Appreciation

©2008 Joan M. Newcomb

This article was going to be about Appreciation vs. Gratitude, as the Canadians just had Thanksgiving and we'll be celebrating it next month in the US, but today I've been overwhelmed with information from John Edward, and he says "Communicate Appreciate Validate".

Which is a slightly different meaning, but I'll try to weave it all together.

First off, gratitude means to express thanks, and appreciate is more about acknowledgement, being aware of, holding in high regard. When you're expressing gratitude, you're thanking someone or something, but the energy implies that something outside your reality created it or gave it to you.

Appreciation, in the way I meant to write about it, was to notice things in a more expansive way. As the creator of your reality, you can appreciate what is going on in your life. You can appreciate the world around you as this marvelous creation, with the sense that You, the Creator, designed it down to the smallest detail for your own enjoyment. Appreciating yourself, the creation of your body and personality, as this amazing vehicle for navigating this reality. It's no fun being in physical reality without a physical body to feel it fully!

As you appreciate yourself, and your hologram (the setting and the storyline), you draw to yourself more to appreciate. It's what people miss when applying the Law of Attraction (okay, that's next week's topic: Being in Receptive Mode).

So the point I wanted to make was to encourage people to shift their focus from power outside to power inside. Appreciating yourself as the powerful creator and appreciating everything in your life as your own creation. You begin to love *everything* that happens and *everyone* who comes into your awareness, because you come into alignment with your Expanded Self, and You are the one who created everything.

Okay, now I can address 'Communicate Validate Appreciate'. John Edward's focus is on people who've passed (something I've already talked about in a recent post). Communicate - it's okay to talk to dead people, they like to be acknowledged. They respond, not necessarily in words, but in images, impressions, insights and symbols showing up in your life. It *validates* their existence. You may want to write down what you feel they're saying to you, because it validates it as real for you - there it is, down on paper, you didn't make it up. And appreciation in this case is holding in high esteem, valuing, which is much easier to do with those who've passed. There's no longer the (sometimes irritating) personality, just their bright, shiny essence.

As I like to say, they're easier to talk to and harder to hear. My sense is also that the longer it's been since they've passed, the more diffuse their energy, but that's only my experience. I still see silver PT Cruisers (yesterday yielded a bumper crop) but my dead friend Ian feels wispier, more on a thought level than a feeling level (although he's showing up big time as I'm typing this).

Byron Katie says that when ever she things of loved ones that passed, the tears she sheds are one of joy, not loss. She experiences them as delightful 'visitations'.

Which, apparently, is the point I'm supposed to make in this article. No one is ever gone, they've only passed beyond the physical. You can't see their form, but you can sense their essence. The more you communicate, validate, and appreciate, the more real these connections become.

Someone wrote me after the last article on this topic and said 'what about the one's you *don't* want to communicate with?' I think she was nervous that she'd have to talk to her least favorite dead relatives! Just don't focus on them, and they don't show up. However, you may be delightfully surprised that former unpleasant personalities are much nicer on the non-physical. My grandmother was bossy and controlling in life, but her energy is much gentler now. When she was in body, she'd had decades of painful experiences that caused her to be harsh. Once she passed, all the darkness dropped away, leaving only her brightness.

Okay, the pressure is gone from my head, so I must have said what I was supposed to say.

One last tidbit from me is, tying back to the earlier topic, when you're aligned with your Expanded Self, which is your own light essence, then you can see how everyone in your hologram is you, a reflection of you, because they're all sparks of light, too. We're all one Consciousness, that created this reality for the fun of experiencing dichotomies and opposites. And I'm going to stop there, because *that's* another topic, as well!