QA191 QUESTION: I’m working very hard at going deep in meditation, and I start by asking, why is it I do everything for approval? I got the answer that I have gotten approval in my lifetime, but why am I so afraid of not getting it? Because it was the only thing I knew to be love. Then I felt this unlovability – I got there! And I wondered at that point – and I think this is where the block is lying – how can I ever feel that I will be loved or begin to love if I am living on this deep, deep feeling that at bottom of it, I was never loved. This approval thing is such a weakness. It ends up that I do nothing, rather than risk not getting the approval, because I am so afraid.
ANSWER: You see, you are quite right that you equate love with being approved of, which of course, in reality, it is not. It is possible to be approved of without being loved, and it is possible to be loved and not always to be approved of.
You can only accept, see and experience this truth, when you go into what seems like a bottomless pit of aloneness, when you go into this pit of momentary aloneness, with the feeling, “Yes, I will endure this pain in the hope that I will find something within myself that is of greater value than approval from the outside.” And this is really where you are stuck, because you are unwilling as yet to give up the approval – because you’re unwilling to endure pain.
You’re unwilling to explore something that is unsettled. Therefore there is a greedy child that is not willing to risk anything or feel anything negative. And therefore, you are in a constant state of deprivation. You would have to take a chance of feeling the pain of your aloneness, and go through it until you find the light at the other end, naturally. And stop fighting it!
It is your constant inner fight that has to come to the surface more clearly. In other words, you have to really allow yourself to express the childish voice that says, “I will not do without any of it. I must have it all my way, because I was deprived as a child, I had a pain as a child, that I do not accept.”
Then you will find the great truth that it is not the painfulness itself that is your pain and your sickness. It is the fight against it. It is the stemming against it, which is also often so totally unconscious. You’re unaware of how much you fight against it. You must make that fight conscious so that you can then give it up.
If you’re willing to do this, if you’re willing to have the courage to feel something that is in you, rather than deny something that is in you, only then can you be in truth; only the negative truth of the moment can become the ultimate good tidings of the universal truth.
QUESTION: I think I expressed this so that you’d know where I was going, because the lecture on laziness applies to me 1,000 percent. I have the laziness, which is the apathy, the “do nothing.” And I thought it came out of “I won’t do.” I don’t even think it’s that. I think it’s that, but it’s also something underneath that.
ANSWER: Yes, you are locked there.
QUESTION: I’m locked there. The “I won’t do” is based on the other thing underneath.
ANSWER: I would make also another suggestion to you, and that would be that maybe every six or eight weeks, perhaps you can arrange to have a session with this instrument [Eva]. And the rest of the time go on with your Helper.
QUESTION: I really want to open up and give myself to life, to other people, to the universe, to myself too, and I want to do the thing you keep saying: feel all the feelings – negative, positive – go through it, know it, express it. I want this very badly. I want to do it. I want to open up.
ANSWER: Open up. The Force is coming to you. The Force is going to help you, and the meeting of these two currents – your commitment to this as well as the powerful spiritual current that is coming toward you, will facilitate your struggle greatly. [Long pause]
QUESTION: I want to truly be open and love.
ANSWER: Love yourself. Love your feelings first. Love your feelings. For as long as you search for the love from others as a substitute for acknowledging and affirming your own feelings – even the painful feelings are your life – as long as you are thus displaced, it cannot work.
QUESTION: How do you love yourself, though? How do you love yourself?
ANSWER: By loving your feelings! By the life that is moving within you, even the pain! For what you describe as the laziness or the stagnation or the paralysis, is that you have denied this life, partially because you did not want to feel anything unpleasant, partially because you did not trust in the movement of the feelings leading you into something secure and beautiful, and partially you wanted to please so desperately that you denied what you thought was wrong – which was many of your feelings.
The denial of your feelings is what deadens you and what makes it necessary, as a substitute, to receive approval. So you must first acknowledge and welcome and affirm and love that which moves in you, and that is the feeling flow – no matter where it starts, even if it is pain, even if it is desperation, even if it is unhappiness and fear. {Fear}
Let it be. Listen to it quietly. Welcome it. Receive it. Let it go its natural life and very soon, the fear will transform into something else, and you will become attuned to that moving energy flow of your feelings. Only as you affirm and welcome that, do you actually affirm life, and do you create your own inner center as the base from which you proceed and live, move and have your feelings. Be blessed, my child.
