To create a window where there was only a wall, requires a willingness to keep reaching out your hand... even if it trembles and shakes. Most of us require mutually assured vulnerability. We match the level of openness to the person in front of us. Connection becomes one big game of chicken. By closing off, we haven't protected ourselves from pain. No, pain will seep through the cracks of your walls regardless. All we've done is cut ourselves off from life itself. Like a bird that never leaves the nest, the wind stops whispering it's secrets to her. To open, is to risk. It is to shoot yourself out of the cannon, moment to moment. Safety is a silent prayer on your lips as you free fall, but certainty is a long since forgotten hope. After all, you have wings. So I no longer avoid the point of breaking. I say to the world, "Break my heart. Break it so wide open that all of eternity can fit in between the pieces."
- Allie Michelle
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Hey! :) This past week, we read chapter 5 of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. This book is divided into five sections. We've just completed the first section, Awakening Consciousness, in chapter 4, "The Lucid Self", where we learned how to 'wake up' within the dream of life, as well as practices to remain in living wakefulness. Here, we begin part 2 of the book: Experiencing Energy. In chapter 5, "Infinite Energy", we dive into an examination of our inner energy... why do we sometimes feel overflowing with vitality and other times completely drained? How can we learn to open up to the unlimited energy available to us?
Below are some notes from the chapter, as well as a journal prompt for further exploration.
Chapter 5: Infinite Energy
Just like the mystery of consciousness, which we explored in the first section of this book, energy is yet one of the other great mysteries of life. Science has provided ways for us to, in some systems, measure, localize, and direct energy, but when it comes to our bodies and our inner worlds of thoughts and emotions, there are a lot of unknowns... a lot of uncharted territory.
Have you noticed that sometimes you're just exhausted? Even if you got 8 hours of sleep, ate nutritious meals, exercised, and don't have too much on your plate... you're just so drained. And other times, you pulled an all-nighter, living on a diet of Doritos, melting into the sedentary black hole of your couch, swamped with work, yet your spirits are high, you feel alert, capable... you've got energy for days. We can't quite understand how this inner energy works...
The book provides and example of a man whose girlfriend ended things. He falls into a depression... pizza boxes sprawled across his bed, dirty laundry piles growing in the corners of his room, crusty dishes overflowing in the sink... the blinds closed, his body feels like ten thousand pounds. His friends try to get him to come out, but he just can't... he's too tired. Then, one evening, his girlfriend calls, "I've made a mistake, I love you, can I come over and see you?" How fast do you think he cleans his apartment and gets in the shower? All of a sudden, that man, who could barely take care of himself, now is bursting with vitality. What happened?
If we investigate the workings of our inner world, we'll see the complexities of energy at play within our bodies, yes, but also within our minds. Every thought, every emotion, is an expenditure of energy. And when we are combating our thoughts and emotions, we are expending even more energy. Sometimes it feels like we have a finite amount of energy available to us, so especially when we have lots to do, or our mind isn't particularly cooperating, life feels absolutely exhausting.
Now there are definitely situations in which our physical health or a pressing situation in our life needs attention (check out this energy leaks article for more)... but we are here to address the overarching question of where our energy "goes" when we feel empty for no understandable reason. What happened?
Our energy doesn't "go" anywhere. We didn't use it all up. We can't. There is infinite energy available to us... if we could just learn how to open to it. Newtonian physics tells us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It's all right here, but it does often feel unavailable...
The answer is not based in any kind of measurable science... yet... but it sure as hell can be experienced. Refer back to the example of the man and his girlfriend. We cut ourselves off from energy, life force, when we close ourselves off to life. We cut off our own life supply by closing our hearts and minds. We do this as an effort to protect ourselves, but it is an ineffective method... we're not really protecting ourselves from anything, we're just shutting down. We don't want to feel the "bad", so somehow we'd rather feel nothing by closing off to the energy that allows us to feel.
Just like electricity passing through a wire, if we add resistance to the current, not as much electricity is able to move from point A to point B. Similarly, when we close ourselves off from life by pushing it away, we cut ourselves off from the fullness of life, of the energy available from the world around us... by closing, we downgrade the current.
In yoga this energy is called Shakti, in Chinese medicine, it's called Chi. All spiritual teachings point us towards how to open our hearts so that this energy is available to us... so that we can move through life unobstructed, and able to follow our callings.
So how do we stay open? The book says, "stay open by never closing"... but if we have a habit of closing our hearts, this is a difficult task. Even more so if we're not sure what an open heart is supposed to feel like. If someone says to you "OPEN YOUR HEART" those words can feel empty and confusing if you don't know what that's supposed to mean. The best offering I can provide, is to recall experiences that made you feel alive and connected and energized and filled with love. It is not that those emotions caused you to open, but that you were already open, and so those emotions were revealed. Maybe with an open heart, you also open to sadness or anger... but they are also emotions that are true, and filled with life force... and so they don't necessarily feel "bad"... things only start to feel bad when we close, contract, and push them away (and we love to push away 'negative' emotions). Otherwise a negative feeling, just like a positive one, is just a cue. It's just a signal describing how we are reacting to our experience, and if a shift is needed or not to redirect us towards greater alignment.
It's like that game where you move throughout a room and someone guides you toward the "hot spot"... "warm.. warmer.... colder... cold.... warmer... hot!" When we are open to our emotions, when we are open to life, we are able to listen. We are sensitive to where we need to go and what we need to do. And because we learned to live with our hearts open, we have all the energy necessary to answer the callings of our hearts. We have the energy to do the things that we know we need to do - to show up in life in a way that is joyous, enthusiastic, and loving. We don't need to "fix" life first in order to be open. First open, and life will unfold in absolute perfection.
Journal Prompt:
Recall a time when you felt your heart wide open... an experience when you truly felt alive, full, and overflowing with love and vitality. Now, recall an experience when you felt closed, constricted, and suffocated... when you were exhausted, apathetic, uncomfortable, suffocated, and desperate. Reflecting back on those two experiences, notice how your body feels... notice what your thoughts are doing... notice the radical shift in your perspective of, and your relationship to, your life when you are operating out of openness versus being closed off. Write down some notes from this investigation. And finally, for your practical application in your daily life, instead of trying to force positive emotions when you are feeling drained... drop into the physical release and stillness of your body, heart space, and mental space... just as you felt when recalling that first open experience above. Notice how by first, opening, the space is created for your true emotions and experience to flow - finding freedom not through control, but by allowing life to move through you unobstructed.
next week: chapter 6, the secrets of the spiritual heart dream extreme!
♡ kat
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