The Individual Landscape

 

We experience these lives we live primarily through the physical bodies we created. We see, hear, touch, taste, and feel our way through the world. Yet our experience of being human extends beyond what the five senses can easily measure. We think, we feel, we sense, we react and respond. We sometimes walk into a room and immediately notice its atmosphere. We feel comfortable around one person and unsettled around another without knowing exactly why. A thought can change the way our body feels. An emotion can change the way we think. 

 

More Than One Layer

 

Within the energetic model, the human being is composed of interconnected layers of physical and subtle energy. The physical body is the most tangible. Interwoven with it are subtler fields associated with physical vitality, emotion, thought and consciousness. Rather than functioning independently, these layers continually interact, creating the changing energetic environment through which we experience our lives.

 

A thought can stir an emotion. An emotion can affect the physical body. A physical experience can influence thought. Change one part of the landscape and the rest of the system responds. this is why I don't think of energy work as something separate from ordinary life.  Ordinary life is where the energy ihs happening.

 

The Personality and the Greater Self

 

The denser levels of the system, the physical, etheric, emotional and mental levels form what I refer to as the personality system or ego self. These are parts of ourselves most directly involved in navigating everyday human life: our physical needs, emotions, thoughts, reactions, relationships, choices and sense of individual identity. 

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Beyond these are subtler levels of energy that I associate with the ongoing or eternal aspect of ourselves. You may call this the higher self, soul, greater consciousness or simply the deeper part of you that seems to know more than the everyday mind can explain.

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As these different aspects of ourselves begin working together more consciously we develop a greater awareness of the relationship between our physical experience, thoughts, emotions, energy and deeper level of beomg. 

 

Learning the Landscape

 

Energy work begins with awareness. Not with mastering an invisible system. Not with escaping the physical world or becoming something other than human. It begins by becoming curious about the landscape you already inhabit. 

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Through meditation and energy work, we can begin to recognize the relationship between our centers, fields, thoughts, emotions and physical experience. With awareness comes greater choice in how we respond, what we carry and how we move through the world. The purpose of understanding our energetic nature is not to rise above the human experience, it is to become more fully present within it.