Positive Energy Guide

Walking with the wound was its own concentration. Grateful that I could walk at all, I had to move with care. My slow, focussed rhythm was unusual. Those who notice others looked to my bandage and gave me room to reach handrails, or let me sit on crowded busses or trains.

The wound spoke in its only language—sensation. Sometimes the stitches pulled for no apparent reason. I worked at staying with sensation instead of pushing it away and relaxing fear.

In his response to my email, my Teacher suggested breathing up from the soles of my feet through my whole body and out through my crown, then exhaling through my crown and body, out my feet. He recommended adding the practices “Ya Raqib,Ya Hafiz” to my breath, though intention.

Ya (invoking) Raqib is a divine Name for loving attention. Inhaling in this intention, I watched each step to avoid jarring the wound. Bringing loving attention to my leg, limits and needs helped during onrushes in crowds. I kept renewing my intention to bring Earth energy in through my feet. This focus also helped me to take in my environment and locate places and items I was trying to find. It increased my confidence getting around.

Ya (invoking) Hafiz is a divine Name for protection, and also for deep respect. I exhaled this quality from my crown down and out my feet, beginning with respect for my body and the ways enhanced attention makes me safer.

Combining Ya Raqib and Ya Hafiz evoked numerous reflections:

Paying loving attention is doing our part. Expecting protection without contributing attention is absent accountability.

We need to NOTICE in order to truly respect. Making assumptions without truly noticing does not support respect. A few implications:

–If I did not feel my wound I may not respect my limits.
–If we do not notice the results of eating something we are sensitive to, we will keep eating it and irritate our bodies instead of respecting our needs.
–If someone thinks we are other than we are, they are unlikely to respect our needs.
–If we do not recognize our own energy, we cannot tell when we take on energy that does not belong with us and cannot respect our own need for boundaries.
–Being aware makes for right action.

Our degree of self respect and our ability to respect others are intimately involved with our relationship to physical space. The ways we do and cannot take up space reflect whether or not we feel respectable, and express some of the ways in which we respect or disregard others.

We have different styles of negotiating safety and personal space. Some people, for example, accumulate physical bulk and use it aggressively, demanding a lot of space. Some maintain energy fields like barbed wire or electric sparks for a similar function. Others shrink away and all but disappear in groups. Some blend so much they cannot tell who they are themselves. These types of behavior are rooted in the survival instinct. In part, they help compensate for feeling small, unimportant, unsafe or unseen.

Receiving respect assists us to feel seen and to feel safe.

Through practice we can root ourselves so strongly that we sense our existence whether or not anyone acknowledges us. Surmounting fear of nonexistence supports the ability to melt into profound meditation and broadens the range of experience with which we are comfortable.

My own practices began to show me my tendency to navigate away from occupied space by quickly flowing into open spaces. I noticed that I feel trapped and sometimes a bit panicky when I cannot move freely. Being fully grounded and taking up space intentionally adds gravity to my energy fields feels like dignity. The leg wound forced me to do this. Doing so felt good, if somewhat confining.

I still found oblivious tourists who stand in Borg-like (from Star Trek) solidarity, as if no one outside their hive exists challenging. As a child I felt that I didn’t matter or exist. My practices helped me begin to break down these impressions—but also sensitized me to them. Being trapped in crowds whose conditioning aggravated my old discomfort was like being annihilated in a sea of painful energy. I held a goal to be able to respect myself enough to respect the people who set me off.

Knowing my own wounds helped me respect myself. Sensing the wounds beneath people’s cultural conditioning helped with the outer part. I could see how martial arts and meditation could help counterbalance immersion in a hive-like mentality, where it’s hard to matter as an individual, and understand how constant selfies and being in every photo helped to affirm individual existence.

Crowd reduced sixty percent by rain, most groups not out.

Holding my own vibration with loving attention and respect among intense masses of energy was a useful self-development exercise. When I was too distracted by the crowds, it helped to focus on the individuality of each person in front of me.

What are your survival defenses?

When do they arise for you?

What do you do if your usual strategies for self care fail and you cannot get what you need or ask for it?

The underworld parts of my journey began with the wound. In life as in mythology, a lot of journeys do. I hope you will find my deeper processes useful. Some parts are difficult to share.

At some point I asked myself: “Did I force the bike trip?” “Was I supposed to go?” “Did woman I called my ‘travel angel’ showing up to guide me mean that I was supposed to be at the monastery?” “If I hadn’t gone, would I have injured myself elsewhere?”

Frankly, I roll my eyes if I think like this. I find “supposed to” or “meant to be” talk annoying. Who is doing the supposing? Such conjecture is rarely useful. Real experiences of meaning arise from feeling, not conjecture. Then again, if we stay with feeling, sensing, and intuition, mining experience for gems will surpass such theories.

I felt clear that what I was going through was related to my energy experience in the castle garden. (Part 4)

As I lived with my injury, memories and insights surfaced from my personal archeology:

About fifteen years ago I had what seemed to be a trivial wound in almost the same spot on my opposite shin. I slipped on a jungle-gym and found myself hanging upside-down by a rope. (Shades of The Hanged Man in Tarot.) That rope wound did not appear serious but the tissues resisted normal healing.

About ten years ago I accompanied other healers on a Shamanistic trip to ancient power spots and barrows in England and Ireland. As our bus passed through Wales a succession of different past life images surfaced, along with related emotions. This intense experience seemed to be a type of energy release. One salient visionary sequence clearly pertained to the shin wound:

I was a man, carrying a huge, rough wooden cross through the streets of a medieval town, having suffered this for some months. I felt ambivalent about this penance. It did not feel spiritually alive. After long deliberation I confronted the church leader, who had tasked me with this burden. We disagreed. I pushed the cross in his direction, rejecting it, but did not push hard enough. It fell back. I jumped back but the wall arrested my movement and a crossbar struck my right shin.

Subsequent images showed me limping winter streets with a wound that worsened over time. I died without coming to grips with related conflicts about my beliefs.

Whether or not we were raised with religion, many of us carry remnants of religious programing. This can show up in many different ways. For example, we may assign a sense that we can never be good enough to an abstract divine authority, feel we deserve to be punished for things we think, or feel shame about our basic humanity.

Following my past life reflections, the rope wound to my shin began to heal again after remaining stagnant for years.

My current mix of influences had pinged that past life memory:

–My injury occurred near a medieval town, just after exiting a monastery.
–I had been actively processing ambivalence related to power structures within my spiritual group. [I’m good with my Teacher.]
–I was struggling with a painful and awkward burden that did not seem mine to carry, yet it fell back on me when I refused to do so.

Current life tags to the past life wound that never healed fueled flashes of terror. Hospital staff had told me this area of the shin was subject to necrosis. I could not stay off my feet. I could not check the injury as I had been told to leave it undisturbed until the drain was taken out. I worried whenever it hurt.

The positive energy experience I evoked at the formal garden before the injury (Part 4), spoke to laying down burdens, allowing myself to be honored, living more lightly, and receiving support. My healer and I had long been working to correct a weak energy grid on my left lower body, related to the above. I had challenged my status quo.

Some energy-based issues can be corrected immediately. Effective energy work then influences our life experience and reduces related reactivity. Pulling out energies that do not belong with us usually falls into this category. Energy patterning formed over decades or lifetimes, however, are often riddled with deeply held beliefs or conflicts and require ongoing attention and significant change to resolve.

How does your past shape what things mean to you in the present?

How do you influence whether your past creates a meaningful continuity of experience, or prejudices your experience of the present?

This tip is counterintuitive: Keep your energy-sensors pulled in unless you have a reason to check something out. 

Sensitive sorts want to scan everything to see if we will be safe. Constant scanning is draining and causes energy leakage, making things worse. If we mind our own business, our fields remain more intact. When someone approaches and it doesn’t feel right, in dangerous locations, or when intuition prompts you to attend, attention is a good thing. Habitual, inappropriate attention to everyone’s energy makes one more open to drawing Stuff in.

Learning how and when to contain our energy (not “leaking”), supports safety, clarity, and vitality. 

Having emphasized our self-responsibility and the internal aspects of managing our energy, I will include a few externally-based tips on energy protection:

Mirrors are used as a Feng-Shui cure to deflect energy coming toward your house from inharmonious neighbors. You place a small mirror in a window, facing out, facing the direction where energy comes in. You set this up with the intention to bounce the energy back where it comes from. If you use this cure, do it with practical and clean intent, not defensiveness or retaliation.

Violet flame can be used for protection as well as clearing. You visualize violet flame in a space that needs clearing, around you or around your home.

I have been exposed to numerous techniques of visualizing protection in your energy fields. One uses a spinning pyramid and an inverted, pyramid, another uses three layers of different colors of light connected with different sources of protection. We do empower these techniques by honoring those who come up with them, but you can certainly craft something that works well for you.

The last few tips rely on your ability to concentrate and project energy and intention. I use this type of tip only occasionally, if they are specifically called for. They are worth doing in the short term if you feel compromised and cannot yet shift what you need to shift internally in order to disengage from the energy.

As we all know, sincere prayer–with appropriate inner alignment–can be used to protect as well as to clear out energy. I have emphasized in previous posts how to address what we need to take on in ourselves to be able to align ourselves effectively. If we could just do this well we might not need other tips, but what we can access in any given moment and what we believe impact whether or not they energy actually changes.

In my opinion this is the most important tip: “Make your energy clear and transparent so energy goes on through without stopping.” Most of my previous posts support this aim.

One externally-based intervention I do like. These are devices that look like laminated pictures, but they are more complex. The energy technology of this device raises the pitch of your resonance to help disengage. In a sense this is working on Self.

I have used these devices for years, setting them on clients when their energy is compromised, to clear out Stuff that does not belong with them. Recently some of my clients have started to covet them. As they become more aware of energy they can feel the results.

They look hokey. I was initially skeptical. One time I asked the guy who makes them how they work. My eyes glazed over at his response, so I can’t tell you. I can say that they work quite well. I use them when I am exposed to intense negative energy until I get a chance to work on what’s letting it in.

When I was writing about External Energies I made a website to sell these as a service, so people would have some kind of support as they became aware. Should you wish to get one you may go to http://positiveenergytools.com/

How do YOUR beliefs impact your style of working with energy?

Do they enhance or hinder your abilities?

Do you make belief a precondition for getting results?

The extent to which tips on energy protection will be useful to you depends on quite a few different factors. How much trauma you have endured, your exposure to people who modeled good boundaries, your sensitivity and the degree to which you are empathic will have a bearing.

A tip must correspond to your current capacity for self observation and your level of energy mastery to be useful. Different tips work in different moments.

Techniques do not stop energy from coming in if we open the door to it ourselves, intentionally or otherwise. In stories, granting permission for a vampire to enter your house allows it to enter at will until permission is intentionally revoked and clear boundaries are established. Similar principles operate in the world of energy. If something enters, some part of us is in agreement or in resonance with it. This can be really annoying when we don’t know ourselves well enough to be aware of what we are letting in or why. Thus the universe makes self awareness a high priority for sensitive individuals.

Blaming ourselves, or flailing around in confusion about ‘why’ we pick up energy just muddies the water further. I produced the Inner Work Series and the Pearls to Pain Series in this energy-savvy context to assist readers to develop the personal clarity and self awareness to learn to sort self from not-self and gain better boundaries. These series are one huge tip. This is not an easy fix, but it produces permanent life results.

Energy transfers for various reasons. Sealing ourselves off is not a real answer. Using our sensitivity for personal development is meaningful and satisfying.

Given the above, here are various tips that help minimize unintentional energy transfer:

• Focus on and breathe into your hara/belly center and bones
• Ground yourself as well as you can
• Be careful about trying to help people who are not asking for it or flying out of yourself to others in sympathy
• Take responsibility for your sense of safety by working with your fields, setting boundaries or withdrawing instead of trying to get others to make you feel safe
• Discern clearly between your needs and the needs of others
• Resolve issues that arise clearly and directly instead of stewing about things
• Notice the way your negative judgments send out energy toward others–and remember that energy can transfer back to you along the link you are sending out
• When you feel drawn in to someone’s story, tell yourself, “I am HERE; that person is THERE,” and notice the space in between you
• Remind yourself that just because someone is carrying energy you don’t want, you do not have to pick it up
• Scan and clear yourself regularly, and get assistance if you cannot
• Challenge yourself to master your energy in difficult situations instead of fearing or resisting them
• Make your energy clear and transparent so energy goes on through without stopping
• Visualize your energy fields and strengthen them with light
• Let your energy fields be strong but bendable, like spider web
• Allow your fields to flex, like pushing a finger into a partially inflated balloon, when someone comes near (instead of imaging them as being broken)
• Keep your fields smooth and intact so they are like Teflon
• Do spiritual practices on your breath to raise your resonance to a higher pitch
• Practice keeping your resonance at your own pitch instead of matching someone else’s when their energy is compromised

Which of these tips is most useful for YOU at this point in time? Why?

What tips can you add to this list?

What happens to our energy when we ‘go out to’ others, become overly sympathetic, ‘over-merge’ with another person or a group, give ourselves away, get drawn in to interactions that do not serve us, do more for others than is healthy, or get ‘triggered’ and begin to dissociate?

These unintentional behaviors leave our energy fields patchy and thin, riddled with holes, or partially unoccupied, leaving space for ‘squatters’ (like in an empty home). This type of condition creates erratic energy connections with others.

Unintentional energy connections spring from our personal issues. They do not express our preferences or foster healthy intimacy.

The behaviors mentioned above cause energy to leak from us into the fields of others. This may or may not compromise us, depending on our own field strength and what happens to be going on with the other person when we do it. Let’s say it “leaves us open,” literally and figuratively.

A bit farther below are some types of interaction that can lead to unintentional energy transfer. I have broken them into categories. Some kinds actual of interaction reflect issues that cause ‘leaking.’ Things we all do inside our own heads can also create energy openings or connections. These connections can be constructive, neutral, or problematic. The key is to notice and have a choice.

The maxim: “Where your mind goes your energy follows” applies here. Note that thinking about people creates connection. This may seem sketchy to some people but I have several friends who will call me, or visa versa, EVERY TIME we focus on one another with feeling, whether it has been a few days or a few months.

The mind has been referred to by a certain spiritual master as, “A public well.”

Thinking is an interaction more often than we care notice. I have seen strangers respond bodily to my thoughts about them, and realized I was thinking too loudly or judging. The stronger our will and concentration the more important it is to watch what we put out.

I am do not suggest neurotic self-consciousness about your every thought. That produces its own kind of inner ‘noise’ and leads to suppression. Notice instead when you are putting out energy, and learn to manage your energy instead of dwelling on your thoughts. Learn to think inside your own space instead of projecting.

Examples of conditions that can create energy contact:

Emotion-based

• Compassionate desire to help, with insufficient energy boundaries
• Over-concern for another person, without adequate grounding
• Inappropriate care-taking
• Worrying about someone
• Worrying about what others may think of you
• Resentment, hostility, hatred, guilt, etc.
• Any other emotions (including positive) that cause you to project yourself into someone else’s space
• Vacancies or hole in our energy fields from emotions or issues we push away or deny

Mind-based

• Judging another person creates a link to the energetic frequency of the behavior upon which we are focused
• Conversations with others in our heads
• Having something we need to say and not saying
• Intending to do something for or with someone and thinking about it without acting on it

Body-based

• Body contact, especially if it involves energy transfer
• Hugging
• Training that involves touch
• Healing work
• Sex

Take care to associate with people with good energy hygiene.

Resonance-based

• Going into rapport/resonance with someone who has energy that is not theirs or who has disowned emotional energy in their fields
• Running an emotion that matches the energy in someone’s fields
• “Matching pictures”– which means that something unresolved in your history, one of your emotional triggers, or an incident you react to has the same resonance as energy the other person is carrying

Note that energy easily transfers over the telephone when conditions set up sufficient resonance

Moving from a defensive stance into personal growth depends on taking responsibility for the INTERNAL reasons that we take on energy.

What habits, traits, or behaviors make YOU vulnerable to picking up energy?

When you notice the potential of picking up energy, do you do seek to protect yourself from the other person or to shift what you do inside to minimize your vulnerability?

In the last post I introduced the project of becoming transparent to unwholesome energies and influences to prevent taking on external energies. Let’s now explore the skills that support transparency: Clarity and discernment. Contemplating these rather abstract words makes it easier to access the parts of ourselves that can actively apply these gifts in daily life.

Discernment is the ability of the mind to perceive differences between things without cloudiness or obstruction. Clarity is a state of Being that allows light and insight to penetrate and pass through you.

Understand that clarity and discernment are not just something you HAVE or LACK. They are skills we cultivate with practice, and they contribute to success in every life arena.

Clarity is similar to transparency. The word clarity implies perception and intelligibility. Clarity is coherent—whole. Transparency is open and free from pretense. I am using the word transparency with respect to letting energy come though without sticking, and the word clarity to refer to your interior state.

Note that when you put on pretenses, your energy changes. It becomes kind of clumpy and inconsistent, and you will be far more likely to pick up external energies than you are in your authentic state.

Clarity:

• Implies the peace that comes when we are not entangled
• Allows light and energy to pass through
• Is a prerequisite for discernment
• Supports accuracy of inner vision
• Aids in general effectiveness and personal mastery

Clarity is an extraordinary asset that contributes directly to all business and personal affairs.

Clarity is not an across-the-board attribute. One may be clear in some contexts or states of mind and muddy in others. As we explored in the Inner Work series [link], our level of over-all clarity exists in direct relationship to our ability to integrate inner wounds. Blind spots caused by wounds bias vision and response. Some of the most dangerous people identify themselves as being very clear because they are intelligent, discerning, and take bold action, while blind spots the size of Texas inform some of their motivations.

Discernment:
When it comes to accurate perception and energy protection it is quite useful to be able to tell the difference between (for instance) your anger, someone else’s anger, anger from a third party impacting you, irritation from liver overload, suppressed helplessness or grief hiding under anger, and numerous subtle influences that feel similar.

You need to have a clear inner mirror or remarkable detachment to discern and sort out external influences. At least you need to know which smudges were already on your mirror when you begin sorting things out. Self-awareness is essential.

You may think you don’t need to know the difference between various inputs like the example above unless you’re doing advanced healing or guidance work. If you think about it you’ll realize that being able to tell yourself apart from assorted external influences and knowing what drives you is integral to being awake and aware. It also contributes to happiness. Being confused is a drag.

Positive thinking without discernment is not necessarily an asset. Note, for example, the way someone who views power as abusive and themselves as powerless uses power abusively. This person does not need to THINK to create the sense of abuse. He or she can repeat positive surface thoughts ‘til the cows come home and as long as the inner wound is screaming out energy, emotional reactions will trump any new soundtrack grafted over the top. Substituting surface dressing for self-awareness is not ultimately positive. Positive thinking is a wonderful tool when combined with Inner Work.

Bottom line: There are many types of energy and many reasons for susceptibility. Energy protection is often approached as a simple one-size-fits-all technique. Such techniques offer partial protection or Band-Aid approaches, some of which have undesirable side effects. These techniques may be useful or essential in the short term. In the long run ongoing application of clarity, discernment, good boundaries, and Inner Work lead to profound benefit and develop natural immunity to unwholesome energies. This is an ongoing and rewarding process.

Did you ever notice that the clearer you feel the more safe you feel? What do you notice about the relationship between pretenses and your feeling of safety?
Tell us your favorite practices for energy protection.

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?

A housecleaner was leaving my home after his second visit. At the door, we were conversing about whether or not to reschedule. I said, “To be perfectly frank, I like your work and feel you are reliable, but I need to adjust to you being in the house. You have really big energy, and I find myself having trouble concentrating. Perhaps I can do errands when you’re here. Of course I couldn’t do that the first time, but now that you know the house, something like that could work.” 

“Can you tell what I am thinking?” he asked, suddenly and baldly. I smiled and he went on: “I mean, I suppose I do notice energy to some extent—but I’m used to being around people who don’t notice that type of thing.”

“I get the impression,” I said gently, “that you have had some experience of being invaded by other people.”

“Oh yes! When haven’t I been invaded?!”

“Lots of us have that experience. It’s more normal than you would think. Take, for example, being a teenager and coming home two hours after curfew. You put your hand on the door and most people know at that point who is awake and whether or not they are in trouble. That’s feeling energy.”

“Sure. I did that.”

“It sounds like you are fairly sensitive to energy.”

“I think I may be, but I haven’t really thought about it that much, and I’m not sure I always know what I’m noticing.”

“My friend who was visiting today scanned you when you came in. I think that may have made you uncomfortable.” He shifted around on his feet. “She’s young yet, and doesn’t realize that it’s invasive to scan someone. Here’s how it works: Some things are in the public space and some are in private space. It’s okay to ‘read’ anything someone puts into the public mind-space. It’s not okay to go into their private mind-space without permission.”

He was looking at me, engaged, taking it in.

“Say you are sitting at a table reading a newspaper. If I walk by and I see the major headlines on the outside, that’s normal and acceptable. I may notice but not really try to read the fairly large headings. I do not sit down or bend over and read the articles. It is a violation for me to come around to the side of the paper you are on and read things without your permission. That is how it works. So: I don’t really pay any attention to what you are thinking. It’s not my business—and it takes work to read it.”

The housecleaner looked relieved and we went on to handle scheduling.

I found the encounter interesting because he was forthright about what he needed to know, and asked directly. For every one like him there are likely to be thirty who will not know how to ask, and a few hundred to whom the concept doesn’t even occur, or who shut down their thoughts and feelings about it before they become aware of them.

How do YOU feel when someone scans you?

If you scan other people, do you use any ethical or practical guidelines?

Do you believe that there is or should be an ethic about scanning other people?

If so, what feels right to you and why?

Here’s an old joke: Two psychics were walking down the street. They stopped, smiled, looked one another up and down, and one said, “You’re fine! How am I?”