the demon of external validation

Last day my best and eldest friend came visiting.This woman is so filled with light that my eyes water over when I see her. I love her deeply and always have, through numerous incarnations. I wrote a blog yesterday about this, but deleted it – it did not feel right to post anything about her experiences – so I’ll stick to mine only.

We played Game of Transformation. I have played it for 30 years now, given workshops with it – and yesterday was a breakthrough for me. The Game is a mirror of the dream – and shows us how we navigate here, and what the consequences of our choices are. It is filled with wondrous humoristic surprises and a presence of the angelic realm, and physicists would not be pleased playing it I think – so called «coincidences» that are mathematically impossible happen with great frequency.

The ego also likes to play the Game: it thinks that it is all about filling the four levels with awareness, and the first who reaches the spiritual level has «won.»Not so. The game is about becoming aware of the traps that we love to have and which we identify ourselves with, and the pain we experience as a result of that ego-thinking.

My theme was being addicted to external validation. I needed to go to this blog and see how «my» ratings were – and if “my” candle-cave was good enough lighted up – and I took it all very personal. It’s mine, dammit! I have seen the pattern clearly since I started this blog, forgiven it each time –  but had not succeeded in attaining peace about it – until in this game.

Now I found myself in the «dark night of the soul» – a place in the Game-process where we sit and contemplate – «are with» – the pain of our resistance and attachment to our ways.

Usually, what we do when  the pain of the Game has added up ( we receive one tear for each time we act from ego and it hurts) we try to find out which beliefs lies underneath our choices. But this time I realized that it was very simple : I just needed to look at it with Love – meaning drop any resistance to this addiction, drop any judgment – just let it be there.

Something shifted inside: for the first time, this «night» was not dark – it was a tremendous calm-filled space to be in. I found myself being quite not-serious about this addiction: no big deal really. I rested. My body, who has felt super strained and tense for three months, relaxed at last. I wanted to stay in the dark night, to savor the sensation of no judgment, the wonder of seeing innocence where I saw BAD before.

I was resting in the non-judgmental space, realizing that it was no big deal.

In one of my all-time favorite series, Northern Exposure ( lots of good stuff on YouTube) there is an episode where the young shaman Ed is wrestling with the demon of external validation. That demon is dressed impeccably elegant businesslike and Ed becomes sick after that wrestle. BUT: he sends away another clingy little bastard-demon: the little green demon of low self-worth – and having done that, I know that the bigger devil will have to move another place.

So now it all comes down to forgiving the little green demon : low self-worth.In other words: guilty little bastard

phew