Positive Energy Guide

Before I share my general comments regarding topics she brought forth, let me say that I am delighted with Kelly’s comprehensive, well thought-out, and fascinating commentary in the last two posts. She covered a lot of ground, and touched upon a number of ways that energy does indeed show up and express. I always value the the rough-and-tumble way she gets it straight out there and speaks her truth, with its stamp of authenticity and colorful qualities.

Below are my related considerations:

Those who do not experience energy directly and specifically are also impacted by it, sometimes less directly, sometimes directly but with less awareness. One naturally finds something else upon which to attribute whatever one experiences. It is common to assume that sensations source from physical causes, mood states from events or dreams, and so forth, as the mind seeks to make sense of our experience. Of course, when energy pathways are not open and enlivened, ones range of experience is less broad, less vivid.

Inability to notice the energies inside and around us can be similar to the way the body shuts down sensation and compensates when we have multiple misalignments. A person who has never had body therapies or done yoga etc., despite various problems, becomes out of touch with sensation. Similarly, those who are buried in and riddled with energies that do not belong with them become numb to energy to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their neurological software, nature, and level of development. Assorted impressions and energies are all glommed together and feel normal. This load prevents the person from noticing something new unless it is quite intense, just as you don’t notice one more small crumb on a dirty floor. When it’s clean, you notice. “Stuff” usually starts to show up, if and when we are ready to release it, layer by layer. The more we clean the more we begin to notice and the more stands out. Deeper layers are often related to deeper emotional and ancestral archeology.

In very rare cases, people go through sudden awakenings, during which intense sensitivities and capacities show up suddenly. This is no picnic and nothing to envy.

People who work with energy through Qi Gong, acupuncture, extensive meditation, etc., and who address our Inner Work, learn to identify our own issues. We become more able to sense and recognize energy. This is partly a learned and developed skill, and partly owing to innate aptitude. Like all developed skills, different brain pathways are of course established.

Energy sensitivity is often but not always associated with physically or emotionally inconsistent or unsafe early environments. We turn on and develop our sensors learning to stay safe. Hyper-vigilance is an extreme stance, involving adrenal pathways. Innate sensitivity to energy is not necessarily an imbalance. It can be an inborn trait.

Some of us who start out with abnormal capacities for sensing energy may have unusual brain organization or activity, possibly involving the temporal lobe. Think, for example, of those individuals who can recite several thousand decimals of Pi without a calculator. Energy sensitivity is more common and uses very different brain pathways.

No matter the origins, one can use energy sensitivity as a path to self development. Development may be driven by the need to learn to mediate influences so they don’t overwhelm. This, plus learning to source influences, requires work and it demands self awareness to become accurate. Further self awareness results from these efforts. Whether one chooses this path or enters by necessity, once started upon it, most of us prefer to be clear and aware over inaccurately attributing our experiences to false causes.

A skeptic may consider energy experience as a false cause—until they experience, over and over, they way so many symptoms and life expressions almost miraculously change as such energies are addressed, and collaborate repeatedly with others who validate what they discover.

I started out as a skeptic—which helps me to ground my experiences in actualities whenever possible. Reality testing and seeking confirmation of findings is an essential element of self clarification and becoming accurate.

Where are you on the spectrum of sensitivity to energy?

How did your sensitivity come about?

In what ways does sensitivity to energy stimulate your personal growth?

“Love is always the answer. Love comes forth from the heart and the head is never involved. When I’m coming from Love, I feel it in my expanding heart. As soon as I begin thinking, I know I have stepped out of Love. Love is always a feeling. Love is pure and unencumbered, it can be nothing else.”  ~Therese

Given that we are discussing real love, yes, it is the only satisfying answer to most conundrums. Love addresses most emotional needs at their core and paves roads to harmony. Love creates an atmosphere in which wisdom can flourish—which the head on its own cannot do.

I would like to expand on “the head is never involved.” I hold Therese’s comment to be true for those who like herself are grounded in genuine love, who can access love through sensing and feeling. This love is indeed pure and unencumbered, and does not require the head.

When the head functions with respect for the heart, operating on the directives of the heart, there is no error.

When we are not able to access real love, we become more prone to confusion. Passions and reactive emotion become confused or entangled with real love. Resulting emotionally-based directives may be unwise and cause complications if we act on them. Real love may be present, but it has become mixed with need, mixed motivations (such as trying to please people, which is often a subtle type of control), lust, cultural or religious conditioning, and so forth.

Buried wounds create confusion about love. The deepest wound that virtually everyone shares is separation from the Divine.

When we try to love or to act in right and virtuous ways, these efforts can be more about trying to be worthy of love or to obtain it than they are about actual love itself. Pure love leads naturally to virtuous action. Trying hard to be virtuous can be a defense against feeling there is something wrong with us, or against feeling unworthy. We may assume that love must be earned, that we are inherently flawed, or that love is not natural and abundant.

Conditional approval—social, peer or parental—must not be confused with love, or sought as a substitute. Ultimately, that will not work. To heal ourselves we need to be able to generate and absorb real love, deeply into the places that drive our quests for approval from the outside.

In the patterns mentioned above we see that head efforts—including our interpretation of events and our self-assessments—often distract us from going directly to love itself.

One good use of the head in all this is to make different distinctions such as discerning love from not-love. Once we can FEEL love directly, making these distinctions is no longer necessary. We can just tell, without a lot of process. It gets obvious. Before we have identified real love, or purified our love, learning to step back and observe our personal motivations assists with developing discernment. Discernment allows us to move with wisdom.

Being balanced and healthy requires using all three centers—head, heart, and body— to think, feel and sense at the same time, integrating the functions of these centers. When the centers are in balance and used in concert together, intuition and wisdom become much more available, and pure love is significantly easier to access.

When you are challenged or confused about love, what is going on for you?

Is this primarily about motivations, needs, ideas about what you ‘should be’ feeling, an imbalance between your three centers, or something else?

Is there one center you overuse or underuse?

How does this habit of Being impact your relationship with love?

Thank you, Therese, for the inspiration. 🙂

Be sure to catch Kelly’s comment under last week’s post. It’s as if she put in life-situation examples for all of concepts in this post.

Over time I have learned that I must correctly identify the type and source of the “impression” in order to release it. (“Impression” is another word for the impact that energy or things we perceive and experience have upon us; the way it remains with us after we take it in.) Once I see what it is and no longer identify an energy or impression as belonging to me me, I am able to command the energy to go out. As it leaves, my body may shudder or jerk, sometimes even violently, if the thing I am releasing has been taking up inner space or has had an intensive hold.

During an active energy release, my body sometimes moves in ways I cannot do intentionally. (I have seen this occur with energy-sensitive clients also. Most people experience release less obviously. They may simply feel better in the related body area after the release, without noticing the release happening.) This release is not frightening, although it was unsettling the first few times it occurred. It feels freeing and cleansing. I feel more alive and fluid in the areas that the old energy moves out of, and in my body as a whole after a session like this. This kind of release session occurs spontaneously and organically, when I am doing concentrated inner work. It seems to be an amalgamation of many different types of energy healing, which eventually developed into a self repair protocol.

Sometimes the energy I discover during one of these cleansing protocols surprises me. The sources of these energies may show up to me through simply recognizing the identifying energy signature of a specific person as I turn my attention to the area of blockage, excess or odd energy. More often, I need to flip through potential people-sources in my mind until I come across an energetic match. Sometimes a name pops into my head as I attend to the sensations. Other times I have to dig to find it, and what I discover surprises me, but it clearly feels correct, and the energy moves. The energy does not move out until I identify it correctly and ask it to move.

I learn through this process about what is important to various parts of me, which were apparently running their emotional programs beneath the level of my conscious awareness. Previously-unconscious emotions or reactions are what allows energies from other people to lodge in one’s energy systems. I also get information from what I find about the emotional processes within the people who projected the energies; what drove them to project. Once the energies release it as if the footprints in the sand have been blown smooth. The related issues tend to be if not forgotten, at least unimportant.

The process I am describing, of identifying energy originating from the outside, is occasional. Identifying what is MINE and originating from MYSELF is frequent and consistent. Looking for impressions from others without taking responsibility for one’s own involvement in the interactions and energy transfer would be bunk. A steady baseline of self-observation helps to develop the ability to tell the difference.

Please feel free to describe any similar process you may have that allows you to release energies that do not serve you.

What have you learned in the process of developing an ability to recognize and release this type of energy?

What does energy transfer from one person to the next have to do with your self-definition or emotional context?

“Acknowledging the presence of negativity is the first step to putting your life back in order. You can’t change what you refuse to confront.” ~Levine

In this and the following post I will describe an experience I have from time to time, during which I locate and release energy that does not belong with me:

Occasionally, when I do spiritual practices between waking and sleep, I find myself in a state in which I am sensing my body and the energies and sensations related to the practice, and running a related inner exploration. For example, after the a set of practices related to balancing karma and forgiveness, my contemplations stimulated me to review whether or not I was harboring any emotional reactivity toward those who may have done me some type of injustice. I was gently and detachedly reviewing this topic, and checking my body sensations.

As I did this I began to notice energies from other people, which had become lodged in me. Some of these lodged because of my reactions to them, others because they were strong projections that I was unable to keep out owing to incidents in my history making the energies so similar that I hadn’t filtered or sorted them. Many of these projections consisted of, for example, inner child projections from people who fervently desired me to caretake them in some way. I felt responsible for my mother’s feelings and emotional needs as a child. I was now finding some related energies that had been lodged in me for years.

I have noticed that after periods of significant personal growth, I tend to find and release layers or pockets of energy that no longer belongs with me. I see this type of release with clients too, during profound growth. The energies we identify with are not accessible until that growth takes place and we no longer identify with them. At this point related energies release, or the issues show up, and different types of release occur as one reorients and experiences one’s self differently.

In that state between wake and sleep, I experience these types of energies mainly through sensation, although sometimes they show up like dark or fuzzy/static-y spots or areas when I scan internally, which is more of less visual. These spots or areas of sensation always have a specific location. Some may reside in chakras, some in my energy fields, some in organs, and occasionally in my spine. I might feel the energy as a stinging burn, an ache, congestion, slight nausea, contraction, antsyness or deadness in the area. The sensations change or resolve after the associated energy or “impression” releases. The emotional charge on any related issue decreases right away when the energies release.

Are you able to sense when there is energy in your body that does not belong with you?

What do you notice in your energy and in your body when something is present that does not belong?

Can you discern whether what you are sensing originates from within yourself, or from an external source?

“When power leads and wisdom follows, the face of wisdom is veiled and she stumbles; but when wisdom leads and power follows, they arrive safely at their destination.”  ~Inayat Khan

Accessing intuition is supported by inner stillness. When our energies are still like a smooth pond we can most easily read what is going on and sense when, how, and whether we need to act.

Fear, excess speculation, investment in a particular outcome, and external Influences interfere with intuition. The things we do in our minds can interfere with inner Guidance.

When we become afraid and get stirred up we may well get into a loop in which we go outside of ourselves looking for information, and render ourselves less able to access intuition and internal guidance. If we are looking to an unstable outer situation for guidance, it is easy to become confused and upset. Gathering information is necessary, but it is essential to take the step of then quieting ourselves to access clear, balanced, intuitive Guidance, which transcends the external situations. If we do not, we will rush about all reacting to one another.

When we are invested in a particular out come it is very difficult to be objective. Does this mean not to hold goals and values? Absolutely not. Self mastery consists of holding goals and values, and caring deeply about them, yet also being open to good coming from scenarios other than the ones we envision. We need to balance between acting on our best assessment and accepting what is going on. This does not mean we accept it without acting to change it. It means that we act from inner peace and intuitive presence instead of reactive emotion.

Self-observation is the greatest boon to intuition. Intuition is strengthened or obviated by our capacity to self-observe.

The most difficult and some of the most important Inner Work consists of self-observing our survival reactions and defense systems. When these are kicked up and in action it is all but impossible to access intuition, for it will be biased by fear and speculation, and often from energies that do not originate with us, clouding perception.

It is easy to understand how we naturally go out into our environment to collect information and impressions when we are uneasy, to try to sense what is going on. This opens us to external energies. When we are at peace, we go out to gather impressions and then return to ourselves, releasing them.

When we are burdened by fear or survival issues, the emotions and imbalances this causes in our energy systems causes our energy to become sticky to and hold onto matching fear and anger energy from the outside. This is the energy-equivalent of the mental process of case-building, where one builds up a biased point of view by gathering evidence.

Mental types are more prone to case building. Emotional types are more prone to reactive emotion. Body or sensation types are more prone to instinctual gut level defense. All of us have all three functions. Ability to self-observe each of these reactive stances in ourselves is an advantage. This skill can be challenging to develop, but if we cannot, accessing accurate intuition and inner Guidance will be spotty at best. Actions taken from clear perception and intuitive Guidance are more positive, powerful, and peaceful than actions taken from a reactive stance.

In general, the less aware we are of our reactivity the more it runs us. Intervention consists of bringing one’s self back into balance. To do so, we need to accept What Is, self-soothe, relax our reactions, and shed external influence so we can identify what belongs to us and what does not. In our current political climate one needs to do this multiple times a day. When we do not, negative emotions and energies build up and create painful and frightening imbalances, and we are unable to take clear and effective action, or to calm ourselves. Noticing that we are able to be safe and okay just in this one particular moment can help body chemistry return to normal so that clarity is possible.

What is your tendency when you go into fear?

How does this influence your ability to access inner Guidance?

Combined and fluid approaches to development work better in the long run than trying to make something particular happen with your will. We need to feel and sense what we are in the moment to succeed instead of imposing a particular idea. The urge to impose an idea on ourselves usually comes from an ego-based need to make ourselves different—with a wound underneath.

The sensitivity of the solar plexus area serves as a gigantic sensor, enhancing energy impressions about upcoming events in addition to our instinctive orientation to what is going on in the moment. Most of us have experienced stage fright or trepidation in that part of the body. Those sensations are most obvious. The solar plexus will hold subtle impressions as well, which can provide direct information about our environment, the type of support available within in, and information connected with other dimensions of experience.

Reactivity from our pasts, with conditioned and habitual emotions and constraints makes ‘noise’ in the body and mind. Wherever it is harbored, this noise is a type of chaos that crowds out and distracts from subtle perceptions of Guidance. Once we work these things through and relax them we become more able to attend to and clarify our direct sense of what to do in the moment. ‘Trying to be’—good, without error, worth of approval, successful, etc.—is one kind of noise that undermines truly noticing and responding.

Solar Plexus Exercise: Place your attention on your solar plexus area, in the hollow where your ribs meet under your sternum. Focus on the FRONT of that area, out toward your skin. When your attention has been established, imagine, just for a few moments, a person or situation in front of you. Pick someone or something that is difficult and challenging for you. As soon as you feel what happens in your energy and sensations when you sense the person or situation from this center of awareness, stop.

What happened? What did you notice?

Now move your attention to the BACK of your solar plexus area, straight back from the front point, toward your spine. Keep your attention on that area, even if it’s a bit hard like holding an inflated ball under water. Do the same visualization you did before, of the challenging person or situation. Stay with this one a bit longer and notice your sensations and observations.

What changed? What did your energy do differently? How did your comfort level change?

Comments on Solar Plexus Exercise: From the front solar plexus your energy feels vulnerable and unprotected. Dealing with adversity from that point can feel like getting slugged in the gut, anxious, or like being pulled forward into the situation without any distance from it.

Note that from the standpoint of the back solar plexus you can feel your energy wrapping around you first, before it goes out to others. There is a pronounced feeling of healthy detachment (not aloofness) and connected independence of motive force.

Also note that focusing on the back solar plexus activates awareness of the spine. The strength and support of the spine make for determined action, connected with the vertical axis, which mediates between crown center Guidance and earth plan grounding. (The horizontal axis is more inclusive of other people, expanding outward into connection.) The vertical axis allows for independence and more individuated expression.

Isn’t it amazing how much of a difference such a small locational shift can make in your experience and perception?

Advanced Version: Place your attention in your solar plexus, several inches deep into your body. Move it forward toward the front solar plexus and backward toward the back, feeling the way the energy shifts when one or the other begins to become activated. Enter the small spot between the two, which is not pulled either way. Relax as much as possible and notice the type of body intelligence in this spot.

What did you experience doing this exercise?

What are the implications for daily life?

The solar plexus region feels so vulnerable. The body is even wired to protect our vitals, and we hunch forward by instinct when we feel wounded inside, literally or figuratively. I have a broken rib and my body wants to pull forward to protect the area. This aggravates the rib—but the reflex is so strong that my back muscles get in a tug-o-war with the muscles that pull me forward. The instinct is strong.

How is it that the seat of our sense of self—the solar plexus, which is associated with personal power—is so intensely sensitive? What’s going on with that?

A Qi Gong master (the real deal) who I take classes with identifies a small point in the solar plexus area as “the Wisdom Gate.” He talks about that spot being an access point for Guidance and an entry point for entering into experiences of different dimensions. The Wisdom Gate is used, along with other energy-connecting points, as a part of a self-development sequence he teaches.

I have been sore in that area, and have been breathing tender, gentle love into it to see what happens. I feel a knot in the hollow between my ribs. Too much has been going on. After a few days of seeking to relax and enter that point as I lie in bed, I have noticed a small but powerful shift in my sense of Guidance during the day. Direct Knowing has been more instantaneous, where something I have no normal way of knowing drops in directly, clear and accurate.

This morning I asked myself the questions I wrote above. What I came to understand is that Guidance IS our sense of healthy personal power. When we have a clear and unerring sense of exactly what we need to be doing at the moment, it is easy to be true to that, and we become solid in ourselves in the face of other influences. This direct experience of who we are and what we are about is what healthy personal power IS. It has nothing to do with force or control.

Health personal power stems from ‘a sense of self,’ and expresses our ‘essence’—but sense of self and essence are just concepts unless we had an energy and sensory experience them. I think most of us have had the feeling that we know exactly what we need to be doing in the moment, and can appreciate the clarity, sense of direction, and freedom from feeling unencumbered by lesser priorities and demands. As this state becomes more and more usual we express true self. This is a power in its own right, a force of nature. It springs from an intuitive or instinctual basis, meaning, it is not something we DO or intend. It is what we ARE. This is about Being, not will.

Let me remind you here that when I mention intuition I am not talking about guessing or knowing with your head. I am talking about real intuition, which is never wrong. If something is wrong it is an interpretation, vision, hunch, guess, assumption, or belief. Intuition is direct perception of actualities.

The type of experience I am talking about is founded on much more general development in a number of different directions, including the enlivened functions of all of the other chakras in relation with one another. Over the course of life our Inner Work accrues. Different experiences are available and possible at different points in time—and not at others.

The above being understood, when we are drawn to work with specific energy centers in the body, doing so unfolds the related experiences for which we are ready.

It’s not like building something. The process of development is less direct. We don’t just decide to build in a certain capacity and succeed at that. The capacity exists in relation to the whole of your self, and changing the homeostasis of one area or expression will bring up unresolved issues that are held in the related part of the body. Developing one area will make demands on other areas for support and collaboration of other related functions.

What sensations do you have in your solar plexus when you pay close attention?

What do the sensations tell you?

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?