Positive Energy Guide

It is not by shutting out what we consider negative that we Awaken and become truly loving, but by learning to embrace ALL. There IS NOTHING more positive. We begin within.

(Following from Part 3) The forgiveness issues that came up for me in the retreat were not about feeling wronged or significant personal relationships. The monumental type of issue had to do with what might be called genetic memory, ancestral memory, or cellular memory. This is the faculty by which a horse, raised in an area with no snakes, instinctively recognizes snakes. This type of issue could also be called ‘past life.’ Terms and belief systems are unimportant to my point. My experience involved a dark and terrible sense that I had committed “unforgivable acts”, somewhere in the murky past—beyond my physical existence.

Carl Jung, who initiated Depth Psychology, discussed at length “the collective consciousness.”He was talking about the group mind or One mind shared by all. Intensive spiritual work involving unity with others touches in to this level of experience, if we can allow it. This is the reality that allows us to link with or perceive others across space and time. At the level of experience where we are all directly linked, and always have been, we have ALL committed acts we must stretch to forgive. We also sense these acts in others.

The following incident speaks to the urge to find forgiveness at a profound and transpersonal (bigger than personal) level:

After seeing a movie together I was in a car with my mother and two other people. Somehow the conversation turned to bombs. I mentioned that children often have great fear of losing parents and homes due to bombs. I flashed on a fantasy I had as a child. In my fantasy—which I shared—I imagined having a huge underground bomb shelter. Into that shelter I brought a hand-picked selection of people who were totally honest, loving, and contributed to others. I wanted to create a fantasy world in which we could emerge and enjoy feeling safe without worrying about being harmed, cheated, or abused.

My Mother said, “I bet you fantasized being the person who dropped the bombs.”

Her comment was like dropping a bomb. Shocked and alienated I went silent for the rest of the evening. I was talking about wanting to feel safe as a child and I felt she was telling me I was a monster inside.

After the ten-day retreat I had enough internal support to get up the guts to ask her about what she had said. I said, “I’d like to give you the opportunity to take back something you said before.” I felt pretty shaky and vulnerable telling her what the topic was. Her response surprised me.

She told me that what she intended to say was: “Have you ever imagined being the person who dropped the bombs?”

Given her history of working as a clinical psychologist in a Veterans Hospital mental ward, she had certainly worked with men who had to come to terms with doing just that. Lots of people have been in similar positions, in service and under orders.

I was initially startled, then found her question to be profoundly spiritual—and positive. She had tears in her eyes. She was exploring what it meant to be fully and completely human in some of the most horrific human experience yet seeking to reclaim full feeling. Whether or not one believes in war (she does not) is irrelevant. I am talking about the type of love it takes to fully accept one’s self or another person in spite of acts that abhor us.

We’re talking about hard-core positive love here, not gloss-over-and-and-avoid-the-dark-side surface dressing. Full-spectrum forgiveness takes that kind of clout.

Remember we are forgiving the person—the soul who found itself in dire circumstances—not the acts they commit. We are forgiving the soul that is somehow pure beneath all the confusion, weakness, feeling trapped, having the heart closed down after too much pain, getting twisted. We are not saying that the acts are okay. We may aim to remember the source and the wellspring where purity-of-being is hidden at the person’s very core, however buried and polluted they became after one miss-step led to the next. Unity with others requires finding a way to manage the whole range of human behavior.

Are you willing to discover the humanity underneath unthinkable acts?

How do YOU handle it when you cannot accept what has happened?

The Energy of Forgiveness
People do exist who can intentionally generate or draw to themselves authentic energies that produces specific positive emotions. This energy comes along with specific states of awareness that we can learn to tune in to by focusing, like a radio may be tuned to the frequencies that are “out there,” and bring them into the room. Sound, for example, is one tool used to “tune” the body to different frequencies. Being able to produce specific states and energy experiences is a science. The ability to broadcast these frequencies in ways that allow others to feel and resonate with them is an advanced art.

Developing proficiency with energy requires sensitivity, direct observation, and experience. There is nothing vague about it—this art simply deals with experiences most of us are not tracking. For instance, our consciousness and emotions change with our breath patterns. Those who study the exact techniques can influence their inner state and physiology through breath practices and intention.

Several of the experiences I would like to share took place among people with a staggering capacity to broadcast the energies and sensations of authentic emotions, including forgiveness.

Dancing With Forgiveness:
Profound experiences of forgiveness and gratitude took place during a ten-day retreat, alternating Zen sitting with heart-opening energy exercises. Leaders directly connected with the origins of the Dances of Universal Peace led these dances, along with additional methods for evoking transcendent emotions. Several of these leaders were able to intentionally transmit energy experience to others.

The following exercise took our forgiveness work to another level: One leader guided the group in a Buddhist meditation in the form of a dance during which we were eyeball-to-eyeball with a partner repeating a phrase, and then advanced to the next partner. We began by sincerely wishing the person in front of us happiness and the conditions of happiness, and release from sorrow and conditions of sorrow, bowing before moving on to a series of partners. Each repetition deepened sincerity and feeling.

During the second round we were to do the same thing, imagining the person in front of us to take the place of a stranger out in the world, someone at the store or a Beloved we had yet to meet. Music, movements, and concentrated intention intensified our emotions. The third round we focused on all the people we found mildly annoying. In the fourth round we opened our hearts to all those who had actually caused us harm.

The final round the leader deftly guided us to turn our focus toward forgiving ourselves. Just about everyone was streaming tears at this point as we supported one another to delve courageously into the fragile and sacred spaces in our souls, to release any causes of bitterness or deadened feeling.

The dance leader said, “How many times must the heart break to learn compassion for all Beings?”

The pain of the open heart ceases to be frightening and begins to take on more and more pleasurable aspects as we come to peace with our wounds and learn how to move through the world with tenderness.

During the course of deep practice in the retreat two sorts of issues related to forgiveness began to filter into my awareness, one monumental, the other seemingly trivial. Both types were claims against myself. These issues called for further development of the spiritual heart, for to be able to embrace them is the path to internal freedom. It’s that old Chinese-finger-trap theory. You know–those woven cylinders that tighten around your forefingers if you pull away, and loosen up if you push them together.

I’ll head into deeper waters in my next post.

What has touched YOUR heart and awakened forgiveness?
How do YOU experience the energy of forgiveness?

Emotional Forgiveness:
Forgiveness–as a heartfelt feeling–brings release and relief. By releasing grudges, bitterness, harsh judgments, resentment, self-pity, rage, anger and hatred we are more fully alive, and present in the moment. Maintaining these emotions blocks and drains energy. Energy can flow freely and renew us as we truly forgive. This experience is one of having more open space in our lives. Having fully forgiven, it does not matter whether we remember or forget—the topic no longer arouses us.

At its root, forgiveness is a function of FEELING. Most of us like very much the IDEA of forgiving. The real-time ACT of releasing negative emotions requires finding these difficult emotions inside—actually feeling them. You can’t give it away if you don’t own it. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty as this post series continues.

Forgiveness and compassion are like two hands that wash one another. Forgiveness invites the flow of compassion. Compassion opens space for forgiveness. Both rely on the free flow of feeling.

Emotional forgiveness does not require scouting around in your memories to dig up lingering grudges. Accessing and attending fully to experience in the present can pull up past issues, like following an echo back up the canyons to someone’s shouting mouth. Digging deeply into moment-to-moment experience exhumes the past-within- the-present. Discovering issues here-and-now increases our motivation for resolving them; we are present to the ways issues actively interfere with the free flow of feeling in current relationships.

The need to forgive does not necessarily show up in the guise of grudges or resentment. Here are a few clues that indicate a background stuck emotion:

• Emotional coldness
• Subtle disengagement from the present moment
• Inability to be wholehearted
• Vague irritability
• Boredom
• Hyper-rational states or “being in your head”
• Lack of emotional engagement
• Projection of one’s own feelings onto other people

Transcendental Forgiveness
Transcendental forgiveness means forgiveness that helps us to go beyond ego and personality. It involves a transpersonal element. In other words it takes place in the realm of greater-than-self, and involves connection. Transcendental forgiveness relies on our ability to allow agencies beyond our personality to influence or assist us.

These other agencies may simply be the kindness and wisdom of the people around us. Whether we believe in God, angels, guides, masters, Nature, Spirit, or simply the principle of grace is not at issue here. What IS crucial is to attain a frame of mind and heart during which we are willing and open to connect with others. This state allows positive and expansive energies to participate in our personal experience. We have opened ourselves to intentional influence.

Transcendental forgiveness is a state of grace. Like real love, it is not available on command. While we cannot control it, we CAN take both internal and external actions that serve to open us up to greater-than-personal experience, inviting the expansive feelings we encounter to roost within.

There are a number of different ways to invite ourselves to experience forgiveness. The easiest way to do this is to be around someone who generates the actual energy of forgiveness and to attune to that person, like tuning an instrument using a tuning fork.

I will share some direct experiences with the Energy of Forgiveness in Part 3.

Which modes of Forgiveness do You most relate to? What do you notice when you think about the other modes?

Please also read the “comments” and share your own. We will have some meaningful and important discussions in this series.

Forgiveness is a prized promoter of ease, grace and healing. We appreciate the state of forgiveness as a strong positive. What does it take to get to genuine, full-on experience of forgiveness? This post series explores forgiveness in depth.

Sometimes it seems like there is a chasm between those of us comfortable with forgiving and those who find forgiveness almost an abstraction. For me, forgiveness is a challenging topic to write about. What challenges me most in these posts is that I care to stimulate useful insights for people at different stages in your work. Rather than preach to the choir, I will to go into the nitty-gritty with this topic. Actually forgiving can require us to work deep.

If we are to make a real difference that impacts day-to-day experience, we need to move past preconceptions. Forgiveness is one of those words like “love,” which mean vastly different things to different people. One person may mean releasing a claim to seek revenge. Another may be contemplating divine grace. Our interpretation of forgiveness—what we conceive it to be—shapes our experience.

Let us first consider everyday-type experience and then explore the kinds of experience that promote transformation. We learn and grow personally from ALL types of forgiveness.

Transformation occurs when our Inner Work uproots who we have so-far believed ourselves to be.

Forgiveness occurs in several different modes of experience. The way we relate to forgiveness depends which mode we are operating in:

• Social
• Mental
• Emotional
• Transcendental

Social Forgiveness
Social forgiveness can be achieved with minimal introspection. You decide to release a claim upon another for a particular unpleasant, unkind, or hurtful action, situation, statement or gesture. You agree not to retaliate or to condemn them, and to move on in a peaceable or usual manner.

Social forgiveness can be purely selfish—or not. Some “forgive” as social lubricant, from fear of conflict, rejection, or abandonment. Giving up being mad about something because a loved one will not like it or acting ‘nice’ while the victim pot simmers in your depths is not real forgiveness. “Forgiveness” that is denial in disguise, or making nice to get what you want, does not promote personal integration or robust intimacy. Real forgiveness comes from inner strength.

“Forgive and forget” as a strategy works better for some personality types than others. If you tend to hold grudges, releasing the memory of prior events may be an asset. But if you tend to allow others to hurt you again and again, forgetting may reinforce weakness. You can forgive the action or event—and simultaneously study people’s nature and tendencies. Thus you can accept people’s limitations and even love them while maintaining boundaries that work for you. (We explored the how-tos in the Trust series.)

Mental Forgiveness
Mental forgiveness can remain barren and intellectual. Forgiving in theory–can at its best lead to deep understanding. Deep understanding naturally brings about forgiveness as we become able to identify with and relate to the person we aim to forgive. Understanding unfolds as we recognize the fractures and forces that drive someone to non-ideal actions. Understanding goes even farther when and if we are willing and able to identify similar fractures and forces within ourselves, whether or not we act them out.

Sincere thinking, visualizing, imagining, and wishing may establish direction as we contemplate what has occurred. Thought can birth intention. Mental forgiveness alone may change your attitude, expand possibilities for interaction, and make room inside for different experiences. If mental forgiveness makes a blueprint for change, feeling drives the bulldozer. The more deeply we dig into our own hearts the more powerfully we can forgive, for we begin to recognize others in ourselves and ourselves in others.

Inayat Khan who brought Sufism to the West said, “The depth of mind is heart, and the surface of heart is mind.” (Sufism is a spiritual approach that honors all religions like beads on a string. The string represents Truth, which runs evenly through them all.)

We’ll head into Emotional and Transcendental Forgiveness in Part 2.

Please share YOUR insights about forgiveness in Comments, below.

Few things are as painful as nerve pain from irritated spinal disks. It shoots, burns, and temporarily cripples. I was physically unable to sit, stand, or lie down for about 36 hours. Being on knees and elbows in total darkness left me unable even to read, totally awake hour after hour with no distractions. Each day bled into the next.

I practiced:

• Finding one spot that didn’t hurt and building sensation out from there, relaxing every place I could.
• Getting my breath down into areas of my body where I did not used to feel fully, activating body parts and organs and increasing my ability to Sense.
• Viewing this difficult time as having value.

Being able to do nothing freed up my sense of time. My habits and patterns were all out of commission. Un-creating our lives and getting off the treadmill of have-tos and all the things we think we need to do and to be creates perspective and opportunities for spiritual growth. I could not use my time as I might wish, but was temporarily released from the necessity and addiction of managing it.

Intentionally making the Observer function far larger than the parts of us that are in pain–by becoming open and curious and releasing resistance to pain–the pain often shrinks down. It may even go away. Mine remained, but my exercises in awareness made it manageable.

I used the pain and period of incapacity to:

• Focus on my Inner Work*
• Develop compassion–for myself and for the suffering of others
• Release pride–I was literally on my knees
• Explore deeper issues about receiving support
• Clear energy blocks related to self-love and support
• Learn how to ask for and receive assistance more gracefully
• Develop gratitude for things I was taking for granted
• Do profound energy work including clearing out energy from clients
• Find the inner strength to remain authentic in a painful passage in relationship
• Find and learn from new healers
• Learn more how to manage pain and help others with pain
• Practice positive spiritual surrender (not giving over—acceptance)

In addition to icing fifteen minutes out of every hour, I maintained a cleansing diet high in fish oil and antioxidants to reduce inflammation, built up levels of vitamin D and minerals, and used enzyme supplements that eat up pathogens as well as inflammation.
These approaches will be a net gain for my whole body.

A friend who had grown distant stepped in to help me. She practiced new found and profound healing skills that she would otherwise have been shy about sharing. Her loving service reestablished and deepened our friendship.

Always remember:

• Resistance is the only pain we can spare ourselves.
• Letting go of intense desires for life, people, or situations to be different than they actually are can alleviate suffering.
• Don’t waste your pain.

*I will post on Inner Work after the Pain series. Also see Inner Work as Universal Service

What benefit have you been able to create in painful circumstances?

What Is Higher Awareness?

The problem with higher awareness is that our concepts of what it might be interfere with what it actually is.

Words carry previous meanings. Words can prevent us from actually experiencing what we are talking about. Assuming we already know what the words mean can turn potential spiritual exploration into merely trading platitudes. Meaning and expansion occur by entering the unknown, the mystery.

What is awareness?

What is higher?

Higher frequencies of sound shatter glass. That is energy in action, acting upon solid matter, clearly and uncontrovertibly. The higher interpenetrates the lower. But what does “higher” and “lower” mean?

Does higher mean better? In language, the two words are stuck together. In the scheme of life, the forces and frequencies interrelate. They depend on one another. We become aware of the “higher” by living in bodies made of matter, experiencing the illusion of time, which we know actually exists all at once. The body is a means to acquire experience.

Actual higher awareness can be too undifferentiated from the life it interpenetrates to experience itself distinctly—hence the value of matter in learning to see and know ourselves.

Self-awareness is an avenue to higher awareness (whatever that may be).

How do we become aware of ourselves?

The problem comes in when we judge what is higher and lower because we then tend to turn away from the lower and lose self-awareness of the lower. Am I suggesting giving over to the lower? Which most of us fear? No. Not either/or. Both/And. When we can observe with neutrality or love all of our attributes and impulses we are in a position to chose which to bring forth. If we bury them, the choice is gone. They go underground.

If you study the lives of the most advanced spiritual teachers through time they were not remote from the baser elements of life and humanity but sat in the dust if need be to interface with those who needed their help. The highest of the high are humble. They embrace life. They do not walk about in fear that their incomprehensible purity of Being may be polluted by contact with life. It can’t be. They are fully established in it.

In our own process of coming to know ourselves deeply we may for periods of time need to separate ourselves from disturbing or distracting elements–for instance avoiding those who do drugs–as we explore the profound sensitivity that comes with expansion of awareness. This separation is not an end goal (although the ego may take it to be). Separation is not spiritual. Neither is running away from awareness by failing to notice and acknowledge our negativity. Denying negativity shrinks awareness. Embracing it fully while focusing on the positive generates energy and awareness through the interplay of forces and frequencies.

The problem with higher awareness is that to get higher we also need to get lower, because it’s really about becoming whole. Until we can see exactly what motivates us, power has a down side. By developing the concentration of will to face ourselves fully and by becoming whole we gain the possibility of full, functional intention. Self-aware intention carries the power of co-creation along with the love to wield that power with respect for all of creation.

What do YOU do to become aware of yourself and how does this support your Awakening?

Your ability to locate, sense, and recognize or “read” different frequencies of energy may be the most significant factor in having a healthy, vibrant, and productive life.

The statement above may seem extreme but it is quite factual. Being able to discern what works for you and what does not, quickly and accurately, and being able to select influences that support you is of paramount importance. When you can tell what to eat you become healthier. When you know which people and places drain you, you become more vibrant. When you can sense which projects give you energy you become more productive.

Cultivating your ability to sense energy is learning to be aware. This skill contributes to Presence—the essence of and a primary goal of any spiritual practice.

Being able to feel what is going on in and around you is a tremendous advantage when it comes to living your moments with real meaning, fully alive. Whether you are interested in spiritual development or simply want to live closer to the bone, learning to sense energy is a huge advantage.

Heightened perception is inherently meaningful.

In my early years I was almost drowning in a sea of energy and impressions, unable to tell myself apart from anyone else’s energy. I did not know about energy and thought everyone else’s feelings were mine. Growing from this state of confusion into being able to clearly distinguish my energy from what is not mine, allows me to “read” people’s energy well enough to do effective healing and life guidance. My weakness has become my strength.

Sensing energy supplies access to the natural guidance we are each graced with—if we learn to distinguish this guidance from the noise of the world.

What do YOU do to cultivate your ability to sense energy?
Please comment below.

Important dreams show up differently than our usual day-to-day dreaming. They may be brighter, more colorful, contain more body awareness, or simply evoke a totally different feeling tone that alerts us to pay special attention.

These days I find myself too busy to consistently recall everyday dreams.

When I studied dreams I went from recalling one dream every ten days to recalling three or four a night. This change in frequency occurred over a period of three months. I processed dreams for several years. Then I dialed this back, setting myself to recall only dreams with direct messages that will inform day to day understanding or behavior.

I asked my internal guidance system to adjust my dreams in the following ways:

Make important dreams stand out clearly
Make them very short and to the point

This spares me the time of sorting and sifting through dreams all the time, and writing down long, confusing sequences.

This week I had three short, vivid dreams, in color (I usually dream in black and white or pure concepts), from which I woke up instantly alert, knowing that I needed to take note of them. One of them came with words telling me to share the dream with a specific friend.

The most important of these three dreams featured a single, several-second sequence of old man toppling quietly to the ground.

Anyone see the movie Avatar? It’s an amazing journey full of truth and feeling. The old man in my dream was the height of the sacred tree in the movie. In other words–ENORMOUS.

The old man in my dream represents two things.

On the mundane level it is about the weakening of existing (patriarchal) social structures, like the banking system and the way we are learning to own what some call personal power (I call it personal agency) instead of handing it off to authority.

The inner meaning was personal to me, but perhaps useful for you as well: It was a reminder that getting big in the world–having power–makes us a target too. If we set ourselves up to be greater than others this can be a spiritual error. I am becoming more powerful, and my guidance system is reminding me to stay on the earth, stay low, stay humble.

The mind (masculine element) likes to tower. The heart (feminine element) likes to tiptoe among the moist moss and other delights at the forest floor. We are happiest when we keep these elements in balance.

Remember that those who serve, including some of the greatest people in history, stayed among those they served instead of towering above.

Do you influence your dreams? If so, how?

What are your thoughts about getting big in the world and service?

E.J.'s Paints

(Continued from Part 7) E.J. has been creating video games designed to train their players in some oftheinternal skills and principles necessary for making transitions in consciousness from one level to the next. “This is something people can do that is a little bit removed from doing the work directly,” he told me. ”They can involve themselves with some of the important elements of the work and familiarize themselves with them even if they are not yet able to do more.”

The group’s sci-fi vibe from the game project, orchestral teamwork, striking mixed nation accents and appearance, and the other-worldly collection of art in the shared living quarters made me feel like I was on a rebel starship.

E.J. generally goes to bed around 6:30 and gets up around 12:30–to work in the quiet hours when the energy is clear and open, I would guess. As our after dinner conversation drew out, I sensed it would end if I got up to relieve myself, so I sat in growing discomfort until it felt like time to move. It was 9:30!

It was time to go. Fortunately E.J. welcomed me to return over the duration of my stay in the area. This gave a chance to talk with him about entities, sensitivity to energy, and accidental transfer of energy from one person to another. He calls picking up energy “incursion.”

Back on the farm where I was to park and sleep the stars astonished me with their multitudes. In a conversation with one of my hostesses asked me to write about how I came to be visiting here and how I would describe or manage the sense of unity, belonging, or connection visitors feel with the community. I had just said: Presence creates the experience of unity.

I was speaking to the fact that many who visit feel an inherent sense of belonging or involvement. She liked the way I describe things and wanted my take on it. I will elaborate on my comment:

When we are present in the moment, authentic, and sincere, and we turn our attention to another person, they feel connected. Being treated to full attention makes us feel significant, loved even. Our associations of interacting with people being present with us are accompanied by memories and sensations of being personally involved. So when we encounter a group of more-than-normally-present people we feel connected.

An interesting thing about presence is that when we are present in the moment, rules are unnecessary, and structure is allowed to morph to accommodate authentic individual expression. We respond.

One more insight I had is that during the time I the feeling that I was being managed, this was more about stewardship than control. People were looking to give me structure. As I shared with them later, I need less structure than some guests may. Unlike many, I did not come to primarily to learn. I came to experience and commune. Communing with aware beings, fitting in with them, honoring them from a position of equality, and allowing one’s self to be influenced can transform us more than memorizing data. Not that E.J.’s teachings have to do with the information. For this reason I plan to read more of his books, including, “The American Book of the Dead.”

(Continued from Part 6) During dinner E.J. regaled the group and myself with jokes and limericks, delivered with his consummate acting skills, in hilarious and perfectly-rendered voices. Seated across from him at the end of a long table, I tried to relax my habitual self-consciousness, to spare him that. I have learned that among highly conscious people this can be a small but appreciated gift. So I relaxed instead of biting my tongue when I interrupted his fascinating tales of famous people and amusing experiences to ask a question or share my best jokes, hoping some would be fresh for him.

E.J. is multi-talented, kind, and has staggering a range of life-experience. He was the script doctor for screenplays and knew many great and wonderful people in New York. He had been in the National Army Security Agency Association and had been on the remote viewing team. This latter, I had heard before, was a group of highly trained psychics, used in special operations. Interesting, isn’t it, that something the average person might dismiss as woo woo is used by special forces in the army?

E.J.’s group loves him dearly and honors him deeply. He does not exert the kind of power-over associated with control, or adopt pretenses. He is creatively alive. The atmosphere is what-you-see-is-what-you-get with the somewhat intense caveat that anything may change, even radically, at any moment. Like life.

During dinner I asked E.J. about his book “Practical Work On Self.” This is one of the only three books I have ever compelled others to read. “The language is obscure,” I said, “particularly in the first chapter. I know this was not an accident because you are very precise with words and a good writer. I surmised that you used language in particular ways to keep from activating the reader’s mental assumptions that they know what you are talking about; so they take in what you are saying from a fresh place instead of filtering it through what they already know. Was this your intention?”

E.J. told me that he wanted to bring the material and understanding out from within his reader. He is holding the reader responsible, he said, for stepping up to the plate and formulating a response that is not only in the nature of The Work, but is The Work itself.

“When I am teaching sixty people,” E.J. continued, “I have sixty different classes going. The class will be a different thing for each person, depending on that person. I may have one class on painting, one on ceramics, one on drawing, one on music, but they will all be the same class. What I am teaching is a way of looking at things just a little bit differently.” He used the analogy of looking at the stars from the earth. From any other angle, stars that appear to be in a line or formation may be shown to be far apart. Constellations appear only from a specific perspective.

E.J. gave me permission to use “Practical Work On Self” any way I like.”

Continued in Part 8