Q: Hello, John. We were talking about my son and you said I have to give him boundaries. I want to ask you to help me with this.

John: His boundaries need to come from your clarity and not from what he thinks and feels. He’ll absorb the boundaries that you give him if he comprehends in his heart that your clarity is goodness.

Q: Do you mean by clarity that I should express myself well?

John: Yes.

Q: Or is it even more from the inside?

John: It’s more from the inside and it needs to translate to the outside. Then your child sees that you are connected, deep within, from the inside all the way through to the outside. Then your boundaries on him are not an imposition but a goodness imposition. It’s the goodness he comprehends. It’s the goodness he comprehends in his heart of you, enabling him to be restricted by the imposition. He’s listening to goodness and cooperating with what goodness says. It’s the goodness that has him.

When it is the goodness in you that has him, he’ll let himself be restricted to what you say because he realizes that it is the underlying goodness in you that speaks. As he comes into his power he will want more than what he is able to manage, so you need to restrict what he has to suit what you know he’s able to handle. When he comprehends in his heart your goodness, because the goodness in you is what you’re being, he’ll listen.

For him to develop in a way that is rich and wholesome, he needs to grow up being more in what is less. If he goes by his undeveloped wants and needs, then he’ll want to have it all and be less in all of it, so then he’ll be out of control. For him to really have command of his self, he needs to grow up comprehending what it is for him to be more in what is less. He needs to be able to do much with little. When he’s doing much with little, he’s drawing upon his own deeper resources.

When you give him boundaries, you’re calling him deeper within to discover his deeper resources. If you give him everything that he wants to have, he’ll neglect what he really has for what he is able to grab hold of on the surface while not being in command of himself. He needs the boundaries to be able to realize what he’s able to be in command of in himself. If he can’t handle being said “no” to, then he can’t handle having very much.

When you raise him being able to warmly receive a “no” to something, that warm reception of the “no” is because you’ve brought him into deeper resources within. So when you say “no,” he warmly opens within, and he comes into his own resources and he opens those resources within the “yes” you give him. So he learns how to be in deeper command of himself and to not be ruled and mastered by his whims and wishes. That makes him being in himself real: real because of the goodness that he’s coming from, the goodness that is deeper within than what his self is. Then when “no” is said to him, he knows his deeper goodness. Then “no” for him doesn’t immediately translate to a restriction on his self, but an opening to his own resources, his own deeper resources.

If you give him all of the room that he wants to take on the surface, he’ll not go deep. If he comprehends your goodness in making the surface for him smaller and less, he’ll go deeper into the goodness that he comprehends in you. He’ll go into that, in himself, and in what is deeper than himself, so then when you wholesomely restrict what you give him, he’ll draw from that goodness within. When he has everything that he wants to have, he won’t draw from that goodness. He’ll jump from one thing to the next, to have.

You imposing boundaries on him works if he knows that you are coming from what is more, within. When he sees in you that you come from goodness, within, more than your self, that it isn’t your self that you live for, in his heart he’ll comprehend what you’re doing with him. Then when you give him a “no,” he’s comprehending a richer and more unseen “yes.” Your “no” to him brings out the deeper “yes” in him.

When you’re not coming from the goodness within, and he’s not fundamentally comprehending the goodness in you, then your “no” is nothing but a frustration to him, Your “no” does not give him his own deeper “yes.”

If his use of power is not being wholesomely restricted, he’ll grow up not being able to handle his own power. His own power will always be bigger than he is. He’ll grow up being out of control. He needs to grow up deeply comprehending what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. That comes from you.

Love matters more than your love for him. That makes your love for him not just felt but also deeply practical. That makes your seeing greater than your self and his. Love that loves him includes and is greater than a mother that loves him. The more that that comes through to him, the deeper the goodness he knows in your boundaries.

Q: Thank you very much.