Seeking approval can be like an addiction. When we can’t get it from someone, we move on to the next and to the next and to the next. A wise teacher will know when to drop you – high and dry, and that period is much like experiencing a withdrawal symptom – lost and jittery; yet unable to get anything out of the trusted knowing it jeopardizes the transcending of the addiction.
It can come in a gross sense, and eventually skilled to the point that the mannerism in asking is so subtle that the person who is asked of a question is not even aware that it is his or her approval that is being asked save and unless he has surpassed his own addiction of approval seeking in every minute sense. Nothing can escape one who has experienced and transcended an addiction, or any life lessons in fact. And it helps a lot, even when inquiry and integrity is being put to practice even in the minutest of experience, as if not wanting to let go of those residuals left in the mind.
As skilful as the mind is, the equivalent if not more skilful practice that has to be tended. I love it how every little thing is being put on the pedestal as if it is a corpse to be dissected. Others think that it is crazy and madness to even question such trivial matters but I’d say that it is these trivial matters where the hidden treasures are… for they are accumulated, cultivated and then culminated. That is why, sometimes when a person suddenly blows his or her top off over a small matter, you can be sure that it is not that one particular incident that has caused that outburst, but a built up of several incidents or similar or related causes that has resulted in such conditionings.
Watching this pattern of going from one source to another seeking for the approval needed to go forth with something dear to the heart is interesting. It is as if, it is insufficient that the heart says, “do it!” and it simply lacks the confidence to proceed with what one wishes to do. The need for perfection, for blessings or whatever reasons that is given to feed this pattern of seeking approval all comes hand in hand as if to tie in partnership that one without the other just won’t work! So then we bring in God, or the Divine to make them the scapegoat. “I trust” she says, failing to recognise that it is still an excuse to push something away from her vicinity to be accountable for.
Trusting is not in deciding to do or not to do as the decision lies in the beholder. It is a choice. Trusting is in the already doing, the performance of the act that she is ready to take accountable for and believing that any outcome that results from the doing or performing is for the highest good. But if she doesn’t get that, she will go on seeking approval from the form if not the formless and then blame on either when the outcome turns out to be totally unexpected. No wonder there are people who blame ‘God’. As if there is any difference.
Approval is out of the question when one is clear of what she wishes to do. There are no conflicting wishes, as this is only possible in a state of confusion and being unsure. If unsure, what is there to do, but yet there is a surety this is the way to go. Then what is stopping the surety but the unsure and what is the unsure that is stopping the surety? If only she questions, she will soon realise there is nothing to answer to. All are parts and puzzles of nature, of what needs to be undone, even the approval seeking hence arriving at a space of clarity – where approval is no longer needed, or more truthfully seen as bogus; whether from the form or formless.