Energy Field Survival Tips for Sensitives

Silver Chalice E-zine Exclusive ~ Feature Article

This has been a very challenging year for sensitives so far. The Energy Field onslaught has been intense and pretty relentless.

You have probably noticed recurring — or continuous! — feelings of despair, overwhelm, grief, depression, and/or tension.

While the Wicca Spirituality Fanpage on Facebook and to a lesser extent WiccaSpirit onTwitter have given sensitives guidance on this energy field, the situation is fairly drastic and we need more help than those limited mediums can offer.

On top of which, we should take full advantage of the vital opportunities these fields offer for the healing for ourselves and for the Earth!

So in this issue, we'll take a deeper look at these recurrent energy fields and how to keep afloat when they threaten to swamp you.

Carrying the Weight of the World

These days it often feels to sensitives like you're carrying the whole world's grief and anxiety on your shoulders.

Life feels hard, demanding, unproductive, even brutal.
Things are coming at you so fast it seems like you're getting swept backward.
You feel like you are struggling to keep afloat while everything around you sinks.
A lot of old patterns and problems keep coming up, as if begging you to clear them once and for all.
Emotionally you may be battling — off and on — feelings of . . .

depression,

sadness,

hopelessness,

despair,

rage,

tension,

anxiety.

And it's been going on for what seems like forever.

This describes various the energy fields that sensitives have been living with for months. It's hard enough to deal with this for a short period, but it's gone on for so long it's beginning to feel like this is just how life is, and no end is in sight.

This idea, of course, strengthens the negative effects of this energy field.

It has been hard work to keep afloat during all this. I know I often feel like I'm going under. A large portion of my energy most days goes to just keeping my head above these dark and turbulent waters.

In fact, I've been beginning to doubt it's an energy field at all, thinking there's something wrong in me or in my life.

Except that all the sensitives I know are experiencing exactly the same thing!

The First Steps In Energy Field Survival

So that is Step 1 for sensitives in surviving this intense energy field — know that it's not you. You are just one of the many sensitives caught up in an energy that is big and really heavy. See if you can step aside a little and watch it happening, without getting caught up in the illusion that it's about you.

Step 2 is knowing that it's bigger than you. Don't be hard on yourself because you haven't been able to shake it off. The best that most sensitives can do in these times is recognise what's going on and try to keep afloat during this storm.

Or, perhaps more accurately, to keep resurfacing.

What IS Going On?

This energy field seems to be a phenomenon of a turning point.

There is a huge shift going on, and it will go easier on us if we accept all the insecurity and uncertainty that comes with it. This change is ultimately for the good.

Which brings us to Step 3: Letting go and trusting that the Divine will uphold you, trusting that this all serves the greater good in the end.

(Luckily, that trust is a strong ability in sensitives.)

A Circle sister of mine used an analogy of the turning at the Solstices. In our elliptical orbit, the Earth is heading out away from the Sun, and as it gets to the farthest reaches of its gravitational string, the tension mounts... Will we break free and go flying off into the void of space, of will the Sun catch us and pull us back around again? This feels just like what's been happening. It's like we're at the far reach of an elastic band, trembling with the tension and stress in the strand, poised and hovering in the wilderness ... just before the direction reverses and we head for home once more.

This is Step 4 for sensitives in surviving this field: knowing that this too shall pass.

And I believe that when it turns around, we'll be heading into an improved version of life — in part thanks to all the work we sensitives have done to ease through this difficult transition! Let's call this Step 5.

This optimistic outlook alone undoes a lot of the drag of this energy field.

The Astrological Issues

I am becoming more convinced that some of these Energy fields are linked to, if not caused by, astrological events.

For instance, there is a T-square alignment of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto that has been active since 2008 and lasts through 2012. (There's that year again!) This means that Saturn and Uranus are in opposition to each other (180° apart), and Pluto forms a 90° square from each side.

This augurs tense confrontations between Saturn and Uranus — between clinging to structure, resistance, and fear ... and an impulse toward freedom, transformation, and breakthrough.

These Saturn-Uranus oppositions work on all of us — not just sensitives — individually, and culturally. They are linked, for example, to intense societal polarization, reforms, and backlashes.

Which is Step 6 — remember that you're not in it alone! We're all here paddling along with you.

Now add in Pluto's square, and the dynamic becomes so compelling as to be obsessive! It also heralds progressive steps toward personal empowerment and social liberty.

"As Tarnas documents in Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View (2006), Saturn-Pluto alignments regularly coincide with periods and events that evoke feelings of overpowering threat and pressure, darkest catastrophe and grim urgency, along with a corresponding empowerment of and sometimes overreaction by the conservative impulse in society. ...
"Overall, then, we are witnessing the confluence of very extreme energies. These are exceedingly challenging times, as many people experience overwhelming feelings of shock, breakdown, and rude awakening.

- Renn Butler, Hard Labor and Rebirth in the Psyche - The Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T-Square.

Doesn't this describe what we've been going through, both individually and in society?

So this astrological event gives us a context for our feelings that seems tangible. It even gives me cause for hope, that this difficult rebirth we've been struggling toward as a planet is now, actually, truly at hand!

Staying Afloat In Stormy Waters

I keep using the analogy of trying to swim in stormy waters. This is exactly what it feels like to many sensitives. This energy field keeps dragging at our heels, as if trying to pull us under. Our emotions around all this are rough waves that keep slapping us and making us come up coughing. We're like waterlogged eagles: we can't fly from this state. It's foolish to even try.

The task therefore is to try to float on the surface of the waters, and hold on to whatever logs we can find to buoy ourselves up.

The first 6 Steps we've looked at in energy field survival deal with keeping afloat:

Know it's not you, and it's not personal
Know it's bigger than you and you are not expected to fly right now
Release into change and allow it to unfold, entrusting yourself to the Divine
Know it's temporary and will pass
Know that we're all doing this work with you
Keep up your optimism: the work you're doing now will make an improved life and world

The next steps deal with holding onto logs to help support you.

The Life Rafts

The standard tools that sensitives use for spiritual practice and emotional balance may not be working for you as well as usual.

This is not failure on your part.

While you may find it more difficult to meditate, say, and while it may seem that it's not really helping, the problem really is that these energy fields keep returning.

The practices you do ARE helping, even if it seems to only help for a moment. But every little bit you do actually ERASES a bit of this energy field. Back to our analogy of sinking in stormy waters, it's like you scoop out a bucket of water near you with each prayer, but then more water fills the void.

This would seem pretty hopeless, if you were the only one scooping.

But all us sensitives in this together, and all of us scooping with our various spiritual practices and tools really DO make a dent in this ocean we're feeling adrift in.

So Step 7 is to make sure you are doing your spiritual practices every day. You may do new ones, or rediscover old ones, but do something!

In times like this, you need spiritual practice more than you need food! (Unfortunately, you may only notice that when you emotionally collapse for lack of soul nurturance.)

In fact, if you've been noticing yourself craving a lot of sweets or comfort foods in the past few months, that's a signal that you are needing more spiritual sustenance.

Step 8 is to be easy on yourself. Give yourself lots of down-time, and spent it quietly in nature (or a reasonable facsimile thereof, such as a botanical garden, or even listening to nature music and tending your houseplants).

Don't be too demanding of yourself. A lot of your energy is going to this energy work right now, and you can't be expected to take on a lot of additional burdens.

Be gentle and encouraging with yourself, as you would with any new mother giving birth for the first time. That's basically what you're doing. So honour this work, and honour yourself for doing it.

Step 9: Make sure you do something fun every day. Give yourself opportunities to be creative, to express yourself. Play with life a little more.

You may need to make a conscious effort to do that, these days.

Step 10 is basic energy protection. Cut out all news and common media. The extremely low energy-level of these will drag you down faster than anything! This goes as well for any books that are about evil, anger, violence, vengeance, despair, etc.

And the corollary to that is Step 11 — Input as much inspiration, joy, hope, and love as you can. I get these feelings from reading (or watching) inspirational materials, playing with children, cuddling with cats, watching moving water....

Mostly, though, putting your feet to Mother Earth is one of the best ways to realign to a positive energy flow.

Other Energetic Water Wings

Step 12 is to use some other tools that help either uplift your energy field or keep you clear of the heavy energy fields for a while. Here are some tools that help sensitives keep their heads above water.

Sing! Sing mantras and bhajans (devotional songs). Few things can shift and uplift your energy fields like the physical and spiritual vibration of mantras.
Divination helps you reinterpret what's going on, from the soul perspective.
It also helps in these times just to have that connection with a loving, caring Deity and knowing you're not alone, and you're not being punished. You get a renewed sense that everything is really okay, that it's all part of the journey, and that you are loved and supported through it all. These are gifts of divination.
Do a whole lot of Divine Light Invocations. In an intense energy field, this can shift energy amazingly. Do three in a row. Do ten or more a day. It really helps.
Breathe with the Goddess' Breath. This helps realign your field to accept that everything is okay, and much better than okay.
Ask your Allies, Angels, matron deities, etc for help. They are here to help you, especially with this work which heals the world.
Use the exercises in Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires. to shift negative mind-patterns and emotions to more positive, beneficial ones.
Self-Reiki every morning or night. You can do this by placing your hands on your crown chakra at the top of your head, and invoking with authority: "I invoke the healing energy of Reiki" or "I invoke the health and well-being energy of Reiki." You can also invoke "of the Divine," "of the Goddess," or whatever else works for you.
Go through each chakra this way. Let yourself open to the energy, and feel how it feels in your body to have this energy filling you.
Also include your Wishing Tree chakra, which is right at the point where your rib cages meet above your belly — this is the centre from which we ask for what we want, and it's helpful to have that purified so we are only asking for the best things.
Once you've done all your chakras, place one hand on your chest and one on your belly, and feel for when the vibrations of the two come into harmony. You may just feel it as a sensation of "done, complete."
It's also helpful to brush your aura with a feather after as well.
Use the Invoking Qualities practice given in the last Silver Chalice.
Tonglen meditation seems well-suited to this astrological configuration. In tonglen, you breathe in suffering, transform it within you with the help of the Divine, and exhale love, peace, kindness, etc. In this way you are healing the pain of the world, with your own into the bargain.
Exercise to burn off the physical, biochemical components of tension and unhappiness. Walking is wonderful for this, or swimming, and easy on the body as well.
Do the LBRP (Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram).
Here's a tip from my friend Colombe to empower the LBRP even more. As you "dive" into the pentagram, pull up on your perineum and open your eyes wide in a bulging fashion. This is an energy activation from Qi Gong.
Another helpful practice, especially to clear an energy field that has penetrated deep into your cells, is this visualization my spouse Jamie led me through one day —
Imagine yourself in a dark room. All around you are lush tropical plants, but you can't really see them. There's a showerhead above you, one of those large old-fashioned kind that lets down water like a gentle rainfall. The water begins to flow out over you, and it is the perfect temperature.
This is special water. It is polarized to attract and hold on to negative energy fields. As it washes over your head and skin, it catches the energy field vibrations and carries them away, down the drain where they are processed by the Earth into healing energy.
As this cleansing happens, the room begins to lighten, the green of the plants become more visible.
As your exterior layer is cleansed, the water begins to flow through the inside of you, inch by inch, cleansing and carrying away the uncomfortable vibrations, until you are clear to the very core.
The room you are in is now brightly sunlit, the green of the plants glowing with health and beauty.
Now the water does one last thing. It sets up a protective vibration inside each cell and atom, which acts as a barrier to any negative energy field. This will help keep you clear of it in the future.
This may need to be repeated regularly, in the Energy field we are currently experiencing, but it does help for a time at least.

Step 13: Download this list of these steps and put it up where you will see it every day, to remind yourself when you're swamped of how to get up above the waterline once again.

Beyond Surviving

These survival steps help sensitives cope with this intense energy field. But can we sensitives go beyond surviving into thriving, using this to empower our healing transformation?

The answer is found in the T-square alignment of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto.

This is a time of rebirth. As Butler puts it —

"A new consciousness is struggling to be born on this planet and we are entering the final stages of intense hard labor.
"Like being pressed in a steel trap, old ways of thinking are being exposed and undermined as a new consciousness emerges in our species, a more globally connected, inwardly satisfied, and sustainable way of being."

So this is not just random struggle and suffering. We are feeling what we're feeling because it is part of the birthing process of this new human consciousness.

With that awareness, what has been an experience of misery is suddenly transformed into the pain that comes with the sweetness of new life! This is the time we have been waiting for, and working toward.

So how can we best contribute to this global process? We can be real. We can be in the process, and paying attention to how it manifests in us — the feelings, the fears, the negative patterns.

And we can consciously act to align ourselves with the future we want, the enlightened human consciousness that is calling to us.

In the same article, Butler concludes —

"This is one of those times when we are being forced to face our inner energies and emotions and let them flow into consciousness. Reminded of the inevitability of death, of our human mortality and fragility, old structures and illusions in the collective psyche are being burned away.
"The deepest contribution each of us can make is to honestly face our own unconscious emotions. Feel the fear and terror of this time. It is real.
"Whatever we feel inside us we automatically consume and release from our systems, with a corresponding release in the external world."

Emptying Our Mental / Emotional Pockets

Squeezing through this birth canal into the Earth's new life, anything we're carrying gets stuck. Old patterns, false beliefs, ego-based thoughts can't come through with us. So a lot of the disruption we're feeling is those blockages PRESSING ON US.

In other words, a lot of the emotions that are going on are so intense because they are coming from deep within you. Your deepest emotional habits and wounds are being triggered big time.

All kinds of psychological gunk is flying around on the surface, instead of hiding where (we like to think) no one sees it. Including — especially! — us.

They are coming to our attention this way, so we can deal with them and clear them out. the emotions and moods you're experiencing are the signposts of these dysfunctional patterns and beliefs.

Our job, then, is to take note of what old patterns and beliefs are being called up.

We must remember that, as sensitives, we not only feel these things more readily, but we have a greater ability to heal them. That healing heals everyone... a little bit more with each person who does it.

For instance, a common experience in these times is that things are coming at us really fast. As one friend put it, it's like rushing down the rapids in a kayak, trying to deal with this boulder and that log and half a dozen other looming disasters at the same time.

Let's call that reality. The question then is: What feelings does this bring up in you? What thoughts and beliefs does it trigger?

For example...

"Life is hard and dangerous."
"Everything is falling apart and I've got to somehow keep it together."
"I'm in way over my head."
"I'm all alone with no one to help me."
"I'm not good enough / I'm failing."
"I can't keep up."
"I'm being punished / God has it in for me."
"I'm not safe."
"There is just not enough time / money / etc."

With this process you are being called to clear out the mental habits that hamper you. Pay attention to what you tell yourself about what you DON'T want to do. And then reframe it! Turn it around so you look at the positive aspects. Approach from the other side, and give your attention and anticipation to what you DO want.

When you've noticed your feelings and identified the thoughts behind them, you can begin to heal them.

For this, I especially recommend the exercises in the Abraham-Hicks book, Ask and It Is Given. (Read the book review.) This is a wonderful book, over half of which is devoted to simple exercises you can do to immediately shift your energy state.

For this energy field, the Focus Wheel is particularly helpful.

The Abraham-Hicks Key

A key point in Abraham-Hicks is that you can't simply jump from feeling rotten to feeling great, from a very low energy calibration to a very high one. (Learn more about energy / emotion calibration, in the upcoming book: The Energy-Field Survival Guide for Sensitives, Mystics, and Modern ShamansIn other words, you can't leap from shame to unconditional love, skipping all the energy states (emotions) in between. But you can change your focus, and thus your energy state, bit by bit, moving up the levels to a much more positive state.

Which means, you will shift from manifesting negative events into your life, to manifesting positive events into your life.

You can shift your energy state, but if you try to go too far too fast, your mind will reject it as unbelievable or impossible, and it won't "stick." Or you may buy it for now, only to experience a strong backlash reaction later.

The key is to shift your energy calibration a bit at a time. The Focus Wheel exercise, or my version, the Focus Spiral exercise, helps you do that. To learn the Focus Wheel exercise, please refer to the Abraham-Hicks book, Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires. Here's an affirmation that will be helpful to sensitives at this time:

"I can choose to see things as a little better than I usually do. In time, I will see things as being wonderful, and they will be."