Everyone is governed by energy patterns, which are combined emanations from us, the earth, and the solar system. The commingling of these energies creates discernible patterns. The current energy influence is similar to the effect of Plexiglas cubicles. It’s descriptive of the sensation people have of being contained and yet feeling frustrated that they think they shouldn’t feel contained because they can see out of these perfectly clear boxes. Although people can see where they want to go, they often bump into an energy field when they try to move forward. Most people, not knowing what the energy field is, stop in their tracks and aren’t able to figure out a constructive way to move through the energy field.
Q: So these are actual energy fields. Do people’s emotions, hopes, and dreams get trapped inside these boxes?
Thinking that there really are boxes is the illusion. In reality, there are no boxes. It becomes a self-created experience because people don’t understand energy. The energy isn’t solid.
Let’s use emotions as an example of how, in daily life, we can unknowingly cause containment, which prevents an open flow of energy. If you place Person A, who is not angry, in front of Person B, who is angry, Person B’s anger becomes a block, an obstacle Person A wishes to avoid, causing Person A to step back or move away. But this anger is only an energy which Person A could easily move through if it weren’t for long-standing conditioning, fears, and cultural expectations of behavior. This is merely an emotion, and yet it has such control over people.
Energy fields generated from the earth and from beyond the atmosphere are as powerful and often even more powerful than the emotional situation just described. Because people are unaware of these fields, they can’t see how they can become mice in a maze trying to move through these energy patterns. Crossing through them is a very simple matter when you have the tools to do so. These tools are strong communication skills, deep breathing, meditation, developing sensitivity, and the practice of feeling, sensing, and seeing these energy patterns so that instead of unconsciously responding to them, we become consciously aware, thus making choices to work with rather than against them.
People who find themselves boxed in by a cubicle of energy have several choices—some good, some bad. The unconscious person often reacts with frustration, discouragement, and possibly fear or panic. Depending on how that person feels held back, boredom and blame might also be experienced. The conscious person would look at it and decide: This is a good time to read a book, to get all my papers in order, or to do the necessary preliminary work so I’ll be ready to take off when this energy moves. This is a good time to do some deep breathing as a way of moving through the energy, as I want to move forward rather than allow myself to be contained by a field that ultimately has no power over me except the power I give it through ignorance.
Q: Returning specifically to the idea of containment by anger, what are the best ways to deal with people who are angry?
Let their anger blow through you rather than hit you and stick to you. That would be the energetic interpretation. The emotional interpretation would be that when you let it blow through you, you are not engaging, not letting the anger engulf you so that you find yourself becoming angry. When you realize that the anger is not yours, and that it’s of no consequence to you, you can let it blow by like a breeze.
You can also choose to look at the angry person not as someone who is attacking you or something you care about, but as someone who is hurt, scared, or frustrated. Simply acknowledging the emotion without engaging in a battle allows the person to calm down. Responding to anger with a defensive/aggressive posture (“Now wait a minute,” or “You are wrong,” or “Calm down”) only generates more anger because it creates a wall of energy which the anger hits. This causes it to intensify and to boomerang, returning to the angry person, thus creating even more anger.
By saying, “I can see you’re really upset about this. Tell me more,” you not only allow that person’s anger to bypass you, to go through you, but you have also helped to release the other person from his or her anger. Allowing them to feel heard lets them release the anger so they don’t need to continue to use anger to be heard or to make a point. All anybody wants is: “Hear me. Don’t deny me, my existence, or my feelings.”
Q: So most people who are angry feel as if they haven’t been heard?
Yes. This isn’t to say that many habitually angry people don’t have problems with needing to be in control. What the other person is often reacting to is the feeling that someone is trying to control them. In that case, a web of emotions quickly develops that changes form. You’d need to remain very conscious in order not to feel manipulated, controlled, used, or even abused. It can also be the case that anger is a reaction not so much to a need to control someone else as to avoid being controlled. If you are an open being, porous in your ability to let people’s emotions pass through you, it’s a simple matter of recognizing the cause of the anger or any other emotion, and remaining clear to avoid responding unconsciously.
Q: How can we become porous?
By doing the work of becoming clear. By paying attention to your own emotions, by stopping every five minutes and noticing what you are feeling and why. Where did it come from? Where are you allowing it to go? If you don’t like what you’re feeling, how can you change? It always comes back to having a clear mind, a clear body, and a clear spirit. Once again, the practice is meditation, breathing, clear thinking, clear seeing.
Simply wanting to acquire this ability is the first step in making large strides toward clarity. This is a very easy ability to acquire by reminding ourselves that we want to be clear. The first step requires that we don’t lie–that we tell ourselves the truth even if we’re not capable of telling another soul. “I said such-and-such because I wish this person to think that about me.” Too often our conversations are cloaked in misleading or obtuse meanings which we’ve become masterful at interpreting unconsciously. The next step requires that we become expert at consciously interpreting the inner, hidden meaning behind what people say.
Q: If it’s so easy for people to achieve clarity, why are so few people clear?
Because they’ve been taught to be afraid of it. They are afraid of stepping outside of their culturally conditioned boundaries. Because once you’re clear, you are no longer motivated in the same way others are. The first and major stumbling block in becoming clear is that we live in a society that has learned a widespread communication structure that’s based on lies. Very little is said that is spoken for its own sake. It’s either an outright lie, albeit perhaps only a white lie, or it’s couched in some other meaning. People rarely say what they mean; they say what they think you want them to say to get what they want. Breaking a cycle such as this when it’s so ingrained that people usually aren’t even aware of it is a greater challenge than many care to take on.
Also, we’ve become so accustomed to continuous noise that quiet makes many people nervous. When one becomes clear, one naturally speaks less. Saying what you mean is a very economical form of communication. There is no need for embellishment, explanation, justification. You simply say what is. By eliminating all the excess components, you are removing up to 80-90 percent of the conversation. People get nervous without that other 80-90 percent of filler. They start to feel uncomfortable because, oddly enough, they won’t know how to interpret your simple and direct way of communicating. They won’t believe that this is all that’s happening. They will place other values on it, such as thinking you’re being withholding. Then they’ll try to pull you back into the cycle of the polite lie.
Q: So if we keep a positive attitude, stay open, and keep trying, eventually we’ll become more clear and things will work out.
There’s a law of the universe that very few people understand on an energetic level, and that is: The greatest energy always overcomes the smaller energies. This energy that’s creating the box is not a great energy, but it does not require a great energy to contain someone. Truly, a simple negative thought is often enough to contain most people. When you begin to apply a consistent energy such as, “I maintain crystal-clear thinking,” and you concentrate upon and practice staying clear, you are building an energy that builds upon itself. Eventually this energy becomes the greater energy and will overtake the lesser energy.
Q: What about people who have at least accomplished telling themselves the truth, even though they haven’t begun to externalize it?
They will experience a grinding of the gears in their process of trying to live a clearer life. This person’s great fear is usually that if they speak the truth as they see it, they will be perceived as hard, harsh, nagging, critical. Let’s take a simple example: Person A says that something needs to be done, which requires the help of Person B. Because Person A habitually doesn’t ask for help, Person B, as well as anyone else who knows A, will automatically assume that A will take on the responsibility of the whole job. Because of this well-established pattern, Person B will most likely choose not to hear when Person A asks for help. This is how you can create a trap for yourself.
Q: How do we get untrapped?
You would have to be willing to speak the entire truth of what you want to say. The problem is that you see these things that you’re not speaking the truth about as petty. Most of our common frustrations with each other most often stem from the unequal sharing of the mechanical details of daily life. Of course, the remedy in this case is making needs and expectations clear by stating exactly what you want to have happen.
It would be beneficial for those in relationships to sit down and discuss your life, not from the point of view of what you’ve done or what it’s been, but from who you are now and what you’re willing to do in the future. Have it be a collaboration rather than an unspoken assumption of roles.
Some people are so clever in their avoidance of telling the truth that they can even put a positive spin on their anger and turn it into a “spiritual lesson” for themselves. Let’s take a very mundane example: taking out the garbage. The garbage is not taken out. You think, “If this bothers me, then it is my job to fix it.” So you do it, even though someone else has agreed to do this job. You tiptoe around the issue and, instead, go to the other extreme of not asking for help, controlling no one, manipulating no one, treating everyone with respect—except yourself. This kind of resolution does appear to temporarily let you get on with things, but it’s not a workable solution. It’s just another way to allow yourself to avoid speaking the truth. And yet this is such a harmless truth: “The garbage is full. I need you to take it out now and put in a new garbage bag.” The problem is that you think too much. You think for yourself and for everyone else instead of saying what you need to say and letting other people be responsible for their own thoughts and actions.
It’s scary—like your first dive into the pool. But just as you lived through that, you will live through learning how to say what you mean. Make your energy be the greater energy by paying attention and becoming clear.