D is for: Discipline, Energetic Mastery, & Energetic Resources
This post is part of a series I’m so excited about: “The ABC’s of What I’ve Learned as a Medium and Intuitive Healer.” This is my full-time career, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned!
Discipline
It's common for spiritual mentors to ask on the first day of a new intuitive or consciousness class: "What are you willing to give up for this?" Not because Spirit will ask you to shave your head and go live in the mountains if you take on a practice, but because that's what most people think when they hear the question, and they realize very quickly that they're not actually willing to give up anything for their practice. This is okay, and really, it’s important to know!
Sometimes, when I say the words, “Living in service of Spirit,” I watch a student cringe, and they will ultimately admit it’s because their image of being in service of Spirit is tied to being a priest or monk, cut off from society, fun, and joy: a slave to prayer. Really, when I suggest living “in service of Spirit” I mean: in service of your higher self, your very best you, in service of maximizing good and minimizing harm. Living in service of yourself and living in service of Spirit are exactly the same thing - it comes down to what you’re willing to do to spend your energetic resources in a way that helps you move closer to your purpose instead of further away from it. God doesn’t want you to move to the mountains where you’re no good to anyone - Spirit wants you and your unique essence among society at this time, helping yourself and others by showing up to as many situations possible as your best self.
I have given up more for my practice than I could say, but I've gotten more from it than could be expressed in any language. That's why discipline is so important, and I think it's important to lay out the exchange: we give up as much of our time and discipline as we are willing, and in return we receive some amount of energetic mastery. The time we’re willing to put in is in direct correlation with what we receive back.
This is why a mentor asks what we’re willing to give up. Are we willing to give up the idea that controlling circumstances equates to self-control? Are we willing to give up getting caught up in others’ business? Are we willing to give up things which do us no good and stop us from being our most intuitive self? Are we willing to give up five minutes per day for meditation? These are usually the kind of things asked of us on the path.
Energetic Mastery
We can’t master a psychic or intuitive gift. Truly, it’s impossible. Psychic gifts are meant to evolve as this planet and the creatures on it are; as science will and must evolve and the cultural paradigm, too. Certain things aren’t meant to be conquered or finished, but seen as an ever-evolving aspect of life. If one did master a psychic gift, the gift would shift underneath them and make more room for growth immediately.
Energetic mastery, however, is possible and measurable! Energetic mastery is knowing and choosing where and how one is allocating their energetic resources.
Paradoxically, one cannot understand any mysteries of the universe until one gives up the need to do so. When one accepts that it isn’t their role to understand the inner-workings of the Cosmos, some of the inner-workings are suddenly made clear. We won’t know why things happen until we’ve given up the need to know why things happened. Giving up need for control is possible - it’s plausible and preferable to a life in which we lose ourselves to the minutiae.
Energetic mastery doesn't mean we've mastered our surroundings - that's impossible (and it’s supposed to be - we’re here in these human bodies to grow, and we grow most through resistance). Energetic mastery means we've mastered our reactions to our surroundings and how much energy (how many resources) we’re willing to give a situation, any situation. It’s knowing how much energy we're spending and on which thoughts and feelings, so we can refocus and reapply it at any time we choose. Is an argument with a stranger all it takes for us to lose our power? With a partner? With our family? We can know how much energy we’re expending, even in very difficult life situations, and pull it back when necessary: this is energetic mastery. One doesn’t need to be a spiritual guru for this to have beautiful life applications.
Most of us will never get there on this plane, but our daily spiritual practice is what brings us closer. As much as we want it all: consciousness, intuitive and psychic gifts, feelings of oneness, energetic mastery - not one of these things will come to any of us without our discipline, and a lot of that comes from having energetic resources to devote to our practice.
Energetic Resources
I find that one of the things regularly holding us back is a fundamental misunderstanding of what energy is in this context and how ours is being spent. We generally understand that if we'd like to run across the room, it will take X amount of energy, and we will need to rest for Y number of seconds afterward. Same if we run a mile or climb a mountain! We understand, "I just spent all that energy climbing a mountain, I no longer have the physical energy to go for a swim."
Most of us lack this understanding of our subtle energetic systems. We don't see that if we allocate X number of energetic resources to worrying, we must then devote Y to finding genuine reassurance if we'd like to feel better. If we spend X draining our energy on social media (just a few minutes on which can make someone run the gamut of emotions from jealousy to self-loathing), we need to spend Y meditating or practicing self-love to replace what we lost. This is not an exaggeration, many of us have used our entire day's worth of energetic resources before we arrive at work, then wonder why we are exhausted and cannot fathom giving a moment to ourselves, our sense of purpose, creativity, or wellness at the end of the day.
This has everything to do with most of what plagues us. Clients start a new energetic regime most often in a time of crisis, and then wonder why the regime isn't showing results. Well, one who is in a time of crisis does not have the energetic resources to devote to the regime, even if they are spending time or money on it. Energy work requires power (and a lot of it) like electricity requires power - if we're a surge protector with stuff plugged into every outlet, it will eventually blow. If there isn't enough juice in our system because our subtle energy has been given to the people and situations around us, we simply won't be able to start a new program and see results. This is part of an energy healer’s job - having enough resources to spare to devote some to healing others.
I find that the first step, especially when we're particularly lost or don't know where to begin, is to understand how we're currently allocating our energetic resources. Then we can begin to see how to pull ourselves and our energy back from situations where it isn't serving us, and then we can begin to place our energy with more intention.
This is not easy because it requires a lot of accountability and self-understanding. *Not* self-blame or shame, but understanding we are the only one who can make changes to our life, so blaming others doesn't help. We can choose to try to feel better by working on ourselves, the only thing we control in a situation, or we can choose to continue to give our energy away. There's no other option and very little in between.
Energetic Resources Journaling
For any who want to begin their intuitive journey (and really for everyone else too), I heavily recommend an “Energetic Resources” journal. I recommend a journal devoted only to this, and making the promise, even a swear to yourself, that you will always be honest with yourself within its pages. This is completely unhelpful if we lie to ourselves about what’s going on, which is what we’re most likely inclined to do.
This is really a simple and easy way to think of things! Imagine we have 100 units of energetic resources per day. We know that to give ourselves to a daily meditation practice would cost about 10 units; to work on our psychic gifts 15-20. It’s just that before we’ve even gotten out of bed, we’ve given 20 units to wondering just how bad work will suck today. 10 to thoughts about our relationship. 30-40(! This is not an exaggeration - this is what Spirit would say we use on this, within the parameters of the metaphor) on repressed emotions and the placeholders we’re using to replace the repressed emotions. By the time we’ve gotten to work - forget it. Usually, all our energetic units are spent. Our culture isn’t helping us learn to use our energy wisely - we’ll focus on our ex’s social media before we’ll even try to meditate. To have best use of an intuitive practice, we have to have enough energetic resources to spend on it.
For an Energetic Resources journal, I recommend the following! Break your journal into sections for:
How you currently spend your energetic resources
If you have 100 energetic credits, how do you spend them every day? Where are they being applied?
I would break this into physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual situations. How many credits are you allocating to each area?
*And this is how they build. If we don’t have physical resources (safety, security, comfort), we will not have emotional resources (thoughts about our own creativity, life path, wellness, fulfillment and joy, self-expression). If we don’t have physical and emotional resources, we don’t have relational resources (anything from basic conversation to full-on relationships need relational resources of different kinds). And if we don’t have all three under control, we won’t have room for spiritual resources, hence what I talked about earlier, clients not having results from a new spiritual regime which began in a time of physical, emotional, or relational crisis.*
This isn’t meant to hurt anyone, but to help one see the ways these things really build on one another! If we are having a physical crisis - if our home, finances, or physical safety is in jeopardy in some regard - we simply will not be able to think about emotional situations, much less relational or spiritual ones.
This is one reason we must give grace to those who are struggling physically - it’s truly not one’s fault when they are reacting from this place. One cannot think emotionally, relationally, or spiritually until their physical matters are solved. We must remember to show each other grace, as we don’t know what others are going through and how many resources they have.
So, how are your resources being applied? If we break life into areas: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual, which areas are getting most of your attention? Is it to the detriment of any others? Where do you need to show restraint? Which makes you feel best? What makes you feel worst? Are your resources being applied to the past, present, or future in different areas? To recent conversations? Relationships you are in or were recently in? How you’re being treated in certain areas?
There is pretty much an infinite number of questions you could ask yourself here, but this can get you started! If you have a healthy psychic or divination practice, it’s also great to ask your spirit guides what you need to see here that you may be missing, as we all have blind spots!
How to re-allocate the credits
Which areas of life do you know you should have more energy for? Which areas do you know you’re giving too much? How are boundaries playing into it, as they are likely to be? Do you assert boundaries when it’s necessary? Do you move them when it’s time to? Our boundaries being invaded and our invasion of others’ boundaries are two of the biggest ways we lose resources.
For instance, if we are likely to get caught up in other people‘s drama to avoid our own inner work - it takes a lot of resources to do this! Our inner being knows what we should be focused on and is constantly trying to pull us in the right direction (toward ourselves and our purpose), and it takes a lot of resources to fight our inner voice! Way more than we often realize.
If we are used to telling other people how to live their lives, and especially while our own is falling apart, we need to think about reallocating some resources.
Truthfully, we know the answers to these things. We know when we are allocating resources to something which simply doesn’t feel good, and it’s really important to drop the justification surrounding it and just allow ourselves to feel better. We all have many reasons we’ve decided to hold on to the things, people, feelings, and thoughts which just don’t feel good, and none of those reasons are as important as the simple truth: we will feel better when we let go.
Stories you simply must stop telling if you want to regain your power
This isn't meant to hurt, and absolutely not to blame a victim; it's only meant to help. Every one of us is trapped in at least one story we must stop telling if we want to heal. It is vital to know when a story becomes a tool we use to get sympathy which we want to use as power. These are hard words to read! But we can at least attempt to stop telling stories which aren't moving us forward, and stop giving energetic resources to situations which are over - it's the only way to give those resources to the underlying energy and let it go. Telling a painful story keeps it alive.
This can be the most painful section for us to be honest about, and when I do this reading for others, it’s the most painful section for me to do, and I’m sure it’s the most painful section for one to receive. However, this is just the truth.
If we want to move on, (and we should always want to move on because it’s what’s best for us and everyone around us), we should give ourselves a maximum number of times we are going to tell a painful story, and then say that’s absolutely it. If we say, “I am going to talk about this exactly 7 times - with my therapist, friends, spiritualist, partner, whoever, and then I’m done,” we’ve just done a huge amount of the work. If we give ourselves a max number of times we are willing to talk about something, we are giving ourselves a built-in date to work through something. This has such a huge subconscious effect, people are usually amazed!
When we leave it open, we can talk about past hurts for the literal rest of our lives. I don’t say this to hurt anyone, I say it because every single person with a soul feels better the moment they let go of hurt and allow for more comfortable feelings to take its place. When we decide to stop talking about something that hurts us, we make room to talk about something that feels just a little bit better. This is our decision to make!
Some of us decide that our trauma means we have to be traumatized for the rest of time, and that we are doing ourselves a disservice if we let the trauma go. We believe that means that the abuser wins. However, Spirit would argue that the abuser wins the more we talk about them, the more we lose our life to them, and the more we let them destroy every day we have left without them. We win when we move on because we feel better when we move on. In every case, we feel better when we stop telling the story. It’s vitally important to be honest with ourselves about which stories we have to stop telling to feel better.
Underlying energetic causes for what's taking your power
I find in almost every case, when we're giving our energy away, there are underlying energetic causes such as subtle energy bonds, past-life trauma, or energetic blocks which are contributing.
You may or may not have the gifts or practice to get this information, but if reallocating resources has been significantly difficult, if there’s a situation or person which you seemingly cannot rip your energy away from - I would definitely look into underlying energetic causes!
I find that most people in significant pain have weak and broken energetic barriers which need energy healing, or have subtle energetic bonds which are contributing to painful energy exchanges and making it impossible to remove oneself from a relationship.
Again here, if you have the practice to do so, look for underlying reasons for loss of energetic resources. If you don’t feel you have this ability, sit in meditation and see if these things ring true to you: do you believe your energetic barriers are likely significantly damaged, usually from a lifetime of taking physical or emotional damage? Or do you have so much trouble getting away from someone in your life that you suspect there’s an energetic bond between the two of you with a painful energy exchange? If you feel one of these things are true and don’t have a way to get the information, I recommend looking into it with a healer or reader whom you trust.
Forgiveness and compassion necessary
In every case, if we're giving someone else our energy, we need to forgive them or show them compassion. *No one can take our energy from us without our permission,* so if someone has our energy, we need to forgive them and ourselves, and move on with the understanding of what happened so it doesn't happen again. Situations repeat in our lives when we haven't understood the base lesson, forgiven, or shown enough compassion (to ourselves or others) - we will replay the same ordeal with new actors until we see how our energy is causing it. (Or until we pass away - sadly the more likely of the two.)
Where do you need to show forgiveness or compassion? If the instinct is to point out someone else in your life who needs to show you forgiveness or compassion, start there, and recognize that these two things are two sides of the same vibration. If our instinct is to point to someone else, we need to forgive them or show them compassion, in every single case. This is another area in which it is difficult to be honest, which makes it even more important that we do so.
Letting go
We usually know what we need to let go of to feel better. In some cases, it is overt and obvious, and the reasons we have not left the situation vary wildly. However, sometimes it is not as obvious. In those cases, it’s really helpful to analyze any feeling, thought, or behavior in our life which is showing up persistently.
When one of these things shows up persistently, it’s a placeholder. Specifically, if we have a persistent feeling, a persistent thought, or a persistent action, we are stuck in one phase of that cycle because the persistent aspect is not informing us adequately.
When a true feeling informs us, it goes away. Even if it is a terrible feeling, when we really allow ourselves to feel it, it goes away within a matter of minutes. When I help people release grief, fear, despair, unworthiness, and the most heavy and horrible emotions from the body and energetic systems, no matter how long the emotion has been repressed, it cannot last for more than about 15 minutes. Feelings have a job, it’s mathematic - feelings are meant to inform our thoughts and behavior. If we have a persistent feeling, it’s a placeholder feeling. In every single case. That’s an intense statement to make, and I’m making it. Only placeholder feelings last because they cannot do the job a feeling is meant to do - a placeholder feeling cannot properly inform our thoughts and behavior.
If we are stuck in a persistent thought, it is not being appropriately informed by our feelings, so we cannot adequately use it to inform our behavior. A persistent thought is the same: we are missing what it is trying to tell us. The moment we understand a thought, it’s replaced by new thoughts. Thoughts are meant to evolve. We are here in these human bodies to feel, think, and do new things. Watch: work with a persistent thought, don’t just let it replay, ask it questions. Get to the bottom of it. Understand what it’s trying to tell you, and notice how the moment you do, new thoughts will come in. The moment we understand a thought, we’ve made energetic room for new thoughts to take it’s place.
With persistent action, it’s not being informed adequately by our feelings and thoughts. When we get stuck in a persistent action, but never seem to go anywhere, it’s because we haven’t understood the feelings or thoughts which informed the behavior. Once again, when we do a behavior which is based on a well-informed feeling and thought, we naturally eventually complete a task, rest, and we can start over with a new action. If we’re doing the same action every day with no results, it is an ill-informed action.
I know this is a lot of information, but it’s important! Many of us don’t know what we need to let go of because we are stuck in a persistent feeling, thought, or action, sometimes all of them, and sometimes we are stuck in persistent rest because the whole cycle is broken. In every case, this means we need to let go of something which we’re using as a placeholder for what is really trying to inform us - this is the only way to get our energetic resources back.
Willpower and determination
Do you feel determined to get your energy back? Are you willing to put in a little hard work if it means you’ll feel better in the long run? We have to be honest with ourselves when the answer is no! And sometimes the answer is no, sometimes we are just not in the position to try to make big life changes, we simply don’t have the resources! Do you have the resources to have the willpower and determination necessary to make changes to the areas of life you don’t like? You know the answer to this. If you do have the willpower, how can you apply it to re-allocate energetic resources to be your happiest? If you don’t have the willpower, how can you begin to try to take steps in that direction?
Relationships
Your relationships are likely taking and giving energy in different ways and measures, but relationships are one of the reasons this is most important. We're more likely to give our energy away to coworkers and acquaintances than to hold onto it (or lose it to strangers in road rage incidents) - but it's really worst when we're giving all our energy to worrying about serious relationships. *For instance, a relationship in which we're concerned a partner is unfaithful can sincerely take 100% of our daily energetic resources. A relationship with trust instead of fear takes 0% in that same regard = someone who trusts their partner automatically has more energetic resources = this is why trusting our partner is important.*
It’s important in this section to be honest with ourselves about who takes our resources, and that we know when this is permanent. We know when someone is not going to get better, we know when we cannot get better around another person, and we know when the two of us can only engage in negative energy exchanges together.
We also know when someone gives us energy, when just being around them makes us feel better and like our cup is being refilled. How can we spend more time in relationships like that, and how can we begin to remove ourselves from the situation in which we are giving endless resources and only receiving pain?
In my Etsy store, I offer a reading, which is laid out very much like the journaling I have suggested here.
I also offer a video reading to go over one's sense of discipline and mastery.
Thank you so much for reading! I’m very grateful and I would love to hear about your relationship with discipline and energetic resources!