“You have really great energy,” the check out guy at Trader Joe’s said to me yesterday.
“Really?” I laughed. I had been sitting in my car crying five minutes before, feeling used and lost in a chatter of mental shame-bombing. “I’m actually in a really funky mood right now, so that’s surprising that you’re picking up on my energy as good,” I admitted. “Usually, I feel like I have pretty good energy, and it’s something that people have mentioned before, but right now, it feels like…ugh.”
“Well, I’ve seen a lot of people, every day, hundreds of them, and so when I see someone who has energy that stands out, I have to say it.”
And just like that, a beautiful reminder is given to me at the Trader Joe’s, a lesson that has definitely been a learning for me over these last 30 years. As much as I appreciated the noticing of my energy from the Trader Joe’s man, this comment segues to a larger belief I hold: we are all energetic beings. Therefore, we all have the ability to tap into, to exude, to be part of that positive energy force and flow. And yet, the challenge is how to do that in this world of constant stresses, systemic inequalities, internal and external conflicts, and hyped up/caffeinated/capitalistic/consumeristic mindset? And yet, anyone who knows me knows I’m an optimist, sometimes annoyingly so, and so, I believe there are ways.
Reiki, Imaging, and Cunts: Healing Forms
Last year, I did my Level 1 Reiki training, and I hope to continue this spring with more trainings. Reiki is a Japanese technique for healing and reducing stress. The Japanese word “Rei” means “Universal Life” and “Ki” refers to “Energy.” It is traced back to a Japanese monk, Usui, and has grown into various branches of a tree of systems, though the Usui System of Natural Healing is backbone. The Genesis story I had learned when I did my Level 1 training was about how Usui went up to meditate, seeking answers, and refused to come down until answers had been received. After 21 days of meditating, without food or water, he received symbols that he then realized, with the help of a monk he met as he walked down the hill, in a state of shock, were a system of energetic healing. He stubbed his toe on the way down and rather than cursing himself or the toe, he began to rub the energy field around the toe, to move healing energy toward it. This, in turn, made the pain subside.
Other healing techniques, like imaging, are quite similar to Reiki. Imaging is a process of imagining healing in a visceral way. One focuses on the the hurt part of the body (for me, right now, a stressed right heel that might be a muscle tear) to be whole, to be repaired, to be healthy. There are stories of folks who have miraculous healing in this way. While reading Inga Muscio’s book “Cunt: A Declaration of Independence,” she talks about how a combination of herbs, massage, and imaging helped her body to induce an abortion of a baby that she did not want. She does not at all, I must say, claim that this is the only way of having an abortion. It’s a fascinating insight, however, into the idea of self healing. What can we heal for ourselves? And, from the energetic standpoint, how much of it is actually ourselves doing the healing, rather than an energy that is around us, of us, within us? I want to note as well that the very notion of reading about cunts, and reclaiming the word and its entirety, is another very important form of healing for me.
Can Someone Own Energy?
When people have told me they feel my good energy, it recharges me, makes me glow a little bit more on the inside, because I know the energy is in them, too, and maybe in recognizing it in another they are also recognizing it in themselves. I like to give hugs (with permission), make extended eye contact (which many of my students have pointed out can be creepy…sorry, but not sorry). I also love giving, and receiving, massages as a way to connect. In understanding that there is this energy force field all around us, a consciousness through which we are born, we can see that there is tactile science to show tapping into the ether of things not always understood. I’m reading about this currently in Mark Gober’s fascinating, academic yet not over-the-top synthesis of quantum physics, mediums and psychic arts–“An End to Upside Down Thinking.”
I wonder, so often, how and when this energy likes to manifest. Is it the same energy that can connect a friend of mine who is a medium with the voice of my grandfather and channel him through? Is it the same energy that can lead me to have a dream and then watch as some iteration of that dream happens the next day? Is it the same energy that can anticipate calling someone and then receiving a call from them shortly after the thought? Energy, consciousness, spirit, connection. One of the reasons I enjoyed Reiki so much is because we were taught that the energy does not belong to us, the “healer,” at all. In fact, the one receiving the session could very well be called the healer. The energy is between and around us all, and just by drawing attention to it, one can better feel it, sense it, know it.
Can I Just Bypass the Hard Stuff and Ascend Already?
I am a creature who deeply values connection, and not just in one on one conversations, but in human beyond human interactions. In the sense that I deeply crave moments where I feel we all belong to one another, and to this earth. And yet, there is a part of me, as someone who has been called at times in my life, “too happy,” “puppies, rainbows and butterflies,” and “not able to handle hard stuff” that cautions, or at least, evaluates the need for that feel-good pull.
Spiritual bypassing is a term that really hit home when I first heard it a year or so ago. It is, in a sense, the notion that one can bypass all of the aches, problems, inequalities, and human-caused suffering that exists on this planet and ascend to the spiritual realm where we’re all equal. I believe in the spiritual realm, in a place where all of our consciousness comes from, belongs to, and returns to, a place where we decide, in some sense, who we want to be born as in this lifetime, what challenges we will struggle with, what we will overcome. AND I deeply hold that the human world we live in and create is not that spiritual fantasy world.
There are movements that require action, moments of discomfort that have to be explored, hard learnings that have to be unlearned. Everyone’s pain is unique, and so, somehow, universal, but that does not mean I can say I know what you’ve been through. Empathy as a practice is vital, but I will never know what it means to live in your skin, to walk with your feet, to see through your eyes. I can try, and that, often, is what it’s all about. The trying. Being connected in a spiritual or soul sense, as I believe, does not mean that the human injustices, inequalities, hurt, shame, and fear should just be ignored or transcended in meditation. I’ve been learning about this a lot, in small and big moments, over the last 30 years of my being, though more intentionally probably the last 8 years, and really, the last 2 years. The learning is lifelong.
I share these reflections on energy because I hope that you, dear reader, friend, family member, student, one of the 8 who might peruse these words, feels the power of your own energy, which is both yours and not yours at the same time. It doesn’t mean we have to amp up our positivity, smile and fake it to exude hugs and love all the time. Even when we’re in a funk, as I was yesterday, there can be something that touches someone else, and while that’s not the end goal, it’s certainly, for me, a nice reminder of the path. It’s yet another cairn, a memento, to show how connected we all are, and how much we do belong to one another.
