How Can I Validate That Awful Person? Part 1

What does people want in a relationship? What they want is Validation. Validation. Validation. I state it three times because it is a very, very, very important thing. Validation. And what does validation mean?

Validation means that you find the other person, every other person, intelligent and attractive. And, if possible, wonderful and enchanting. Jejeje, I know what some of you may be thinking. “But how will I find him or her intelligent and attractive, if he or she is an awful person, a son of a blip blip blip? But my boss is a horrible person. My husband is a drunkard and a womanizer. My former friend is a bitch, who tried to steal my husband”.

To answer this, first you need to learn how to discriminate. Discriminate means to recognize a distinction, to differentiate. You need to learn how to discriminate between your real You, your Being, and your false Ego.

You would need to know who you are, and who the other person is, who any other person is. And you need to know what is called “the conscience of unity”. These two are the two underlying truths of all noble truths.

When a man asks a mystic, who I am? The mystic´s correct answer should be: “I don´t know. I am an ineffable, fathomless mystery.” This is comparable to “The Tao of which we can speak is not the true Tao”. That´s because I am unknowable, fathomless, ineffable. You are unknowable, fathomless, and ineffable.

But an approximation would be: I am. Or I am that I am. 

Walt Whitman starts the “Song of Myself” stating, “I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Leon Felipe paraphrases him as follows: "I celebrate myself and I sing to myself. And what I now say about me, I say about you, because what is in me, is also in you, and every atom of my body is yours too."

What am I? I am. I am. I am. There is no need for more. But we like more. That is why I Am said to Moses. Ok. Here´s more: I Am That I Am. Incapable of defining or restricting Himself, He only says “I am That I Am”, or Being, What Is. That is what Jehovah means. The Being. Or the Spirit. Or, if you are a Hindu, the Aum. Or the Universal Mind. Or the Creator. Or Light. Or the Word. Or, as the Kybalion states, the All or the Substantial Reality underlying all the outward manifestations and appearances which we know under the terms of “the material universe”.

What am I? This may be answered also using any of the attributes of the Being. Since we cannot talk about what the Being is, because the Tao of which we may talk is not the true Tao, the God of which we may talk is not the true God, we however may talk of his or her attributes, through which it may manifest in external life. Freedom, Love, Happiness, Peace, Wisdom. Every positive quality is an attribute of the Being.

That is why Ancient Wisdom says, “God is Love”. And Love implies an essential morality, which means not to intentionally harm oneself or others. If we Are Love, we Love everybody and everything. No exceptions? No exceptions.

The Key to Relationships: Love and Validate Others

Oprah Winfrey tells us that the key to relationships is to validate others. I add: do it with love. All people have one thing in common: they all want validation. They want to know: Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I am saying mean anything to you? Validation means that you may tell them: I see you. I hear you. And what you say matters to me.

Validation means that you consider the other person as intelligent and attractive. And if you want to practice an upgraded validation, add this: find the other person wonderful and enchanting!

Validation may start with compliments. With showing approval. With making the other feel accepted.

To tolerate the anxiety of allowing people to disapprove of you.

Jessica Cohen suggests three important ways to provide validation:

Be physically present. When you are with someone, really be in the moment with them. Make eye contact during conversation and avoid unnecessary distractions.  Let that person know you care by giving them your full attention. Give a hug, a pat on the shoulder or hold a hand when it is needed.

Be empathetic.  When you feel sympathy for someone, you recognize their emotional response to a situation.  As Oprah stated, people simply want others to understand them.  Our innate ability to see an issue from another person’s perspective is authentic, it is real and it provides validation.

Be an active listener.  Active listening is focusing on the conversation at hand and nothing else.  It means giving the other person your full attention.  It is a sign of consideration and respect. 

Validate others, but do not try to be validated. That is freedom. Try to be self-validated. Remember the Prayer of Saint Francis: Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.

We may add: Grant that I may not so much seek to be validated as to validate!

But a friend of mine asked me: how can I validate that awful person?

The answer to this question will be in my next blog.

Love surrounds you

Love surrounds you

Tony de Mello tells us a nice story about some people who have suffered a shipwreck off the coast of Brazil. They had drifted for several days on a rickety raft, and were about to die of thirst. You know that we cannot drink the sea water because it is so salty that it is not drinkable for the human being. Instead of quenching thirst, it exacerbates it, damaging our body, and in the case of shipwrecks in the open sea, ingesting it accelerates death, instead of slowing it down.

Then, being in the sea off the coast of Brazil, they did not drink the water that surrounded them, and were about to literally die of thirst. However, these castaways did not know that the Amazon River empties its fresh water with such force on the sea, that for some kilometers the sea is “a sea of ​​fresh water”, before beginning to dilute and become a normal sea of saltwater. They had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water, water they could drink. They had no idea that this was their Reality.

It is like the fish in Kabir's poem, who says, “I laughed when I was told that the fish in the water was thirsty.” Of course, the fish do have an organism equipped to drink salt water. And yet the poet Kabir says, “I laughed when I was told that the fish in the water was thirsty.” You would have to talk to that fish and tell him, “Are you a fish in the water? Mm-hmm. Are you a fish? Mm-hmm. Are you thirsty? Oh, come on! It's ridiculous. All the ocean water surrounds you. How can you be thirsty?”

In the same way, freedom, love, happiness, peace, and wisdom surround you. They impregnate you to the marrow of the bones. But, if you're like most people, you have no idea about this. You have no idea that you are like the shipwrecked people with plenty of fresh water, fresh water everywhere. You are a fish and you are looking for the ocean.

If that's your case, it's as if you've been brainwashed, or hypnotized. You are sleeping. Imagine a magician in the theater who hypnotizes someone so that the person sees things that do not exist, that are not there (unpleasant emotions, which do not belong to the realm of Reality, but to false delusion). And the hypnotized person cannot see what it is there in Reality. Well that's what happens.

The Reality is that abundant freedom, love, happiness, peace, and wisdom surround you. They are like juicy and delicious fruits that are within reach of your hand at all times. Come on! Wake up and stretch your hand! There it is… there it is… Stretch your hand and grasp the act of loving, your freedom ... Love means to feel: “I am here for you.” Freedom means to feel love at this moment without attachments or unpleasant emotions… Smile. You have it. Do not let it go. It's yours…

Learn to Listen

Learn to Listen

The way to plenitude has some requirements. A very essential requirement is your ability to listen. Listening is uncommon. People hear all the time, but rarely do they really listen. It has been said, with a better translation: he that has ears to hear, let him listen. How come? We all have ears to hear. Yes, but we do not use them to listen. In order to understand wisdom, you need to use what has recently been called active listening, or empathic listening. At least, sympathetic listening. There are whole courses to teach people to practice active listening.

The essential point in the art of listening is that you put yourself in a receptive, receiving mode. You are normally like a glass full of muddy water, full with your preconceived ideas, biases, thoughts referred to spiritual development, interpretations of your past experiences, unpleasant emotions, strong opinions, etc…, which fill your glass with muddy water. It is so full, that such muddy water reaches the edge of the cup and spills out. Nothing can enter into your glass, which represents your mind.

In order to listen, what you need to do is to empty your glass. You may pour your substance into a, let us say, a cup of tea, that you have available, and let your glass crystal clear, empty, ready to receive new ideas or, better, the Ancient Wisdom.

That does not mean that you are going to swallow what you are going to listen. No, no. When Do what Socrates recommends. He said that an unexamined life is not worth to be lived. Therefore, please examine what you have read or listened to, and then you may reach your sound conclusions.

My daughter, when she was a child, used to tell me the following joke: there is a duck at the edge of a pond (more common versions place a man in a bar). He has a banana in his ear. So he could hardly hear. I doubt if I should tell him the problem that he cannot listen because he has a banana in his ear. Maybe he will be upset if I get close to him and tell him what is wrong with him.

Finally, I took courage, and decided to tell him the truth:

“Hey, Sir, excuse me, but you have a banana in your ear.”

“What?” The man cannot listen to me, so I cry loud.

“I say that you have a banana in your ear”.

“What?”  The man still cannot listen to me. I speak still louder.

“That you have a banana in your ear”.

“Sorry –said the man- I cannot listen to you because I have a banana in my ear”

Je, je. You know. He knew the problem, but he did not do anything to solve it. He kept the banana in his ear, and could go on unable to listen.

So, my dear friends. Please assume an active, alert and emphatic attitude, put to work your whole attention, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, please be present here and now, empty your glass of water, take your banana off your ear, and listen…

A Tale of the Dervishes

A Tale of the Dervishes

Once upon a time the Teacher of Moses called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed with different water, which would drive men mad.

Only one man listened to the meaning of his advice. He collected water, and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.

On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat, and drank his preserved water.

When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of man. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.

At first, he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving, and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

Dear reader, are you like the man who collected his water, or like the other sons of man? Please examine yourself… If you were in the case of that man, would you also choose to become mad like the rest of the people? If you have drunk of the water that makes people mad, would you like to find the fresh water and drink it? Please examine yourself…