Over the years, I’ve met a lot of people and read a lot of authors who take consciousness and energy as separate balls of wax. Many are meditators who don’t believe in energy, or are energy workers who won’t/don’t do meditation.
 
For me, consciousness and energy are two sides of the same coin. You can’t separate them. They flow from each other and help expand the other. 
 
In fact, it reminds me of a song from Our Town… 
 
(sing to the tune of Love and Marriage)
 
Consciousness and Energy, Consciousness and Energy 
Go together like a horse and carriage-y.
This you can discover
You can’t have one without the other.
 
Consciousness and Energy, Consciousness and Energy 
It's a union that produces synergy
You ride your bike with both feet 
Or else I bet you’d fall upon the street.
 
Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion
(repeat from the top)
 
So, why do consciousness and energy go together? Consciousness is the “mindstuff” of the Divine Mind. It is the awareness of all that is. There are many, many levels of consciousness, all unfolded from the Divine (One) Mind. Energy is the outflowing of this mindstuff. And mindstuff is continually outflowing. It’s all rather intangible, until energy takes form, then everyone sees it as physical manifestations of bodies, chairs, and earth. For those of us who work with energy as healers, energy actually is tangible for us: we can see, hear, feel, taste, and even smell it. Anyone who starts to wake up to energy can sense it too and most people can sense it even if they aren't aware that's what they're sensing ("that person gives me a weird vibe," for example).
 
What happens when we shift our own or someone else’s energy? Their consciousness shifts. What happens when someone’s consciousness (mindstuff, awareness) shifts, their energy changes. See? They roll one into the other.
 
However, if you only affirm consciousness without energy, you won’t shift as quickly or efficiently as you can if you affirm the higher energy needed to support higher levels of consciousness. If you only do energy work without working with your consciousness practices (like meditation) you’ll probably miss some big blind spots that will hinder your expansion. Here's a great article that speaks to the issue quite eloquently and calls consciousness and energy "the software and hardware of the universe."
 
In your life, do your consciousness practices, meditation and contemplation, and other spiritual disciplines AND work with your energy. You’ll be surprised at how much faster the Universe supports your transformation and expansion. 
 
Oh and what ties consciousness and energy together? LOVE. Unconditional universal, eternal Love.
 
As in…
“Let me tell you ‘bout consciousness and energies
And the flowers and the trees
and the moon up above 
and a thing called “Love”
 
Sung to the tune of The Birds and the Bees

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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell.com.
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But when I segue into my current life of energy work, something else entirely comes to mind.

​In energy work, one of the things that becomes obvious with experience over time is that anything can be stored anywhere. Although there are themes as to where stored energy might be (love issues in the heart chakra area, for example), in actuality, an issue might show up anywhere in the fields. Why is this?
 
I like to think of an energy field as a coat with many pockets. Since we have many layers of energy fields and systems, we actually have many coats then, with a lot of potential pockets. When we experience something that is overwhelming, whether to due to intensity of the experience, age of development at time of experience, length of duration of said experience, etc., we are often unable to process the totality of the experience and clear it from our energy fields right away. So what happens to all the unprocessed thoughts and emotions, etc.? They get stored in our fields/coats. Now the first place some of that unprocessed energy goes might in fact be to an obvious place (truth/communication issues in the throat, for example), but if it’s too overwhelming for even that “pocket” to hold it all, the excess unprocessed energy might then go anywhere and everywhere there’s a free “pocket."
 
Some of us have layers of coats, filled with pockets of unprocessed energy from experiences we have yet to fully process and release. This is one of the main things energy work does. It helps to release what’s in the pockets so the energy coats you’re wearing become lighter and you become freer. Imagine being weighed down with many heavy coats with a lot of pockets filled with heavy items. Many people live like this. Talk therapy, while useful, doesn’t often clear the many pockets of the many coats. It might start the process. It might empty out a few pockets. But it can take a long while. Affirmations and positive thoughts also are useful and helpful but can take awhile to get into the nitty gritty of the subconsious and dense energy layers/pockets that reside in our coats of many pockets.
 
Energy work can empty pockets on multiple levels at once. Energy goes wherever it is needed to empty out pockets of memory, emotions, thoughts, experiences, you didn't even know were still there. It works faster—IF the person is ready to release what’s in the pockets, let go, and move on. The longer we wear certain energies, the harder it can be to let go of them as we get used to the feel of our energy. We attach our identity to the reality of what’s in the pockets. We hide our True Selves behind our filled coats of many pockets. 
 
Until life teaches us, that is, and we realize that walking around with such heavy coats is harder than releasing and shedding the stored energies, and finally, finally we release and let go and move into new ways of being, revealing more of our True Selves. 
 
Another way to release said energies beyond energy work is through ceremony and ritual, which are rich in metaphors—the language of the soul and the unconscious. The Solstice and the New Year are optimal times for such letting go and releasing the old so the new ways might emerge. 
 
Spend some time feeling and looking around at your energy fields/coats in the coming days. Where does it feel heavy? What pockets need emptying? What is ready to be released? Writing these thoughts and feelings out and burning the paper in a fire ceremony or ritual can help. Another idea is to put your writing into a river/creek and watch it flow away. You also might try burying your writing like a seed that is buried and then transmuted into new life. You could also write symbols and words on feathers and let them go in the wind. Using any of these four elements: fire, water, earth, air can be transformative.
 
If you’re ready to release a lot and move into the New Year in a New Way, consider a Soul Goal Package, which is a more focused energy and intensive life work.

I encourage you in this New Year to focus on shifting your energy to the extent that feels right for you at this time. The more of us that shift, the more everyone and the Planet can move into new ways of being that more closely align with our Highest and Best.

Happy New Year!

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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell.com.

Where the Mythical and Mystical Meet

It’s that time of year when the veil grows thin. Mythical creatures are also celebrated during this thin time in movies and in Halloween costumes. Mythical creatures have always held a fascination for me, starting with fiction books as a child: Where the Wild Things Are in elementary school, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in junior high school and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in high school all come to mind as shaping some of that fascination.
 
But what most people have assumed—that mythical creatures are invented creatures of the imagination for fiction and religious stories, I have come to know is not true.
 
After my third eye opened during the My Karma Ran Over My Dogma saga, one of the things that became apparent is that mythical creatures are real in the energy realms: fairies, gnomes, dragons, merpeople, etc. Sometimes I see them as simply representative metaphors of physical or energetic realities, but more often than not they represent their own realities. My observation is that these mythical creatures usually represent a bridge between realms or dimensions or levels of consciousness—whatever you want to call it.

For example, fairies are depicted and in fact look like winged small humans: half-insect, half-human. Thus, they are a bridge between insect consciousness and human consciousness. They live among the flowers and greenery just like insects do. 

When I have connected with the Salish Sea (the Puget Sound) to do healing work, a mermaid always shows up: half-fish, half-human—the bridge between the water worlds and the human worlds. ​

Gnomes seem to be part burrowing creature, part human. And just like in this picture, I have see them scavenging for mushrooms.

When I worked with the elements in a Reiki class as a student, I could see dragons working directly on my DNA. Are dragons a middle realm between the building blocks of life (elements in DNA and humans)? Apparently,I'm not the only one that thinks so. 

The more we shift into higher levels of consciousness and get more in touch with Oneness consciousness, we will all experience more of these intermediary beings. However, rather than connecting with them in a superstitious way as humanity has  in the past, we will connect with them intentionally for helping to heal all the levels of manifested Divine reality. 
 
What mythical creatures fascinate you? Do a meditation with these beings and see what they have to offer and teach you. 
 
Happy All Hallow’s Eve! or literally, Happy All-is-Holy Eve!
 
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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell.com.

The Shift from Individual Divinity to Collective Divinity Consciousness
 

​We, in what is commonly called “the West” have an imbalance in our comprehension of human reality. We tend to lean too far to the “individual” side of the individual-communal continuum. Other cultures may do the opposite and lean too far to the “communal” side of the continuum, but for the purpose of this blog I’m going to stick to the imbalance that my own culture promotes.
 
We see this everywhere, but nowhere better than in the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.” This phrase depicts the rugged individualist, who eschewing all dependency on others, can survive on one’s own out in Nature, rejecting all help from outside sources. Of course, this overlooks the obvious fact that the rugged individualist is still completely dependent on Nature.

Beyond that, though, we see this show up in the spiritualities of our dominant culture. In evangelicalism, we see the “just Jesus and me” theme. Even in contemplative practices, we see the hermit “just God and me” theme.
 
On Facebook, I’m a participant in our local Buy Nothing or sometimes called Gift Everything groups. The somewhat subversive principle is to share freely from our overflow rather than from a motivation to get a good price either from selling or buying. Find out more here. For me, this has helped underscore that abundance is not just a quality of individualized divinity but a quality of collectivized divinity. I also recently joined spiritual community as an employee only. It will be interesting to observe how a community that acknowledges their divine nature as a starting point realizes that in community. Will it be just a collection of divine-realized individuals or will it be a divine-realized community? Does that make a difference? If so, how? 

I know from years of experience, that group healing is more than the sum of its individual parts and is vastly stronger than one-on-one healing. It’s interesting to note that the common way Reiki was administered in Japan was as group treatments, not one-on-one. I participated in a group healing with Dr. Adam McLeod and the results were monitored in an EEG and were phenomenal. I wrote about that here. 

Lynne McTaggert, in her recent book, The Power of Eight, writes in-depth about the miraculous power of collective intention (see my book review). Knowing how powerful collective intent is, I started a group for healing our country. Dozens of people collectively sends meditations, prayers, and energy healing at the same time every week. If you’re interested in participating, let me know!

Or, How to create True Neutrality

Politics is messy. We all agree on this, right?
 
What about this question, though: is it more or less spiritual to stay out of politics? What’s your opinion there? 
 
I just saw a social media post by a popular spiritual author who is followed by thousands of spiritual movers and shakers, who basically said he was chucking politics because it was too polarizing and he wanted to focus on the spiritual. He is a white, well-off, male.
 
I also saw another social media comment by a spiritual author who is a white male, too, and self-described as reasonably well-off. Here’s his comment:
 
     “I’m aware that my life is not much different than it was two years ago. In fact, I’m probably a bit better off financially. It would be easy to settle into that privilege and allow the world to go by. For me, indeed, this time shall pass. But I have deep concerns about those for whom this time is devastating and life-threatening. I’m aware the people in rural parts of the country have very limited access to healthcare. Rural hospitals continue to close. Restrictions on immigration will impact their ability to attract physicians and nurses. I’m deeply troubled by the immigrant children separated from their parents. That trauma is the stuff that can be the foundation for the kinds of multigenerational transmission of trauma seen today among Native American people and other groups. Of course, there are the Black men killed, those killed in gun violence in schools and other public places, and the poor treatment of our seniors. The list is long.

    I participate in demonstrations, write letters, use my voice to raise awareness, contribute to progressive causes and campaigns. But the tide of hatred, bigotry, and self-centeredness is overwhelming. 

         In the midst of the massive injustice of these times, my hope is that we can just be a bit kinder to each other. My partner, Kin, helped me to gain insight into my need to be more aware of my responses to others as a white man while on a road trip to Louisville. I’ve tried to be more aware that my actions don’t add to the burden others carry. (If only I could do better with that when driving!)

        I think it’s important to remember that we’re all in this together. We need each other more than ever to make the world a better place.”
 
   ~by Lou Kavar. Used with permission FaceBook comment, 6/12/2018.
 
I love Lou’s response. He sees his privilege. Even though he is overwhelmed, he is doing everything he can to be a voice of love and light. He isn’t “chucking politics for the spiritual” but instead, is seeing them as integral to each other.
 
If you are someone who tends to shy away from politics because you think it’s not spiritual, or because you think it’s too polarizing, I understand. I used to think similarly as I am a big conflict-adverse personality type. After learning this one the hard way, though, I would like to offer another viewpoint. Perhaps one of the big reasons people stay away from politics (besides anxiety, stress, overwhelm—as Lou himself points out—and fight-or-flight paralysis!) is because they are not impacted directly by the politics at hand. That is, they have privilege, the option, to stay away, as Lou recognizes.
 
For if someone’s children were shot by police (illegally)... If their spouse was deported (illegally)… If their grandchildren were forcefully separated from their parents (illegally) when seeking asylum in another country... If their neighbor’s civil rights were taken away (illegally)... If they were the ones who’d been raped/sexually assaulted/harassed at work, and their company didn’t hold the accused accountable, and knowing there were others who’ve experienced the same...
 
Do you think that person would simply walk away, saying, it’s too polarizing. It’s too divisive? It’s too ____? 
 
Or would they get involved?
 
In the parable of the Good (Compassionate) Samaritan, I imagine the priest walks by the injured man because it’s unclean (messy/polarizing?). I imagine the Levite walks by the injured man because it’s dangerous (divisive?). The Samaritan (the least spiritual person of the three according to the perception of the listeners) gets involved and acts. The least spiritual person is praised by Jesus as being the most merciful, the most loving, the most in alignment with the Divine. If someone avoids taking care of their neighbors, whether those neighbors live next door or somewhere else in their common country, are they being more compassionate or less? 
 
So if people aren’t getting involved now, with the ongoing upheaval in our country, is it due to their personally not being impacted? And are they not being impacted due to their privilege that allows them to not be impacted (white? male? sufficient income and back-up to not be impacted day in and day out?)
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