Since I first wrote this post, I’ve learned that Westerners are badly dissociated from their bodies. More often than not, we are not “feeling energy.” We are feeling sensations for which we have not been taught names.
Developing your inquiry mindset is key. I can help you in sessions.
Many of you have done amazing work for yourself. You’ve worked through surface-level issues, top-level issues, and mid-level issues. You’ve worked on a lot of your core issues and have ground away a few of them. You have released a lot of attachments. Good work!
But you may be finding that the journey of releasing attachments is not yet over. Subtler levels of restriction and holding start to become “visible” through your enhanced sense of your self, and these subtle unconscious energy levels are a slightly different venue to step into.
In the energetic world, there are all kinds of levels, and most of them most people don’t need to do anything with or know anything about. If we think of energy like the Earth’s atmosphere, then how many of us have to know what an astronaut has to know? Not many. Most of us will never go beyond the Earth’s atmosphere nor beyond our most basic energy fields. This metaphor has application to our energetic bodies particularly as they open and expand and go beyond our initial “atmospheres.”
Going into deeper levels of energetic restriction within the body breaks down attachments that hold us back, and that tends to lead to energetic expansion. Energetic expansion leads to finding new levels of energetic boundary that restrict our growth (and also protect us). But when a person’s energy is open and clear, these boundaries and protection become unnecessary. So let’s talk about accessing these subtle and unconscious energy levels and the best way to approach this reality.
Moving Beyond Human Basics
Imagine you’re a primitive human being. Living in the world, you accept all the things that are around you, and you’re primarily motivated to survive and procreate. Going beyond this planet–this reality–is so far beyond the scope of your “thinking” to be of no interest to you. Survive, procreate, help the offspring survive, and then survive as long as you can until something happens. That’s all that concerns a primitive human being, and this is a very small world of understanding.
As human beings evolve and become more realized, the focus on just surviving and mating diminishes. To be sure, plenty of people are still at that level, and some of that has to do with the unequal distribution of resources around the world. If you don’t have enough to eat, spiritual realization isn’t of much interest to you. I should add that we can and should do everything we can to help our whole human family so that others can go beyond a pure survival focus.
Consciously Confronting Hunger
However, if you’re reading this spiritual awakening blog post today, I presume that you are interested in stepping beyond these basic interests. In particular, this post is for those who have done quite a bit of spiritual inner work. For you, it’s time to forge out beyond the “atmosphere” you’re accustomed to particularly if you’re starting to feel these subtle restrictions.
If you are brand new to me and to spiritual inner work, you probably want to go check out this blog post now:
Subtle Restrictions and Deeper Levels of Unknown
A lot of deeper restrictions take us further into resolving the primal drive to survive and procreate. These two drives are powerful, and as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, these two pillars of human biology create the fears of death and pain as well as the desire to procreate and nourish children. They are unconscious in the sense that we do not choose to have them; they are there and functioning whether we recognize them or not.
The 2 Pillars of the Ego and the Human Animal Body
As we recognize them, we begin to understand how they function in us and how they create different kinds of subtle restrictions, which are kind of like anchors that stop you from expanding very far outward.
I know these words are really vague and ambiguous. These subtle restrictions are something that you’ll have to do your inner work to get to the point where you understand what I’m describing. Rest assured, this blog has left a huge number of pointers to direct you where you need to go if you are at an earlier stage in your spiritual development. I also have an ebook if you are interested.
Everyday Spirituality: Cultivating an Awakening
With that said, more and more subtler restrictions get seen as the animal drives are broken apart. Some of these restrictions are deeper elements of the same animal drives, which require A LOT of work to erode. Others are more like restrictions that encase you energetically like the atmosphere metaphor. You are very likely to have no idea what they are at first. Usually, people have to resort to fantastical metaphors and other things to describe the sense of these types of things. For my part, I try to use as neutral and unexciting terminology as possible so that these restrictions don’t become more than they are.
If the Sun Lived in a Seed
Let’s focus on the subtle energy levels that we run up against through expansion.
Imagine that every human being is a sun inside a seed shell (We’re doing a lot of imagining today, aren’t we?). Then also imagine that there were multiple seed shells one bigger than the last and encircling the last. What is the role of the shells? To protect us from things for which we are not ready.
Fairly frequently, some of the natural psychics out there get half a leg out of a couple seed shells and start having experiences for which they’re not ready. This scares a lot of people, and they tend to try and create even more shells to keep out whatever experiences they are having. However, as we do inner work, a lot of these shells become unnecessary. Our own inner brightness, love, and strength expand. The expanding sun burns up the seed shell–which can be an intense experience–and the person opens to a new level of expansion and awareness beyond their pure mental, physical, and emotional self.
Expanding Into New Levels of Consciousness
In that expanded state, the sun–you–naturally burns up anything tossed your way. Additionally, you aren’t restricted by old pain and issues that you once had and which would have been triggered by so much exposure to all of life. In general, the heat of love and clarity offer a different and softer protection. It’s open protection. It’s protection without needing to protect or defend with hard walls, and it is fundamentally different than any other kind of energy protection most people ever think about.
If the sun metaphor doesn’t full work for you, you may also consider the development of ourselves as children. When we are conceived, we are protected in our mother’s womb. We are not ready to be outside of it, dealing with the disease, dirt, and other dangers of human life. When we’re born, we’re kept in cradles and playpens a lot of the time until we’re ready for more freedom. On and on, certain kinds of protection are set up by parents for their children until they’re ready to move beyond those boundaries and handle the freedom and challenges of the next level.
This is much like how our energy expands through openness.
How to Access these Expanded States
Firstly, these expanded states are far along in someone’s journey. They are not goals to be attained. They are not spaces to be trifled with as many spiritual tourists do when they are looking for new, fun spiritual experiences. The loss of a seed shell is yet another kind of dying. Each time a seed shell drops away, the person goes through another inner revolution and outer evolution as they become more experientially connected to oneness.
Melting Invisible Issues and Moving Into Oneness
Thus, a person already needs to have had plenty of practice releasing attachments, being with unknown spaces, watching from the space of the witness (our most direct access to oneness), and learning to correctly interpret energy. These are four powerful skillsets, and yet they also are very simple, intuitive, and natural.
How to Correctly Interpret Energy (Video)
From doing the inner work to dissolve attachments and resolve old pain, a person’s energy naturally expands. It accesses expansion on its own. So there is far less doing than most people think about when it comes to discovering these subtler energetic fields.
Becoming Aware of a New Energy Field/Restriction
As someone naturally grows, they expand to their most natural way of being. Every sun in the solar system is going to expand to a certain size. They’re not all the same. Similarly, not everyone is going to burn up many if any of these energetic seed shells. However, as you do, things become different. When you come up against one of these energy shells, a sense of limitation may be felt while there is nothing actually limiting about the life around you.
As this limitation is coming into view, the person returns to awareness. They watch. They observe. They relax the body to help ensure that they’re not running up against some unconscious body program instead. It can be a little uncertain at first if the restriction is a chain linked to an issue within or an energetic wall without because within and without are disappearing more and more. If the unconscious restriction is something to do with the body, then they’ll work on further eroding those primal drives further. Or if they find another piece of an old core issue, they already know how to go into it. As they work through this little checklist of possibilities, they may find that there is a sense of expansion moving against a restriction.
And they stay as awareness still watching.
No Exciting Energetic Tools
There are lots of energetic tools that people have gotten excited about. The Internet has given access to so many spiritual energy tools. It’s a lot to handle. It’s too much, and most of those tools are irrelevant to these subtle levels of energetic change. They aren’t operating at this level. They are usually meant for dealing with more dense energy fields.
Additionally, the openness of our own energy in the metaphor of the brilliant sun IS a lot of energy. It’s enough. That’s why the restriction is being discovered. If the sun is still nascent, there’s no inner force driving the change. That inner force is the most intelligent part of the equation. It must be trusted. If it is not alive and moving, then some of these more popular energy tools (like a lot of Kundalini yoga techniques) get used to get this inner space opening and evolving on its own. Once that movement is excited, a lot of the energetic tools that may have been useful before are discarded. No one worries about stepping on the bottom rung of the ladder when they are standing on the seventh and eighth rungs.
In general, a person’s own expanding energy is the primary energy tool that is required.
From Oneness, Intelligent Energy Moves
Again and again, we return to the space of the witness. We return to that space of oneness. From there, our energy takes over. An inner intelligence takes over that has nothing to do with goals, getting better, moving forward, or anything else the ego might desire. In oneness, we are perfect. From that perfection, things re-design themselves. Your energy continues to evolve and re-design you. And that only encourages deeper forms of surrender.
Surrender, Surrender, and Keep Surrendering
Surrender is another way I discuss coming back to awareness, and it can’t be repeated enough. At times, there may be some small level of action to help your inner sun expand. But at this level it’s generally not a lot. As the sun burns up another shell, a new level of sensitivity, understanding, clarity, love, and connection become accessible. That new level of sensitivity brings with it everything that there is out there–the good with the bad. The astronaut sees amazing things from space, but she is also exposed to cosmic rays and a whole host of other things that scientists probably don’t know about. But unlike the actual astronaut, our “sun states” of awareness are powerful. They provide the shielding and strength to be in expanded states, and from that space even more intelligent growth and discoveries become available to you.
