energetics

Energetics is a fairly new concept to have floating around in the general population.  Mystics and sages have known for eons that we were energy and subject to the laws of energy.  Lofty notions that matter vibrates, thoughts are things, change has a rhythm, All is in all and all is in All (which we have niftily named panentheism because we love new words) have found a foothold in a larger percentage of ordinary people.

This can be a good thing and this can be a difficult thing.

It’s fabulous because ordinary people are growing into their own Divinity.  I see more and more people who work in factories or have three kids understanding the world is their mirror.  I hear more and more people who’ve never taken a retreat to “work on themselves” say, “I have to watch what I say – words are power, you know.”  And they mean it and they understand what it really means.

This greater access to powerful concepts can also be difficult because our culture teaches us a lot of beliefs that are not in alignment with the highest of spiritual principles.  To say the least!  Slowly – and sometimes so slowly it feels like it’s going backwards – general consciousness IS elevating in vibration.  As this happens, our generally accepted beliefs will realign to the highest possible good.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, the belief in such fear-based notions as lack, limitation, and victimization run unchecked through our collective consciousness. 

One reason is we live in an economy that requires constant feeding.  This hungry beast demands we see ourselves as “less than” so we can “buy more.”  Take hair color as an example.  An entire billion dollar industry has grown around the simple notion our hair must never be grey or dark brown or whatever color it was we were born with.  If consumers (not citizens) stop buying then the monster gets hungry.  Jobs are lost, programs cut, the sick tossed onto the street, if you stop buying.  So, you are convinced that there’s something wrong with you AND this product will make you feel better. 

Another reason for the misalignment is the most prominent religions in western civilization are rooted in the notion of original sin, which means you’re born stained.  Most religions in alignment with Divine Principle tend to fall along the lines of Matthew Fox’s notion of Original Blessing, which teaches we are born into grace.  It’s a huge difference in philosophy!  If you were born Divine then you unfold divinity, not sin into the world around you.

Last but not least is a pervasive belief that the inner subconscious mind was stamped in childhood and nobody really knows what’s in there.  The most recent twist on this helpless theme is you are your genes and you have no control over your deepest nature.  This might explain how a man abused as a child can grow up to be a murderer.  It doesn’t explain, however, how the murderer’s twin brother became an emergency room doctor!  They were both abused and they have the same genes but one was destroyed and the other was forged.  The key role of personal choice gets stripped from both of these models.

Your beliefs and the expectations that are drawn out of those beliefs are like ribbons running through your energy field.  Whatever you send out is stamped and molded by these ribbons.  If those ribbons are in alignment with spiritual principles healing and manifestation occur easily and with fewer ‘surprises.’

Doing the personal work to clear out beliefs and expectations not in alignment is commonsense.  Yet I can’t tell you how many times I heard variations on the Spiritualist’s philosophy – “You make your own happiness or unhappiness as you obey or disobey Nature’s spiritual and physical laws.”  Yet whenever I asked “what are those laws?” nobody could give me a good answer.

Over time, I have learned that spiritual principles are found in many places under many different disguises.  You can find them in a small book on abundance (Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra).  You can find them in a popular self-help book for life management (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey).  You can find them on Internet sites - The Principles of Attitudinal Healing (what site was that).   You can find them in your religion’s sacred texts - The Spiritualist’s credo or the Peace Prayer, by St. Francis of Assisi.

Most, however, have certain key characteristics. 

1. Spiritual principles begin with the certainty of Divine Presence.  A spiritual principle varies from a religious tenet in a reluctance to get into the definition of that presence.  Spiritual principles tend to focus on the experience of Divinity and how to build a relationship with the divine.  Any time you define you limit and most spiritual principles are about expanding into a full awareness of Divinity – not placing a box around It.
2. Spiritual principles are life affirming.  They celebrate and rejoice in the process of life, love, and the beauty of it All.   Any principle that promotes alienation, segregation, superiority or brutality is not a spiritual principle.  It’s a principle based on fear and lack.  The universe, instead, is a friendly place where the drama and dance of life unfolds exactly the way it should. 
3. Spiritual principles usually acknowledge that the world changes – change is, in fact, the only constant – and it is part of life to work with this principle of flow.  Life consists of birth, growth, maturity, decline and death.  Each of these is a stage in the cycle of life.  Drawn from this affirmation is the notion spirit itself is unchanging.  Anything is permitted on this plane because nothing is permanent.   
4. Spiritual principles tend to encourage self-love.  If you are a Divine Child of the Most High, sacred in all your glory and in all of your “bits still in process,” created from the Great Divine, then forgiveness and compassion have to start with yourself. 
5. Spiritual principles tend to cultivate inner peace.  They often propose gratitude, acceptance, compassion and grace as a preferred response to the conditions, people and events of our lives.
6. Spiritual principles view truth is the cornerstone of integrity and integrity as the foundation of personal responsibility.  These principles tend to shift the responsibility for your actions and reactions on yourself.  Concepts such as karma, ‘the world is the mirror of inner reality,’ and ‘you sow as you reap’ are axioms grown out of this principle.
7. Spiritual principles tend to acknowledge duality as two poles of a richly nuanced spectrum – not two sides of a coin.  To fully understand attraction and repulsion you need to understand that they are embedded a single principle of “drawn to” and somewhere in the middle is a place of neutrality. From a spiritual perspective evil is a misunderstanding of principle.  Very few people are born inherently evil – and that is even now being understood as a mal-development of cognition.  Time after time spiritual principle demonstrates hardened criminals locked away in prisons for the rest of their lives awaken to the divinity within and are forever transformed. 
8. Spiritual principles advocate disciplines that cultivate personal presence.  Meditation, prayer, contemplation, gratitude, blessing – these are core practices all over the world that cultivate personal divinity.  They clear your mind, connect you to Divinity, contribute to others, etc.
9. Spiritual principles usually encourage us to serve others.  If the Divine moves to me, through me and as me into the world, I must be the Divine I am seeking.

This list isn’t in any way an exhaustive list but it’s a start to understanding spiritual principles that cross culture and definition.