If you look at alternative health programs, you’ll run into stuff showing the kind of sludge that can build up in peoples bodies from years of poor diet habits. Yuck!
Traditional medicine practices the world over recognize energetic channels, meridians or nadis in some form or another. These can, in a similar way, collect years of energetic sludge. Gooey energetic resistance and literal knots in the energy channels. Even big ones we can feel under the skin.
This sludge is formed by energetic resistance. Blocks in the flow. Fighting life, ourselves, and whatever shows up. We can recognize this resistance in 2 main ways – mental resistance and emotional resistance, often closely tied together.
The mental habits are those stories we tell ourselves and others about what’s wrong and bad. What we’re against, who has wronged us, and so on. While there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing or standing up for what we feel is right, most of our stories are not about what we’re for but rather against. If you just stop and listen when you’re chatting with friends, you might be surprised how often you retell your problems, reinforcing them in your reality.
Like when we catch ourselves judging someone we’ve never met. (The media is great for reinforcing that one) Or replaying old stories long since ended. If we stop and consider what we’d like instead, we may be surprised that we have no answer. We have no intention for what we want, just a story of what we hate. We’re inviting what we don’t want, over and over. Even if we know what we want, is that what we’re giving energy?
How do the stories make you feel? Good? Or is there a subtext? Regret? Anger? Is it more like eating junk food?
This is the emotional resistance – the real energy drivers – the reactivity and habitual response against what is unfolding. Snapping at a loved one before they get 2 words out or assuming that because we dropped something, the whole day will now be bad. Venting on our kids. (no wonder they become teenagers) Our closest relationships can be the most full of habitual responses. Where is the room for communication and intimacy if we’re reactive robots?
Curiously some of these habits of mind and emotion can appear “positive”. Like old stories of the past that actually cause us to regret in the present. When they are pushing against what is now, they are resistance. We may feel right to be against something, like an “enemy country” or another religion. But being anti-war is NOT the same as being pro-peace, as Mother Teresa highlighted. The energy is the opposite.
The sludge that results from this resistance is stored in various places throughout our system. Even in our lived environment, the “vibes” of a home. But the largest and most obvious places are the primary energy centers, the chakras. Caroline Myss calls the chakras the “data banks”. If we sludge them up, we’ll see life issues in that area. For example, if the root is sludged, we’ll feel ungrounded or insecure. For the 2nd, we may lack passion or have poor social skills. Inversely, there can be dependencies and addictions. For the 3rd, submissiveness or controlling tendencies. And so forth. You can see that it goes both ways, depending on if the energy is just blocked or agitated because it’s blocked.
The resistance I’m talking about here is sustained. This requires a continual energy supply to keep up that uses up a remarkable amount of our resources. But we don’t realize it’s happening because we’re so used to fighting internally.
All we have to do is be willing to stop, look, listen. If we see something we don’t want in life, do a little energy healing or inquiry to disengage the energy source. What is the feeling value under this resistance? What is under that? The emotions will wash over us in a brief wave and be gone, done, completed. As these emotions are the energy that drives the clingy mind, the mental drivers also go.
At first, it may be very uncomfortable to see. Our dark side, the bogeyman. But once seen, it clears easily. The stories may come up again for a while but slowly they will lose the energy they need to continue. At some point, they will be fully seen through and end.
You’ll also find an effortless meditation is wonderful. It connects you to peace and who you are, making a lot of this automatic.
Over time, we take the load off. And what a relief it can be!
Davidya
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