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!
*I say Spirit to mean God, the Universe, the Cosmos - I use these phrases interchangeably for all enlightened beings who help us. I use “greater Spirit” or “Spirit” to mean everything out there, taking care of and managing in here: Them as a group and concept. You may choose to substitute the word “Spirit” with Jesus, Archangel Michael, Allah, Lakshmi, Kuan Yin, The Universe, The Cosmos, or about a billion other names, and it doesn’t matter. Spirit is all this and so much more than we can ever understand. They don’t care what you call them so long as you give them the same respect they give you. I work with these beings closely, as they are an integral part of my practice and career. It is a relationship I heavily encourage everyone to build, as it enhances every aspect of our physical lives and spiritual practice.*
Discipline
Sometimes, when I say the words, “Living in service of Spirit,” I watch a student or client 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 time and energy in a way that helps you move closer to your purpose instead of further away from it. God doesn’t want you to cut off from society where you’re no good to anyone - Spirit wants you and your unique essence with other people 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, energy, and focus as we are willing (discipline), 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.
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 time and energy.
Paradoxically, when we accept that it isn’t our role to understand the inner-workings of the Universe, some of the inner-workings are made clear to us. When we stop telling God how we will accept our blessings, blessings are everywhere. When we stop attempting to direct our life’s outcomes, we find that they come out better than we could have ever made them.
Many hear "energetic mastery" and assume it means full control over all aspects of life and everyone in it. This is really the exact opposite - energetic mastery is giving up the need to control aspects of life which one begins to recognize they will never actually have any amount of control over. 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. It means we've mastered our reactions to them and how much energy and precious attention we're willing to give a situation. Energetic mastery is 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. We can know how much energy we're expending and pull it back when necessary: this is energetic mastery!
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 energy 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 energy 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 hurts us. We start a new regime most often in a time of crisis, and then wonder why it isn't showing results. Well, one who is in a time of crisis does not have the energy or attention to devote to a new practice, even if we are spending time or money on it. If there isn't enough juice in our system to get excited about a new practice in the first place because our 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.
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 energy. 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 often inclined to do.
Think of your energy as a precious resource, because it is! How much of your precious resources are you willing to give away? Do you have enough for yourself? Let’s figure it out.
For an Energetic Resources journal, I recommend the following! Break your journal into sections for:
How you currently spend your energetic resources
How do you spend your energy every day? Where are your resources being applied?
I would break this into physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual situations. How are you doing in 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, not seeing results from a new spiritual practice 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 resources
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. This is physical, but also energetic. Do you believe you’re losing actual subtle energy through holes in the auric field or painful energetic exchanges? Do you believe you’re absorbing others’ energy the same way? How can you begin to heal, asap?
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 get your energy back
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 and I know it. But we can at least attempt to stop telling stories which aren't moving us forward, and stop giving 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 used to do this reading for others, it was the most painful section for me to do, and I’m sure it was the most painful section for one to receive. However, this is a vital part of the process in getting ourselves back.
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 can 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, you may be amazed!
When we leave it open, we can talk about past hurts for the literal rest of our lives. 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 and resources 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.
Underlying energetic causes for what's taking your energy
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 or holds which are contributing to painful energy exchanges and making it impossible to extricate oneself from a relationship or from memories about it.
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
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.
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. This is another area in which it is difficult to be honest, which makes it even more important that we do so. Those who have harmed us, we don’t forgive them for them, we forgive them for us. It saves us energetically.
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 we 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 10 minutes. Feelings have a job - 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, because Spirit does. 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. 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
Our 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?
Through my Etsy store, I 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!