Disagreement and energy exchanges

I read a bit of Ghandi's Way (Mark Jurgensmyer) today and I have to disagree on a point he made about why one should fast. I don't believe someone should choose to fast strictly out of a sense of duty or obligation. I believe any kind of 'extreme' action like that should be undertaken as a result of a sense of knowing your own truth. If the point Ghandi is making is this: If I truly believe in 'x' so much that I am willing to fast in order to draw attention to a specific problem surrounding 'x' then I agree with him.

However, if the point is that we should draw from our sense of duty and obligation (to whatever) in order to make this type of decision, I don't agree with that. I recognize that the difference is subtle but I believe it is profound. There is nothing wrong with wanting to serve your fellow beings but that feeling of service (for me) is better served from a higher place - a place of seeing the oneness and realizing that what I do helps us move closer to each other. I don't feel that service is best performed because I feel like I should or that I owe something back to society (or whoever).

To me, that feels like a type of coercion - that the collective conscious is subtly coercing me into performing this type of service. That others feel, on some level, that I owe them. This is a difficult concept for me to communicate without bringing up chakras, the differences in the level of energy and vibration associated with each and how motivation changes depending on where most of our energy 'lives'. This is part of what I want to bring to conflict resolution. Even though others may thing it's a weirdo new age thing, my experience has given me innumerable examples that awareness of our energetic interaction is vitally important.

Tangenting off...

A couple of books that talk about this kind of thing are The Celestine Prophecy and Conversations with God, Book 1. I think The Celestine Prophecy breaks it out into very simple and understandable terms. Conversations with God Book 1 introduces the concept and then the other books expand on it a bit.

For me, this concept has proven not only true but valuable. I find it interesting that the 'energetic' language is becoming more and more prevalent in our communication, as are the concepts of energetic exchange and energetic beings. However, if you talk to people about details they get a little uncomfortable. For example - everyone knows what an 'energy vampire' or a 'psychic leach' are but if you talk about exactly how that happens (those people literally suck away our personal energy and we allow that by either not shielding or by buying into their drama), many people kind of drift off. In fact, I'm re-reading this now and thinking that I sound like a total kook.

I would think I was a total kook if I hadn't had the concepts around the energetic body proven to me again and again. It feels right so I'm sticking with it. It's not mumbo jumbo, it's just new ideas that many people aren't ready for yet. I'm guessing the same thing happened every time other new concepts and ideas were introduced to mainstream society. Yoga, for example, and therapy. In the 50s, no one had heard of yoga (save a few kooks :) and going to a therapist was a humongous shameful secret. Now, yoga is almost as common as running and going to a therapist about as commonly accepted as visiting your regular doc for checkups.

Another tangent

Encouraging stuff :) I firmly believe that whether or not people accept ideas you present depends on two *big* conditions: 1). The way it's communicated and 2). Where your energy is when you communicate the information. If you don't use language (terms and concepts) that people understand, they either think you're making fun of them or they completely disregard what you're saying. Secondly, if your energy is not in a good place (i.e. you don't truly believe what you're saying, you're afraid they won't believe or that they'll laugh at you, etc.), your chances of gaining their trust (i.e. establishing your credibility) and them comprehending your message is significantly reduced.

This is what I want to bring to CR - an understanding of how we interact energetically and practical, concrete ways to teach people an awareness of this type of interaction. We've all become more and more aware of unspoken language - nonverbal cues including body language, physical location cues, culture/society attitudes, gender, etc. All the unspoken understandings and knowledge that we bring to every interaction. What I propose is that there is another level at work here - a level that we can tap into and gain more control over - the energetic level. I believe this level is always at work, we just don't know it. Our lack of knowledge in this area is the missing piece in understanding many conflicts.

How many times have we said "I don't understand why X is completely set on that idea - it's completely absurd!" Usually this comes after a big nasty fight with X that utimately ended with no resolution and lots of bad feelings. If we're more aware of the energetic interaction, perhaps we would realize that X is holding energy in a very low place. At that point, we can either choose to go to that low place with him/her or we can choose to hold our energy in a higher place, perhaps helping X move his/her energy up a bit and increasing our chance of resolving the issue.

It just occured to me that I forgot to mention that the higher we hold our energy, the bigger our perspective grows. We are able to move away from the annoying and aggravating details a bit and get an idea of the larger perspective. Instead of focusing on the niggly details of how X wishes to implement his/her suggestion, we can begin to appreciate that his/her idea may be very good for our organization overall but that it's the implementation that's causing the problem. When we realize this, we can give X credit for a good idea (making him/her feel better) but we can also introduce ideas around different types of implementation. This could prove to be a turning point in your relationship to so and so, in addition to bringing a valuable idea into your organization.

Thus ends my initial attempt at clarifying my ideas around conflict resolution and energetic exchanges!