Living in the World of Energy

Managing Light and Dark Energies

Aug 05, 2024

Many years ago while meditating, a rabbit spontaneously showed up in my meditation. I asked the rabbit, “what are you doing here?” It jumped up on a table, stretched out, put its head on one of its feet, crossed its legs, taking on a cartoon quality and said “Lighten up.” At that time I interpreted that message in three ways: (1) lighten up, meaning don’t take things so seriously, (2) lighten up, as let go of stuff I was carrying, like guilt, anger, regret, etc. and (3) lighten up, as in energetically, vibrate at a higher level. It wasn’t until I began my journey into Andean shamanism and energy medicine that I came to understand what the rabbit may have really been talking about.

We are energy beings, and we engage the world of living energy through our energy bodies. This energy body is a bubble of energy that surrounds and infuses our physical body. It has an outer layer that prevents heavy disordered energy from penetrating and infiltrating deep into the energy field. However, if we don’t cleanse the heavy energy from the surface of our energy body, it can build up over time and seep more deeply into the energy body. As this dark, heavy and incompatible energy penetrates more deeply, it affects our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states. The deeper it goes the worse the symptoms become and the greater the loss of well-being.

The material in this post is taken from Joan Parisi Wilcox’s wonderful book, Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru. Wilcox points out that from the shaman’s point of view the work of us humans is to establish and maintain a relationship with everything because everything, including ourselves is made up of a vital, animating energy. The shamans tell us that not only do the trees, rivers and mountains have a vital living energy but also our buildings, the places where we shop, the houses we live in and the people and groups we interact with have their own energy signature or power. The goal or task is to establish a good relationship with these people, places and objects.

According to Joan Wilcox, we westerners often see power as dangerous, that power is not good. We often hear the quote “power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This quote is attributed to the nineteenth-century English historian Lord Acton (1834–1902) in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton about how historians should judge the abuse of power by past rulers. But from the shamans’ point of view, power is just power. Power is the difference between being able to do something and not being able to do it. If we want, we can do good things. If we want, we can do bad things. If we want to do good things in our lives and in the lives of those around us, we must have power.

The shamans tell us that power is only power. It is up to use to decide how to use power. We must decide how to use it not based on our ability to use it but based on our moral code. Sometimes we will not do something not because we do not have the power to do it but because we follow a moral rule that tells us not to do it. On the other hand, there are people who are not able to do something, even good things, because they haven’t acquired sufficient power. According to the Q’ero, it is important to have the power to do everything and then the next step is to have the personal morals to know how to use or not use that power.

So what do the Andean traditions mean when they use the word power? Power in the Andean tradition is the ability to move energy, to be in a sacred relationship of conscious interchange with the energy world in a way that we can affect it. For the Andean, consciousness of this energy world arrives at birth and intensifies throughout life aligned and interconnected with the energies of the physical and spiritual realms. For the Andean, this energy world is simply seen as a spectrum that moves from ordered energy to disordered energy. The most ordered energy is called sami in the Andean tradition. Sami is energy in its natural, fundamental, unspoiled state. The quality of this energy is a refined and light energy. According to the teaching, it is the vibration of energy that is most compatible with our own, for it is our original vibrational state and so empowers us.

In contrast, at the other end of the spectrum, is a quality of energy called hucha. Hucha is felt as heavy, disordered and dense, even dark. This energy is less compatible with the human energy field and so it tends to disempower us. Our perception of the energy of sami (light, refined and ordered) and hucha (dark, heavy and disordered) is tied directly to the condition of our own individual energy fields.

According to Andean teachings sami or refined ordered light suffuses the natural world, animating all living beings and imparting power to natural objects and places where it accumulates. Our natural state is to be filled with this refined, ordered light energy. When we come into contact with this energy at a sacred site or natural power places, we feel enlivened because it is compatible with the energy the infuses our own energy body. However, the reality of living in a material and human world of emotion-driven thought and action disrupts this ordered, refined flow of light energy, causing it to become disordered and heavy. We humans create hucha, dark, heavy, disordered energy. Thus, the task of the “lightworkers” is to become conscious of the ecology of our energy bodies and environments so that we can transform the hucha into sami and live with greater well-being and balance. The more light and ordered energy we can incorporate into our energy bodies and the more we can release and cleanse our energy bodies of the dark, heavy disordered energy, the better we can live in harmony with others and the natural world. Wilcox asserts, “By increasing our level of sami, we move toward our natural state and concurrently raise our level of consciousness.” As we raise our level of consciousness, we then become the light in the world and assist in raising the collective level of consciousness. Next week I will share more about our relationship with the world of energy and provide some ways to decrease the hucha-the heavy dark disorganized energy and raise the level of sami, that refined and ordered light.

Source: Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru by Joan Parisi Wilcox.

The Psychotherapist and the Shaman

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