We are beings of energy and consciousness, and we can learn, with practice, to be adept at working with both of these forces. It is in the everyday events of our life where we learn the skills of working with energy. Becoming aware of how energy flows within us, feeling its ebb and flow, moment by moment, teaches us a lot. We notice how it leaks away when we think and act in certain ways, and discover how energy can be trapped and held by parts of ourselves that are unconscious. Certain habits and practices, we come to realize, increase our energy, and others decrease it, and we take note of this.
How we feel is an indication of what is happening with our energy. Energy ebbs and flows within us, so noticing what causes these ebbs and flows allows us to make conscious choices in our life from an energetic perspective, which is a totally different way of living. There are a number of energy practices that will uplift our energy, and practicing these methods, we learn how to become choreographers of energy.
Our first practice is HARVESTING MOMENTS OF FUN, JOY AND BEAUTY:
We harvest moments of fun, joy and beauty because they make us strong. It is wasteful and disrespectable to not enjoy and appreciate the simple everyday pleasures of life. It shows we are unconscious, neurotic, captured by pettiness or lost within our mind. We must try to be happy, to enjoy our life. It is good for us to live this way. When we enjoy life and drink deeply from the moments of fun, joy, and beauty that happen daily in our lives, giving thanks for this magnificent journey, we feel better, have more energy and become more aware. Fun, joy and beauty have never been understood as energy sources before, but this will change as our understanding of quantum reality increases.
The universe encourages us to have fun. We know this because it rewards us with energy when we enjoy ourselves, therefore it must want us to do this. The universe encourages us to increase our energy by making these sources of energy pleasurable. Just as procreation is made pleasurable to ensure that the species propagates itself, similarly when we are happy, having fun, enjoying and appreciating ourselves and our life journey, we are rewarded with increased energy. It is not surprising that nature would create ways to increase our energy by making them fun and enjoyable. This would encourage us to access these sources regularly. We have always meant to be nurtured by these sources; only we have forgotten our most basic need for fun and pleasure. We got lost in busyness, thinking, and other matters deemed more important. We need to reestablish different priorities and redesign how we are living our lives. To let joy, beauty and happiness into our life each day is a very conscious thing to do. These everyday experiences and pleasures of life are more than just enjoyable moments; they are valuable sources of energy, so daily we harvest them by appreciating them in the moment that they happen.
Learning to make fun, joy and beauty a priority in our life shifts our energy. There are many ways to do it when we are creative and attentive to this task.
In 2000 I wrote a beautiful little book called The Practice of Happiness. I can’t tell you the number times I had to correct people, usually in media interviews, when they confused the words pursuit and practice, calling the book “the pursuit of happiness”. “It’s not the pursuit of happiness” I would say; “It’s the practice of happiness.” Each of us is so indoctrinated in the notion that we pursue things in order to achieve them that this Freudian slip happened time and time again, even though they had the title of the book right in front of them. But this is the whole point of the book; we don’t pursue happiness, we practice it daily. Fun, joy and beauty are to be discovered and harvested daily. They are the most neglected and misunderstood sources of energy in our life.
I quote from The Practice of Happiness: «Having fun daily, even if it’s only for a few minutes, is a life-affirming practice. It’s also a powerful symbol to our subconscious. It is saying I am worthy. Life is good. Even small amounts of fun every day can have a profound effect. We must be diligent in taking time to nourish ourselves. If, no matter how busy we are, we still have the wisdom to take time for ourselves, we will be well compensated. Don’t be fooled by pressures and responsibilities; they will wait for you. We set the agenda for our life, and in our agenda there must always be time for fun.»
Each of us takes responsibility for our own life by uplifting ourselves and replenishing our energetic system daily. We need not wait for life to change in any dramatic way in order for us to be happy. We become proactive in harvesting our own moments of happiness in whatever situations come our way. We harvest joy and beauty by enjoying the simple everyday pleasures that previously we had ignored or passed over. We begin looking for ways to be happy in our life and take on our responsibility to be happy. We harvest happy moments by abandoning ourselves completely to them, letting them fill us with pleasure as they are happening to us. Taking a bath, talking to a friend, reading a good book, falling asleep when you’re tired, gazing at the moon, the sound of children laughing, having a good meal, watching a bird in flight, there are so many enjoyable moments. We harvest these moments the way a farmer harvests a crop. We harvest them by giving them our attention completely in the moment that they are happening. We can have many of these moments every day if we take the time to notice them, and when we do we shift our energy accordingly. Each day we can contemplate the quantum reality of being immersed in this sea of energy. We become energy conscious, watching energy in action as it manifests in all its different forms.
It is a truly beautiful system; all things, plants, animals, rocks, oceans as well as human beings drawing energy from the cosmic web just by being in it. It happens naturally, without us having to do anything. The life energy that nurtures the cinnamon tree is the same energy that fuels the barking dog and allows the grasshopper to leap in the field. It is the energy of the universe that maintains life in all things, and it exists everywhere and in abundance. Although the energy encircling us is invisible and undetectable by our human senses, we can nonetheless be aware of it and learn to choreograph it. The energy web is all around us and in it «we live and move and have our being.»
Working with energy in these quantum ways enhances our life immeasurably. With increased energy we feel better, heal more quickly, are more alert, intuitive and effective in our lives. With increasing energy comes increasing vitality, mental capacity and grace. If we have life-problems to work out (and who doesn’t), our increased vitality gives us more energy and courage with which to deal with them. Our increased mental capacity gives us increased insight, which reflects in our choices and actions. Increased energy shifts our vibration and this is translated into every aspect of our life. When our vital energy goes up, every part of our nature is quickened and intensified. We also have a sense of being “in the flow,” and there is a sense of aliveness that inspires us. These are the possibilities available to those who learn to be choreographers of energy.