On Validation and Authority

There is no authority on your inner-self.  Spiritual teachings are there as offerings to point you to your own essential nature.  Even your inner-self does not assume the position of being an authority because the core awareness is an open space of consciousness, which doesn’t require the validation of any authority.  Your Being is already valid because you are – you exist.  And your experience is already valid because it is – it exists.  You and your experience arise mutually in the field of awareness, inseparable and yet distinct because of perception.   Exploring this is an opportunity to let go of the struggle for validation and to celebrate the fact of your being. 

Whatever thoughts and emotions seek to invalidate you are learned responses to the resistance encountered in life.  When we believe those thoughts and emotions to be true we invalidate our own existence and then we seek an external authority figure to validate us.  Such an authority figure may provide us with a sense of safety and relief because we have found something we believe to be validating.  But we may eventually end up resenting an authority figure because we fear that if they can validate us through their approval then they also have the power to invalidate us.  It is interesting to note that an authority figure gains its power from our belief that it is powerful.  Thoughts, emotions, people: the power they hold for us internally is due to the power of our belief in them. In this way we actually give the power of validation to that which validates us.  It’s so simple that it can seem complicated.  

Since what we really want is self-validation what we really need is access to our central self-awareness.

As human beings with the capacity of memory we know that experiences and its objects come in and out of existence and so we intuit our own end, the death of our being.  This is the ultimate projection of resistance – life will eventually stop for the individual and his existence will, in a sense, be invalidated.  We get into so much trouble from this one single thought.  And from our fear of this thought we generate immense suffering.

The point of resting in central self-awareness through practices such as meditation is not to stop caring for your individual existence but rather to settle into it as it is in the present moment and broaden the field of perception to include the field of life that surrounds you so that you can recognize your unity with life as a whole.  Then you may become conscious of the fact that when you, as a unique expression of life pass out of existence, life doesn’t die but carries on.  You are not invalidated but you are reintegrated.  As Life you continue to exist.  There is no invalidation of life.  There is only a change of appearance in creation. 

What I’ve written here is a perspective not an absolute truth – no authority.