ON NOT BEING VALIDATED BY YOUR WORK

If we do some kind of teaching/healing work, I think it is natural to feel validated by that when it goes well - and similarly to feel dispirited when it doesn't go well, or when it seems not to be happening at all! I think these responses need rooting out, and that is a big ask. Because the real validation is our sense of connection to Spirit, and if work comes our way, so be it, and if it doesn't, so be it. Spirit decides.

If we need this validation from our work (and thinking of ourselves as 'professional' only encourages this worldly mindset) then it becomes a shield from our shadow side - a need to be loved, perhaps, or to 'achieve' or whatever it is that is lacking or messy. The Protestant work ethic, which goes so deep in our culture - hard workers go to heaven - plays its part here.

And of course we all have a shadow side. The work as a teacher or healer is to keep that separate. The shadow is coyote, it will sneak in through this very natural response of feeling validated when the work goes well - and discouraged or even distressed when it doesn't.

For myself, I do shamanic/counselling/astrological 'work'. And nearly always if I have advertised it, nothing happens. This has gone on for years and years. And it has led me through a roller-coaster of self-doubt. I see all these other people with their healing practices or the courses they run, and they do a lot of good work. And Spirit has never let me do that. And the penny is slowly, ever so slowly, dropping. It is taking me to a deep place where I just trust in what is or is not happening, where I feel happy with who I am regardless of what I am doing. What I do know is that if I follow my nose and put up posts on FB as I feel inspired to do so, and interact with whoever comes my way, good stuff happens. And maybe this attitude contains a particular gift I have to offer.

I have my reservations about teaching/healing work as a day job, because I think it needs a lot of space around it in order for it not to become too much of a means of self-validation - I say 'too much' because it is bound to creep in, and we need to forgive ourselves that. And then what we do has that much more depth, both in what we say and in the kind of presence behind it, which is transformative in ways we shall never know, even in this virtual world