Photo by Sidi-Omar Alami
Know that feeling is feeling, it is only energy; it is not good or bad. It is only judgement that makes it so.
- P'taah
You may have read it all before….everything is energy. At the atomic level, we are all a sea of subatomic particles swimming in an ocean of cosmic soup. And when I say “we”, that would be everything that you see and everything you can't see, including everything that has ever come into being.
Energy is neutral. There is no good or bad, positive or negative, black or white, love or hate, up or down. This is all relative to the meaning we give a certain situation, the labels we assign to everything, the beliefs we commit ourselves to. So what is nourishing for one person, can be poison to another.
Let me give you an example, as a child I used to be allergic to chocolate. I know, ridiculous! What gives, hey? But there you have it. Chocolate gave me itchy hives and rashes. I didn’t question this belief. It was a hand-me down from my paediatrician, who I’m sure meant well. The issue being, nobody questioned the opinion, and why should they? For years I gave my focus and my energy to this belief, with my physical body in full cooperation with it. So yes, I was just as much responsible for continuing the manifestation of the allergic reactions.
However, at some point I was starting to get envious of my friends who were deriving so much pleasure from chocolate. I wanted to eat chocolate without suffering the skin reactions. I wanted to go to Death By Chocolate, cos it was the in-thing back in the day. I wanted to be part of the chocolate club. And just like that, I shifted the focus and the allergy was neutralised. Woah! Lightbulb moment!
Our days are spent gaining energy and then using it up. We gain it from the food we eat, the air we breath, the relationships we love, the activities we enjoy. What most people don’t realise is that we also use up the same energy on similar, possibly adverse, things – junk food, alcohol, cigarettes, toxic relationships and situations we may not love, but we deem necessary. The difference between the good and the bad is based on what it means for each one of us, boiling back down to our individual belief system. So if you believe junk food is nutritious and will never harm you, then you will not experience any long term adverse health effects. I used to know an old fogey, who would put four teaspoons of sugar in his tea twice a day, everyday. It was really sugar syrup with a splash of tea. You’d think he’d develop diabetes, but he was perfectly fine. Good teeth, too. He obviously believed he was immune to the effects of sugar. So he was.
Another example. In modern society, we’ve been schooled from an early age that in order to succeed as a functioning member of the western world, we need to be engaged in some kind of productive work, contribute to the betterment of the race, so to speak. You need to work, to pay the bills, the mortgage, the school fees and to put food on the table. Yes, work! And although there are a privileged few who have found gainful work doing something they absolutely love, that isn’t quite the case for the most of us. To cope with the stress of being in high paying jobs doing work that doesn’t pull on our heartstrings, we pick up weekend hobbies, such as photography, mountain biking, thai cooking, guitar playing, dancing….you name it.
Again the majority of us derive energy from the activities we enjoy. We shore up that energy, so that we have enough to use when we go about our daily business of making the daily dough, in jobs we kinda like but not necessarily love. Where it all gets unhinged is when the effort becomes skewed towards where you’re giving more energy than gaining. Get my drift?
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Its just life. Balance is achieved when you’re aware of your energy bank account. Cos when you’re aware, you know how and when to shift your focus so that you can be harnessing more energy than you're giving away. So that you always have some left for yourself.
Hope you have a good week!
Cheerio!
Energy is neutral. There is no good or bad, positive or negative, black or white, love or hate, up or down. This is all relative to the meaning we give a certain situation, the labels we assign to everything, the beliefs we commit ourselves to. So what is nourishing for one person, can be poison to another.
Let me give you an example, as a child I used to be allergic to chocolate. I know, ridiculous! What gives, hey? But there you have it. Chocolate gave me itchy hives and rashes. I didn’t question this belief. It was a hand-me down from my paediatrician, who I’m sure meant well. The issue being, nobody questioned the opinion, and why should they? For years I gave my focus and my energy to this belief, with my physical body in full cooperation with it. So yes, I was just as much responsible for continuing the manifestation of the allergic reactions.
However, at some point I was starting to get envious of my friends who were deriving so much pleasure from chocolate. I wanted to eat chocolate without suffering the skin reactions. I wanted to go to Death By Chocolate, cos it was the in-thing back in the day. I wanted to be part of the chocolate club. And just like that, I shifted the focus and the allergy was neutralised. Woah! Lightbulb moment!
Our days are spent gaining energy and then using it up. We gain it from the food we eat, the air we breath, the relationships we love, the activities we enjoy. What most people don’t realise is that we also use up the same energy on similar, possibly adverse, things – junk food, alcohol, cigarettes, toxic relationships and situations we may not love, but we deem necessary. The difference between the good and the bad is based on what it means for each one of us, boiling back down to our individual belief system. So if you believe junk food is nutritious and will never harm you, then you will not experience any long term adverse health effects. I used to know an old fogey, who would put four teaspoons of sugar in his tea twice a day, everyday. It was really sugar syrup with a splash of tea. You’d think he’d develop diabetes, but he was perfectly fine. Good teeth, too. He obviously believed he was immune to the effects of sugar. So he was.
Another example. In modern society, we’ve been schooled from an early age that in order to succeed as a functioning member of the western world, we need to be engaged in some kind of productive work, contribute to the betterment of the race, so to speak. You need to work, to pay the bills, the mortgage, the school fees and to put food on the table. Yes, work! And although there are a privileged few who have found gainful work doing something they absolutely love, that isn’t quite the case for the most of us. To cope with the stress of being in high paying jobs doing work that doesn’t pull on our heartstrings, we pick up weekend hobbies, such as photography, mountain biking, thai cooking, guitar playing, dancing….you name it.
Again the majority of us derive energy from the activities we enjoy. We shore up that energy, so that we have enough to use when we go about our daily business of making the daily dough, in jobs we kinda like but not necessarily love. Where it all gets unhinged is when the effort becomes skewed towards where you’re giving more energy than gaining. Get my drift?
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Its just life. Balance is achieved when you’re aware of your energy bank account. Cos when you’re aware, you know how and when to shift your focus so that you can be harnessing more energy than you're giving away. So that you always have some left for yourself.
Hope you have a good week!
Cheerio!
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