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We are looking for approval because we are not respecting ourselves just as we are.
If you are not as happy as you would like to be, if you feel some
discontent in your life, as most people do, take a look at this.
In one way, in every moment we are looking for approval. Not only are we
trying to avoid disapproval, we are looking for approval. It is very
strange because if you really take a look, often you are looking for approval from
people you don’t really like very much, from people you don’t even have a
lot of respect for.
If you spend some time with this, in each moment and each day, you will see
it is there all the time. Everything you are doing is about approval.
So you can take a look and ask yourself, what is that about? Do you connect
with that? Is it true? How come you are looking for approval all the time?
First we can go to the basis of childhood. This is what we needed to do as
soon as we came out of the womb. We needed to be accepted so we got feed.
And that went on throughout our life. It is reinforced at school through
competition. It is reinforced everywhere through competition. We need
approval.
How come we need approval? Because we are not respecting ourselves just as
we are. How come we are not respecting ourselves? We are judging ourselves
by somebody else’s standard. And we always pick the impossible standard we
judge ourselves by. If we have a Satori, an awakening moment, maybe while
you are looking into the face of a baby, or at the sunset, just in that
moment there is no approval or disapproval. There is just an is-ness .–
Everything is just as it is.
Somebody just sent me a lovely email telling me about their occupation.
They are working with delinquent people, people who are mentally imbalance,
all sort of disturbed people. They are working with those people every day.
What they were expressing tis hat there is no judgement. They are being
with these people just as they are. We could call that love. They care, they
really care for those most difficult people who sometimes even hit them.
They are being with them for who they are.
Now if you can be with yourself how you are in each moment, you find you
start to see others that way. But the big thing is you won’t be looking for
approval from what are basically neurotic people.
You will be with yourself as you are. And that means if you have judgement
you will say: “Oh I just had a judgement, or a judgement came up.”
When you start to look at it that way you will find that your judgement,
your againstness, your upsetness inside isn’t actually you. You can’t say, that
is me. You can say, it seems to be me but I don’t know where that came from.
I just got angry and I don’t know where that came from. It just came.
That is right, it is your system. Its your physical, its your emotional and
your mental – and that is not the basic you. That is included in you, but
you are much more then that. You are the one that can watch that. Closer is the
one that is judging your judging. How come you are judging your judging?
Because you have another part that does not judge.
So there is something else to you. The reason you are looking for approval
all the time is because you are not yet focussing on that other part. You
are still focussing on the part that thinks you ought to be a different way
than the way you are.
And most of the people who have a break-through, what they describe is, I
had my break-through the moment I was with what is. I accepted who I am and
how I am. I was just with it, I allowed it, and I let it be. And then,
click – suddenly, the stillness that is alive, and an unexplainable feeling. We can
say its joy but it is beyond that.
What I am suggesting to you –and this is my experience – that it is there
all the time – but we keep focussing on the unessential. We keep focussing
what we call the everyday things. Everyday things are in our life, and they need
to be included, but that is not the focus that is needed. There is
something else.
There is something else. And if you keep going down into the depth of your
complaint you will think that you have got to earn approval.
Watch and read the reports of people who have Near Death Experiences.
They keep saying the same thing over and over – that you don’t need
approval because you are that. We are blessed.
Watch the medium John Edwards when he does his reading and brings back
messages from the other side from people who have died. It is all about
love. They say all that stuff you are going through. is because you are not
realising who you really are. A magnificent being!
Who you really are…
When people have a Near Death Experience they have this
realisation, they have this experience of being who they really are. And
they realise they don’t need approval.
Thou Art That! The Kingdom of God is within. We are all part of the Hidden
Harmony, the Tao, the Way.
So check when you are looking for approval – first – from whom are you
looking for the approval? It does not make sense. The next thing is , stop.
Feel yourself and go deeper. And you find there is only love. That is all there is.
You are embraced. You are blessed. You are part of the whole.
To be against yourself is an aberration.
See if you can embrace yourself just as you are. Often people who are like
you, your best friends – you love them, but you don’t love yourself.
If you get upset by somebody, come back to yourself.
You find that you are upset at the part of you you are not accepting.
You don’t have to change it, just embrace it and it will drop back into
harmony.
And just a reminder again, the big break is the difference between
supporting complaint and being with gratefulness.