Positive Energy Guide

Distress is a call for Guidance. Use distress as a signal. Use distress to awaken yourself to your true needs. Use distress as an alert and a call to action.

Then gently find ways to notice and manage your needs before distress must arise.

Distress is a form of guidance to those who are willing to respond to their needs. It may not be anybody’s favorite form of guidance, but we can learn to use it well when it shows up. Distress alerts us that we need to do something kind for ourselves or make more loving choices.

Intestinal distress encourages more enlightened eating. The distress of feeling invaded invites better boundaries. Distress about situations suggests positive action toward change.

Turning distress toward benefit is a highly positive skill. The skill works much better when we allow ourselves to feel and explore our distress long enough to understand what is actually called for. Learning to attend to the origins and sources of discomfort is crucial.

Turning away from distress before discovering the underlying need can lead to numbness, dissociation, compartmentalization, artificiality, or superficiality. It is important to honor distress. I am not saying wallow in it, just take a careful look and use it constructively. That is the most positive way to handle it.

Here is a funny little example of using distress as guidance: Once I began coughing as a client entered my office. I could not stop. I left the room for water. The moment I left, the coughing stopped. The moment I went back to my office coughing came back. I figured out that the client had toxic energy in his fields. The moment I cleared the energy I was fine. For some years now I get an odd cough if I’m not noticing energy that needs to be addressed.

Loss, prolonged pain, betrayal, and disillusionment are more complicated than mere distress. This kind of intensity can uproot our belief systems until we don’t even know what we believe any more. [link to related Post on Disillusionment.] During difficult life transitions when core beliefs are in question ill-fitting or overly-directive guidance can cause complications. The more intense our distress the greater the call for comprehensive and effective guidance.

We tend to live as if we expect to be the same person from day to day, able to control who we will become over time. When life shakes down the pillars of temporary consistency we discover that our responses to life change in the face of different pressures, circumstances and energies.

New situations, events, and collisions of emotion bring forward fresh and untried self expression. Guidance allows us to use our responses to circumstances and conditions toward our highest good, in partnership with life.

The energies that evoke earthquakes, tsunamis, and world-rocking change also restructure our personal lives. While things we took to be stabile are shifting and coming apart it is important to consider how we might use disruption itself to bring about positive outcomes.

We can use upheaval to help restructure relationships, health, finances, living situations, communities, and global structures. We transform ourselves in the process of doing so.

Here’s a fun quote from the end of a friend’s email: That is my plan –If chaos does not poke its lovely head into my affairs – I will be here.

As we careen into an uncertain future many feel frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, or unclear about how to harness motivation. Motivation can be difficult when we cannot see a clear path or need to alter our goals. Guidance is interaction that assists us to select a meaningful path or purpose with greater clarity and confidence.

These questions may be useful in learning to take guidance from distress:

• How well do you listen to your distress?
• How much distress is required to get your attention?
• Do you respond better to some types of distress than others?
• What do you need learn to respond with compassion to the kinds of distress you try to ignore?
• What changes are supported by any disruption you may be experiencing?
• Do you develop strategies for change or resist change?
• How does your response to change increase or reduce your distress?

Here is a wide range of examples of meaningful ways to contribute. Mix and match:

Does your vision of making a difference include political impact?

• Canvass for a congressperson or someone running for office
• Get signatures for an initiative
• Volunteer at a caucus

Are you passionate about world welfare?

• Join the Peace Corps
• Help with Doctors Without Borders
• Raise awareness about important issues

Do you want to help the Earth?

• Support an environmental cause
• Set up a living will that supports old growth forests
• Send healing energy to problem areas
• Give up using plastic bottles

Do you want to help people?

• Support your neighbors with earthquake or emergency planning
• Volunteer at a hospital, food bank, or crisis line
• Serve in a soup kitchen
• Get involved with Kiva, for microloans to those in need in other countries
• Read to the people or play music at a senior center
• Become a Big Brother or Big Sister
• Learn conflict mediation

Do you love animals?

• Volunteer or get a job at an animal shelter
• Take care of strays or find homes for them
• Adopt Greyhounds that used to race

Do you want to develop your energy, or support others through energy?

• Learn and practice Qi Gong or other techniques to balance, tune, and strengthen your energy
• Learn energy medicine or go to practitioners who use it
• Send the energy of love and support to people and nations under duress

Are you inspired to develop your own or other people’s ability to experience peace and states of grace?

• Meditate
• Practice watching your breath
• Practice random acts of kindness
• Express your love

Are you in a partnership?

• Ask your partner what you can do to improve your relationship
• Offer to take a chore off your partner’s plate when s/he is overwhelmed
• Spend half a day a month doing anything you have avoided that your partner wants you to do

Do you read this blog?

• Work intentionally with the questions.
• Please pass my posts to people who will benefit from them. They take about 7 hours each, and I’d like to see them serving lives!

Here is a loving conversation that occurred between two friends:

Becky told Karen, “I get the impression you have something important to do in the world.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m just a piano teacher,” Becky said. Her tone implied that she could not be important or make a large contribution in this role.

“Stop!,” said Karen. “It’s not about ego; it’s about Path. Don’t minimize who you are and what you do! You are awake and aware. You are touching all the people you work with. Your purpose is just as big as mine—it’s your energy and love. That’s the gift. For all you know you could be teaching the next Beethoven!”

Karen went on to say, “I used to think I would Save the World. I now understand that we can help the world, improve and impact the world. That’s heart. SAVE the world? That’s bravado. No one person can save the world. We can only save ourselves, and help impact those who appear on our path. –And you’re doing it.”

Dive heart first into life! (Comment credit to Evelyn Roberts.)

What are YOUR favorite ways to help, improve, or impact your world?

What do you get out of it?

Great Christmas Gift idea! Simple but potent tools effectively clear out unpleasant energy & promote higher awareness.

We each impact the world at every moment. Life Purpose is about being intentional about this impact.

I recently returned from a spiritual camp in which we used breath, intention, movement, music, and concentration to bring about a very real experience of being safe, loved, and connected with the entire group and with life itself. This had nothing to do with doctrine or belief–just direct experience.

If you have had direct energy experiences of unity with others you will fully understand what I am saying. I am not talking abstraction, theory or concept. I am talking about FEELING a sense of Unity–personally and palpably. When this happens in a group we can discuss the experience with the people who were there and discover that they felt exactly the same thing that we did. If you have not experienced this, remain open and motivated.

Even when we are in distress we are one with the world. We just don’t have our attention focused in a way that allows us to notice.

Personal issues block our access to feeling Unity. We feel isolated, alone, needy, or estranged when we are out of touch with our essential unity with others. Our influence becomes less positive when we are entangled in our issues. Learning to love yourself is service to others.

If you have not done so please read the post on Inner Work as Universal Service.

Working out issues that keep us from loving ourselves IS contribution to the world:

• It strengthens our energy connections with others by making us more available and clear.
• It allows us to effectively support others with issues we have already healed.
• Our impact on everyone we come in contact with is more positive, and their added ease spreads to their contacts as well.
• It makes your energy better as we begin to broadcast happiness and love instead of distress.

What if loving yourself is the one thing you can do that makes the most difference in the world?

Accepting and being larger than our issues is a spiritual act of healing. I have seen advanced spiritual teachers fall from their state of realization and harm their followers due to unresolved inner wounds, and motivated people who were once broken blossom into loving Life Purpose.

In addition to dealing with issues that block our ability to love, we can change the world just by breathing with awareness. Any way that you get good energy flowing you impact everyone who comes in contact with you, and everyone who comes in contact with them. What you do with your energy, at home alone, matters.

Working intentionally with energy strengthens our influence, and we can learn to direct this influence. I have seen masters of energy who can clearly and powerfully impact the state and experience of a roomful of people through the qualities, frequencies, intentions, and awareness they place on their breath. Their prayers pack a wallop. They did not develop these skills by wanting to change people. They developed themselves.

The most important way we make a difference is through Presence, full attention, and our love. BEing in the moment has intrinsic value. When we bring ourselves fully into the current moment in a spirit of contribution the question of Purpose dissolves into direct, internal, moment-to-moment guidance.

Sense of Purpose is a form of internal guidance. Being in touch with your inner sense of purpose from moment to moment–let alone Life Purpose–rests on the same skills necessary to receive all other types of inner guidance.

The next blog series will be about Guidance.

What does it mean to YOU to make a difference in the world?

What have you done that has helped to develop your Sense of Guidance?

This post speaks to additional challenges with Purpose.

The problem with “needing to know” is that intense focus on the mind and on outcome block the processes of feeling and intuition—the channels through which the information you long for might otherwise come.

So many people want to “know” what their Purpose IS. Beyond presupposing that Purpose is like a job, and that it doesn’t change, this prevailing attitude implies that we are equipped to live out Purpose without needing to be in touch from moment to moment.

Life paths are like labyrinths. They twist and wind, and we often cannot tell whether we are getting closer or farther away from our goal of returning to the center. The answer of one moment may not suffice in the next. Each challenge along the way calls for the discernment to commit more deeply, or to establish a new direction.

Being whole-hearted whenever we possibly can is one of the best investments we can make. Even if we make mistakes with more vigor, we then learn quickly and do not repeat them.

I have been deeply touched and honored to be present as clients discover Life Purpose. At times Purpose pops up quickly and clearly, like a revelation or an insight. When this occurs we are communing together in a state of grace, perceiving together.

If someone else tells you what your supposed Purpose is and you cannot feel it for yourself this can cause intense and painful confusion. That person has no way to assume responsibility for their effects on your life if they mislead you.

A healer once told me I had a strong and abiding connection with and should be following a certain Master, she with whom she was connected. After checking in and finding I felt no internal connection with this man I felt kind of slimed. Fortunately I was intuitive enough to sort this out easily for myself.

Occasionally I meet someone who cannot seem to keep alight the fire of inspiration or make anything matter enough to fully engage themselves. We’ve probably all had days when nothing trumps anything else. We stir around wishing we wanted something enough to feel connected with a goal or take purposeful action. This feels worse than being really hungry and not being able to find anything you feel like eating, and can go on and on for weeks, months and perhaps years.

Remember the time between high school and college when grownups always asked, “Are you working or are you in school?” Without purpose or plan you may feel useless and flat yet intensely frustrated, tied up with too many choices you don’t relate to, looking ahead at the daunting task of making a critically important choice, without information or inspiration. Where to start eating that elephant?

Lack or loss of goals and dreams can be devastating. I have wished I could do their work for them, but even when I have found and lit a spark, they themselves need to keep the fire going.

If you still have trouble developing a relationship to Purpose, here are some serious suggestions:

• Rule out physical causes such as clinical depression, low thyroid, adrenal hypofunction, low testosterone, neurotransmitter imbalances, blood sugar and chronic occult (hidden) viral issues.
• Then address feelings, beliefs, and the intersection of the two, as discussed in Post #2. Do this with a proficient therapist or healer.
• Answer the questions that have come up through this series.
• Read the Inner Work series. [link]
• Get help to clear out energy that does not belong with you, that you may be carrying from a parent or other source.
• Find ways to increase your physical and spiritual energy.
• If it works for you ask the Universe or pray for Life Purpose, remember to stay in humility, openness, and surrender.

Remember: Purpose is a sense. Hence: Sense of Purpose.

Use sense about your purposes.

When you heal yourself you can attract and sustain what is best for you. If you do not, you are likely to undermine what you want.

Remember: We need to be in partnership with life, not control it.

Like any other type of sense, Sense of Purpose is a skill to nurture and develop.

Sense of Purpose and ultimately Sense of Guidance are developed by making a daily habit out of paying attention to what we really feel and need and what life is currently inviting, making choices that support our best interests.

What do YOU do to get in touch with your feelings, senses, or intuition?

What is your worst fear about being in touch with your intuition?

Let’s take a tour through common misconceptions about Life Purpose. Part of this is summary and review, heading into fresh insights about the things we’ve covered. We will also break new ground:

• Success and Life Purpose are the same thing
• Life Purpose refers to your entire life
• You will be known and seen in the world by doing your Life Purpose
• The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth
• Your purpose has to be something in the outer world
• You need a particular job or role to serve others
• The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth
• What you do for meaning should provide money and security
• Getting what you want leads to happiness
• Life Purpose comes with a time line and a plan
• Being good at something means you are supposed to do it
• Your purpose means living up to your full potential

We’ll pick through these misconceptions one by one.

Success and Life Purpose are the same thing:

What is the difference between success and Life Purpose?

Success is generally defined against the backdrop of superficial, societal values. You are comparing yourself to other people, or to an external standard of accomplishment.

Life Purpose (also known as Soul Purpose) is that which actualizes not the brightest, best, and most recognized potential, but the elements of heart and character that invite authenticity, joy, balance, and expression of core values.

Life Purpose is that which gives your life meaning and value—to YOU. We are social creatures in an energy web of oneness, so our experience of meaning and value is not separate from our contributions and relationships with others. Since Purpose is personal, when it is lived in the outer world, authenticity is required.

Life Purpose refers to your entire life:

Motivations, values, and attitudes transform during the course of life. Even when you commit “your life” to something, what you are committing is your life energy, full participation, will, and intention. You are not placing the years your body will live in a trust for that commitment. You cannot count on having years. Your life is your life force, not your years.

Life Purpose does not refer to one thing you have to do or else you have failed. It refers to the way you bring yourself to what you choose to do. There are many different ways this can play out, according to the unique requirements of an individual life.

Purpose can change. You may have many purposes.

You will be known and seen in the world by doing your Life Purpose:

Being in public view does not measure either success or Life Purpose, just as money is no indication of our worth as individuals. If money equaled worth, Mother Teresa had no worth. We know this is not true.

The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth:

Gandhi used to require all of his followers to take shifts cleaning the latrines. Humility and willingness to do whatever is needed has always been the mark of the truly great.

Your purpose has to be something in the outer world:

Life Purpose may be as simple (not easy) as:

• Learning to love yourself as you are
• Mastering a tendency to project blame onto others
• Becoming able to maintain body awareness instead of getting spacey
• Discovering how to feel safe inside yourself
• Becoming able to trust yourself
• Standing in love or peace no matter what happens
• Bringing to the planet a specific, necessary energy; being a connecting point for that energy, broadcasting or receiving it

I believe in the possibility that people exist who have influence the workings of the entire planet through their profound mastery of energy. Can you say that such a person has no purpose because no one sees it?

You need a particular job or role to serve others:

Balanced, powerful people penetrate and permeate the energy of those we touch or engage with, whether professionally or in the line at the bank. You may impact players on the world stage, set the stage, or influence how the audience receives the play in the course of your normal life.

Cynthia felt no meaning in her job answering emails for an insurance agency. I suggested she send, from her heart, a specific and personal blessing with each email, invisibly. She began to love her job.

We’ll finish the other misconceptions in Part 2 . . .

Here is the complete quote with which we began the series:
“Your work in this life is to find your work, and to give yourself to it with your whole heart. And not to do the work of another no matter how great their need.” Buddha

Inspired contribution to the Greater Whole is meaningful and fulfilling. Giving, without respect for the context can interfere or distract, making it all about you instead of helping out. The word “giving” does not imply what happens with the receiver. “Contribution” implies that we are
participating in something larger than our own efforts; making a difference.

‘Sensing into’ the situations we seek to enhance improves our assessment of when and what to contribute, so that giving may be fully of benefit. This skill complements being in touch with what and when it works for us to give.

The skill consists of paying attention to the potential results of our participation, and aiming to maximize the outcome for others. Without this sensibility we may give what is not needed while overlooking something absolutely necessary, like shipping in crates of Coke when the people need a new well.

Aim to sustain your vital forces and enhance your ability to give by honing discernment.

Contributing to the world by participating in loving service is the most meaningful thing we can do. Love or service cannot be forced as acts of self-assertion. We do not need to be in any way perfect before we set out to help. By involving ourselves we learn who we are and what to develop in order to actualize our values.

Pure service includes exercising wisdom to consider the results of receiving a gift or service. When we do for others things they are able to do and need to do for themselves we weaken them or interfere.

We cannot exercise, eat or eliminate for someone else, and we cannot do their Inner Work. We cannot open another person’s heart, motivate them, or give them insight without their willing participation.

The old maxim about teaching a man to fish instead of fishing for him comes to mind.

I was in a relationship in which I attempted to get the other person to take care of himself better, and to develop greater insight and inspiration. That failed. Of course, it ended in resentment on his part and exhaustion on mine.

When someone wants to learn to fish they motivate themselves. You can show them and give them tips, but they need to be pulling for it, and to take up readily what they are able to do themselves.

When we attempt to do the work of another, it’s like being a mother who wakes her child up for school every day, never passing along this responsibility as the child grows. As an adult, this person lacks the wherewithal to get to work on time.

Buddhists and several other spiritual groups customarily offer the results of spiritual practice for the benefit of all beings, everywhere. Is this doing their work?

It is not.

Generating positive energy and making it available to those who need it is constructive (except specifically for those who habitually feed off of others). So is praying for others. As long as you are not attached to how or whether specific people take it up you are okay. When you want or need someone to respond in a particular manner it is time to question your motivations. That is not love.

How do YOU FEEL when you are trying to do the work of another?

What if the things you do to try and make a difference interfere with experiences others require to develop strength and compassion?

What if getting your energy strong and balanced by taking care of yourself with respect and compassion helps the world, not only through everyone you encounter but by bringing helpful energy into the world through the portal that is YOU?

What if your love and self-acceptance empower your prayers and positive intentions to enhance the energy-pool we all share?

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill

With respect to Life Purpose, it is natural to consider not only what we want to GET from life, but what we can bring to it. Giving allows us to receive in special ways that put us more deeply in touch with our values, qualities, and other people.

How and why we give is a window to motivation—and to Purpose. What do you enjoy contributing? What does it do for you to contribute?

Like so many essential life skills, learning what and when to give depends on sensing inside ourselves.

Once we are able to tune in to our inner voices and body sensations, we can sense inside whether or not we are called to contribute in any given moment. Learning to notice this call is crucial to spiritual and emotional health. The same skill tells us where we need our boundaries to be in any moment or situation.

Knowing how much to give and being comfortable with our decisions makes for ease and clarity in personal relationships. It allows us to feel good about our contributions instead of feeling like we can never give enough to be acceptable, or that we might be selfish and insular.

Most of us over-give, under-give, or both in different situations. Balanced giving builds self-esteem, boundaries, spiritual values, and the wonderful feeling of Purpose and meaning that accompany heartfelt contribution.

Giving for the wrong reasons interferes with the ability to be on track with Life Purpose.

Giving to appease, please, or protect ourselves from criticism is toxic to Purpose. Over-giving tends to oblige and bind others. It is usually about control, and is therefore detrimental to intimacy. Over-giving is draining. Bleeding out energy to “contribute” to people who are not receptive is invasive.

Giving too little can lead to feeling small, stingy, disconnected, meaningless, emotionally impoverished, hard, and/or defensive.

If you over-give:

• Try altering the way that you give, even just a bit.
• Try giving different things or in different ways than you usually do.
• Change WHEN you give, even by a few minutes or seconds.
• Give to different recipients, even once.
• The feelings and insights that accompany these changes will enable you to explore your patterns gently.

If you under-give:

• Catch yourself at moments during when you are withholding or resist giving.
• Pay close attention to what you feel at these moments.
• Listen closely to your internal dialog. What is the nature of your conflict? What motivates each side of the conflict? How do your feelings change with each side? Which side do you like better?
• Try giving just a little bit more is comfortable, like stretching tight muscles. This can feel freeing and oddly relieving, and it gets more interesting as you practice.

Over- and under-givers:

• Study your discomfort, consider what you get when you give.
• What are you trying to preserve and why?
• Has your life changed since you began these patterns?
• How would giving differently impact your life?

Once you are in touch with and have done some regular work with your patterns you will be able to bypass all this by simply turning to your heart and going by what FEELS right in the moment.

What if who you need to be to live your Life Purpose requires being able to sense exactly who you really are, what motivates you, and what you can and cannot give?

What if success is measured not by external goals but by giving exactly the right amount in any situation, from nothing at all to your entire life?

How would this model of success change what you do or how you live?

How do you sense what is called for from you?

What happens when you shift your aim from trying to succeed to making a contribution?

Are your goals, dreams, and motivations inspired by heartfelt values or motivated by buried emotional issues?

What if you are already lovable, worthwhile, and even precious, without having to prove anything to anyone? If you knew this to be true–and could feel it–how would this impact what you feel you need to do in the world?

The nature and fruits of our influence in the world depends on our values. Goals and dreams are constellations of our values. Values are like the stars we use to navigate the ocean of our lives. Without values we are rudderless, driven by compulsions and the winds of momentary desire.

Purpose embodies motivation. What motivates you?

Several years back, in an email conversation within a spiritual group, one guy was avidly pushing his philosophy that spiritual values require political action. Tension grew as several people politely tried to say that not everyone was politically motivated. The political guy kept pushing.

I sensed frustration and even anger behind people’s indirect responses. I finally jumped in and wrote: Politics is divisive. Spirituality promotes unity. If you are spiritually inspired to involve yourself in politics it is your duty to do so. If you are not, your time is better spent contributing in other ways.

The tension released and I received some ‘thank yous.’

Let me clarify here and say that voting, and other societal duties are in a different category from Life Purpose. You vote. You get license tabs on your vehicle. You do not confuse this with Life Purpose. Taking an active stand in the world for a cause requires passion, purpose, and involvement. You may find Purpose in such expression. Such Purpose may or may not feel spiritual to you, depending on your values and approach. This is a highly individual matter.

To know our own values as pure sources of guidance we must lift them up and clean them off. Practice washing away these sources of confusion:

• Other people’s values including parents, siblings, spouse, friends
• Conditioned social “values” based on competition, superficial circumstances and material gains that have no special meaning for you personally
• Reactions and compulsions such as greed, lust, excessive concepts about security
• The need to prove yourself worthy
• Reactions AGAINST, such as proving you are NOT what a parent or teacher thought you were

Values change as we develop. Updating our concept of success and our sense of purpose as we grow supports living motivation.

What do you value now that you did not feel strongly about before?

Motivational speakers often say, “never give up and never quit.” It is one thing to give up and quite another to discover that a goal no longer suits us or feels appropriate. Killing yourself off to make something happen may occur at the cost of your happiness and health. Whether or not the goal is worth this use of your life depends whether the goal is truly your Life Purpose. Pay attention when the exertions necessary for success begin to turn you or your life into something you don’t wish to sustain.

This quote from my third spiritual teacher remains apropos:
“If it is your highest option to become a spiritual teacher and you become a garbage man, you have wasted your life.” He paused and added, “If it is your highest option to become a garbage man and you become a spiritual teacher you’ve wasted your life as well.”

Some people have destinies that require global involvement. Some people are envious of these people. Such envy is rarely tempered by understanding the burdens, sacrifices, and discipline such a life requires.

I believe that we are drawn from within and prompted by our environment when we have big work to do in the world. Pushing ourselves into positions of prominence for personal reasons rarely leads to happiness.

As we develop spiritually and open our hearts we are more likely to be inspired to contribute to humanity through service. Inspiration to serve can stem from a felt sense of being connected with others.

Following inspiration develops qualities of the heart and provides the personality with ample opportunities for growth. The motive force behind this impulse differs from a desire to be in the limelight and to find personal importance through leaving one’s mark upon life.

What if your ability to be in touch with yourself and to know yourself and your values is THE MOST important purpose in your life?

The discomfort of longing for meaning and Purpose has great value if it can get you to explore who you really are and what you really need.

What types of experience bring you meaning?

What experiences make you feel connected with yourself and with life itself?

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?