Q: My question is to do with children, when they come into this world and have desires, and how does it turn into the want, and then the insistence comes in? I have an almost seven year old daughter and many years I’ve been dealing with that “I want” and that insistence and the frustration, and all the feelings that are attached to that. I wonder if you could say something about that. Where does it all start? Where does it all go off?

John: You were conceived in the midst of patterns, even though you are not that. These patterns suggest to you what is real, even though what is real is not the patterns but you. The patterns then suggest something to you other than what you knew you were.
Patterns suggest a different way. These patterns you inherited. These patterns are everything that your ancestors did not transform. Everything that caught them is now presented to you.

Desire finds these patterns interesting which, in itself, is not harmful and really okay. It’s when desire identifies itself with what it finds interesting, then it believes the suggestion of what is real instead of being itself real. Then it gets caught by the suggestion; it gets caught by a pattern. Then other patterns begin to apply. Those other patterns are other suggestions on how to deal with getting caught in a pattern. And slowly the world of patterns increasingly becomes more and more important, more useful to you, even though it doesn’t work.

Q: Is that where will comes in, where will gets stronger in a child? It’s like it discovers that there’s something else?

John: It discovers its own power.

Q: Yeah, that it thinks it has some power or discovers that there is power. And then discovers more and more ways of using that power?

John: When a child begins to realize its power then it will watch other children or other adults and observe how they are using their power, and out of interest they’ll do the same thing. It’s like trying on different clothing, which for a small child isn’t serious. It may appear as being serious. It’s playing at being serious but it doesn’t really believe what it’s doing until it grows into that clothing and then it gets lost in the clothing.

Q: And if I believe that clothing, then I give it power from the outside as well, right?

John: You’re proving to the child that their power can catch you. As soon as you get frustrated with a child, that child has overpowered you. The child won. The new clothing works.

Q: I can really see how I have done that, and I can also see that when I don’t get hooked into it in that way, then it will just disappear. Sometimes she’ll put up a fight. It’s like an incredible game.

John: In the development of a child it’s important that it can play with identities, that it can play at trying on different kinds of clothing but without turning into that. It’s just trying on what it feels like to act like you, to act like others. But when it takes that seriously, the child gets caught by that identity and starts to believe it. Then it’s no longer play.

Q: Does it all just come from a desire to experience or to explore, like just a very pure innocent desire?

John: Desire awakens a child to awareness other than what it’s used to – any kind of awareness. When desire is played with and not taken seriously, then there’s an expansion of being in existence. It’s learning what it is able to be as, without being that.

Q: I just remember a talk in which you kind of set all parents free of any responsibility for however their kids turn out; that as consciousness, when we come into this world, it’s like we choose and it’s not my mom or my dad who’s going to do that or make me do that.

John: Instead of being a parent, which you don’t know how to do, be what little bit that you know, with your child. Then you can see each other where there are not even roles. You play the role of a parent, and the child will play the role of one that needs parenting.

Being a child with a child, then they’re seen – something that good parents don’t know how to do. Be a child with a child and there’s magic, the kind of magic that they know they are.

Q: The magic that I know that I am. I totally know what you’re talking about and I feel like it’s been given by grace. It’s like I don’t know how to do it. I can’t do it, but sometimes that’s just what’s happening and it’s magic.

John: When the sun shines toward a child then the sun shines back. The sun doesn’t shine toward a child unless you can see just their sunshine.

Q: Thank you John.