Spiritual vs. Psychic Energy

God energy, for all intent and purposes, is a neutral force. It is an intelligent force, but contrary to traditional religious dogma and belief, it is not concerned with outcome in the way we have been conditioned to think. The energy exists for life-force sustenance and to be used both consciously and unconsciously for the purpose of manifestation; ignorance of the law of attraction is no excuse. When an individual petitions God for a particular outcome through prayer, from the perspective of Divine energy, this petition is no different than a person thinking about something they passionately want. The intention is the same, to manifest. In an earlier blog entry entitled, Understanding Belief (Part I), I stated that “…A thought is a prayer… in exactly the same way we exercise the intent of petition through prayer, our thoughts basically create the same effect and outcome. The cosmic energy makes no distinction between a formal petition through prayer and an impassioned thought… as we transition ever deeper into the heightened vibration of our new spiritual paradigm, the karmic connection between our seed thought and its out-pictured effect will become even more apparent in our conscious perception.”

This karmic connection is something that I believe deserves deeper analysis and consideration. With almost no exception, everything creates karma. This is neither good nor bad; it is merely an aspect of spiritual law that we cannot escape. There is however, one extremely important exception to this fundamental rule. The only thing that is karma-less in nature is sending love to the Creator. This creates no karma whatsoever. It only creates a wonderful and fulfilling feedback loop of divine love back to the sender. This outflow of divine love to God for love’s sake makes no request of any kind, and is therefore free from any cause/effect relational energy, consistent with the creation of karma. This is a very important distinction to understand and paves the way for a deeper discussion on the difference between Spiritual energy and Psychic energy.

Psychic energy is an extremely ubiquitous and powerful force. It can be used for a myriad of purposes from general manifestation through the law of attraction to mental telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, prophecy, psychic healing, and inter-dimensional communication and travel to name a few. It has both positive and negative aspects determined by intent, and can be used for good as well as for evil. Those knowing practitioners of the black arts are well aware of its power and use it regularly and often for negative and malicious purposes. There are also those who are equally aware of its energy but use it for good and to counter-balance the negative energy taking place throughout current world affairs. In truth, we all to some degree use psychic energy everyday, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. The hope is certainly that as we grow spiritually and more aware of the subtle energies around and through us, we serve more and more as a conscious channel for divine loving energy. With this in mind, and with the earlier mention of karma as a backdrop, I’d like to make a few key distinctions that we should all be aware.

First, Spiritual energy is much, much more powerful than psychic energy, and should be utilized over and above all else. What makes this energy Spiritual is that it is centered within the Divine love of Source energy. All energy, whether psychic or otherwise comes from All That Is, but what makes Spiritual energy different from psychic energy is the intention of specific outcome. Let me repeat this; the difference between Spiritual energy and psychic energy is THE INTENTION OF SPECIFIC OUTCOME. Spiritual energy has no intention for outcome. It is only sent in love, to where it is needed.

Second, when practicing Spiritual energy, it is important to know how to formulate and utilize the energy so as not to make it psychic in nature, and therefore karmic. Using prayer as an example, let’s investigate this further. In our example, a person is feeling ill and needs to see the Doctor. The Doctor determines that the patient needs to be checked into the hospital right away. This person is very sick and his condition is 50/50. Wanting to help this person, you send out a prayer asking God to take away his ills and make him well again. As well intentioned as this prayer may be, it is a classic case of using psychic energy and not Spiritual energy. In order for this to become a Spiritual energy exercise, it would be better to, in the name of the Creator, send loving energy to this person only. You surround the individual in your mind’s eye with loving God energy, but you do not ask for any specific outcome, for “Thy will be done”.

You see, who are you to take away a person’s spiritual experience? Who are you to take away his karma? Perhaps this individual is in the hospital because he was not taking proper care of himself and was abusing his body through poor diet and lack of exercise. Perhaps this experience is an opportunity to provide a wake up call for better health practices. You simply don’t know, so to ask for this person to get well might be doing him a karmic disservice. Better to send Divine love to an individual with no formal intention, and allow Source energy to determine what is best in the situation. Believe me, this is a powerful exercise and one centered in Divine Love. That Soul will be well taken care of.

This type of energy utilization is sometimes easier said than done, especially if it involves a loved one. I am by no means telling anyone to do anything other than what they feel is best in their particular circumstance. I am only pointing out the differences so that you can become more of a conscious channel for Divine energy. It takes practice and in some cases a bit of spiritual detachment so as to remain objective and open while utilizing this loving energy. Trust that IT will do what is best.

So you can indeed direct very powerful Spiritual energy to any situation you deem appropriate, as long as you understand that it is not up to you to determine what the cause and effect relationship should be; you simply don’t know enough. But All That Is knows all there is. Leave it to the expert. Namaste.

What Is Your Next Lesson?

When one makes the conscious decision to live a spiritual life, a conscious life where you start to become more of the observer and co-creator of your own personal universe and less a victim and pawn, the pursuit of spiritual lessons become ever more important. When ready, these lessons serve as the building blocks for enlightenment as they slowly reveal themselves to you. We then begin to take on and work through these lessons in the ever-elusive pursuit of spiritual upliftment and perfection. Now some consider this aspiration for perfection to be an unattainable milestone. I kind of tend to agree with this and personally have no problem with the assertion. Within the course of my own spiritual journey I have come to recognize that my true identity is that of Soul…who inhabits a physical body to serve as a vehicle while still on this coarse plane of existence…but am in fact a divine spark of God awareness created in love by All That Is… for the purpose of gaining experience and enlightenment. Within this fundamental understanding of Soul is the realization that I am eternal; that I will never die. Knowing that I live in eternity bodes a very basic question; what do I do with all of this duration (…see, time is an illusion)? There is a saying that goes, “There is always a plus (+) element to spiritual unfoldment.” What this basically means is that there is always a next step, a new challenge, something more to learn and that we will never stop growing. I believe this to be a good, good thing because truth be told, we need something to do. So I have no problem with the probability that I will never reach ultimate perfection because then what would there be left, floating on a cloud playing a harp (or in my case a saxophone) for eternity? I think not.

So within the premise that there is always something more to learn, how do we determine what our next spiritual lesson might be? In the initial personal audit of our own respective character defects, some of the lessons may be quite obvious. It is up to each of us to have the courage to look at that “man/woman in the mirror” and call it like you see it. Admission and acceptance is the first step, then daily maintenance and the replacement of one habit or action with another that is more in alignment with Spirit. I won’t go into any details in this entry on what this might entail because that is a personal journey for everyone, and I will leave you to your own introspection and insight. Suffice it to say though that much of the initial self-critique is often low hanging fruit. Over time however, these lessons are learned and adjustments are made, and things that were considered negative in nature begin to fall away; you simply don’t need them anymore. Karma is one of our best teachers and serves as a major catalyst for bringing to our attention what we need to focus on. As we come closer and closer to the God-loving life however, the lessons tend to become more subtle and intimate in nature, and we may need to use other measures besides karma to make us aware of what we should focus on next.

There is one very close and simple barometer for determining what your next lesson might be. This measure has always been with us and often times has been an unforgiving nemesis during crucial times in our life. If you want to know what your next lesson might be, simply ask yourself, what are you most afraid of? Your answer may very well be your next lesson. I have mentioned in earlier blog entries the nature of fear (see March 16 blog) and how it can often cause you to shut down and become unable to accept divine love. Fear takes on many forms, and it is incumbent on us to really examine what we are afraid of. Fear, in truth, is an opportunity for growth. Another way of putting it is something I heard once, “…pain is a sign that soul is growing.” We must again have the courage to tackle the fear within us that is most pervasive and find ways to overcome it. Once achieved, you will be stronger and wiser for having taken the journey.

Having said all of this, I feel it only fair to mention here that nothing really occurs in a straight line, but within waves of unfoldment. There are good days and there are bad days, peaks and valleys to life. Daily maintenance of spiritual lessons learned becomes important. There is another saying that basically states, “Heaven must be re-won everyday”. What this basically means is that vigilance is always important, and that you must be mindful to practice what you already know and have already learned (remembered) on a daily basis to maintain where you are so as not to slip backwards in your own personal unfoldment. Remember, you can only coast in one direction.

Does Wisdom Erase Karma?

There is an esoteric school of thought that states that the attainment of wisdom negates the need for karma; an intriguing notion to say the least. But how true is it with respect to the laws of karma and the subtle balance of enlightenment and universal truth? Most people understand karma as the law of cause and effect; what goes around comes around; you must reap what you sow; or for every action there is an opposite but equal reaction. All of these statements are true in their own right. When you dig deeper into the mechanism of karma and how this balancing energy interacts with our lives and choices however, the revelations can be quite intricate and nuanced. There are many schools of thought as to the process that karma uses in determining a person’s destiny or fate based on choices and decisions in one life to the next, and many religions certainly have unique perspectives on just how this works.

There are some spiritual schools of thought that state that there are over 150 different types of karma, all working in concert to determine the course of ones spiritual evolution. But for this discussion, we are only going to focus broadly on four types of karma. In the Hindu (Vedantic) tradition which we will use here, they are identified as:

1. Sanchita Karma – This is considered the sum total of all the accumulated actions that you have created in all of your incarnations. It contains the vast stores of cause and effect choices you have made throughout your conscious existence.

2. Praarabdha Karma – This is considered a subset of Sanchita Karma, but with emphasis on actions that were set in motion in this life and the carry over from the last life. For example, certain conditions you might be dealing with in this life that you might feel is an unfair challenge or burden may in fact be the balancing of actions taken from the last life.

3. Kriyamana Karma – This is considered in the nomenclature to be instant karma. Its immediate cause and effect relationship is helpful in that it allows the conscious observer to connect the dots between choices and outcomes. It is daily karma, and helps one navigate through the waters of enlightenment to determine if he/she is on the right course or not. This is the karma we are most consciously aware of.

4. Aagami Karma – In some respects this is a subset of Kriyamana karma, but with emphasis on the future. It is the direct effect of actions taken now that serve as the determinant for reactions experienced in the future. This is in constant flux by virtue of choices and possibilities. What you do now determines what happens next.

This last one is very interesting because in some respects, it can be considered the karmic off-ramp by which parallel universes of possibilities exist. All of our choices and options create endless possibilities of alternate reality; but this is another topic for another time.

It is important to put things in perspective here by stating that we are the sum total of all of our experiences. Who or what we are now has been determined by the roads we have traveled before and choices that we have made leading up to what we remember of our infinite divine origins, now. All of these types of karma serve to monitor, assess and quantify our existence and growth. It is the karmic record keeper of our existence in the inner and outer worlds.

This brings us back to our original question; can wisdom erase karma? The truth is that karma to a great extent can be corrected. Expansion of awareness provides an option as to whether or not one has to go through (or continue to go through) an experience or not. Having said this, it is also important to realize that actions set in motion must inevitably run their course, like the waters of a river must inevitably flow to the sea. But our thoughts and actions now, along with the wisdom gained from our experience paves the way for what will occur in our future. So in truth, wisdom and karma are necessary pieces of the same intricately complex puzzle.

So as we come to understand in our daily spiritual evolution, nothing is cut and dry. The edges of truth become more rounded and the relativity of existence becomes more apparent. Considering this in combination with an understanding and recognition of reincarnation (please see A to 1 blog, Life, Death and Reincarnation - Feb. 18th, 2009) and the awakening to our true existence becomes one of infinite conscious expansion. It’s all about remembering who and what we are in context to our divine mission and expansion of universal awareness. Our existence is but an intricate droplet of awareness and experience necessary to All That Is in Its desire to gain experiential knowledge and infinite expansion. We are It, It is us, and we are one. Source cannot experience anything outside of itself, for there is nothing outside of it; it is all. Our infinite cycles of life, death, reincarnation, and the karmic underpinnings that make up experiential recognition of omniscience already attained is what we’re here for. Pretty cool gig when you think about it, for we are all part of the whole. No experience necessary, for that’s what the job we’ve been given is all about.