your development. When you’re a really small child, your first self is that goodness comes up into your face and your eyes and you’re just responding, happy without a reason. Each part of the development that you come into stays with you. Those are all important building blocks being present in you as an adult. The baby needs to be there; the small child needs to be there; the child starting to realize things needs to be there. Each stage, all of that, needs to be there. If they’re not all there, you’re not functioning properly as an adult. You need to have the full spectrum. What opens up the frame on the inside is for you to come into your heart and then your heart can come up into your face.
Q1: I feel a lot of sensation in my cheeks that I haven’t noticed before. You have a reasonable barometer to judge how you’re being is in situations.
John: One of many instruments. What starts to loosen it is you need to be available, so when you’re shy, you don’t take it under control. When you’re embarrassed, you don’t put it in its place. All of these human delicacies need to be able to be present in your face, and they need to show.
Q1: We’re only allowed in society to portray certain emotions and others are taboo: embarrassment, anger.
John: There are so many things to be let go of, holding mechanisms, and so many of them are all in the face, because it’s your face where you’re seen. So when you don’t want something to be seen then you do things; you smile when there isn’t a smile or you have little antics when you’re uncomfortable, little things that you do with your mouth and little things that you do with your face and it all gets you through situations and it’s all covers.
Q1: That’s what I’m working with. I really don’t know what I’m doing here but I just show up.
John: You come here and you put your sails up.
Q1: I think I get the most just by watching you and how you live your life and those around you.
Q2: I’m very shy also. Is it good to just go against that?
John: If you’re feeling bright and happy and you’re out of control because you don’t know where it’s coming from, don’t stop anything, don’t cover anything and realize the different antics in your face and your body language that you use to get through your discomfort instead of it just being there and getting stronger and stronger. It shows in little kids. When little kids get embarrassed for instance, they haven’t figured out the antics yet, so they just get more and more embarrassed. The light just gets brighter and brighter and brighter and they’re just wide eyed. For an adult to see that, it’s a pretty endearing thing and then a child learns to cover it because it’s really uncomfortable.
Q2: It’s really difficult to just hang out. It’s different at work because I have my title and everyone does what I want. It’s really easy there.
John: That’s when you’re just being a person.
Q2: Here it is just so challenging for me.
John: Spending time in the café is really quite a gift because you’re in something that you’re not going to find in your life. Here you’re seen and there’s a lot of understanding for what you are sitting in and what everyone else is sitting in and everyone knows that, so it changes our social environment. It could make it much more uncomfortable. If you go into automatic mode, in one way you don’t fit in because there’s something else going on here, so there’s a pressure to come from something that’s deeper. It’s a constructive pressure and that either puts you into performance mode, which will mess you up, or that pressure has you letting go of all of the effects on your self and you end up coming through in a way that’s exposing and quite uncomfortable.
