Welcome to 2020: It is time to intentionally fill our vessels
In my previous blog post, “It is time to empty our vessels,” we looked at the ways we can empty our energy bodies to prepare ourselves to receive the higher vibration energy moving into our world in 2020. This post reminds us that we are the only gatekeeper for what goes into our vessels even when it can feel like we are not in charge.
When we exhale, we empty the vessels we call our lungs. After exhaling, none of us intentionally look for poor air to inhale. Sitting by a smoky fire, we do not look for the smokiest space to breathe in. In fact, we hold our breath sometimes to move to clean air. Intuitively we all know that the quality of what we take in affects the quality of our life, both short term and long term. Let’s look at how gatekeeping at the boundary of our energy bodies can improve the quality of our life in 2020 and beyond.
Physical Energy Body
We are what we eat. Literally. The food and drink we ingest has two main destinations. Either the atoms and molecules we ingest become part of our physical body or we eliminate them. The more we take in that is not healthy for us, the harder our body works to either work around the stuff we incorporate or eliminate the stuff we reject. In my training in science and statistics, a common saying was “garbage in, garbage out.” The quality of the data determines the quality of the research. This appears to be a universal law. Applied here, the quality of what we ingest in food and drink determines the quality of our health. As the gatekeeper of our physical energy body, it is our responsibility to learn information that maximizes the vibration and function of our physical energy body and apply that information to the choices we make. The information comes from two places: within and without. Within information is information that we know through trial and error by living in our body. What particular food does our body process well or poorly? What balance of fiber, carbohydrates and proteins gives us optimal energy? Our intuition (a bubbling up of the inner wisdom put there by our Creator) helps us to make the right choices for the physical vessel we have been assigned. Knowing what works for our particular body is critical to assessing the “without information.” Without information is the explosion of data from nutrition science that is teaching us how a human body works in general. If left to external data alone, we would all be tossed about on a sea of information with no anchor and no destination. In case you haven’t noticed, there is often an agenda behind scientific studies. At a minimum, there is an agenda behind the dissemination of scientific studies. The dairy industry funds and promotes scientific studies that point toward the benefits of consuming dairy products. The coffee industry does the same for coffee and caffeine. Neither one of these substances may sit well in our physical body or promote optimal functioning for our vessel. We are the gatekeepers, choosing through trial and error what is best for us. One substance that is universally best for human bodies is clean water, which makes sense intuitively and scientifically since our body is comprised of about 60% water. A good rule of thumb for daily water consumption is drink in ounces one half our body weight in pounds (if I weigh 180 lbs., I drink 90 ounces of water a day).
Emotional Energy Body
Our emotional energy body is primarily designed as an alarm system that tells us whether our needs are being met in any given time and place. When we have emotions we label as “good,” our needs are being met in that time and place. When we have emotions that we label as “bad,” then our needs are not being met in that time and place (see resources on Nonviolent Communication for more information, https://www.cnvc.org/). As social beings, we have been trained to override our emotional alerts in many settings. When our boss says something mean or disrespectful to us or about us, we often override our emotions because of our perceived risk of losing our income from that job. Many of us have been trained by our upbringing to not be advocates of ourselves and our needs. As spiritual beings, we are the gatekeepers of the environment we subject ourselves to in the seen world. Our bodies have amazing feedback loops that we can bring to bear to raise our vibration and improve our functioning.
We can use our consciousness to triage our response to “bad” emotions. First, when we experience a “bad” emotion, assess what underlying need is not being met. Second, as objectively as possible, determine the likelihood of that need being met in the current environment. Much human suffering occurs from expecting a need to be met in an environment that does not have the capacity to meet that need. It is like expecting to buy fresh fruit at a bank. No matter how much I expect the bank to offer fresh fruit, there is a high likelihood that I will continue to be disappointed every time I go to the bank. I need to change the environment from which I am expecting fresh fruit. Changing to the farmer’s market in the summer or a grocery will increase the likelihood my need for fresh fruit will be met. Sometimes we need to change the location of where we are expecting our need to be met.
Third, if it is a reasonable expectation that our need will be met in the environment we expect, we may need to advocate for our need to be met. Back to the example of feeling disrespected from our boss, it is reasonable to expect that the person overseeing the work we were hired to do values both our work and our presence in the job. It may come to a point where we need to have a meeting with the boss to work at improving the environment in which we spend long hours immersed. If unresponsive to our needs, it may be time to make a move to a more supportive environment. No environment will keep us experiencing “good” emotions 100% of the time. Even as my own boss, as an entrepreneur, there are tasks I find as tedious or uninteresting that must be done. My job is to remember the necessity of the tasks to the larger goal and move through them with the least amount of “bad” emotions.
Intellectual Energy Body
In some ways, gatekeeping this energy body is the most important in our current environment. When we are awake, our bodies are constantly and continuously processing sensory information. All the commonly accepted five physical senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch – along with several other senses are flooding data into our brains that then is processed, analyzed, and routed to different parts of our brain. The level of data input into our brains has exploded exponentially in the last 100 years. As amazing as our brain is, there is no way any of us can process all the data available in the world today. Therein lies the role of gatekeeper of our intellectual energy body. We each have the responsibility of knowing what sort of, and what source of, information feeds us the data we find most useful for raising our vibration and our mental functioning. Every source of data has an agenda. Yes, even the data you receive from me. My agenda is clearly stated on the bottom of my website’s homepage: “My objective is to help individuals, couples, families and organizations live and operate at their fullest potential.”
How are you doing at gatekeeping the sensory information being fed into your brain? Frankly, it often feels like force-feeding! Even though it feels that way, becoming aware of it helps us to reject it before it takes hold in our brain. I have certain college sports teams I like to watch. When I am watching a football game, I can be almost certain there will be a pizza commercial. I have found myself craving pizza during the games, but I am aware of the sell and now discount the information as it enters my perceptual fields of vision and hearing. American businesses spend billions of dollars researching how to maximize the appeal of their products to our brains. As a gatekeeper of our intellectual energy body, we use our consciousness to override to sensory input we don’t want and direct our life toward creating the environment that maximizes that sensory input that feeds our passion and purpose in life. Just as there are data sources that can take us out of our joy and purpose, there are data sources that can feed our joy and purpose. If you have difficulty surrounding yourself with positive, life-affirming and life-enhancing data, please let me know and I can assist you in constructing that environment.
Spiritual Energy Body
When we are awake in the world, we know what feeds our spirit. For me it is authentic connection to my Creator, to the created world, to people living on purpose, and to my gifts and challenges. Our job as gatekeeper of our spiritual energy body is to make sure we have enough input of the things that feed us and to not become spiritually dehydrated. What keeps your spirit “juiced up?” Do you need to schedule time to feed your spiritual energy body? This is where both daily practice and periodic practice come in. A daily practice energizes us to turbocharge our power in engaging our world. A periodic practice resets our internal passion and purpose and helps us to make major adjustments to the path we tread. Filling up with pure Source energy fills our heart with the energy of Love that created the universe. A heart filled with Love has no harbor for hate. Love-filled human hearts co-create Consciousness rising in our world.
Please join in the revolution of the human condition happening all around us and all within us. Thank you for walking with me!