Thoughts Around Energy

“It’s not that people who have opinions or ideas worth sharing are rare. It is that people who can express themselves confidently and articulately in writing and in speech are rare.”
 C. Lacombe

It’s just possible; I may be stretching myself a little. Here’s where I currently devote time.

I am Farming Smarter’s half-time Communication Director. I am working with Alberta Low Impact Development Partnership as a storyteller and administrative assistant. This is what I’m doing for money.

For professional development, I’ve mandated myself an aggressive track in Toastmasters and remained a member of Bow River Basin Council’s Stakeholder Engagement Committee.

For personal enjoyment, I’ve joined a drum circle and volunteered with TEDxCalgary.

For spiritual development, I signed up for a two-year exploration of personal power through an acknowledged master guide.

These are the things I’ve added to my life on top of the ever-present background of living and loving friends and family. Oh right, and myself… loving myself, honouring my body that I complain about so much but that still carries me through life with far less problems than many other people experience.

Years ago now, I had someone tell me that I have hermit tendencies while also being an extrovert. That sounds contradictory, but I find that the quiet time for reflection facilitates having something to offer when you interact.

I find interaction with people both exhilarating and exhausting. Consider these things people have put forward as facts.

Communication between people is over 90% non-verbal.

Humans have an energy envelope around them (aura).

Artificial light does not provide a full color spectrum of light and this affects the human body in various ways.

Now imagine yourself in a crowded room under fluorescent lights – sounds like WalMart actually. Anyway, that would mean over-lapping energy fields, large volumes of non-verbal communication coming at you while your mind and body try to function with key energy spectrum components missing. Sounds exhausting to me and it’s how I feel after going to WalMart – over stimulated and under nourished.

Conversely, if I go for a walk in nature or even to a large public event, I usually feel energized and content.

I’ve been thinking about energy for a few reasons lately along with my usual contemplations around ways our society structures itself and what that means for humans trying to function within it.

We are a long way from living naturally in our urban and our business society. We are disconnected in so many ways from nature and human nature that I question the construct's ability to foster natural human wellness and happiness.

I believe questioning whether we are creating an optimum environment for humans to realize wellness and happiness to be a worthwhile endeavor because that is the goal of most people - to be well and happy. What if the society we’ve constructed is what holds us back?

I would argue that much of what we have in place today for education, vocation and living places actually stunts humanity and drives us insane. Why are we colluding with this state of being?

Why am I? Why are you?

 

Reasons I'm thinking about energy 

1 TEDxCalgary Energy: Full Spectrum

2 Energy of Slaves by Andrew Nikiforuk

“There's a lot more to ogres than people think.”

Shrek is a wise ogre who knows something about layers; a word I can no longer hear in any other way than the one Donkey uses in the onion conversation in the first Shrek movie.

We all have layers and I’ve been working on peeling mine away.

I know people in our society don’t like to talk about fear except in conjunction with words such as conquer, overcome or pushed past. However, I believe we do ourselves a disfavor by ignoring the ever present powerful motivator that fear really is in our lives.

There's a lot more to fear than people think.

My exploration of personal fears began, as one might expect, by being consumed by it for a while and finding myself in need of a way to live with it. It is very difficult to spend long periods of time living in mortal fear. Days, weeks and months went by and still it would rear its ugly head unexpectedly in the course of everyday activity.

I've gained acceptance that fear is part of us. We need it to survive, but we can choose to let it dictate our lives or we can explore, understand and use it.
I found that by understanding my fears they lose any power they might hold over my activities and become part of conscious decision-making.

I've decided that talking about facing fear is not helpful. Fear doesn't give a rat's patootie if you're looking at it or not. But if you look hard enough you can choose to accept or reject its role in your life. Some fears are helpful such as not walking blindly off a cliff. Others simply hold you back such as fear of being alone.

A short while ago, someone posted a Buddha quote on Facebook that mentioned that we have 10,000 fears and 10,000 joys. (When I looked up the quote, I found that Buddha taught that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Yeah internet and FB!)

But the thing that struck me was that there really are 10,000 fears we carry around and allow to limit us and our lives. Some are very basic if you can get to the root i.e. the desire for food, shelter and community. And some are purely First World Fears to borrow a current phrase and distort it a bit.

What I’m finding though is that humans are hard wired to constantly check for scary things nearby. If there are no man-eating tigers or armed hostiles, then the fear becomes more subtle.

As I strip away much of my society’s boundaries for life, I get deeper into and closer/clearer about my motivating fears. My time away last year allowed me to begin peeling away layers of fear, belief, clutchies (things you find hard to "let go" of) and obligations.

At one point, I feared that people would think I simply couldn’t handle life anymore and had given up. But from my perspective, I’m getting close to being free. Many people around me still struggle with primal fears that manifest as mortgages, bad jobs and failing relationships.

Some of the fear-based social norms I’ve let go include fear of not having insurance for that, fear of being poor in my old age, fear of not having a significant other, fear of not being able to take care of myself and fear of being irrelevant.

Some I’m still working on include fear of being considered nuts (although I may have already lost that battle), fear of wasting whatever time I have left and fear that I won’t be able to foster change that helps earth.

 I’m getting out there beyond a lot of First World musts and gaining insight. If you’re interested in letting go of some suffering, I suggest you look for its foundational fear.

I think the sorrows Buddha talks about are founded in our fears. Fear is always about ourselves.

I’m getting lighter these days by digging my way through the 10,000 and I will vouch for the fact that as the fears and sorrows become illuminated the joys shine ever brighter.

Here’s another Facebook internet quote to mull, “We are not just here to keep each other company. We are here to show each other God.” The Divine is light. Shine on my friends.

 

Today's Thought

Stories in Thought Bubbles

Look carefully at this image from Chaing Mai, Thailand.

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”

 I’m seeing a lot of this attitude around me right now. Some people are so ensconced in their constructed story, they are not aware of what is outside that bubble.

They wear personal blinders that shut out everything including truth and light.

A wise friend posted this on Facebook the day after the Connecticut school shootings, “The energy is intense right now. Don’t take anyone else’s ego issues personally. It’s their stuff, not yours. Instead, focus upon the sweetness within you, within life and within other people. You will find it, if you seek it.”

Another Dragon from Chaig Mai.

The maelstrom of emotion around the shootings mirrored a personal circumstance and I started to wonder how much of what I was seeing close to home might actually be a huge discord in human vibration emanating from down south. How loud was the disturbance in the force these past few days?

As I watched reactions in both situations, I couldn’t help noticing that people were constructing their own stories about why things happen. Heels dug in, stances solidified and opinions turned to gospel using details skewed to fit personal truths.

It’s as though I’m watching actors on a stage performing different parts of different plays while reality plays in the background unseen, unheard and unrecognized by the players and the audience.

Doorway in Chaing Mai

I almost slipped into the turbulence on Facebook just before I saw that quote. I had another moment tottering on the edge as I communicated with others on the situation in my own life. Fortunately, I managed to stay present. I managed to speak with integrity and stay positive.

It’s not always an easy thing to do, but we, as a species, really need to try harder on this front. We need to start seeing each other in the way the Avatar movie suggested by its line, “I see you.”

Look for and find your story. Step out of it for a moment and see yourself. Then look around and see if you can see others in their stories. Personal stories are easiest to see when emotions are high. They form an invisible boundary around person that nothing can penetrate. A solid thought bubble.

Uh Oh, can't remember where this is.

We need to find common ground and start the healing.

The common ground right now is so simple. All of us want deliberate hurting to stop.

In the Season of Love

In case you missed the flurry on my FB page, I had a birthday last week. As is my habit, I got out my cards for the first time in too long and went intro…

Kathleen, Madelon, me & Matt - all Lacombes and definitely retro

...spection.

You know, as opposed to retro…
Okay, bad joke.

Anyway, I did a message from the universe reading where 4 cards offer thoughts on body, heart, mind and spirit. The card that came up for heart was Judgement. In this case, it refers to divine judgement and the passage in the book mentioned Judgement Day – a personal Judgement Day.

I started by thinking about how, when the time comes, I want to be remembered as an honest, caring person that was willing of give of myself to help give voice to the voiceless. In my case, rivers, trees, wildlife and open space.

Elbow River Falls and less retro me.

But, I had just read the card for Body, so suddenly I found myself confronted by a disembodied voice asking, “And how about yourself? Did you love the body, mind and spirit that you are? Did you take care of your body, nurture your mind and live with your spirit always present?”

Oh, man! “I hadn’t really thought that mattered all that much.” I found myself answering with eyes to floor; which was not there.

What if when my personal Judgement Day comes, I fall short of loving myself? We always talk about being a good person and serving others. What if our job is to be good to ourselves? How much love do I give my body, mind and spirit?

Is it important to experience self-love in order to know how to love others? What if I am admonished for not loving the spirit I am?

I certainly recognize the need within me to look at my quality of self-love. I have been watching how I treat myself for a couple of years now and often find myself asking why I don’t come first in my own mind.

This reminder took me to my journals to find this from August 2011.

Red squirrel copied from
Dereila Nature Inn website.

“And the squirrel! It chattered from the trees, leapt over our heads on the branches and squirreled away pine cones in the wood pile. Someone on Tut posted a link to a site with an enchanted forest. I went there and asked for an animal to help me with self-love. The squirrel showed up. At first, this was confusing. Squirrel? But at the lake, squirrel was always there and always active. Like self-love should be.

“In the movie Up!, a talking dog interrupts himself often when he sees a squirrel. He suddenly stops what he is saying, turns his head quickly and yells, “Squirrel!” This is the appropriate action if you find your mind or your mouth saying unkind or unloving things about you. Recognize these things as squirrel chatter or a passing distraction from truth. Like this… “I am not good enou… SQUIRREL!””

Sculpture from the grounds of the
Reclining Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand

All over spiritual teachings of all kinds is the instruction to honor the Divine within. Any time a person fails to love themselves, they choose to not love that Divine within.

That puts a different perspective on loving God, loving the Holy Spirit doesn’t it? Do I want to arrive wherever it is we arrive and have a master stand before me saying, “Tsk, tsk, really! You could have loved the pure spirit that you carried within all these years a little better. You could have trusted the messages it gave, respected the temple it lived in and fed it better thoughts of gratitude, appreciation and love.”

Right now, I’m not sure I would be able to squeeze past that one if I end up there soon. Maybe our number-one job here is to love unconditionally the spirit that is always with us.