Q1: Hello, John. I would like to deepen the connection between me and my child, and my being aware of it. So I’d like it if you would help me to do that.
John: Be really seen. Reveal your heart and give your heart without embellishment, so that when you’re giving your heart, your heart-given is unadorned. Then your child is fully meeting you. Don’t push your way or have your own way. Don’t use any power to have what is personal for you at your child’s expense, and at the same time be kindly strong with what you are clear about.
All of this draws your child into being seen, being heard and not using any power to do so, inviting your child into a strength of clarity. With a richness of heart, make it really easy for your child to never need to lie. Value a quiet love, enabling your child to read you deeply. Then there’s room for supportive excitement. When you’re agitated in any way, like being slow to speak. And when you’ve fallen short in any way, like being quick to speak.
If you are happy in all of this, your child will be deeply safe and free to be seen in everything. Don’t try to correct your child or give instruction if at the same time you are not being seen. If you are being seen, your child will love learning from you. In the midst of your availability, share your realizations and your child will come into the same. If you are always giving your heart while being seen, giving your heart in a quieted way without embellishment, your heart being given unadorned, your child will know that it doesn’t have to do anything for love. Your child will grow up not being performance-oriented.
Don’t be overly motherly and your child will have no need of being childish.
549 – Soul Food: Difficulty and Pressure in a Polarized World
“The food for your soul while you’re in a body is difficulty and pressure.” John explains why this is so, why the soul is so difficult to see until after we die, and what our soul’s evolution is dependent on.
548 – Right Side Up: No Longer Taking Your Stress to Heart
The responsibilities that come with working in the world can feel stressful. Is there a way of moving more lightly in it all? John explains how it’s all dependent on what we belong to, within.
547 – Profound Honesty: Being Okay When You Don’t Feel Okay
Shame, fear, anger … is it really possible to be okay in any circumstance, even when feeling attacked by others? There is transformative potential, and John explains.
546 – Less and Even Less: Why Weakness is Your Way Home, Within
Contrary to worldly conditioning, weakness isn’t something to conceal or avoid; it’s actually key to embodying a full spectrum of awareness. John describes the journey, and what it requires.
545 – From Fighting to Flourishing: A New Way Forward with Your Teenager
For this mother, who is struggling in relation to her teenage daughter, what begins as a hard lesson to learn becomes a beautiful crossroads that will deeply change them both.
544 – Evolving as Pure Awareness in War and Peace
An epic conversation that reveals what we’re here for, how to help people suffering the effects of war, what can change the planet, and why it’s up to us.
“My sole purpose is to be, in life, what we are after we’ve died. Through openness and softness of heart and core-splitting honesty at any personal cost, I live as that while actualizing the same in others I meet. I am available as a resource for anyone who recognizes and values this way of being.”
– John de Ruiter
