Acting 'As If…..'

This is the work of walking a spiritual path.

 

Coming to personal or spiritual maturity is neither easy nor is it necessarily pretty.  It calls upon us to leave the comfort of dearly held beliefs and step into the unknown. 

Opening to and working with subtle energies is one of those openings, one that turns our versions of reality inside out and offers us the potential of seeing our world and our lives through new eyes.  Rather than staying within the comfort of thinking about and learning about how energy works, we step further into our experience of these energies, no longer mere concepts, deeply into our bodies.

This is hard work and takes commitment and practice. It takes perseverance.  And perhaps a willingness to laugh at ourselves and most especially at our attachments to the old ways of be-ing.

Recently a student made a wonderful statement on the heels of my suggestion that they ‘act as if’ they could ‘feel’ the energy running through their bodies.  The question went something like, “So we are pretending here just like in real life when we are asked to pretend to be something we’re not.”

These thoughts address the difference between pretending to be something we are not and stretching to become who we can be.

We have all experienced other people’s will being imposed on us.  Such as bosses.  Or parents.  Or children.  Or social expectations. There are many examples.  I am sure that you can identify with one or many of them.

Here is the crux of the matter.  We can stretch into our expanded minds (imagination, intuition, visualization, listening to ‘hunches’, etc.) and bring our experience into the realm of sensation instead of thinking about these experiences. A personal litmus test, we ask ourselves,  “How does this feel in my body?  Does this system truly work for me? (We had been working with the chakra system.  Not just learning about the Chakras but sensing them opening and closing, opening the channels that connect them.) What is MY experience of them?  How do I validate my own experience?”  In some ways we are being scientists using ourselves to determine what is true for us.

When we expand our minds, we expand our capacity to accept and to hold the totality of our experience.  Expanding our minds allows us to align with our divinity.  Expanding our capacity opens us to our shared humanity.

We do this to expand our capacity to connect with and ally ourselves with the unseen world that impacts us all of the time.  We seek to be active participants in what is possible.  Being able to sense subtle energies is one piece of this puzzle.

So, yes, we DO ‘act as if’ we were able to do more than we might be able to do right now.  And, as with any muscle, we develop strength as we deepen awareness.