by Louis Bourgeois
When I was in my early 30's I began a process of healing and recovery. This involved at first a process of physical cleansing, detoxification, and strengthening through exercise. I began to see a series of physical therapists, neuromuscular therapists, and massage therapists. I turned to nutritional coaching and emotional healing support groups. Eventually I was guided toward "energy" workers. This was at the time a very new concept to me.
I was seeing this one very remarkable "energy" healer, and she told me some valuable information about myself. She said that though despite the obvious fact that I had damaged my energy "system" over the years of my childhood and young adulthood, with all kinds of blockages evident mostly from emotional abuse, the quality of the energy in my system was remarkably strong. I didn't know at first exactly what this meant, but I would learn over time.
Some years later a friend in New Mexico loaned me her set of CD’s of Carolyn Myss’s Energy Anatomy. I listened to this over and over again, thoroughly entranced. Myss’s description of the chakras, the energy system, gave me a whole new perspective. This perspective even became more clear when I listened to Myss’s Three Levels of Power and How to Use Them.
I integrated this teaching with what Eckhart Tolle was pointing toward in The Power of Now and his description of the “inner body.” Slowly the “Western” mind was catching up with ancient Eastern wisdom about energy, the body, and the universe. And then David Hawkins came along with his provocative Power vs Force. This whole field of new thought, tying in with what I knew from theoretical physics, was thrilling.
My years of devotion to A Course in Miracles was leading me to a new understanding of the teaching of Jesus, ands especially the need to move the language of the teaching beyond the limits of form. This teaching I knew was another version of “energy teaching.” How did I know this? Because I could feel it with my “energy body.”
We all know this way of “feeling” something. When we experience what might seem at first a “radical truth” we feel a tingling all over our body. This is the energy body responding to what it knows to be truth. You can rightly say that this energy body has its own intelligence, a level of intelligence far exceeding that of the mind. This is why Myss says: “The mind will lie to you, but the body never lies.”
Another way of seeing this is using Hawkins’ calibration system, as arbitrary as it might appear. His 1000 point system is essentially showing the energetic vibratory levels of feelings, intelligence, and the energy body. Whereas fear and shame calibrate at levels around 200, and the intellect peaks at 400, the energy body has the capacity to “know” the experience of joy which is a calibration of 600-650. And when we have that “aha” moment of revelation, we might be experiencing an energetic pulse in the 800’s.
Eckhart Tolle speaks in his own language about the vibratory levels of “a new earth.” He calls the levels of this new consciousness acceptance, appreciation, and enthusiasm. You might guess in Hawkins’ calibration system acceptance would calibrate at about 450 (eclipsing the judging rational mind and its limit of 400), appreciation or gratitude in the 450-550 range, and enthusiasm in the 550-750 range.
So we can see that the cultivation and nurturing of our energy body yields significant dividends. We want to be living in this “new earth” consciousness, a place of endless acceptance, appreciation, and enthusiasm. A good model for how this looks is Byron Katie’s “The Work,” her book Loving What Is and especially a favorite of mine, A Thousand Names for Joy.
So how exactly do we drop the denser, old forms of the “tribal mind” and “egoic mind?” We focus our attention on the energy body, or the feeling body. We feel deeply the emotion of anger, or hatred, for example, until it breaks open into grief. This is the emotional portal into peace, and eventually joy. Our natural state, you see, is radiant joy, and we “accomplish” this state simply by dropping our fixation on the rational egoic mind and its interpretation of “what is.” Remember that this level of mind is, in Eckhart’s language “a complaint looking for a place to happen.”
Our inherent divinity has been denied and projected by our cultural conditioning. When we block the natural flow of energy, like appreciation and enthusiasm, we feel “upset” and our conditioning will have us look outside for someone or something to blame. Our healing journey, then, is to remove all this construction of denial and projection (the ego) and feel what is really going on. Like A Course in Miracles teaches: “I am never upset for the reason I think.”
I can only be upset for one reason, and that reason is that I am blocking my awareness of my own glory, my inherent divinity, my god/goddess energy. There is no other cause that ever was or ever could be.
The energy body is remarkably fluid and flexible. It can dance with human grieving and divine joy and experience them as ONE. Everything comes alive in this sacred dance. There is no more reason to separate, compartmentalize. Everything that we know is a part of this beautiful flowing experience, once we open to our true function. We have shifted our identification away from the old, rigid forms of body, self, world and into the rich and delicious universe of energy. Our function is to serve, celebrate, and dance with this endless flow of energy. As we open to this “new earth” way of living we taste a way of living that is truly whole, happy and free.
