Empowerment is the experience of connecting to your true self.  The purpose of this show is to offer practical tools to make that connection by expanding your awareness of who you really are and allowing that awareness to work for you in your day to day life.

I want to talk to you tonight about a very powerful tool –  Validation

Validation is an interesting word that carries a lot of power.  Webster’s definition of validation is to make valid, substantiate or confirm.  Confirm and affirm are basically the same thing so another definition would be that validation means to affirm something is real or true and to give it value, strength and power.  From the spiritual standpoint, validation means that we treat ourselves and others as spiritual beings and, in so doing, we affirm the fact that we are all one.  We are all Spirit with all the attributes of Spirit so in validating ourselves or others we validate that Unity which is expansive.

This kind of validation is as simple as smiling at someone at the grocery store, saying hello or giving someone you may not know a compliment and then receiving the gift of their appreciation.  You acknowledge them and you are acknowledged.  When you sincerely give anything you are validated in the giving regardless of the response to gift.  Think about the last time you gave someone something that you were really excited about.  A gift that you felt was just the right thing for that person if you think about it their reaction didn’t matter as much as your desire to give the gift.  No matter what they thought about it the gift to you was in the giving because it was given in love and love always expands.  Validation is love.  When you smile and say hello you are saying “I see you”.  It resonates with both of you because you are acknowledging that you and they are the same.  Namaste’ is a wonderful validation because it means “The Highest in me honors the Highest in you” and that is both powerful and graceful.

The main objective of the spiritual journey is to express more and more of spirit.  To first of all know with certainty that you are Divine and lack nothing.  The starting point is you where you are in this moment and in every moment because nothing else truly exists but the present moment and each moment is a blank slate an opportunity to make a different choice if you want to.  No matter what is happening around you the truth of who you are doesn’t change.

When you are in a negative emotional state you are reacting to something from outside yourself and actually it is your ego that is reacting because it has been offended.  The real you cannot be offended.  Your ego sees itself as separate and is looking for validation of it’s specialness from the outside world.  When things go wrong the ego blames the way it feels on its circumstances. The ego allows circumstances to dictate its feelings in fact it has no other way to operate. Ego doesn’t just feel sad or angry or afraid, it becomes sad or angry or afraid.  Spirit on the other hand, being in a human body, can see and agree that it feels sad or angry but not become those things.  It validates or affirms itself by being neutral.  It accepts whatever is happening in the present moment, gains information, and allows the emotion to move by acknowledging it.

Chopra call this self referral vs. object referral.  Object referral is the idea that something outside of yourself is responsible for your circumstances or the way that you feel.  An example is He makes me mad. Self referral knows that you choose your feelings and you create the circumstances of your life from within yourself.  Using the same example, He is the way he is. He is a mirror.  IF I choose to be mad it is an opportunity to look at my beliefs and process some old stuff.

I like Wayne Dyer’s definition of responsibility he says it means to respond with ability and it really does.  When you blame any one or any thing you are invalidating spirit because you are abdicating the truth that you are the ultimate choice maker in your life. You are actually relinquishing your power to somebody that the ego feels did you wrong.  But when you accept what is in your life in this moment and acknowledge that you in fact chose it, you grow and the idea that you are limitless begins to take root.

When I am talking about taking responsibility I am talking about doing so from a place of neutrality and acceptance not judgment.  Judgment is the polar opposite of validation and it is not truth.  Judgment also distracts you from your path.  Judgment and opinion create mental chatter and take you out of neutrality and out of the present moment.

Neutrality says in this moment whatever is, is, it looks at it, without becoming emotionally attached and lets it go because it is a done deal and no matter what you do it cannot be changed.  Judgment and opinion say whatever is, is either bad or good and then takes you further out of the present moment in a flurry of reasons or justifications as to why it is bad or good.

If a thing is judged as bad you get taken further away because your tendency then is to resist it, push it away because it’s bad.  If you resist it and push it away it just gets bigger and keeps coming back and now it is a huge issue that takes time and effort to deal with because you have taken it on as a belief. You have validated or affirmed its badness and made that judgment real and given it power.

The Opposite is true as well.  When you judge something as being good when ever anything opposes that opinion you feel you have to defend it and pretty soon you have a new job, defending your opinion, which is about as far away from neutrality as you can get.   All judgment is based on past information, experience and memory not truth.  Judgment has an emotional charge – Truth does not. It just is.

A great affirmation that comes from A Course in Miracles is “In this day I will judge nothing that occurs for non-judgment creates silence in my mind”.  I love that and I like to follow it with another affirmation that says “In this day I will resist nothing that occurs for non-resistance allows the creativity of the universe to move on my behalf.”   The silent mind or the mind free of judgment and opinion is neutral and present and validates the limitlessness of Spirit.  Neutrality is limitless – judgment and opinion are limiting.

By validating or affirming spirit you become a bigger person so to speak more magnanimous and giving, more open minded and neutral, you express more and more of the attributes of your Divine nature.  It is like when you start to affirm your Divinity by affirming that you are limitless or happy or healthy or abundant your mind talks back saying your not but if you persevere you start feeling the truth of those words.  You feel powerful as you speak them and then you become them and when you become them you naturally express them in your being which in turn attracts what you’re affirming.  It is another lovely circle.

When you use validation consciously as a spiritual practice you will feel yourself expanding and then you will begin to notice that, as a result, you naturally have fewer judgments and opinions. This takes practice and is part of the process of growth but, because everything is Spirit the progress we make individually affects the whole.

When we expand we become more aware of Spirit speaking to us in our daily lives.  Our ears and eyes are open to synchronicities and signs of support that we would have missed before.  The Universe is always talking to us but it is up to us to become aware and notice, which brings up another opportunity to validate ourselves.

Take a moment and notice where you are right now on your Spiritual journey.  Sometimes I can get so caught up in what I want to do, what I want to learn or where I want to go that I forget to acknowledge and appreciate how far I’ve come and that is important!  Being conscious of that progress and growth is validation of self and Spirit and gives us a hello to say thanks to the universe for bringing us this far.  Whether you think so or not you have made progress. Just noticing how far you’ve come is validating, you feel encouraged.  Acknowledging your progress empowers you to go through the growth that is inherent on a spiritual path because it is unthinkable to go back to the way you were before you started. Growth takes guts and you should give yourself credit.  Seeing your progress gives you the fuel to move forward.

My personal truth is that I have lived lifetimes in this lifetime.  What I mean by that is I can look back and see different stages of growth in my life, both personal and spiritual and see when I moved out of one and into a new one.  Some were profound others subtle but I can say today I am not the same person that I was even six months ago.  I find that exciting and encouraging.

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