Lesson 3

 

ENERGY EXERCISE WITH AN ORANGE

 

“Through World Contemplate World”

~Lao Tzu

 

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When Alex Grey, the visionary artist famous for his book, The Sacred Mirrors, traveled to the North Pole in search of insight about the principle of polarity, he found himself performing an impromptu ritual in the middle of a vast desert of snow. He had made his way to the magnetic North Pole, the place all compass needles point to, where all the lines of the Earth’s magnetic force converge. Grey found out that instead of being in one constant position on the map, the magnetic North Pole “wanders” in a circle about one hundred miles in diameter, so he reasoned that he, too, must wander in a circle in order to capture the essence of this mysterious phenomenon. In a work entitled Polar Wandering, he photographed himself walking, naked, a circular pattern in the dazzling snowscape. He would later describe the experience as an ecstatic ritual act.

 

Grey was using an ancient style of reasoning: If the Earth and natural world around me behave in a certain way, then I come into harmony with her and learn her secrets by emulating what she does. The patterns that run deep in nature are among the most ancient starting points for conscious ritual. When we trace the contours of a natural cycle with our mind, senses and imagination, or even emulate them through ritual, our awareness is invited into what the ancients thought of as a basic idea in the mind of God. The patterns that run deep in nature also run deep in us, and our energy healing practices partake of this as well.

 

Our spiritual ancestors had great reverence for the natural world. They understood Nature to be the mirror of the Cosmos and their spiritual “technology” was what they had at hand. In ritual, when we consciously mirror the cosmos with love, mindfulness and heart in our small worlds, we are learning about the place “where the inner and the outer worlds meet," and we invite connection with the great cosmos. This, again, is the basis for all effective ritual. Each natural cycle, down to the tiniest sub-microscopic event in a drop of pond water, is a mirror of the cosmos as electrons gyrate like planets around an atom’s nucleus. The Dervish whirls, turning a spinning orbit around his teacher, replicating the motion of the planets around the Sun. Soon, the Dervish’s consciousness is drawn into the cycling of the heavenly bodies.

 

This may be a universal step into spiritual awareness: the experience of being part of something vastly bigger than our individual selves. What follows is a meditative exercise that demonstrates this idea. Exercises like this one have been used for eons to help humans to, as the poet Blake put it, “. . . see the world in a grain of sand.”

 

Exercise 1: Contemplation of an Orange

 

Preparation:

For this exercise, you will need an orange.

 

      

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Exercise 2: Now You are the Orange

Our examination of the orange revealed that it has a “north pole,” and a “south pole.” It also has a core of fiber that connects these two poles through its center. Close examination reveals that the same fiber that makes up this core also forms the orange’s skin. Like the orange, you—or to be more precise, your personal energy field—also have a “north pole” and a “south pole,” and an energetic core connects the two and this core is of one piece with the rest of the energetic sheath that makes up your individual aura.

 

In the practice that follows, we will travel pathways we learned from our ally, the orange.

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Energy-Active Positions used in this Exercise:

• Crown Center: The easiest way to connect your awareness with your Crown Center is to move your attention to the highest point on the top of your head, then find a position slightly forward of that and slightly up in your hair.

• Heart Center: This will be the beginning and the end of this pilgrimage. Locate it in the middle of your chest.

• Perineum Center: This is an energy-active position located at your perineum, between your anus and your genitals.

• South Pole: If you were to drop a slow, conscious line straight down from your perineum to a position that feels to your inner senses like it is about three feet (one meter) in the floor or ground below the level of your feet. If you are sitting on the floor or the ground, you will get a feeling contact with your energetic South Pole by moving your awareness to what feels to you like three feet below your perineum.

• North Pole: To locate this position, move your awareness slowly, consciously straight upward from your Crown to a position that feels (again, to your inner senses) like it is about three feet (one meter) above your head. This might be regarded as the “north pole” of your personal energy field.

 

Spend some time locating each of these positions before you take them into an exercise. This way, they will have the time and attention they need in order to “bloom” in your awareness. The advantage to doing this is that you will then know how to find them more easily when it comes time to use them in an exercise.

 

Now, finally, the exercise:

 

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Homework: Nature Observation

In the week to come, do one of the Orange Exercises each day, alternating between the two you have learned. During that time, spend some time outdoors. Have a close look at natural forms in your environment. Take note of geometric shapes in nature, circles, spheres, squares, triangles, living shapes with a center and a way for the center to communicate with the periphery. Our friend, the orange, for example, has a central core that is made of the same fibers that create its surface skin.

 

In our next lesson, we will focus on something we talk about all the time in context of natural healing and thought, namely holism, the idea that all of nature, including our energy fields, is arranged as a whole system. But what does it mean and why is it an important recurring theme in our energywork practice?

 

(Orange exercise graphics copyright by Aimee Eldridge. Used with permission.)

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Lesson #4 is about another perennial theme in energy healing, namely Holism. When you're ready to roll, click here.