Removing Layers of Oppressive Energy, or Accomplishing a Lot by Doing Nothing

Over the past couple weeks my energy has become much more clear and my energetic perceptions more accurate and defined. 

There are a few things that have allowed for this opening.  First, the culmination of my period of going inward during the late fall, winter and early spring. Allowing my mind and body to more fully attune with the nature of the seasons allows my energy to attune more as well.

Second, some big energetic breakthroughs, including an energetic validation I referred to a couple weeks back.  This has freed up a lot of energy.  Sometimes I can’t tell what is oppressing my energy until it goes away.  But my energy was immediately out of the quicksand and flowing after that.

Third, the conscious decision to remove certain oppressive patterns from my life, or at lease eliminate their importance.  This is ongoing, but saying goodbye to the obsession with Cal football and basketball is huge.  So is energetically dissociating from the evolution guru and group I’d been involved in for a very long time.  Again, sometimes you don’t know what’s oppressing you until you don’t feel oppressed.

Fourth, some opening in my career and finances, particularly a significant reduction in debt.  Debt is interesting.  From a logical standpoint one can see the value of debt – if you utilize the debt for things that produce a higher return it’s like free money.  But that’s ONLY if the debt is being applied directly toward something value-producing.

In my case it wasn’t. 

Now, from a purely rational financial calculus, yes, it’s a good deal.  But energetically, no, it’s a drain.  My energetic relationship with the use of the debt proceeds changed and the stress of sacrificing personal enjoyment and basic wealth-building to fund the debt is a huge energetic drain.  This personal experience has led me to the conclusion that in the huge majority of cases debt is bad energy for people, even if it makes logical financial sense.  Most people, including myself, are better off getting a comparatively lower return and paying off the debt than earning a higher return and maintaining debt.

And my personal energetic experience confirms this – every time I consciously lower debt, my energy frees up.  And I’m sure my efforts in this regard, which preceded the energetic breakthrough a couple weeks back, helped “unstick” that energy as well.  It’s all interrelated. 

So in other words, when my higher self told me to go inward and focus on paying off debt, this was because my energy was so clouded and stuck with the combinations of energy oppressors that any active work would be counterproductive.

Now it’s expanded to meditate, pay off debt, and dedication to physical exercise and health.  Again, the reason I have to trust my higher self is because he sees things I cannot see.  He can see I’m stuck energetically while I “feel” I’m not.  Because I experience some movement and success I think “this is progress, I’m good,” while he can see from a bigger perspective that, no, this marginal success is a drop in the bucket next to the energetic oppression.

So over the past couple weeks I’ve become aware of the physical pain of people close to me emotionally and in my physical proximity.  It’s not that I feel their pain, but I sense it and it draws my thoughts toward pain and suffering.  I can also sense psychic suffering and feelings of pleasure, though less clearly.  So there’s SOME movement, but there’s still quite a bit of stuckness.

And there’s probably additional layers of energetic oppression in my life that need to be cleared. Almost certainly.  It is very important to my higher self that I clear these things out first before taking on any new endeavors. And it is clear doing so is very beneficial to me, even if there are times when I feel like I’m wasting my life or “not doing anything,” because all that “doing things” has really gotten in the way of my doing the things I am set here in this lifetime to do, my dharma. 

What is #californiaspirituality?

I had little Twitter-burst about #californispirituality and some of you might be wondering what I’m talking about.   

I’m not talking about spirituality.  #californiaspirituality has nothing to do with spiritual connection or living a more holy life.  It is a social and psychological dysfunction that has its genesis in the San Francisco Bay Area but has metastasized in communities throughout the US and the world.  It is right now the biggest threat to true spiritual growth and energetic evolution, because many people in this community are both extremely gifted energetically and hopelessly deluded in the head.

#californiaspirituality is the unholy alliance of raw spiritual gifts with American leftist political, social and economic dogma, and all the spiritual, emotional and physical wounds and illnesses that go along with this. 

Unfortunately, probably 90% of the “spiritual” community in the US subscribes to this false belief that spirituality and dysfunctional political and social dogma are intertwined, and the result is nothing short of disaster on a spiritual level.  And now it is reaching crisis level on the physical level.

A rational, independent-minded person wouldn’t have to be told that drugs are not spiritual and that spiritual connection is not obtained through external or artificial methods.  One would think a group of people who eschew anything artificial in their diet would be the first to avoid drugs produced artificially in labs with God-only-knows what standards from God-only-knows where.  And that said people would avoid putting essential oils directly on their skin.  But such is the psychosis of #californiaspirituality.

#californiaspirituality seems to be 50% about sex, 30% about drugs and 20% about arrogance.  Feeling superior to others, and communicating that superiority in the most annoying ways possible, is a critical element of this “tribe.”  (Really, calling this group of idiots a “tribe” is an insult to every tribal system ever created in the history of the universe.)

#californiaspirituality is obsessed with sex.  Dropping trou, letting your tits hang out, dressing up like rejects from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” pole dancing, being overtly sexual with someone you met just then, Tantra this, Tantra that, telling everyone how sexual you are, telling everyone how awesome you are in bed, writing a sex manual, being a sex coach, and calling yourself a sexual healer seems to be pretty much all this group does.  You’d think they’d get bored with this schtick after a couple years (I’m bored just writing about it), but they’ll stay this way for *years.*

Along with the weird obsession with sex, #californiaspirituality is heavily into drugs. #californiaspirituality will tell you cannabis is spiritual.  Period.  And FUCK YOU for JUDGING ME!  SERIOUSLY!  IT’S FUCKING LEGAL!!!  I’M FUCKING SPIRITUAL, STOP JUDGING ME YOU FUCKING PRUDE!!

Yah, no drug problem there.

They load up on EVERYTHING and imagine that they’ve found clarity in their addled state.  Then they post all the verbose, boring, nonsensical shit that comes out of their ass when they’re high as fuck on their “spiritual medicine,” and apparently others fucking READ this shit and reply with their own fucking pot novels.

Ick.  And unbelievably annoying.  And really ick.

So that’s 80% of #californiaspirituality.  The other 20% is an obsessive need to show how much better they are than everyone else.  Cuz nothing says awesome like a broke-ass guy in his forties, whom Children Services won’t let see his kids, writing a pot novel on Facebook about how his sex life is the envy of everyone.  (Dude, NOBODY fucking cares.  Including your partners.)

A lot of these people feel the need to “make an offering to the world” in the form of yet another “look at me” sex manual, so we can all be as awesome as you.  Then they wonder why nobody is buying their fucking book.  (Can you say “LOSER??”)

It’s obvious to everyone observing that isn’t drinking the kool aid or high on whatever is handy that the smugness and self-congratulatory behavior is a cry for help.  Every time I see a “I’m so great, I’m such a great lover, I’m so evolved, please look at me” post, I feel sad.  I want to give the poor soul a hug and tell them it’s going to be okay, refer them to a good therapist.  Because they’re clearly hurting a lot.  Healthy people don’t act and behave like that, they just don’t.

Oh #californiaspirituality HATES the word “normal,” they conflate it with their ideological dogma and think “normal” and “therapy” are tools of Evil Capitalist Devil.  So I have to do end arounds their blocks – HEALTHY people (which is really what “normal” means, the vast majority of people who are psychologically and social well-adjusted and can function in society with other humans) don’t obsess over sex.  They don’t spend all day posting pot novels on Facebook.  They don’t feel an overwhelming need to write a sex manual because their partner had a good time with them (WTF??). 

Healthy people aren’t arrogant, because they’re well-adjusted.  Maybe they had wounds, but they got over their shit and they aren’t tooting their own horn all the time.  They know drugs won’t get you to God unless you OD.  And that’s NOT a good thing.

#californiaspirituality looks down its noses at healthy people – they think they’re unhappy.  Because #californiaspirituality is unhappy.  Really unhappy.  And they think that’s just normal.  It isn’t.  The unhappiness, dysfunction, emotional wounds, unemployment, underemployment, financial distress, marital distress, issues with the law and children’s services that people in #californiaspirituality deal with is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR out of proportion with what those poor “normal” people deal with (which is damn little, to be honest – NORMAL people don’t have their kids taken away or go to jail for prostitution or drug dealing, they just don’t.  That’s what FUCKED UP people do!  The jails are full of them.)

The level of depression in #californiaspirituality is off the fucking charts.  I have a lot of friends, most “normal,” but many in this spiritual community.  ONLY in the spiritual community do I see “adrenal fatigue,” or “doxing issues,” or “Mercury Retrograde” excuses for SEVERE depression issues, or “trauma memories,” or any of this other bullshit.  “Normal people” have problems.  I have dear friends who have been raped.  “Normal” friends heal and move on.  #californiaspirituality people make it a fucking LIFESTYLE.

Then what?  Well, let’s see, a group of people with a high level os psychological dysfunction and an aversion to therapy that is into sex and drugs – WHAT COULD GO WRONG??  Well, for starters, everything.  Rape in this community is more common than having a full-time paying job.  So is suicide.  So is tragic death.  So the end game of #californiaspirituality is a crappy, unhappy life full of self-delusion that more likely than not ends in a tragic, early death.

In other words, it’s completely fucked up.

And I have more bad news.  The powers that are elevating the energy of Earth are not patient.  They really don’t care about the issues of this community, and they have zero tolerance for the drugs and ideological dogma.  While I don’t like seeing basically good but very misguided people suffer and die, the higher powers are very indifferent to that scenario and would be perfectly fine with the whole community dying off to make way for the growth that needs to come, burn off the weeds and plant healthy new souls. 

I feel bad.  Most of these people were raised in this environment.  Their parents were hippies and beatnicks from San Francisco and brainwashed them.  They know no other way.  They really didn’t ask for this, but not it’s their karma, and it sucks.  But at this point I don’t know what else I can do except hold up a mirror, hope some people are seeing what’s reflected, and do my best to ensure no others get sucked into that mess.  I’ll continue speaking up but honestly I feel I’m pissing into the wind. 

Not all my posts are cheery.  Sorry.

On Karma

I want to revisit an important spiritual subject I’ve talked about regularly here, because I feel like this subject gets twisted and misconstrued a lot.  I want to talk about karma.

What is karma?

Well let’s use my situation as an example.  Right now I’m sitting on the sofa, writing, basking in the glow of a good workout at the gym and a nice long walk at the beach.  I just had a nice late lunch and I’m enjoying a beer as I relax and enjoy this afternoon and share my thoughts with you.

I could go on – job, family, everything else in my life.  This is my karma.

Karma isn’t just bad things happening to you.  It’s good things too.  It’s everything.  Because karma is the “effect” of the Law of Cause and Effect.  Every thought, every word, every belief, every action, these create energy in the universe and there is a direct effect to each of these. Collectively they directly create the effect that is our life situation.

People who are hurtful or damaging in their thoughts, words and/or actions receive hurt and damage in their own life and often in future lifetimes.  You can’t fool karma – you may be able to fool your friends into thinking you’re a nice person, or your evil is justified, but karma doesn’t care.  What you create is what you receive, and there is no other way.

You say well, some people are so nice and they don’t deserve the bad things happening to them.  But, first, you don’t know.  Maybe they had you fooled.  Maybe their thoughts are filled with hateful thoughts.  Maybe their karma is carrying over from prior lifetimes.  And maybe that “bad thing” you’re observing isn’t actually “bad,” maybe the universe is trying to push your friend in a direction they refuse to go and then there is suffering – but your friend brought this upon themselves by refusing to change.

And what about those “bad people” whose lives seem to be happy and they never get their comeuppance?  Many explanations, but it all boils down to the fact that you really don’t know and need to refrain from making assumptions and jumping to conclusions.

Most often we know.  I’ve seen more than a few people who have been unfair to me and others and I’ve seen them get a strong dose of karmic realignment.  And in almost every case, they didn’t get the message and more “bad karma” followed. 

“Bad karma” is not “bad luck.”  Tipping or not tipping the barista is not going to change your karma in any significant way by itself.  If your intention in tipping was to assuage your guilt over something you’re doing that you know is wrong, you’re probably making your karma worse and would be better off stiffing the barista and gaining clarity on what is driving parts of you to behave in ways you know are wrong than blurring things with false generosity.

I believe most people receiving good or bad karma knew deep down it was coming.  They may outwardly be “surprised” by their change in circumstance, but in their heart they knew it was coming.

Karma includes the universe’s various ways of communicating with us – some subtle, some harsh – in order to get us to change.  A lot of human suffering is people attached to their routine, or their story, or their right-ness and as such unable or unwilling to heed the instructions when they’re being told to change.

The worst response to karma is to act as a victim.  Nobody is a victim.  I realize what I just said here is jarring and will challenge the beliefs of many people, but it’s absolutely true.  There are no victims in this world.  However wronged you think you have been, you are not a victim.  And it’s even possible what you think was wrong was not what you thought it was.

This is where I’ve ended up in negative cycles.  Someone did something wrong to me and I’d engage in hurtful thinking and actions.  Then I’d wonder why bad stuff kept happening to me.  It took me learning the truth about karma to finally let that stuff go.  And when I did, I noticed something interesting – people trying to do bad things to me ended up having much worse things happen to them, thanks to their karma. 

Acting like a victim or seeking revenge will only bring a person more negative karma.  The way out is understanding and acceptance, and taking control of one’s thoughts, words and actions.  Once you accept that you are the sole creator of your life, your thoughts naturally shift toward “what do I want to create? More shit, or something good?”  You stop holding onto the illusion of victimhood or the fantasy or revenge and place more and more intention on good thoughts, good words, good actions.  And “magically,” karma starts improving.  But of course it’s not magic.  It’s a law of the universe. 

Energetic Liberation

My higher self has been consistently telling me April 15 is the time to start making plans for a move.  At first I thought this was for financial reasons – and it does appear I’ll be in the right place financially to make a good move by then, but I probably could have moved earlier too and been just fine.

No, there’s more.  After last week I’ve had an undamming of energy.  It’s like for years I’ve been carrying around this oppressive psychic weight and didn’t even realize how bad it was.  And now it’s totally gone.

It’s more than an affirmation that I was on the right path and I’m a good person.  It’s more than a validation that I’ve been doing the right thing, even when I doubted myself for so long and suffered so much.  It’s a deeper and more integrated connection with my heart and higher self – the inner conflict between my higher self and my thinking/ego self is resolved and I’m really listening to my heart and higher self much more clearly now.

All week this has been integrating and the truth is becoming more and more clear.

My higher self kept telling me to wait for “spiritual reasons, not financial reasons.”  And at the time I didn’t understand.  I understand now. Things had to clear up in my energy for me to be able to make the decision that would best serve my higher self. 

Because it’s not just a move, it’s a realignment.  I’m saying goodbye to some energies and habits that aren’t serving me anymore. I’m significantly limiting my social media.  I’m cutting out people who are just annoying and not serving me.  People who I allowed to have power over me are finally completely gone from my energy field, along with all their junk. 

It’s a relief, it’s an awakening, it’s a transformation.  There are many aspects of my life that were fear-based.  Maybe I thought I had to, or out of convenience or whatever reason.  The problem is those aspects affected other things as well – many of my relationships, even ones that were intended to be empowering, were fear-based in some way.

That’s gone now.  The cancer is gone and the rest of my energetic body is healing.  And many relationships that were disempowering at one level or another will either change or die.

Also, those haters who tried to keep me down and make me believe I was less than I am, or that I was a bad person when I wasn’t, their lies have been exposed.  I no longer listen to them and I’m no longer afraid of them.  Energetically they’re gone from my life completely now.  Now it’s freedom. Openness.  Clarity. 

Soon there will be more changes.  The period of going-in and slowing down is yielding to a new period of change and growth.  And energetic liberation.  The dark clouds have passed.  The process makes sense now.  My higher self was right all along.

Higher Self vs. Lower Self

I’ll talk about my story, because many people on this spiritual path deal with similar challenges.

There are two versions of myself, battling it out for my energy.  There is my true self that follows my heart and there is my anxious, doubtful self that has been raised to suppress my true self.

My true self knows how to find silence, how to connect to higher planes of energy, how to create some amazing things.  It does things that are not intuitive, that are often difficult to explain to other people.  Sometimes it takes me through pain and suffering and periods that can elicit doubt.  But it’s always right, it always leads me to where I need to be and doing what is best for me and everyone.

My true self was very quiet when I was younger and only began speaking up when I was at the point where I’d had enough, where I knew there was something better for myself but I wasn’t going to find it going through the linear path.  The more I went down this path, the more clear this voice became and the more in charge of my life he became.

The anxious version of myself was a product of my environment – family, school, social, work and other external sources, and the internal feedback mechanism that reinforced these patterns.  While it’s a painful and unhelpful version of myself, it’s familiar so it “feels right.”

For a period of time I believed the anxious version of myself got me some early success in life, but now I don’t see it that way.  It facilitated my achieving some externally-based benchmarks – good grades, good university, passing some professional certification tests.  But was that really success?  No, not really.  Grades mean nothing.  Being in an elite college is overrated.  A certification for a career I never liked that has created mostly unhappiness and rewarded me with very little is actually counterproductive.

So the anxious version of myself fooled me into thinking I was gaining something from being like this when in fact it really did nothing good for me.  This is a realization that just came to me.  Kind of powerful.  That’s going to sink in.

But when things get uncertain or difficult, the anxious part of me would make my life miserable – all kinds of worry, lack of sleep, insecurity.  But recently things have been happening that are providing visible, tangible proof that yes, things are getting better.  Much better.  My heart, my higher self, is right, and the anxious part of me hasn’t done much good in my life.

It’s been a pretty long stretch where the voices saying I was wrong, or I was a bad person, or I was on the wrong path, were getting louder and louder.  Then boom – confirmation that everything my higher self had been saying was right.  The people saying I was a bad person, or foolish, are wrong.  The parts of me listening to them are wrong too.  My heart was 100% right.

Yes, I am exactly on the right path.  People who tried to ruin my life are falling by the wayside – either realizing their error, finding better things to do, or getting their asses kicked by karma.  That part of me that listened to them is also disappearing. 

Happiness doesn’t come from going down the predictable path of success.  I never found success on that path.  But switching paths, as I began to do about seven years ago, and really in earnest about four years ago, can take a long time to yield success.  And in the process there was a lot of pain and challenges. 

I knew in my heart this was the right path and things would turn around and get much better.  And in some ways it has been getting much better and opened up massive spiritual powers, even in the beginning.  And in others it’s been a slog.  But by listening to my heart things have become consistently better.  But there was always a cloud over all of it, some big, nagging problems that allowed the doubt to continue.

Then this weekend those stuck things unstuck.  The cloud lifted and the truth came to my vision so even my ego self couldn’t deny the truth of it  My heart was right.  Against everyone and everything, my heart was right.  And my anxious self is completely wrong.  Everything is going exactly as my higher self said it would. Even the crazy stuff.

My motto is “follow you heart, let everything else go.”

And it’s 100% right.

Through all this time I felt stressed, was anything really bad happening?  No.  the worries were over nothing.  The things that actually happened were aligned with my heart.

"Experiences" vs "Things": Maybe It Isn't Always a Choice

I don’t spend a lot of money on myself.  I’ve prided myself on this.  I have nice clothes with pretty good style, but I spend very little on clothes for myself.  I drive the same car I’ve owned for over ten years.  I rarely go out to eat and I own very little “stuff.”  I have some crystals (okay a lot), but they cost almost nothing.  I don’t own the tech “stuff.”  Occasionally I’ll spend for some training or something educational, and if I spend money for pleasure it’s generally on travel or experiences. 

As I’ve been clearing out that “holding on” energy, I realize I’ve probably taken this too far and actually gone too cheap on myself, which instead of being frugal and life-nourishing is actually stifling my energy.  This weekend I spent a small amount to get some Bluetooth stereo equipment.  Some of it I kind of need for the car, because of the new laws (cheaper than one ticket, so kind of a no-brainer), and some just makes obvious sense. 

I realized immediately a few things in doing that.  First, as I’m going deeper into Natural Grounding resources, I notice a huge difference in the quality of the experience with the higher-quality equipment.  When the sound is more rich and clear and surrounding, it deepens the level of experience.  Even lying on the couch at home listening to NG music feels different now, my body would absorb the experience instead of listening more passively. 

It’s not like I splurged – the whole investment was considerably less than the cost of a usual long-weekend vacation.  But the payoff was immense.  

I had songs in my phone I thought I was “sick” of and couldn’t listen to anymore.  But I was inspired to create another playlist with these long-forgotten songs and listened to them through the new speaker – it was like listening to them for the first time. 

I also bought a few pieces of furniture – one of which I still need to assemble.  It makes a difference, it frees up the energy and brings some order to the chaos that develops in the apartment. 

Because my value is on the experiential and not the physical, I tend to overlook the value that the physical can bring to the experience.  This weekend was a reminder that the physical can play a valuable role in enhancing the energy of the experience.  Being too frugal on the “stuff” could actually be short-changing yourself and the full value of the experience. 

I should add also that the process of obtaining those “things,” and assembling the furniture, were valuable experiences in themselves. The entertainment value of the experience of waiting for my car stereo to be installed was worth a good fraction of the money I spent for the item, to say nothing of the listening and driving experience.  So maybe it isn’t a “things” vs “experience” duality as much as a challenge to be mindful of what “things” to bring into my life and how to integrate them with the experiential in a way that best serves.

Holding Back Energy Vs. Clearing Out: Lessons from "Difficulties"

Still going inward, still slowing down.  Still learning so much from this.

Last month I had a number of experiences that seemed like “bad luck” or “challenges,” and it was only after that I realized what they were – a clearing out of bad energy.  In one case I had been holding onto physical and emotional trauma from a years ago that was trapped and festering in a tooth.  The root canal cleared it all out and then it’s gone.  I had negative energy that for some reason had settled into my car’s transmission, and after replacing it there was all kinds of opening.

A car?  But it drives completely differently now and the energy when I’m driving it is clean.

Even the spending of funds and paying off of some debt freed up energy, actually opening paths to receive more wealth in the future. 

I have a tendency to hold onto energy, which creates tightness in my energy system and body and also lends to fear-based patterns. Going inward is bringing awareness to them and they’re releasing. 

I’m beginning to see how that “holding” pattern has guided a lot of my thinking and behavior patterns.  And it’s drained energy that could be better used to actually create what I want, instead of holding on and fighting against things I don’t want.

I wouldn’t see this larger pattern if I hadn’t spent a considerable amount of time slowing down to pay attention.  This is a key piece, the thing that’s been holding me back, and once I see it it’s actually not that difficult to flip the switch.  All this time I’d been operating under the assumption this is just how it is, but it isn’t.  It’s a choice.

And when trying to do “big things” with energy, I’m realizing how important it is to align those patterns to create and move energy through, instead of holding back or seeking to preserve. Just noticing this I feel a huge sense of relief.  It makes perfect sense.

So I’m grateful for the “challenges” of the past month.  They’ve helped me to learn a much more valuable lesson.