(This is part 1 of a series called "Wax On, Wax Off!")
This series, "Wax On, Wax Off," is dedicated to fundamental energy skills. These are the skills we have to gain some facility with before we can do energywork with some degree of ease and confidence. The first port of call was to be the skill of connecting consciously with the energy that moves through your own body and energy field.
But what happened next? No sooner did I set that goal than an email arrived from a reader about issues having to do with settling in. This got us into an exploration of external and internal distractions and also the desirability of establishing some kind of dropping in ritual. But enough of that—it's time to talk about basic energy connection itself.
Simple Energy Connection
Remembering that "simple" does not always mean "easy," here are three basic elements of conscious energy connection in your own body and energy field. You can write them on the back of your hand:
Feeling Connection
Relaxed Attention
Neutral Intention
These three elements are the shorthand version. Let's look closer at each of these elements:
Feeling Connection: This is a kinesthetic feeling connection with some place on your body, for example, or with an energy-active position on your body, such as an energy center. This is way different from visualizing it, imagining it or thinking about it, isn't it? This means you deliberately drop your center of awareness into the area you are connecting with. It is exactly the same faculty that lets you move your awareness around in your body so that you can feel your nose or the left side of your left big toe.
Try it: After settling in, deliberately drop your awareness into your left hand. After a minute, see if you can find the center of your palm and bring your awareness there.
Relaxed Attention: Once you have made a feeling connection with your body or an energy-active position, "loosen" your attention. Make it fuzzy. This is the opposite of rigid concentration or fixing your attention immovably in one place. The reason for this is simple: if you want to connect with energy, connected but loose awareness is a key to allowing your awareness to be drawn into its movement. This results in a deeper connection that you would get with rigid concentration in which you fix yourself in one place.
How loose should your awareness be? Take a tip from Sam Snead when he described how tight to hold a golf club: it's like ". . . holding onto a baby bird: . . . firmly enough that it can't fly away, but not so firmly that you crush the thing."
Translation: This is the art of turning your awareness toward something and connecting with it, but not so much that your attention becomes fixed and rigid; then relaxing the grip of your attention, but not so much that you lose the connection.
Try it: When you have connected your awareness with the center of your left palm, relax your attention while staying connected. (This takes practice.)
Neutral Intention: This means you slip into a state of mind in which you are not trying to make anything happen and you are not trying to keep anything from happening.
That last sentence is sometimes hard to get on the first bounce, so read it again.
Once you have made a feeling connection with an energy-active position and you have relaxed your attention, this is the time to settle in and allow nature to take its course. Here is where you stop trying to make things happen. From that point, energy connection is something you allow to happen.
My assumption here: It is the nature of the energy that flows in and around your body to draw your awareness, sooner or later, into a deeper connection. Again, it's not something you can force, but it is something you can allow to happen.
Try it: You have made a connection and you have loosened it while staying connected (this means you can still feel it). Now, shift into neutral and pay attention to what happens. Remember, you are not trying to make anything happen and you are not trying to prevent anything from happening.
Simple.
This takes practice.
"Wax on, wax off."
***
Exercise
Here is a 15 minute exercise with your Hand Centers in the centers of your palms and your Heart Center. Every connection has these three elements: a feeling connection; relaxed attention; neutral intention.
After settling in:
Drop your awareness into your left Hand Center in the center of your palm. Allow your connection to deepen. 1 minute.
Disconnect and slowly move your awareness into your Heart Center. You can move either up your arm or on a straight line from position to position. Key: When you move your awareness between positions on or off your body, don't hurry and don't stop.
Connection at your Heart Center. 1 minute.
Disconnect and slowly move down to your right Hand Center and make a connection. 1 minute.
Disconnect and move slowly across to your left Hand Center and make a connection. 1 minute.
Repeat 1 - 5.
Move your awareness to all three connections, Hands and Heart and then place your awareness in the triangle you have created. 1 minute.
Disconnect from this Hands-Heart triangle and sit quietly, allowing what comes up in you to do so. 5 minutes.
DIVING DEEPER: You can find an audio walk-through of this exercise, as well as other exercises that build on this basic energy connection skill, in two places:
My online course through DailyOM.com, "When Energy Healing Meets Meditation" (This is marketed by DailyOM under the title "8 Weeks to Inner Peace.")
My meditation CD, "Inner Pilgrimages: Journeys into the World of Energy and Consciousness."
NEXT UP: Back to Distractions (ugh!), but this time we go into useful distractions, making use of the basic skill I describe in this posting.
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Illustration by Aimee Eldridge. Used by permission.
Copyright© 2017 by Jim Gilkeson. All rights reserved.