As word concepts go, this is one is a tricky little bugger. It can be used as a noun, indicating the level of importance, worth, or regard with which someone or something is held (as in, “His support was of great value.”), or describing a person’s principles or standards of behavior, or even someone’s judgment of what is important in their life (like, “He had internalized his father’s ethics and values.”).
As a verb, it can be used to describe the estimated monetary worth of an object or service (“The car was valued at $3250.”) or to convey that one considers someone or something to be important or beneficial (“She valued her privacy.”), or to indicate that you have a high opinion of another’s participation (“I value your input.”).
It’s also interesting because what one values and how one chooses to value what one values can carry a significant emotional charge, even as folks can remain completely blind to the games that they play with regards to their values.
I came to ponder this word while trying to explain to a client why her strategy for “Creating Change” in her life (it’s accented because she claimed that “Never-ending Improvement” was the driving force in her psyche) didn’t seem to be working for her, and how her unexamined value system was indirectly devaluing the work she and I were doing together. It was kind of funny, because she clearly valued the outcome that she wanted to claim as her own, but she had no regard whatsoever for the process required to achieve that outcome. And even at that, she was far more concerned with gaining “enlightenment” in order to be able to feel superior to those whom she considered her inferiors than in actual growth or change. She was also quite piqued because she thought that my hourly rate was quite unreasonable (even though her weekly massage therapist’s hourly rate was 45% higher than mine), and that I should be eager to give her volume discounts—preferably at rates less that half of what I’d charge for a 6-week meditation class. Failing that, she wanted me to allow her to schedule time whenever she felt like it, yet promise her that she would make the same progress as folks who’d been coming in for sessions regularly, some of them for years.
Here’s the thing about how often to do this type of self-awareness work. When you’re attempting to break through old habits, it’s kind of like a wave trying to take down a sandbar. If you throw a huge wave against a wall of sand, unrelentingly, for years at a time, you can steadily break down the mass of energy. The more often you rinse a wave through it, the more quickly the mass destabilizes. You gain momentum. You clear your space and energy. You move forward more easily.
But if you throw a wave against a sand bar sporadically, you’re less likely to make headway, because erratic tides will move in between sessions and deposit more sand before you can create significant clearance for open flow. The old formations may even stabilize more densely in between waves of clearing. Extraneous energies, old patterns, out-of-body beings—call it what you will, you give those external energies more time to influence your course. You may not lose a lot of momentum, but you certainly don’t gain any.
The same is true of energy work. In my decades of doing this work, what I’ve found is that people who are resistant to real change, but want to tell themselves that they are working towards change—working towards it, mind you; but never quite achieving it—are the ones who choose the most erratic session patterns. And saying, “Yes, but I only have X amount of money and I can’t afford Y number of sessions,” is what Abraham Hicks would call a “yes, but” response that argues in defense of a limitation.
When you do that, you’re actually reinvesting your energy in creating the “scarcity” reality that is exactly what you don’t want. Whether it’s money or time, you’re saying, “Scarcity is real. I fear it, and I’m powerless in the face of it.” It’s a trap that’s very common and appeals to the logical mind in all of us that has been inculcated in the “reality” of scarcity—we all get caught in it—but in terms of the work we do, it’s completely fallacious.
In other words, it’s not financial scarcity driving the need to do fewer sessions—it’s the unwillingness to value the sessions that creates the easy excuse of “lack.”
I know; I’m working on this one myself, and there are times that it makes me grind my teeth—but this is the leading edge of learning to consciously create our reality that we’re all working. Are we children of God with access to unlimited resources? Or aren’t we? Where do you intend to put your energy? Which version of reality are you going to claim as your own?
The amusing thing, of course, is that when questioned, these are the folks who reluctantly admit that they only turn to meditation when their lives are in utter chaos. Rather than develop the discipline to proactively clean their space and make use of the earth and universal energies available to them, they find ways to distract themselves from the discomfort they create in their lives—until it gets so painfully uncomfortable that they simply HAVE to come in for a healing and reading session.
But here’s the point that ties in with the concept of value. People always seem to be able to create what they really want. Not necessarily what they think they need (especially if they think they may have to see aspects of themselves that they don’t like), but what they really want. The emotional investment locks it down and reels it in.
This often reveals the other game that people play with themselves, where they tell themselves that they can’t afford the work, when in fact they simply don’t value it. Or more accurately, they value something else more. I once worked with a woman who pleaded with me to lower my rates (which I finally did, even though it felt unbalanced to me) saying that she needed the work, she knew she needed to change, she had all these issues she wanted to address, yada, yada, yada—but she simply couldn’t afford it. It looked to me like she wasn’t being honest with herself or with me, but she swore that she was poverty stricken, so I acquiesced. Then somewhere around our 4th or 5th session, she blithely confided that she’d used the mock-up techniques I’d taught her to purchased a new Lexus. So yeah…she’d had the money to pay for the work we were doing together, she just didn’t value the work as much as she valued the social status of driving her shiny new car.
I’m not dissing shiny new cars, by the way. Shiny new cars are fun. I’m pointing out that her energy was invested in what she truly valued. And it wasn’t the energy work she desperately claimed to need.
I don’t think that she ever really understood that she needed to clarify her value system before she could create significant change in her life. This actually happens a lot, all variations on the same theme. One student “couldn’t afford” classes because that would have “only” left her with enough disposable income to roll $2500 per WEEK into her retirement account. Another was almost in tears, assuring me she couldn’t afford a 6-week class which, at the time, was $175. She was asking whether I offered “scholarships.” Her pressing financial commitment turned out to be her upcoming, semi-annual cruise, which apparently, “wasn’t really worth doing if you couldn’t go first class.” Another kept invalidating both me and the work, saying that “she could find a dozen teachers like me online,” before grudgingly signing up for classes. She confided to another student that she held property in three states, but that the upkeep costs were well worth it because she could decamp to any of her houses the instant she didn’t like the local weather.
And again, it’s not that any of those purchases or activities are bad; it’s that in order to receive what’s being offered in these teachings, you have to value them. You have to prioritize them and integrate them. An exchange of money for class time is an investment of appreciation for your own growth. People forget that.
Now, all of that said, there ARE people who can take the nuggets of gold from erratic sessions and maintain the focused, honest, clarity needed to continue to work on themselves during two or three week intervals, or even between monthly sessions, but they’re rare. Most of the people I’ve met require external structure, or sometimes even structure and external accountability, to stay focused. It’s like a yo-yo with a loose string; every single time they “take a break,” they revert to a less-conscious state and hang there, like a lead weight, begging for help.
Yet on the other end of the spectrum, there’s also the fact that we’re living and expressing in infinity. There is no deadline. Nobody has to be perfect by next week, and God’s not keeping score, so there’s no rush. What you value is entirely up to you. I suspect that you (and God) know better than anyone else exactly how much old stuff you’re trying to avoid and suppress. And only you (and God) know how quickly you want to address that stuff, if at all. So choose your direction—but at the same time, realize that your growth is entirely in your own hands. Whether you’re working on yourself, or working with a teacher, it’s what you value that determines the outcome.