There are a variety of subtle ways we hurt others and ourselves with energy. Just to recap a bit, some of the ways I’ve already discussed are: projecting blame, criticism, anger, and verbal, emotional, and physical violence onto others—when it’s really our own fear that’s surfacing in us to be understood and cleared.
By deflecting away from our own wounds, and avoiding the experience of dissolving our fear, we not only prolong our dysfunctional habits of medicating and handling our wound, but hurt others willy-nilly as we fling negative energy at them. When we allow ourselves do this, we create deep levels of shame in ourselves, which only adds to our resistance to feeling the pain. When we live in pain, our loved ones feel the pain along with us, and are especially hurt by the fact that nothing they do seems to help.
It also causes pain to ourselves and others when we make plans and agreements—ie, create an inner blueprint or pattern of energy intention—then act in a way that’s out of alignment or congruence with the inner blueprint. That might be by being late, by not following through and jumping ship midstream, or changing the parameters without renegotiating the agreement with the other partner or partners to see if the new way fits their needs.
When we do this, energy jams up and doesn’t flow to its natural outcome. Jammed energy always feels painful. When we cause confusion for others, we hurt them in a subtle way. Whenever we make things more difficult for others, AT ANY LEVEL, we hurt them with energy.
It also hurts others when we think negative things about them or don’t believe in them. Because we are so telepathic today, we DO pick up on the thoughts around us, even those at a distance, when they are aimed at us. If we’re not centered and conscious it’s easy to fulfill other people’s negative expectations of us. I once wrote a poem about this:
please don’t hold a friend
to the fumes of past fears
if they rise as a vapor
in your presence—
hold a moment longer, won’t you?
and wait for what’s real,
see beyond
what the Soul is evaporating
with Her heat;
see Her warm motive
steadily persist
Another subtle way we hurt each other with energy has to do with projecting thoughts, feelings, needs, and whole realities onto other people. We used to almost glorify the kind of love where we “needed” each other, but now we see it as “codependence” that doesn’t really allow either person the freedom to evolve without setting off the wound of the other. So there are strong expectations about the way one’s partner must behave.
If your friends or partners aren’t happy for you when you grow to become more of yourself, this is a new sort of pain. When someone else has expectations of you, or pity for you, or even great admiration for you, this projected attention-with-an-agenda can handicap your consciousness like several wet blankets thrown over your head.
When two people enter into an intimate partnership, and one projects fantasies of a certain kind of life together onto the relationship, believing the partner will behave a particular way, this also causes subtle pain, because there is no faith in the spontaneous creativity of both parties in the moment, to bring forth their best selves.
There is even a way of praying for or trying to heal others that can be debilitating: when someone believes strongly in the badness of your situation and wants you to change so they themselves won’t feel bad when they think about you. . .then the prayer or healing carries their agenda, which may not be at all what’s needed for healing and evolution.
So whenever we limit the potential of another person’s soul expression, we hurt them, and we hurt ourselves because what they might have offered might have been crucial for something we need for our full soul expression. Whenever we even second-guess what someone is going to say, or finish sentences for them, we deny them the freedom to be creative and spontaneous. Wherever we sacrifice our own self-expression, we hurt ourselves, and also others, because they may have needed what we were going to express via our joyful creativity.
(to be continued)