Q: I have a question about raising children and enjoying them in the way you’ve been describing. I have two daughters.
John: How old are they?
Q: Five and nine. I enjoyed the first child from the beginning, and it has been easy. The second is very different. From the moment she started talking, she can’t stop!
John: “Very different” in that her self is not like your self?
Q: Yes! For all three of us it is a challenge to have someone in the family who, from waking up in the morning until going to sleep, is talking. And we all feel, like, “wow!”
John: A challenge to your self because your self is different from her self.
Q: I often don’t know how to enjoy her.
John: You can’t enjoy her if what you’re seeing is her self. You experience your self when you see her self, because hers is so different from yours, and you use that experience to be removed from enjoying her. If you’re not directly enjoying her, you’re making much of her self and you’re projecting your self onto hers, which gives her a lot to sort out.
She will use her self to sort out what you’re projecting onto her. She’ll then be more intensely her self. If you just simply enjoy her, despite her self, she is relieved of the pressure in her self.
When she is simply seen, that makes her self, for her, less important and she’s able to relax.
Q: I understand what you’re saying but it’s not only talking, it’s also that she’s addressing me all the time.
John: Then, instead of being affected by that which energizes your self, you can be sweetly humoured by it. See the humour in how her self functions and see the humour in how your self is affected by that.
Q: And give up every wish for silence?
John: Yes. If you wish for her to be silent, she experiences not being heard, and she’ll talk more. Make it really easy for her to have the self she has.
Q: It’s not easy for her because everyone is reacting, including her sister and other children. They all feel it’s too much, and say “stop!”
John: She’s watching you more than she’s watching others.
Q: I’ve tried telling her she doesn’t need to think so much. It seems to calm her, but then it starts again.
John: Her thinking hasn’t really developed yet. She’s following your suggestion, but better than your suggestion is for you to lead her thinking into her own interior. Then her thinking isn’t made to be something that’s wrong. But you can’t lead her mind into her own interior if you’re not really seeing her interior.
Q: That seems to be a second step. I’ve been managing my own reaction and staying in what I know, but that did not include her.
John: If you can see her interior and you can lead her mind into her interior, she will become fascinated. She’ll realize the difference between what she is and what her self is.
Once children have been introduced to that, it’s not going to stop. Then they love realizing more than thinking, which trains their thinking. If they’re in their thinking without realizing, they become lost in their thinking. Their thinking has no profound purpose.
If they’re thinking because they’re realizing, their thinking has profound purpose, and their thinking relaxes.
