Positive Energy Guide

This post on using energy and sound to balance hyperactive children was written by my competent friend Barbara McKell, who practices energy medicine in Ontario:

This summer I had some long fruitful conversations during a visit with my friend Teresa Dietze. On one walk together the subject came up of children being drugged with Ritalin. I have always felt it was abhorrent to drug a child. Through greater patience, understanding and a holistic approach, this is completely unnecessary to solve issues with children’s behavior.

I told Teresa about a mother I met at a workshop I was conducting. I will call her Jenny to protect her privacy. After the workshop Jenny came up to me and asked me if I would work with her son. Jenny was very distressed because the school her 6-year-old son was attending asking her to put him on Ritalin because of attention and behavioral problems. They had begun to take extreme measures with him in the classroom. His educators had put a partition around his desk, so that he would not be stimulated by the activities in the class and could not disrupt the other children. This tactic wasn’t working and Jenny had asked them not to do it.  Then they told Jenny that if she were not willing to have Jonathan put on Ritalin, they would have to remove him from the classroom.

Jenny was desperate. I told her I would be happy to work with her son. She brought Jonathan in the following week. The child I met in office was bright, alert and very curious, but he was not the type of child you could sit down with and have a quiet conversation. He was stimulated by all the energies in the new surroundings. In order to interact with him on a level that would be comfortable for him, I encouraged him to move around and touch some of the objects in the room. He was fascinated and his little mind had a hundred questions at once. In my healing room there are many crystals, sacred objects and sound healing instruments. After some exploration and many questions, Jonathan began to settle in a little. His curiosity and ability to operate on many levels at once was being honored and he was feeling safe and comfortable.

He then zeroed in on a musical instrument made by Woodstock Chimes. It is constructed in a xylophone format with the chimes tubes and creates amazing sound no matter how the instrument is played.

We sat on the floor together producing wonderful soothing rhythms to which he responded by becoming even more relaxed and comfortable. Jenny was witnessing the whole interaction and with tears in her eyes. She told me that Jonathan had told her on the way over, before he even met me, that he was going to see Barbara so he could play music with her. She told him she didn’t think so. Now she was witnessing the very thing he had said would happen in his session with me.

Discovering how sound affected him I decided to try out a set of tuning forks with him. I had him stand up and I used a D and an A fork. I use a method with the D&A tuning forks that I learned in a Jonathan Goldman workshop many years ago. It is highly effective for children who been labeled ADD and ADHD.

I simply hold a tuning fork in each hand and gently strike the forks to get them resonating. The two forks sounding together create a harmonic, which is referred to as a “Sacred Fifth”. I move the tuning forks around the auric field and weave them down and around body, usually three times, moving slowly past the ears so the recipient not only feels the vibration throughout their entire field, but can also hear as the forks move past their ears. There is also a cross over motion, which brings the brain into balance while the weaving motion balances the Chakras.

Jonathan loved this and asked me to do it again. After we had done it two more times there was a remarkable difference in him. An air of calm and confidence had settled in. Now he was ready to receive a little more energy work and the rest of the session went like a charm. Jenny was so impressed that she bought a set of the D&A tuning forks and I showed her how to use them.

A few months later I saw Jenny and asked how Jonathan was doing. She told me he was doing beautifully. The work he did with me had held. He had learned to discern for himself when he was out of balance. When this happened he simply ran and got the tuning forks, handed them to his mother and “Here mommy, tune me”. There was no need to drug him or segregate him all that was necessary was a little understanding and a non-invasive tune up.

Barbara McKell,
Visionary Artist and Energy Medicine Practitioner, Guelph Ontario
http://www.reikikids.ca

Transparency, in the context of energy, means letting energy pass right through you without sticking. Transparency is essential because it provides a way to interface with someone’s energy without cutting yourself off from the other person or taking on their energy. This skill is especially valuable in work or play that involves touch, such as healing or dance. Without this skill you either take on energy from others or wall them out and block your own flows.

I once won the respect and gratefulness of a chiropractor who had been suffering for years from almost-debilitating hand and foot pain. I noticed energy blockage when I saw him work and asked him what was going on. He told me he had been using specific visualizations to block clients’ energy from coming into his hands or entering through his feet. He learned this technique from someone who was teaching it to practitioners. Somehow I managed to correct this condition about five minutes. His pain went away completely and did not come back. He called and emailed his gratitude several times over the next six months.

In order to pick up energy from someone you have to be in some sort of relationship with that specific energy, just as an argument takes two parties. Your role may be minimal, but must exist for energy to transfer.
I go into details about why this occurs in my book. [link]

Blocking yourself off doesn’t work well. If it does keep energy from coming in, it also blocks your most direct source of feedback about yourself. The way your energy interacts with external energy provides powerful and precious feedback—guidance. Personal cultivation is greatly aided by staying open to the mirroring that occurs between our personal experience and the rest of life. Awareness and intelligent response are the high road. Protection may be necessary under specific conditions, but personal cultivation and mastery are more much more meaningful in the long run.

Dealing with personal issues is the one most effective way to enhance energy safety. This is why I write about addressing inner wounds. Inner cultivation with respect to these wounds is critically important and frequently overlooked in self-development programs.

Profound self-knowledge is an essential precondition when it comes to accurately discerning energy influences. We cannot be clear about what is going on externally when we are adding our own issues into the mix. Lucid discernment of energy depends on having a clear baseline. Self-knowledge and personal clarity provide this baseline.

When we get confused about which energies and emotions belong inside versus which do not, we lose clarity. Energies that do not belong with us compromise our transparency like a log in a river gathers debris.

Learning to become transparent to influences that might undermine wellbeing keeps us safe from taking on energies that do not serve us. Transparency also enhances our ability to discern between different types of influences. The self-development work necessary to learn to do this improves every aspect of daily and work life.

We’ll go into more detail about clarity and discernment in the next post.

What have YOU noticed about blocking energy as a means of protection?
How do you feel in relation to other people when you wall them off?

Beginners in the art of managing subtle energy are often taught to protect and shield themselves from outside influences. One of my own mentors, an advanced healer with staggering talent, caught me before I learned this type of skill—and put the nix on it.

A Viet Nam veteran, my mentor could discourse for hours on everything from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to contributions to our understanding of consciousness from different Buddhist sects throughout history. He told me shielding is like a Band-Aid; not a real solution. He maintained that becoming transparent to energies and letting them pass through without sticking was a much higher art than attempting to keep influences out.

Before I we go on, I will admit that I felt extremely vulnerable and chagrinned at the time. I had no idea how to manage my sensitivity. We were in a whole house full of people at a healing workshop in which novices were messing with each other’s energy. My mentor had me sit still, carefully sensing my body and feeling my safety issues instead of running around or jabbering. Apparently I survived.

Protection may provide a quick way to feel safe. I have endured situations that did require measures of protection, which I learned later from a powerful clairvoyant healer who had participated in military Remote Viewing programs. While perhaps essential over the short term in unusual circumstances, I agree that protection is not the best way to deal with sensitivity to external energies. This is why:

• Trying to protect from the outside does not address the energy issues on the inside that cause us to be unsafe.
• Most methods of protection do not lead to or enhance spiritual and emotional development.
• Fearful motivations cultivate defensiveness.
• Putting layers between yourself and the world may reduce contact with energies that benefit you.
• When you do pick up external energy this is a form of guidance. It shows you where you need to work on yourself to be clear.
• You may mask information that it is useful or important to be aware of.
• It’s easy to confuse your own mental, emotional or energetic material with something from the outside and try to remove or repel it.
• Working on the energies in yourself that allow influences to impact you makes excellent use of your experiences and will help you to develop depth, strength, discernment, and clarity.

Advanced healers and energy masters do strengthen their energy fields. They may even build in structures that are protective. But the intention is not defensive. They are working with positive intention, not from fear. There is a major difference between bringing in energies that unsavory energy will not stick to, and trying to wall it off.

Bringing in positive energies successfully relies on the personal clarity that comes from acknowledging and handling our own energies and issues. Protective actions, taken by someone who does not confront their issues, are like locking the front door when a punk in the basement is going in and out without shutting the door.

Defensive energy without looking inside yourself at your own issues works about the same as refusing to talk about things when we’re feeling uncomfortable in a relationship. The energy hangs around without being dealt with. And that beaver-dam of blocked energy causes disturbances.

Becoming aware of our own interior contents allows us to deal with the energy that belongs to us. Situations become less charged, simpler, and more manageable when we’re not aggravating them by reacting from a stockpile of unresolved issues.

We’ll go into more detail in the next post. My book discusses energy protection in even greater detail, including specifics about when and why we pick up energy from others, and what to do about it.

Please share these posts with those who may benefit.

What does your energy feel like when you are defensive compared to when you are using good sense to stay safe?
Have you noticed that the things you want to do when you are uncomfortable stop you from doing the things that can get you past it once and for all?

How do you sort your energy out from those around you and simultaneously develop more-universal awareness? This is the task before energy-sensitive people. As we become more aware, we must learn to integrate between personal and global.

We interpenetrate and are interpenetrated by the energy of other people. Whether or not we notice, everything that impacts our environment influences us to some extent. Everything that impacts the planet influences us. We influence the greater whole too. It’s a two-way street.

Our outer, most subtle energy fields not only overlap with those of others– they are blended as One. Visualize yourself as the smallest doll—the innermost, solid one–in a set of Russian nesting dolls. Let that doll represent your personal energies close to your body. The largest doll can represent the Collective Unconscious or group mind on planet Earth. I am not talking about abstractions. People who develop specific types of awareness experience these actualities directly.

Developing the ability to move your awareness intentionally into different states assists greatly with discomfort related to sensitivity to energy. Practices with energy and Presence can be used to exercise our capacity to sit with difficult states without being trapped in them. Sensitivity becomes a tremendous asset as one learns to manage it. Directed sensitivity forms the backbone of accurate spiritual and daily-life guidance.

In Sufism (a 2000+ year old mystical order) initiates use sound and intention to invoke and experience specific states of consciousness. Subtle, expanded states are often paired with embodied, contracted states. Alternating between attention Other to and attention to Self is one example. Spiritual practices that use this alternation help develop boundaries and Presence. Rapid alternation between states develops an ability to shift instantly between personal and Universal awareness.

ALL of the numerous advanced spiritual teachers I have encountered have been able to integrate expanded states of consciousness with body-awareness. They are extraordinarily Present and move with grace. Those who practiced types of meditation that moved awareness out beyond the body also used their clarity of focus to be fully Present IN their body and personal environment from moment-to-moment.

Powerful spiritual people require clear and lucid boundaries. The more developed our subtle awareness, the more essential are excellent boundaries. Without good boundaries, we may get tangled up in the issues and energies of others, and perhaps invade their privacy.

As with nutritional supplements, practices that benefit most people may be inappropriate for a specific individual. Also, substances or practices that benefit initially may be detrimental if used longer than necessary to correct an imbalance. What makes you feel good initially can gradually make you feel bad down the line. Then it’s hard to tell because you associate that product or practice with feeling better. Misapplication of energy practices ranges from having little effect to being unsettling and causing imbalances that are difficult to correct.

All practices that advance health, personal, and spiritual development are enhanced through very specific and personalized application. Ironically: One-size-fits-all programs are not for everyone.

When it comes to powerful energy-changing practices, we have specific and individual needs. Energy work is most effective and safe when tailored to each individual. This being said, some exercises do serve almost everyone. If you are sensitive to energy, pay close attention to how any type of practice impacts you and be certain to speak up or stop if an energy exercise throws you out of balance.

Here is an example: Sometimes profound spiritual retreats include exercises designed to assist in shattering self-identification (ego-based awareness and personality habits). When the personality or ego stands in the way of connection with Other, these practices open up your sense of self and break down our habitual sense of separation.

At a five-day silent retreat a competent and alert Guide altered my practices from those of the group during shattering/opening phase of the retreat. Just thinking about the practices he was recommending to the group made me feel shaky and agitated. He noticed and stepped in, directed me to practice in a way that builds up a body-centered and personal experience of the Divine instead of breaking down walls. I was already too open.

Note that the way to balance being open was not closing or obliterating sensitivity, but finding a way to balance openness with a sense of solidity. Closing down does not ultimately serve us when seeking functional energy boundaries. Finding ways to be balanced and Present is the highest option.

Presence and boundaries are foundational skills. These skills naturally help to develop the ability to become transparent to energy that does not belong with you, allowing it to pass through without sticking. We will pursue this topic more in the next few posts.

Have you ever done energy exercises that made you feel out of balance? What did you do to get back in balance?

How do you tell the difference between energy that originates with you and energy from other sources?

Self-possession is a particular quality of Presence. The state of self-possession naturally expresses boundaries, a sense of dignity, and the ability to feel emotionally safe around others. When we know who we are and where we are, we define ourselves rather than letting other people define us.

Here is a story I shared that was helpful to a client learning to stay present with her feelings in group situations:

Historically I felt unrecognized in groups and found myself being shut down by the leaders when I spoke out. During a ten-day partly-Zen retreat I practiced sitting in my body and sensing while my inner wounds were active, instead of pulling away through action or distraction. The next time I became triggered in a group setting I was able to stay present. This means that I maintained body-awareness and awareness of my surroundings instead of going off in my head or being lost in the emotions that came up.

I made what I thought was a useful comment in the group. The leader abruptly and intentionally cut me off. Since I was Present, I noticed that the first three words of my comment made it seem like I was speaking about a specific person.

In the past I might have found myself spacing out while helpless, frustrated thoughts arose, disconnecting me from the group. Confident that I could stay with and support myself inside if I were to feel hurt, I stuck around. I restated my comment, leaving the out three words that may have caused misinterpretation. Instead of seeing the group like blobs in chairs like we do when lost in thought, I looked around and noticed that eyes in the group were supporting me.

Turning to the leader I said, “I think this comment is appropriate for our context.” My body language made my statement a respectful question. I remained open to her input so she would still be in control of the group. This respect for the group and her leadership gave her room to agree, and she did.

When we cannot stay Present with our experience and we check out, other people sense the energy of our distress. If they are sensitive to energy they may feel this distress as their own, and think it is theirs. The distress in the room can become magnified like a hall of mirrors. In discomfort, they may shut down to us–as we have already shut down to them by checking out.

Trying to compensate for the discomfort of feeling too open to energy creates a paradoxical state in which one is too open in some ways and too closed in others at the same time. Going head-on into the distress, grounding and balancing, and making a statement that addresses your interests or needs brings clarity back into the room.

Uncomfortable situations can transform us once if we can define, communicate, and address our needs. This starts by staying with discomfort and feeling where it goes in your body. By surrendering resistance to the discomfort, we become able to drawn on resources that allow us to break new ground.

What type of situation challenges your boundaries?
What do you need to embrace in yourself to face that situation fully, without pulling away or shutting down?

Being comfortable and clear relies on knowing where we start and stop, what is part of us and what is not, which feelings and sensations originate with us and which come from other people or events. The more intuitive we are the harder it is to make this call.

Mystics experience all life as one. The psychologist Jung coined the term “collective unconscious,” where personal experience merges into what is essentially the group mind of all of us together

The more expanded your awareness the harder it can be to tell your own cup of water from the ocean. In actuality, water that runs through us has been in many different people, places, plants, periods of time, and life forms. We now call the water and minerals of our bodies “I.” Atoms jump in and out and energy interpenetrates us in the sea of greater-than-self awareness.

The task of knowing who we are involves being able to sort out different levels of awareness. Telling our bodies apart is easy. Sorting my feelings out from your feelings can be easy or hard, depending on early experiences, how similar we are, and other factors. The mind world is a stickier wicket. If you’ve ever had the same dream a friend had on the same night you have an idea how hard it can be to sort out mind from mind.

The most distinctly personal levels of our minds have a distinct and separate energy frequency or signature that identifies us to ourselves and to those who can identify persons through the energy of their thoughts. Advanced Intuitives and those who are trained in Remote Viewing, for example, have this skill.

Transpersonal levels of mind are more diffuse. The thoughts of everyone are out there in the mind-cloud of general human awareness and can jump from mind to mind. In Family Constellation/ Reconstruction sessions, where group members agree to represent one person’s relatives, it is not unusual for participants to temporarily express very specific emotions and physical symptoms of persons they know next to nothing about. This is exemplifies transpersonal experience. The group mind allows for transfer of information without words.

Boundary confusion STARTS WITH energy. Energy is not a woo-woo abstraction. Energy is a real part of the non-verbal communication that actually occurs during events when boundary issues begin. When a parent or family member invades a child through inappropriate acts, for example, the energy part of the communication actually enters the fields or body of that child. This type of energy is stick and hard to throw back out because the child cannot tell who it belongs to, owning it. This is one major cause of issues with boundaries.

Boundaries are primarily about sensing/knowing what is yours and what is not. This especially includes knowing what you are and are not responsible for causing or creating. Taking inappropriate responsibility for the feelings of someone who is attempting to manipulate you emotionally is an example of boundary confusion. You do not cause their emotions and you are not responsible for stopping them. They are. You ARE responsible for finding an effective and preferably respectful way to get away, and for taking care of your own emotional needs. Your need to be liked, for example, must not overpower your need for safety.

Making sure to be consistently authentic is an act of healing if you have any issues with boundaries. This minimizes giving yourself away to try and please others, second-guessing them, or otherwise getting them in your space and you in theirs. State straight out what you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with, respectfully, and work out positive solutions that work for everyone whenever you can. Challenges can often be used to hone new skills.

“Boundaries” is another word for self-possession. Self-possession is a fascinating term if you think about like this: If you are in possession of yourself, nothing else can possess you. When you are fully in your body and in touch with your feelings, energy that does not belong to you passes through but does not take up residence.

Do you ever get confused about what is YOU and what is someone else?
What types of energy do you get confused with?
What kinds of actions help you sort yourself out?

This post series speaks to learning to manage sensitivity to energy. Presence and Boundaries are cornerstones of this skill. You have to BE HERE to make a boundary.

The more able we are to be Present and the better we know ourselves, the easier it is to deal with energy we find uncomfortable to experience. If we are honest with ourselves and pay attention we will find that when we absent ourselves in some way through distraction, dissociation, or diversion, we do so because we feel uncomfortable. Often some feeling we don’t like is trying to surface into awareness. We stop it by checking out.

Being comfortable feeling our discomfort is a big key to being able to stick around in the here-now moment no matter what we feel. Although counterintuitive, this skill forms a foundation for learning to manage our own energy. Once we can stay present with our own, we begin to be able to sort it out from external influences.

Bell Rock Vortex

Allowing and observing discomfort instead of trying to escape from it is a very Zen kind of practice. It is the foundation of quite a few types of foundational spiritual work. Basic self-observation—sticking around and noticing what is going on—is also key to numerous therapeutic and healing techniques.

Let’s discuss what it takes to become more comfortable with discomfort.

In response to my Post Series about feeling the energy of the world, one brave man wrote: “I do feel the energy of the world, and it bothers me sometimes. All the unrest in the Middle East caused all sorts of funny energies, restless energies to hit me. I can also feel the energy of some people around me. I just don’t quite know what to do with it, how to process these energies. It is things like that which makes me need to numb myself unfortunately.” (Quoted and responded to with permission.)

I would like especially to address those of you seek ways to “numb out” when energy gets intense and those of you who get confused about what is and is not your responsibility. The common link here is that you need to be more Present in your body. This previous 3-post blog defines and also discusses “being in your body.” (Scroll part way down that page.)

Being in your body is fundamental to being Present, and to having effective boundaries. In order to keep from getting confused about what energy, emotions and thoughts are yours and which ones come from other people or events, you need to learn to clearly and distinctly feel and identify your own sensations and emotions.

Body sensations are the easiest place to start. These sensations change with each emotion, and when we get connected with different types of energy. It’s important to have a solid baseline of sensory experience so you can begin to tell what is yours. Again, this begins by sticking around.

Dissociation or disconnection from parts of ourselves—physical, emotional, thought, or energy—is a defense against pain. But when we abandon or fragment ourselves we cannot effectively nurture ourselves and minister effectively to this pain. The survival tool of pulling away is not so useful for sticking around and doing repair. Being Present helps us to learn when to physically withdraw, and to make new, more-effective responses to our needs.

Setting boundaries means recognizing your discomfort and being able to make decisions that are healthy for you; staying whole when things happen.

Post #2 will begin to explore constructive responses to emotions, sensations, and energies.

What do YOU notice about how you respond to discomfort?
Can you stay Present and feel it, or do you find a way to avoid your feelings and sensations?

This post suggests compassionate responses and actions we can take to stay balanced during times of major change:

Don’t take the ambient energy personally. Ambient energy comes from the physics that CAUSE earth changes AND from the collective response. By ambient energy I mean the energy currently circulating around in the collective. You know—the energy-aftermath from the feelings the news stirs up.

Less obvious and even more important is the energy OF the ACTUAL events the news is ABOUT. Energy generated by people in distress ricochets around the earth like a rock in a pond or an earthquake causing a tsunami and moving continents.

Do explore what is going on with you personally and the issues that arise inside, and address them. Take care not to add anything to them. The intensity that fuels your reactions may have little to do with you. (See Post #3 in series.)

Learn to take internal trauma with a grain of salt—even while you validate and honor its origins. Neutral observation brings balance. (See Inner Work series.)

Seek to participate in fully in transformation during times of trauma. Whether or not the PURPOSE of trauma is transformation, positive participation alleviates stress by conferring a measure of, if not actual control, constructive direction.

Take a longer-range view. Look beyond the last few days and weeks to note with compassion that we’re in the middle of a very long grind. We habituate to this stress mentally, and take it for granted. Our emotional and physical energies adjust more slowly, while fast-moving effects build over time.

Accept your discomfort. Grasping for joy and trying to push away discomfort digs us in deeper. It sets up a series of reactions that make authentic joy harder to access. Be with What IS as you take actions that nurture greater comfort.

Extend compassion to the parts of yourself that feel traumatized by the level of change occurring.

Surrender to the fact that change is inevitable, and seek to surf with it. Resistance drains you and keeps you stuck. Find ways to create benefit, even through loss.

Ask for divine assistance–not to GET something but to BECOME all you can be.

Do your Inner Work (Link).

Use the energy of change to transform yourself and your life by considering positive outcomes. Use any disruption you feel and your concerns about the future to motivate constructive action, personally and in service. Make a concerted effort to recreate your life while things are in a state of flux anyway.

• How would you like to emerge?
• What do you need to release or tear down to make way for a better situation?
• What can you free yourself from or give away?
• What do you need to be independent of to be happy?

Contemplate the freedoms that come with loss. Also contemplate the types of freedom inherent within commitment, the things you can express and accomplish.

Deal with any lingering dissatisfaction and your fears of going away from familiar structures and situations.

Make moment-to-moment choices that are consistent with you where you want to go.

Take responsibility–by staying as present as possible to your authentic experience.

Find practical ways to reduce overwhelm:

• put self-care at the top of your list
• set clear priorities
• revamp boundaries to fit current circumstances
• take time to relax
• spend time in nature
• exercise
• notice if listening to the news becomes too much
• take care of your spirit

Avoid random action rooted in restlessness.

Make changes based on true preference. Changes made to avoid discomfort can land you in another form of discomfort somewhere else. Impatience without a solid direction is just undirected energy.

Give energy a positive direction. If you do not have a clear sense of direction, focus on building clarity and developing lucid intention.

How do YOU manage the energy of change?
Which aspects of you adjust quickly and which ones get stuck?
What do you do when external energies become intense?

Intense world energies have been bringing up buried personal issues, but there is another phenomena going on too. What is it, and how can we use it for positive growth?

I got a call from an intuitive woman does her Inner Work and keeps her energy clear. She had been feeling disturbed by a vague sense of guilt, shame, or culpability and wondered why. She had effectively scanned inside, finding no source.

Responsibility is in the air. It accompanies all our new opportunities for choice. Choice and responsibility go hand and glove. The world has entered a phase in which we must each and all assume greater responsibility for our actions and impact upon one another.

Example: Persons whose choices courted or passively led to disaster for their families feel bad about it, adding concern about responsibility to collective energy pool. One may feel he “should have” sold the house sooner, or she “should have” selected a different retirement plan, etc.

Even waging peace demands responsibility from participants and those they petition.

We each take up what responsibility we can, hoping to see ourselves through the world changes. This new flood of responsibility—the energy of it—begins to work its way down into the things we feel bad about, into our old wounds and shame.

Assuming greater responsibility requires becoming aware of what we need to be responsible for. Not knowing what we are responsible for can cause stress and confusion. So does loading our plates with way too much responsibility without clarity about exactly what is ours, and what to do differently. This boundary-confusion can reactivate old wounds.

Many blame ourselves when we experience trauma. Children who are mistreated or have a parent die attempt to make sense of their world by taking inappropriate responsibility for things that were done to them. This stance confers a sense of having a measure of control. It’s easier to manage than feeling totally powerless in a senseless world. But it also keeps one stuck with feeling blameworthy. World changes can undermine this sense of control, making the wounds accessible.

Turn this to your advantage by doing deep emotional ‘housecleaning’ while the energy supports this transformational practice.

The sense that at some level we choose and set up our destinies can add fuel to confusion about responsibility. In general, giving our experience meaning and seeing ourselves as participants reduces trauma, whether or not our assessment is correct.

One reason those who have been victimized feel blameworthy is that we take on, absorb, and come to identify with the energy that abusers refuse to carry. Guilt and shame an abuser pushes away from his or her body congest in their energy field, like disowned emotion tends to do. This energy easily enters us those who are shocked and stunned into absolute openness by trauma.

Energy an abuser rejects can get stuck in your fields or body and echo as if it is your own. If you confuse this with a psychological pattern you will find that pattern highly resistant to change—and perhaps simple once that energy is removed.

Remember that blame is different than responsibility. Blame keeps one stuck in the past. Learning to assume appropriate responsibility in the present can free us from blame. (Also see Forgiveness Series.)

During times of upheaval we have a wonderful opportunity to do deeper healing and make major changes. Bring love and light to all realms of distress. We are helping everyone when we do.

Do you find yourself feeling responsible for things over which you have or had no control?
Do you blame yourself for it or go into shame?
How do you soothe yourself when this comes up?
How can you move into positive action instead of recycling your discomfort?

Times of change are exciting and invigorating to the extent that we use them to make meaningful discoveries, adjustments, and connections with others. The ways we respond to change depend at least as much on how we position ourselves internally as it does on our life situation.

Using the energy of change to transform depends on the way we manage our moment-to-moment experience.

How do we get from living our lives like business-as-usual to engaging fully with profound change? Strong energy signals that wake us up to the possibility or necessity of change usually take the form of some type of discomfort. These signals alert us that something different is going on. How we experience, embrace and respond to these signals is paramount. If we ignore, misinterpret, or shut them down we cannot use them for intentional transformation. Change will still occur, but with less awareness. We have more choice and possibility when we put ourselves in concert with the changes.

One way that intuitively sensitive people get clear is to ask ourselves: “What is my own in the energy, and what belongs outside of me?”

This is a great place to start when we feel strange. It is, however, easy to misinterpret uncomfortable sensations from the outer world as some sort of energy invasion. When world changes are intense, the energy fields around our bodies go through changes too. And why not? The relationship of the earth itself to its magnetic poles changed a bit with the tsunami. The government has had to change GPS settings. We really aren’t separate from all that.

Initially, during intense world changes, when I felt the fields around my body going through strange changes I had to really pause and evaluate what was happening. Like others experienced in working with energy, I went through a mental checklist to rule out common types of energy interference. I’m talking about the kinds of influence sensitive people take on from others. For example, when someone is throwing anger at you from a distance, pulling on your energy out of neediness, or projecting onto you issues they are unable to acknowledge in themselves, you may sense this energy coming at you and feel invaded. Even those who are fairly skilled may not find it easy to check our own subtle energy when our energy systems are compromised.

After ruling out the usual suspects I discovered that the fields around me were going through the equivalent of being stretched and thinned in places and pulled different ways, like a pizza crust in the hands of a chef.

As we become more sensitive and also more connected with the entire world our energy goes through changes. Unfamiliar sensations occur. These sensations are not totally unfamiliar, so we initially interpret them according to what we already know. We are unable to interpret them based on what we are not yet familiar with, so we make our best attempt. It is essential to stay open to new possibilities and to stretch toward new understanding.

Here are some unusual sensations that may occur when our fields are stretched, pulled and impacted by world changes. Some feel similar to energy invasion:

• fields feeling wispy, or weak
• disproportionate tiredness, which may feel like being drained
• bouts of dizziness
• nightmares
• periods of disorientation, brain-fog, or inability to focus
• inconsistent motivation
• sadness, shame, anger with yourself or others; the showing up of really old issues or inner wounds
• restlessness
• inability to access usual channels of guidance
• sense of losing your bearings or that life tools no longer work
• feeling that there is something in your fields that doesn’t belong or hasn’t been there before

Mental and emotionally you may feel:

• Nothing applies or makes sense
• Doubt
• Wondering whether we made a mistake
• Handling stress poorly
• Feeling unhappy with what you’re doing or like leaving your current circumstances
• Situations we have put up with for years may feel intolerable
• Strong desire for change, perhaps with no idea what to create
  
  This type of sensation may come and go. When the cause is energy it’s important to remember that nothing is wrong. As you relax and adjust the sensations pass. Kind self-care is the best plan. 

  In Post 6 we’ll explore the relationship between dynamic, changing energies and responsibilty, following in Post 7 with compassionate responses and actions that help us stay balanced through times of major change.

  How does monumental world change impact YOUR day-to-day energy?
  What do you do to increase your inner balance, clarity, or ease?