• Economy of Effort,  Philosophy

    Life Energy

    August 24, 2009

    Carbon footprint my eye!  Do we not see that we are doing the same thing to our own life energy that we do to mother earth?  We are expensing it out as if it is re-imbursable:  as if we can replenish it?  Life energy is precious and is inherent in everyone.  We must use it every single day.   It is what allows us to express ourselves, take action and be who we are and the absence of it creates death and decay.

    Every single effort we make has a life energy cost.  That energy that is negative depletes the most.  This is why we over-sleep when depressed, our body yearns for the opportunity to heal itself, which is best accomplished while sleeping.  Postive energy restores our life energy, we can feel the power of a smile and we know from science that laughter is healing.

    This life energy that I speak of is more than physical, it is emotional, mental and spiritual, it embodies the soul in this physical manifestation.  When your soul hurts your life energy drains.  You can attack your life energy in any number of ways, all of these means are available to you:  You can attack your life energy through your physical self, by using drugs and alcohol or overworking and over-extending.  You can attack your life energy emotionally by being angry or chronically sad, you can attack your life energy by consistently harboring resentful thoughts that create negative emotions.  You can attack your life energy by being spiritually bereft.

    Emmett Fox wrote that anger is a punishment of self.  It does not matter if the anger is justified, it does not matter that you have good reasons for anger, it is the same as drinking arsenic.  Arsenic does not care why you have ingested it, it will kill you all the same – no matter what reason you consumed it.  Life energy operates in the same way, it does not matter why you use it or how you use it, you simply consume it.  If you waste precious life energy on strenuous angry outbursts, then you have decided to spend your life energy in this way.  Your life energy drains, no matter what the reason is that you extend it.

    If you care for your life energy you must be careful and husband it as you would a life giving garden.  There are times when we become entranced with our own forward momentum and do not check our emotional and physical self, we plunge ahead carelessly brutalizing our energy until it closes down.  The outward manifestation of this phenomena is fatigue, nervous breakdown or illness.  Your body and your soul will literally crash and burn until you have gained the rest and the regeneration necessary to return to life activities.

    The opposite of this phenomena also occurs when we do not use our energy and it implodes on us.  This will happen as a result of not using our energy enough or even productively enough, boredom will lead to destructive energy which is quenched with hard feelings.  This implosion is often indicated by dis-satisfaction, restlessness and an unwillingness to find peace.  In the Victorian era it was called ennui and it was all the rage in the wealthy set.

    You may replenish your life energy in many ways, yet it is never fully replaced.  This is called the process of aging.  It is the ongoing process of life, it does not end, nor does it begin with this physical manifestation that is your current body.  Each life is an opportunity to spend life energy in ways that give to the universe or ways that take from the universe.  To give to the universe you extend your life energy to others, you may do this by parenting, you may do this by contributing yourself to good work, you may do this by being a gentle and loving soul, you may give to the universe in many ways.  If you choose to take from the universe, it is your challenge to harm others; to take from the life energy of people and the life energy of earth.  Many people live in this way, often they are unquenched consumers who live through others’ life energy by taking from them economically, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

    I am often amazed at how life energy is utilized.  I am just as often dismayed.  Life energy is so precious, so potent, so filled with possibilities, how can it possibly be wasted and destroyed?  My wish is that life energy be realized and appreciated for all that it is.  By giving we replenish life energy and by taking we drain life energy.  In this sense, it is much like a carbon footprint, what do you leave behind when you go?

    Read More
  • Personal Growth,  Speaking as a Parent

    Traveling Down a New Road…

    August 10, 2009

    I’m stressing because life is changing and my belief system is being berated!  Anyone who has ever been around a Libra knows that making decisions is a slow and determined process.  Additionally I am especially agonizing because my upbringing was matriarchal with a strong independent streak.  This is part of that unwanted belief structure that I was practically born with.  Having a strong, matriarchal independent streak makes me less likely to listen to a man’s advice.  That’s bad, because it shuts out opportunities for insight and wisdom.  I don’t mean to do this, but I will automatically question motivations of anyone I am speaking with.  Because I have spent decades as a counselor, I tend to dismiss folks who have a personal agenda that they are using me to try to accomplish.  What I would like to experience instead is a conversation in this moment that has any number of different purposes and interesting motivations.  Why be judgmental and dismissive?  Just be aware.  It’s okay and even likely that people will have personal agendas in any conversation.  My smug satisfaction at my insightful abilities has led me a merry chase.  I am now finding difficulty with plain and clear acceptance.

    Because I am tired and because I am in transition, acceptance of others and acceptance of the universe, as it is now, seems an elusive goal.  Yet that is what I wish for with all of my heart.  I am surprised and amazed at what it is like to be 50 years old.  I find that who I am is at war with my picture of my mother.  There is DNA I want to keep and DNA that I want to discard.  My ability to choose between those two seems limited.  My mother was entranced with this concept that her children must be “happy”.  I too, travel that road.  I would be a fool to think that – that road is a healthy one.  It is okay for my children to be unhappy, indeed it is part of the fabric of our lives as humans.  I cannot and should not make an effort to protect them from what is inherently an adult life.  And here is where men’s wisdom comes in.  It is my observation that men are much better at making demands of their offspring.  It is my observation that men are much better at allowing their children to hurt.  There is even a culture of “toughening them up” which seems prevalent in a father’s point of view about child rearing.

    So here is where my mother’s DNA seems to get in the way of me making current choices: I want to coddle my children and protect them from hurt.  In the absence of their father, there is no one around to balance my requirement that my children be “happy”.  This seems to create a culture in my family of dependence on me.  I hand out twenty dollar bills and kisses when I should be kicking ass.  I have to make different choices and I have to listen to a man’s wisdom – how does that fit with being fiercely, independently matriarchal?

    Well, my experience is that it is like rowing upstream.  It is intensely difficult and I often backslide.  My old friends in the recovery profession (drug treatment providers) call what I do, “relapse”.  But now, now, much more is at stake than the daily grind.  We shift, we change, we begin something new.  We are moving on as a family.  There are new definitions out there, new possibilities for DNA, our characteristics do not have to be written in stone, or even written in history.  We can, we must, be different and that requires me to change.  That requires that I be open to a different universe, a universe that includes a man’s point of view.

    Read More