Energies

Energy is a huge subject. 

J.G. Bennett has written extensively about them, so this is an introduction and my take on his schematic. 

We interpret the word energy in many ways and experience what energy is in our bodies, our thoughts and our emotions. With loss of “energy” we feel listless. We also may experience energy blocks in the form of illness, disease, or emotional anguish.

However, there are energies of a higher order that feed something more than our day to day functioning.

Energy by its very nature is never destroyed but only transformed. When we are interested in our own personal transformation, it is helpful to know what is going on with the energy at play within us and around us.

There are four kinds of energy I will address in this article; each with their specific properties. Each kind of energy promotes more and more consciousness in us as it refines. It refines by our own inner work and struggle to be free of suggestibility and mass hypnosis. It further refines when we are able to make the choice to sacrifice our lower nature. 

The first kind of energy is vital energy which keeps our bodies running. When we lose vital energy, we experience sickness and fatigue. This is the kind of energy that keeps our body in good health and our heart beating.  It is what allows cuts to heal and muscles to produce lactic acid. There is no consciousness on our part to make this energy active.

The next gradation of energy is called automatic energy and by its very name suggests no effort on our part. 

This is the energy at play as we live our lives on autopilot without awareness of ourselves or others. We have the impression we are making choices and understanding other people, but what is actually operating is our system of memory retrieval, analysis based on those memories, and emotional feedback based on identification with those thoughts. Automatic energy in our lives allows us to breed and feed, live, work etc. without any sense of ourselves as a sensitive human.

With work on ourselves, we have the chance to upgrade this energy to sensitive energy in which we are able to observe ourselves. No self-observation can occur without the influence of sensitive energy. We build and increase the energy frequency by small daily struggles with being present. We meditate. We strive to question what is going on in and around us with new eyes by bringing in intentional sensation while we do things. We attempt to align our three centers, the thinking, the feeling and the moving in order to gain a new perspective. 

This new sensitivity brings about self-awareness and understanding of our negative states, our fear and our insecurities. We start to catch ourselves in the act of believing our limiting beliefs from a new place. This can shift life drastically and make way for some real breakthroughs.

We start to have a new perspective regarding our reactions.

Sensitive energy allows us to see something about ourselves that we could not see before.

We can then wrestle and observe our reactions, patterns, and attachments.

If we remain entrapped, operating only from one center, locked in one reaction after another, we are only operating under certain limited laws of existence. It is a very low grade of energy. If we bring in sensation on a regular basis, we learn to work with all of our centers and develop our own “I.”

We observe our reactions as what they are. Something in us can watch the reactions, because we are in a more cohesive and sensitive place. This is the work of the Reactional Self.

The more efforts like this that we make, the more the energy transmutes and we get a glimpse of freedom. We have more power to choose not to get wrapped up in our daily dramas. We start to have healthy boundaries. We begin to act authentically. 

Next phase is learning to choose within a Divided Self and the struggle with our conscience. We are no longer swept away by this and that reaction. We can work with our proximity to a Higher Nature within ourselves.

In this more elevated state of awareness, we watch a battle within us that is just the perfect inner combustion necessary for energies to transform. We have something established within us that can see both the higher and lower nature. That is a huge step on our path to freedom.

In this place, there is a higher energy afoot; an energy called conscious energy. With enough pooled conscious energy, we have the chance to acquire permanent change. We are able to forgive ourselves and others. We allow our hearts to open and remain open. We are able to enact life from a place of Being, and not our heads or reactions. 

Here there is an opportunity for something much higher to act upon us, and we can surrender to it.

A tipping point of conscious energy primes us for this kind of surrender. The perfect storm of surrender and inner struggle between our higher and lower nature is the exact formula for permanent transformation. We begin to see how we are attached to a “story” and we have the will and choice to let it go. That higher gradation of energy allows us to let it go.

We can discriminate in a new way.

Watch your life at the moment. Are you prone to reactions and have a hard time letting go of them?  Are you swept away by feelings of inadequacy and anxiety? That means there is a lower gradation of energy working for you. Can you struggle to simply observe the reaction without changing it? This collision of negative state plus observing it will upgrade the energy at work.

Are you unable to make efforts of this kind at all?  Then there is not enough sensitive energy to allow you to see or be aware. Meditate and do awareness practices that bring you to the present.  This takes effort but that effort will upgrade the energies.

Sometimes we don’t even have enough vital energy to operate properly. We are in poor health, or are not getting enough rest.  This is the scenario for lots of self-care as a basis to begin any kind of Work on oneself. It is the lowest base process.

For more on energies, please read: Energies by J.G. Bennett

For more on the reactional self and the divided self, read: Deeper Man by J.G. Bennett

For more on practices that work with the upgrade and accumulation of energies, take the Practical Awareness 8-week Course offered twice yearly. This course includes particular exercises developed to upgrade energies and develop the practice of self-observation. There are live weekly meetings and an online forum.