Practical Energy Work 01 🐔 Bedrock
This post is part of a masterpost. Click here to go to the masterpost. Please read the disclaimer in the masterpost if you notice our beliefs may be different. Next: Practical Energy Work 02 anticipated, not published
When I say "energy work" I mean the manipulation of metaphysical energies through direct application of willpower.
I think in order for us to navigate this terrain together we should be on the same page about what these energies are and how it's possible to work with them in the first place.
"But how can I do energy work? How is it possible?"
You do not need to integrate or internalize the following beliefs. But for the purposes of this series, let's just agree that the following things are true - even if you don't 'really' believe them.
If we can agree on these things while we do energy work together, we'll be able to build our understanding of energy work on the same bedrock, perhaps making it possible for us to raise sturdy creations using very similar architecture.
I'm using the term 'ethereal energy', which I will explain below, because I'm a bit worn out by the vagueness of 'metaphysical'.
1. Ethereal energy is some beautiful stuff about the web of life, basically
'Metaphysical' energy exists on what you might call astral, ethereal, or subtle planes. I call it ethereal energy, or at least I do for this series.
There's lots of kinds of this energy, categorized by its qualities. Ethereal energy can be rapid or slow-moving, invigorating or calming, enlivening or draining.
This energy is infused within and around the world, and it's a vital and natural aspect of experiencing our reality. Ethereal energy isn't far away or locked behind a veil: it's around us all the time. It's part of life and existence itself in our world.
This energy is a major part of how living beings sense and perceive the world around us. This energy has its own qualities, but it also carries a great deal of information - just like a warm humid breeze in late May carries a great deal of information to people who understand weather patterns.
This energy influences what is around it. Living beings, spirits, the dead, and even gods are impacted by ethereal energy. This is true because most beings exist on the same plane as ethereal energies: we're all joined together by the ethereal web of life. Yes, we're a part of the same web of life as both the gods and the tiniest amoeba in the primordial sea! Isn't that beautiful?
Because we're all joined together by the ethereal, these energies can be manipulated to directly impact experienced reality for everything bound together by the ethereal web of life, or anything that needs to interact with that web.
2. People are inherently energy-sensing
Everything alive (and many things not alive in the biological sense) is inherently energy sensing.
You can learn to sense, interact with, read, and interpret energies because this is just something that people can normally do.
We sense energies all the time and we're used to interacting with them as part of our normal way of being.
Some people are naturally more energy-sensing and more reliant on the information they gather from their inborn energy-sensing. Other people are more closed off, gaining little information from the energy around them or rarely relying on it.
You can learn to get more in touch with your natural energy sensing and actively work with it as an inherent sense. You can do this casually as a way of getting to know your entire being, or you can do this more formally as a focused hobby and skill.
3. People are inherently able to manipulate and control energies.
You can gather up, modify, deposit, or dissipate metaphysical energies. People do this all the time as part of being alive, just like we move water from the sink to the toilet by virtue of being living beings.
We can control and move energies because we naturally exist within the ethereal web of life. Each of us has an ethereal extension of our physical bodies, commonly referred to as the 'energy body'. But it just means that our natural selves extend beyond the physical, and we can affect and manipulate ethereal energies just like we can manipulate the cup of coffee on the counter.
Once we expand personal focus and awareness into energy sensing, then discerning and manipulating energies is just like any other skill. This is just like a beginner cook slowly expanding their palate and truly tasting new flavors inside of old foods, just because of careful practice and focus on their experiences.
Or, this is like a sculptor being able to make finer and more delicate sculptures. They've had their hands the whole time, but they can begin to do things they've never done before because they've chosen to focus on expanding a specific skill.
4. Ethereal energy is like water, not like the atmosphere: there's not an even coating of it everywhere
Ethereal energy can be densely packed into an area, within an object, or around a living being.
Or it can be stretched thin and patchy, or completely absent altogether.
Energy workers and Witches can tell you that powerful wellsprings of ethereal energy are not always available. In fact you may have to go through significant effort to find energies that are suitable to your needs (meaning that their qualities closely match the qualities of energy you need to get your job done).
This is why major tasks of the beginner energy worker (and Witch) are to learn how to discover free-flowing wellsprings of ethereal power which they can draw on in order to create energetic walls, objects, artificial spirits, and any other desired design.
This also means that it's more than possible for you to fuck up the energy balance within a place or especially within yourself, leading to potentially a great deal of discomfort until the place is rebalanced (which may happen automatically over time).
And this is why, if the first major task of the energy worker or Witch is to learn how to raise up energy, the second major task is to learn to put it down, or in other words dissipate, rebalance, diffuse, or send away energies. If this is not done, you can end up fucking up the ethereal plane around you so that your own spaces become flooded with dense energies of strange qualities, impacting you (and everyone else, including the spirits) in unexpected and unwanted ways.
(Or inversely, you can end up stripping ethereal energies out of a space, making it feel 'dead' and uncomfortable or even actively difficult to exist in).
5. Energy sensing and manipulation is going to be a lot easier if you accept that it's regularnatural and it's been around you this entire time
Once we're used to the idea that we innately exist beyond the physical, beginning to identify the energies around us becomes relatively trivial when we remember that we're already very familiar with those energies!
Ethereal energies are not exotic, they are ordinary. I believe that it's more difficult to find these energies by looking for something new or strange. It's easier to find them by seeking out the commonplace qualities of daily living.
Whether or not you want to be an energy worker, energy is a part of your life and it has an impact on you, just as the weather outside and the temperature and humidity in your house has an impact on you.
This is because it's around us all of the time! It's just a part of our life.
When trying to learn energy sensing, remember that you are a fish in the ocean looking for water. You're not going to be running into exotic energies with bizarre qualities - not at the beginning.
What are the qualities of elemental fire? Remember the last time you sat before a bonfire or a hearth fire. Remember how it felt to be near that fire - the experiences the fire gave you that you would not have experienced if not but for that fire. Those are some of the qualities of elemental fire. That was your energy sensing self, tasting the fire the way the chef tastes a strawberry.
When looking for elemental fire to raise up, look for something that feels the same way as the bonfire did. It's that easy. Do you want to drain elemental fire out of a situation? Keep working until every last trace of the bonfire experience is drained away, until you can't find any subtle reminder of a bonfire in that place.
