I have been watching the continued fallout from the election on Facebook since I wrote my last post a day ago. But I was also deeply heartened by the encouragement and support I shared and received from my small circle of friends. Thank you. It made one of the worst days I've lived through into one of the best as well.
After mulling over what I wrote here yesterday, I find I would like to add some thoughts about emotions and emotional energy. Right now there is more rage, despair and grief roiling to the collective surface than I have ever seen. It is toxic, it is explosive, and it is all too easy to be swept up in its riptide. Anger takes over and starts to run people, and before they know it they've gone unconscious--reacting, lashing out, rather than responding. I see people close to me, friends and family members that I love, who do not act this way normally, swept up in this tidal wave of rage. This is extremely dangerous.
The other thing I'm seeing is a horrified withdrawl from the expression of all "negative" emotion as people turn to love, compassion and forgiveness to ease the terrible pain they are in. It is very interesting to see these responses.
There is another way. I said yesterday that it's important to feel your feelings, then not to hang onto them, to let them go. While that's still true, it's possible to work with that emotional energy and use it to fuel constructive action. Anger turned outward into the collective in a scattershot way will only draw more of it to you. But if you take that raw energy and redirect it into creative or constructive action, you've transformed it. That rage becomes rocket fuel for positive change. I think anger, and the rage that especially women have built up over the millennia, can become a tremendous resource if we channel it wisely and do not try to push it away.
There is something called Hucha Mikhuy in the Andean spiritual tradition. It is an advanced energy technique wherein one literally takes negative energy in and digests it. The energy is transformed into light and heavy streams; the heavy is released to the Earth as food to her--yes, she loves it--and the light is retained and circulated through your system, energizing you. Learning this was a huge revelation to me and completely transformed how I view and work with energy. The point I'm making here is that there is no "good" or "bad" energy except in terms of how it affects us, or rather, how we allow it to affect us. It's all just energy, and potential fuel for us to use in any manner we wish, if we are able to work with it consciously.
By the same token, sending love and kind thoughts to people we dislike in hope of changing them into better people may not have the effect we think it has. I encountered this back in the 80s and 90s during the New Age movement and have come to call it the Pink Light Syndrome: just surround yourself and/or anyone you find vexing with it and All Shall Be Well. In truth what this does is send more energy, more fuel, more food, to that person or group. It's like money in the bank for them; they can use it however they please, including to carry on exactly as they have been before and do more damage. By doing this we're enabling them to continue, in the same way a dysfunctional family enables an addict or abuser in their midst. Women are especially prone to this kind of behavior, because many are still under the spell of having to act nice, at any cost, no matter how brutal the behavior they are confronted with. If anything, what is called for here is tough love, a topic for another day.
What I do, and recommend to you, is to not send any energy at all to others you dislike. Cut off that flow completely, and redirect it into what you wish to create. Right now I am not sending our political system or politicians any energy; I am working the situation in another way, to defend and strengthen and create.
I was also going to talk about the need for protection, which is very important right now, very important. But this has gone on long enough, and I'll save it for later. Just call in all the protection you can. Retreat and take care of yourself when you have to. You are valuable and needed.
Love to you all...share this all you want.
Blessings,
Dawn