What is energy? It is what underlies everything, everywhere. It is in all of us, the world, the universe. It is the dance of the atoms. It can manifest as sound waves, radio waves, electricity, heat, light, feelings, colour or movement. It can transform to make matter. It fills us, fills everything, flowing through and around us all the time. Everything solid, including us, has an energy body, often overlapping but not always the same size as our ‘material’ bodies. These energy bodies can leave our ‘material’ bodies, can travel away from them, can return. They can be sharp-edged or diffuse, and they can merge with the energy bodies of others: things, people, trees, mountains, rivers.
This underlying energy has been called by many names: ch’i, prana, ki. I generally just call it ‘energy’ or sometimes ‘magical energy’, to distinguish it from electrical energy, for example, which is only one manifestation of it. Magical energy, like electricity, is something that we cannot touch, see, smell or hear, and yet we can channel and control it, we can be aware of it’s results. Many people can sense it directly, some know that’s what they are doing, and some do not, responding to it unconsciously or calling it by different names. People who are sensitive to magical energy are often sensitive to it’s manifestations: get migraines from mobile phones, dislike microwaved food. We can all learn how to sense it, and our awareness of it will grow the more we ‘work’ with it. The more we work with it the more of it our energy bodies can contain, and the more we can direct and shape them. We can learn to clear the energy pathways in our bodies so that energy can flow freely. We can learn to define the edges of our energy bodies so we can use them for protection and containment. We can learn to merge and separate with others at our will.
I believe that now more than ever we need to become conscious of this energy. The earth cycles that are ending at this time are plunging us fast into the need for change. The future of the planet is now dependent on human beings changing the way we think, the way we perceive the world. The way the majority of human beings think at this time is based on ideas around possession. We own our bodies and move them through the will of our minds. We own each other – my wife, my friend, my child. We own things, buildings, numbers on screens and pieces of paper and we use these things to make us feel secure. We think we own the earth, and we think that we can take it’s resources from it forever. This way of thinking is destroying the earth, and as we destroy the earth so we will destroy ourselves.
We need, as many are starting to see, other ways of thinking. Many people have described what is needed as a change in consciousness, a change in the entire way we perceive the world. It is clear to many that we need to stop thinking of ourselves, others, the planet, as possessions. It is not possessions that will make us secure, in the years to come. The only thing that will save us, that will give us real security, is a re-establishment of our connection with the earth, our home; a renewed sense of community with all other beings.
Some think that the ‘new age’ will mean a sudden shift in awareness for all humans. Some think that it will come only for some ‘chosen’ humans while others will fail to change and not survive. I think it is more possible that what we have now is a time of potential, of choice. The information is here; the connections are here, have always been here. I think that now, more than for many centuries, we have the chance to change, to change the way we perceive things, to reconnect. I think this is happening to many of us, from many different spiritual paths and practises. I think if we reach out to each other, if we are brave and bold and create spaces for others, then this will get stronger, maybe strong enough to save the planet and our lives.
We are not separate. We are part of each other and of the earth. We are connected. What connects us, more than anything, is energy. I believe that at the heart of the ‘change of consiousness’ we need is an awareness of this energy; a conscious ability to sense it, feel it, flow with it, understand it’s impact and it’s use.
We cannot ‘own’ energy. It is everywhere and belongs to no-one. It is all around us, and it is inside us. The blocks put into our energy channels by the ideas of ‘owning’, ‘taking’ and dualism, among others, have stopped the natural flow of energy from ‘inside’ to ‘outside’ and back again. As the flow is disrupted we feel disconnected from all that is, cut off from our source of real security and real power.
Learning to feel the energy and allowing it to flow naturally reconnects us with these things. How can we destroy something which is a part of us? How can we oppress someone who is connected to our hearts, so that we feel their pain as our own? We need to learn to protect ourselves, to open to what gives us connection and joy and strength and to close to that which drains, harms and exploits us. We need to learn to call on energy when we need it, give it to others when we choose to, ground it when it grows too strong, use it for the healing of ourselves and the world.
It is time, more than time, for those of us who have some awareness of how to work this energy to make this knowledge available to all who want it. It is too late to hide it away. In the Moving Energy work I am giving what I have learned, in the hope that we can go on learning together, and that we can make a difference, that we can reconnect with the earth, that we can heal our planet and ourselves.