“My assignment, years ago, was to find a younger man and bless him, once a day.”  I can share this secret with you.  Now, take your time reading this.  It is a gift that I can pass on. 

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Wisdom I heard

About 20 years ago I was introduced to the importance of Blessings and Curses.  A Blessing was something you put into someone’s soul, by word or act, that durably helped them grow more beautiful – like very long-term fertilizer.   A curse was the opposite, something you put into someone’s soul, by word or act, that durably blocked them from growing beautiful.

If you bless someone well, they will remember your gift for years and years.  Much later in life your words or actions will still be influencing them to grow more into a more whole and wonderful persons.  If your curse someone, they will still be feeling the nasty influence of that act, many years later. 

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 Perhaps you can stop reading for a moment and recall those who Blessed and those who Cursed you.

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The idea, I was told, is that all Blessings come from above, from God.  But most of the time humans can act, must act, to make a blessing happen.   A king/queen can easily bless others.  The energy seems to come from above, down through them, to the one being blessed. A church leader can bless.  In the same way a father or mother can bless their children easily. 

The reverse also seems true.  Curses seem to come from somewhere awesome – above or below.  Humans are part of the process.   A king/queen can curse, etc.  Parents so easily can instill these deep negative sores in their children.

As I was taught this, I was told that as a person grows older, as they come closer and closer to death and to becoming fully spirit, their ability to bless or curse becomes greater and greater.  An elder’s power for this gift can be enormous.  “My assignment, years ago, was to find at least one younger person and bless them, everyday.”   And this would be good for my health, my soul, too, because in blessing others, I will be blessed.

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Now,over the years,
I have found all this to be true. 

While there are many ways to go about blessing people, I have recently realized one sure way.   Validation is blessing.  I have been delighted to discover that as I become better and better at validating people, so I have become more able to easily bless them.  And PreValidation is the posture of planning to bless.  PreValidation is the offering of a Blessing.  When you PreValidate someone, it is very likely that they will share themselves with you in order to get that blessing you are offering. What a great idea!

I also learned that as you validate others, as you PreValidate others, some part of that effort or act is heard by you, also.  You anticipate your own blessing – well, actually the blessing of the One above passing through you to you.   How cool! 

And the reverse is true, too.  Invalidating someone is Cursing.  Pre-Invalidating someone, sending the message that you won’t validate them, discourages people from sharing.  Why would they talk or share with someone who appears to be ready to Curse them?  I have even found that silence can have the effect of Cursing.  And the same seems true when you invalidate yourself.  Your soul seems to shrink and starve.

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The opportunity for change
is great.

Almost everywhere I go, certainly in my office, I meet people who are living through a blessing-deficit situation.  They are in frantic need.   And it is so easy. 

I suggest you take the time to find at least one person every day, and validate them.

I am very lucky to live around many animals.  They can be spectacular at bestowing blessings.  Here’s a great poem.

 

A Blessing

James Wright

 

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Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

 

–From Above the River

©Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and The University Press of New England

 

 

Vacillation

by William Butler Yeats

an excerpt

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My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.