Energy healing should not be chosen as an alternative for religion, or for traditional psychotherapy. Energy healing has but one mandate: to speed up or enhance an individual’s personal growth, and physical healing process. When a healer interacts with the energy field of another person they should be able to do the following:

• Perceive where a client needs support, or energetic repair, that will lead towards a significant shift in their lives;

• Assess the impact of hidden forces acting upon the client’s energy system (such as Astral, or spirit being, influences) and remove them;

• Support an inner shift of consciousness in the client towards personal growth;

• Help the client tap into under-utilized or hidden inner resources at their disposal;

• Actively energize, or clear, the auric system of the client so as to maximize personal growth or healing. (This can be done at a distance, unlike physical healing methods);

• Become a therapeutic ally on the client’s personal journey towards finding happiness, fulfillment, and good health;

• Enhance the natural physical healing process of the client.

Each healer has their own system the ascribe to, and prospective clients should pay attention to the healer’s speciality. This is similar to going to your doctor, in that there are general practitioners and there are specialists. In medical healing we often use the services of several professionals in order to fully heal our physical body, and energy healing can be viewed in a similar, practical fashion. There are all-in-one energy healers, and there are specialists. It will be up to the client to interview their prospective healer, and make sure that what is offered is what is needed.

In a similar fashion to medical healing, we may need to try different practitioners until we find someone that fits with our personality: our style of personal growth. This will be very individual to each client, and is important to take into consideration. Some clients prefer to work with a famous healer or spiritual leader (or guru), assuming this is the best available to them. Others prefer a more personalized approach: one-on-one healing work that efficiently drills down into the issues, and works towards resolving them in such a way that personal growth leads also towards spiritual evolution. The choice is always ours, and the options are many.

Related Post: How Psychic Healing Works

But energy healing is more than just a way to help heal the physical body. Many humans intuit that they possess a spiritual nature, and not just an everyday ego personality. This may be experienced during times of emotional stress, while moving through an ecstatic experience, or during meditation or prayer. We humans are more than just matter: we are beings of consciousness, of light, and as such unlimited by the restrictions of the physical body.

Energy healers, mystics, and shamans have many different names that describe the functioning and development of the human energy (or light) body, each according to their cultures. The European energy healer, for instance, may be a student of some esoteric or magical system, such as the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, or the Kabbalah. Similarly, an Asian energy healer may practice a style of Qi Gong, based on Chinese energy healing principles. Traditional native peoples on different continents have tribal ritual elders called Shaman, who integrate cultural wisdom with natural curing methods. Modern-day American energy healers may combine emotional/belief system personal process work alongside energy healing. And there are medical professionals – physicians, nurses, research scientists – who seek to enhance their allopathic medical treatments with insights from energy healing. But these multiple approaches to bio-energy healing can be distilled down to one unmistakable conclusion: energy is the foundation of the human experience, rather than the material body.

There is another aspect to the coming into awareness of this, our light body. As we relocate our attention and identity from the egoic and material self, and into the energetic self, we naturally find ourselves questioning many of the assumptions we have made about the world, and about our shared reality. We find ourselves willing to see something radically new. Locked into the “normal” world view – as material bodies with egos, with social or family commitments, following careers and paying taxes – we can live a fairly predictable life. But once our energy body begins to wake up, the experience of “normality” usually changes. And may change fundamentally, to the very core of our understanding of the world. These internal paradigm shifts are always shocking to each human ego: an inner identity which, although accepted as “normal” by society and family, suddenly can seem incredibly limited and false to us.  Our true identity, as taught by many of the worlds wisdom traditions, is that of an energy body, imbuing the physical body with consciousness. Energy healing – when applied at the right time, and by the healer most helpful to you – not only speeds up any physical healing process you may need, but will also energize this, your light body.

If enough people begin to operate more from their authentic energy bodies rather than their egoic (i.e.,physically-based) reality, our species may be able to evolve beyond our often destructive animal roots, and past the challenges of tribalism. The realization of our body of light as our true nature is not just a personal goal; it has the potential to help others. One “en-lightenment” event can inspire another, and then another, like one candle lighting the unlit one next to it, or like a row of dominoes falling in sequence. Every “en-lightened” human (which I’m defining here as those who drop into deeper contact with their light bodies while also remaining fully present in the physical world) helps others awaken. And remaining in ignorance of our true nature – the light body – may no longer an option for our species. The world which we all share is growing small, and more crowded. Global dangers are brewing, and now threatening our survival as a species. We must evolve to a new level of consciousness. We must fully awaken.

1. The physical body is experienced through reflection: light from an outer source (the sun or other photon-emitter) is bounced off the material world, and our brains then construct a model of solid reality in a way reminiscent of bats and their sonar. But rather than using sonic reflection, humans use photonic reflection, and then their brains fill in the details in order to create “reality”.

2. The body of light can experienced whenever we come into the awareness of who we are as consciousness rather than as mechanical beings. The light body has an anatomy of nadis (energy channels) and chakras (specialized centers of consciousness), and operates through etheric reality: an underlying and fundamental interconnection all sentient beings have with the living world around them. Etheric light is not reflected (photonic) light; it is a structured reality unrestricted by physical distance. While  my physical eyes cannot see beyond the horizon my etheric “eyes” are limited only by my consciousness and my focus. If I can create a fix (including an emotional connection) on another person via my etheric energy system I can then interact with that person in some way. The body of light can be more accurately labeled as the etheric light body.

3. The astral body uses neither reflected nor etheric light to function. Astral realities are self-generated forms: they are lit from within. If you remember an astral or a lucid dream, you may recall how what you see is fully lit from any angle, and in every situation. Many lucid dreams are experiences of our traversing the Astral worlds during sleep, when we are no longer fixated on the physical or etheric (relational) worlds. Astral dreams give us a glimpse into worlds where sentient life of many varieties co-exist and interact. The Shaman learns to navigate these realms for the good of the people, forming allies with some spirit beings, and defending us from the predatory ones.

These three bodies – the body of physical matter, the body of light, and the astral body – make up a full human experience. Science, of course, tells us that only the physical body is real. But thousands of years of spiritual development and Shamanic experience demonstrate otherwise. How to know which is right? Only by personally exploring the three bodies for ourselves. We should not accept any self-appointed authority when it comes to discovering our true spiritual nature. We can set out on the quest to re-claim our body of light, and to expand upon our Astral body. These three bodies together make up our full birthright. These three bodies functioning in harmony empower our lives. These three bodies, when awakened, hold our destiny.

Catching light with your camera requires three things: lens aperture (the size of the opening of the lens letting in light), the speed of the shutter (which regulates just how much light falls on the CMOS sensor), and the amount of light available to you out in the world when you take the picture (the exposure). When the photographer manually sets these three parameters, and composes an interesting picture, we know the results can be wonderful. But if one of the three are not aligned the results will be a failed opportunity. Everything needs to be set up right.

Similarly, the chakra needs three things to function well, and build an enlightened reality: a receptive (and healthy) chakra (equivalent to aperture size) that takes in all kinds of light, not just a limited frequency, an attentive mind/body (equivalent to shutter speed) that awakens to all input, and opportune life experience that can stimulate personal or spiritual growth (equivalent to exposure). Unlike the camera our chakras both interpret (intake) and co-create (output) events in the outer world. Increase the amount of light available to us (say, through a spiritual practice) and we will “see” things in a new way. Open our receptivity to the world (through energy healing or other modalities that assist personal growth) and new options suddenly open up to us. Put ourselves into a new experience (e.g., a course of study, a spiritual journey, a different kind of relationship) and we expose ourselves to previously-unexpected possibilities.

Manually operating our camera forces us to think about all three parts of how our camera works in order to catch light in a singular moment. Similarly, personal growth asks us to break down how we function in life, and offers us the opportunity to step outside of habitual patterns that will always bring us predictable outcomes.

Of course we can leave our camera – or our life – on automatic, and let the in-build programming make all the decisions for us. We’ll still get some nice snaps … but to make art with our camera (or with our life) we have to turn the don’t-want-to-think-about-this function off. We have to go manual all the way. We have to study, and see what does what, and why. Because with our automatic settings switched off, anything is truly possible.

]]> http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/the-camera-and-the-chakra/feed/ 0 http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/personal-evolution-and-energy-healing/ http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/personal-evolution-and-energy-healing/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 04:45:27 +0000 Dean Ramsden http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/?p=3821 A powerful change has occurred within the field of Energy Healing over the past forty years with the integration of psychotherapy into models of the human energy field as the vehicle of personal transformation. In many ways, these psychotherapeutic models have supplanted tprevious ones based on either Theosophy or the more traditional approaches such as Kabbalistic or esoteric Christian metaphysical systems. But while much of psychotherapy has many decades of research and scholarship behind it therapy’s approach to growth has been attuned to the Western social agendas rather than cross-cultural hidden or esoteric truths. Some healers have attempted to integrate Eastern spiritual principles into psychotherapy but the lack of exposure most people have had to Asia perspective limits their efforts. So, it has been the Western approach to psychotherapy, with its emphasis on revealing unconscious motivators and healing trauma, as well as a stress on communication honesty, that has come to dominate the modern Energy Healing skill set.

While these three factors are important, the developmental underpinnings of the more sophisticated esoteric models of spiritual development of the past remain unknown to most people. Some healers even discount the need for any esoteric study, stressing only a spontaneous (and non-intellectual) act of healing. Many healers will say that all is needed is the correct intention/symbols/prayers, etc, and a healing force will automatically flow through them into the client.

But if we are truly to evolve Energy Healing towards its potential I would suggest building upon the new addition of Western psychotherapy while also reaching back towards the wisdom traditions of the past. Only one part of the human brain works with the rational or social norms; the other is deeply moved by symbolic reality in alignment with greater spiritual forces. Psychology speaks to the conscious mind, while esoteric healing speaks to the intuitive. Then we will find ourselves with a full spectrum approach to energy healing.

But we must also address the current and pressing problems of our present-day generation: denial of any obvious truth, and the passivity of opposition towards increasingly restrictive social change. At its core, Energy Healing, as a spiritual development tool, seeks to reveal the truth about ourselves and about the world. But I believe it offers far more than a simple pranic flow from our hands, more than sharing the knowledge of spiritual or personal development, and even more than the release from trauma in our bodies. It can also awaken us out of the disingenuous dreams foisted upon us by others, whether it is via our family heritage systems, or worldly corporate actions that affect our lives. These are the new enchantments: modern day “spells” cast upon us. We must awaken from them, and into ourselves, and not thoughtlessly embrace any agenda. And when we do awaken, our energy healing work can offer not only relief from suffering but also assistance in helping to evolve the client to a new level of awareness. Energy healing is not just about taking away pain; it is about taking away the ability of others to implement their hidden agendas upon our life force. It is about coming to truly live our own lives, rather than a life defined by others. It is all about our personal evolution.

And then there are others, those who know in their heart that life holds more than what is commonly held as reality. They are drawn to a spiritual or religious way of living that replaces a material agenda with an alternate one. Instead of dreaming of becoming a billionaire, or of becoming famous, they long to become their spiritual ideal self. This ideal is a personal vision which you long to attain. Perhaps it can be said that this is only an exchange of one set of desires for another, replacing a material goal for a spiritual one. Both these options look toward outer authority as holding the answer. And this is a problem, because any authority to whom we unconsciously hand over our inner autonomy may have important answers … but that same authority may have other agendas running than just whatever we project upon them. We may also be giving an outside authority the power to shape our lives in return for holding an important role in our paradigm. But by aligning with any authority we run the risk of ending the searching process.

Like many, I propose that the process of searching for meaning in our lives should never end. The ending of the search for meaning (because we believe our paradigm is the right one) is the biggest problem our species faces. The moment we stop searching for a higher knowing – as well as to integrate what we already know  – we give up on our spiritual evolution. It is not finding the answer that defines the human spirit; it is the eternal search for knowledge beyond us that creates us as fully human and fully spiritual. In that search for humanness we, of course, will constantly erect fortresses of knowing, bastions of commonly-held “wisdom”, and defend them from any attacking hordes of others with a different set of knowings. That is also part of being human. But our battles of one paradigm against the other is an illusory struggle, and contains the seeds of our eventual defeat. In the battle of the paradigms there is only one possible outcome: submission to the dominant paradigm, and the repression of the alternative ones. The mind then erects a left-right struggle, an internal mind set that often chooses disparagement over dialogue. It is easier to hate or to mock the other polarity (or cultural paradigm) than to relate to it, and to be changed by it. It is easier to see others as different, as dangerous, as an enemy, than to see them as a brother, or a sister. It is easier for me to hold on to being right than to accept what is right within the other.

And yet despite these difficulties there is a way out of the dilemma inherent in the polarities of left and right, of good and bad, of right and wrong. It is to first energetically relate to the other, and then to allow that meeting with them to change you. You, of course, may change or influence the other in return. And from this place of deep meeting, where contact with the other (and what they represent) moves to the foreground of your awareness, out of this comes personal transformation. Meaning increases in your life, and your goals or desires for living can manifest themselves directly. You become the author of your own life, rather than following along the script written by another. How to do this? By energetically  allowing yourself to be influenced by others, and to process what is then activated within your life energies. In computer terms you choose to be an open-source system rather than locked into a proprietary one. You opt for evolutionary expansion rather than the continual defense of what you assume is true, or real. You open yourself to seeking personal growth rather than willfully reinforcing what you already know.

In seeking to understand the view of the other rather than forcing your agenda upon them you blend the material and the spiritual paradigms together into one powerful exploration of your life. You strive towards becoming free from the paradigm, rather than its slave.

Here is a short extract from my Tokyo seminar entitled Practical Aspects of the Chakra System, taught in English with Japanese translation provided by Yui Wang.

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Now I was sitting on Napolitano, a full-blooded Lippizan horse, and we were slowly treking downhill towards the olive fields and vineyards that surrounded our hotel. We were not getting along very well. Napolitano was young, but slow and stubborn. I respect that, but he was also big, strong, and a muncher. Every time we passed anything remotely green he was trying to grab it. There’s a lot of green stuff on a Tuscan hillside, so I was spending all my time trying to manage my horse. Symbolic, no doubt, of my frustrations with having to let go of two weeks of sessions.

I’m not an experienced rider, but I can hold my own with the average horse. And today Napolitano was in Silver Chakra mode, making me do something I didn’t want to do: spend all my time staying on his back while trying to guide him down the dangerously-steep rocky trail. And not fall off. As for the continual munching… very frustrating.

But I’m still only a few days away from my Higher Chakra Intensive in Germany, which has left me open to new experiences and perceptions. A Silver chakra situation calls out what you don’t want to face but must face: it is the hard work part of the transformational process. I begin to wonder what the point of all this struggling is, for me.

Not all of us want to deal with life as a challenge; mostly, we want life to accommodate to our desires, and to our demands. It takes struggle to spur new growth, to create an enhanced response to any life situation. Otherwise, we just stay the same. Without accepting our challenges we will grow older, but we remain the same person inside. It is the level of difficulty, and how we wrestle with it, that stimulates our personal and spiritual development. In this most mundane of moments, I was engaging in only two challenges: to stay on the horse’s back, and to control his head without being overly harsh with pulling on his bit. Sightseeing the vineyards was not currently an option.

Energy healing can be like this, in that we all want to get results but we don’t necessarily want to welcome the drudgery of practice. If we are healers we may want to become a “Master”, or a teacher, or another authority-enhancing title, and with a minimal effort. If we are a healing client we may want someone to do our personal work for us, to hand us all the answers so we can get back to life as usual. Very few of us enjoy the monotony of practice, and wrestling with a strong-willed being. We don’t want to let the Silver (Eighth) Chakra mess with us; we want the Gold (Ninth) Chakra to appear to us with the end result. Personal development is hard work.

Almost two hours later my uncomfortable relationship with the Lipizzan began to change me. My heels were down, not because of what I had been told but because, well, because that is how you stay on your horse as you descend a steep rocky trail. But you need to take care. Feet too close to his belly and it may trigger a cantering response, while too far away and you can slip off the horse’s back. Repetition results in competency. Also, my attention has been moving continually down, not through my feet chakras as usual but through Napolitano’s body, and into his hooves. I am no longer two legged, but a four-legged creature.

It’s now the end of the ride, and we are returning back up the hill. I’m standing up in the stirrups to shift my weight forward and off his back, to make the climb easier for him. My stubborn silver muncher is breathing harder, and our male competitive natures have relaxed and come together, so as to manage the steep climb efficiently. Then my heels accidentally touch his belly, and the Lippizan surges powerfully uphill, and we are joined as one. Silver is transformed into gold, and I am no longer the rider. For a few seconds I am centaur, and not just a man. Sightseeing is not why I am here; it is for this experience that I am here.

It is the day after my Higher Chakra Intensive in Germany and Yui and I are in Tuscany for Lipizzan horse riding, and to pay a visit to Florence. And I feel awful. The base of my neck is tightly contracted, and I have a headache. My brain is slow, and although I am functioning fine there are no thoughts in my mind. Oh, and it feels like someone is holding a flashlight over my forehead, and everything is very bright. Even with my eyes closed, and in a darkened room.

Welcome to chakra upgrade time. It’s not always fun.

With intellectual studies you can expect to feel tiredness after all your efforts. You may even have a normal tension headache. That’s to be expected. But with consciousness transformation studies, such as spending time with a spiritual teacher or the days following a meditation retreat, there are often physiological changes that may be a result of an energetic upgrade to your auric consciousness system. These upgrades may be uncomfortable or – as in my case – downright painful. They usually pass after a few days, and so there is nothing to do but wait for integration to happen. Discomfort is part of the price we all pay for change.

When we attend any kind of spiritual healing training we are not just spending time learning from the teacher, but we are making ourselves available to the spirit world that accesses the material and etheric world through that teacher. In previous blog entries I have stressed the need to assess your teacher thoroughly, as well as suggested some differences between initiation (transformation into a whole new stage of consciousness) and an “upgrade” (a shift in level of consciousness and chakra functioning). The ideal teacher has moved through various initiations and upgrades of their own, and can now act as a doorway for others. But you should know that an uninitiated/failed initiation teacher cannot fully initiate others; they can only unconsciously exploit the longing of their students for authentic initiation. They cannot take you to where they, themselves, have not evolved. And how to spot the difference? An initiated teacher helps you grow and become free to fly on your own; an un-initiated teacher keeps you in bondage to them.

At the Higher Chakra Intensive I would spend a lot of my time lying on the floor, closely attending to Rosalyn’s words, but mostly my eyes were closed and I was in a state of rest. Yes, I had jet-lag, and the Intensive was a welcome break from my busy private practice, but there was more was going on than mere recuperation. My system was being rewired, by the spirit helpers in the room.

I would not have trusted this “upgrade” process to anyone, or just to any energy healing event. In fact, on many occasions I have consciously erected psychic boundaries and rejected spirit beings who wanted to mess with my auric field. Why? Because it did not intuitively feel right to me at the time, and I seriously questioned their motivations. Just because spirit beings don’t have a body does not mean they always have our well-being as their highest priority. It is important not to confuse naivete with a healthy trust.

In my case, clearly the chakra upgrade work is centered around Talu chakra (brainstem), Sahasrara (crown chakra) and Ajna chakra (aka, the sixth chakra. Verification of my current state came from Yui, who experienced a similar upgrade experience at the similar Higher Chakra Intensive with Rosalyn many years ago. That’s how you get useful feedback, by the way: from someone who has been through the process themselves. Experience beats opinion hands down.

Upgrades occur in any chakra. If you are doing a creative movement or dance workshop, the upgrade can occur to Muladhara chakra; your physiology and balance may become altered. If you are doing emotional clearing or trauma healing work, the upgrade will be in Swadhisthana, your second chakra. You will begin to “feel” emotional attachments to others shift to a higher functional level, and you may gain increased emotional safety. And so on, up the chakra system. Upgrades will alter the chakra that is related to the issue you are transforming in your life.

So, before you grab your aspirin or head out for a CAT scan to search for physiological complications, wait a few days after your workshop or retreat. If the discomfort subsides, and your mind becomes still and clear, know that your energy consciousness system is “rebooting”, and you will be starting at a new level in your personal growth.

Be willing to be uncomfortable, upon occasion. The wiring of your auric system will always need to be upgraded in order for you to progress as a spiritual being … which means you will need to embrace upgrades and change. And change is not always fun.

There are two ways we can think about things. The way comes from understanding the world as it is given to us by others. We accept the statements and actions of people at their face value. We unsuspectedly allow ourselves to become a part of another’s world view, while also feeding a basic human need: to belong. However, in exchange for becoming a part of any group the “social” (or conditioned) mind moves us away from contact with our original (non-conditioned) mind.

The original mind is with us when we experience life for ourselves, directly, and outside agendas set by others. The original mind is not burdened by the past because it revels in the present moment. The original mind is not restricted by common-sense wisdom but stretches to embrace crazy wisdom. The original mind is not bound by the patterns of family heritage but can opt out of any system. The original mind is your non-dual or essential self; your social mind is merely adaptive to your family and your society.

Asian spiritual insight has known about the differences between these two minds for thousands of years, with only a small interest in non-dual philosophies such as Advaita. But the West is at a disadvantage with grasping the importance of the original mind because the experience of it offers runs counter-intuitive to the generally-accepted notions of how we should operate in the world. The social mind learns by gathering information from outside sources, and then taking it on as your own knowledge. You learn about the politics, for example, and then internalize that informational map as though it is the actual territory itself. In the grasp of the social mind you come to believe that people are actually are split into red and blue, conservative and liberal, deniers and non-deniers. The natural functioning of the social mind is for us to belong to a group or extended family, to choose one thing over the other. But one problem with this is that the information we are given is usually supportive of someone’s agenda, rather than being truly objective knowledge.

The original mind breaks free of the social mind once it learns thinks for itself, even though in doing so if may feel like it is skirting the edge of madness. But what the original mind drops us into is not the madness of a dysfunctional brain; it is merely disorientation, where all those things you were told were true suddenly are clearly not true. When the original mind takes over your awareness, if only for a few seconds, the world you thought was real becomes inauthentic, distorted, and hopelessly entangled in its own machinations. Any release from the social mind offers the opportunity to drop into original mind. You find yourself no longer a red, no longer a blue: you become aware of yourself in a totally new way. You no longer hide inside symbolic maps given to you by others, but start to walk the actual territory of information and experience by yourself.

Personal growth starts with the birth of a self that emerges from the narcissistic infant, and then moves into the relational world of the adult. But there is a dream within the dream; for the social mind is also another narcissistic world, albeit a shared experience with others. Only when the bubble of the social mind suddenly bursts are we awoken to the raw impact of original mind. Only when we wake up from this dream within a dream can we truly come to evolve to our full potential as spiritual adults.

Let’s learn to think for ourselves. Let us strive to see things as they are: with eyes of the authentic mind. The results will be nothing less than life-changing, because we can then begin to live the life we were meant to live, and not the life someone else wanted to give to us.