Inner Work

For the week of June 17, 2019

Walking in Energy

(Spiritual Walking: 4)

When we practice sensing often, completely, and robustly, something begins to change in our body. No longer is it only the flesh and bones of physicality. Now we begin to experience our body as more or less filled with energy, the sensitive energy: a cloud of fine, vibrating particles of energy. At first this energy is unstable, evaporating quickly if we do not continually give it attention and replenish it. Gradually, though, our attention to our body brings the conscious energy into combination with the sensitive, resulting in a more substantial inner material filling us, with the sensitive energy embedded in it. That is how our inner body begins to form.

Regardless of our stage in that process, if we can practice sensing our whole body, then we can practice being in that sensitive energy as we walk. We shift from only being in our physical body to also being in our energy body. Doing so has the salutary effect of extending our work with the sensitive energy for longer periods, while also deepening that work. If we are "in" the sensitive energy, we bring the conscious energy, awareness itself, along with us, which is what intentionally being "in" means. In that way, we set up the conditions for the sensitive and conscious energies to combine.

To support and enhance our practice of walking in energy, we can work to increase the quantity of energy in our body as we walk. One way is through simple, direct, ongoing attention to and in our whole body. As we walk, we relax into our body and maintain ourselves there, step after step. Holding ourselves in contact with our body awakens the sensitive energy and increases it.

Another way to increase the sensitive energy in our body involves the practice of breathing energy. We are always surrounded by sensitive energy. It fills the air around us. Breathing energy is a matter of intentionally drawing that energy from the air into us and having it stay in our body. Our primary means for this is our attention and the will to pull the energy in. It is as if there are vibrating particles of light all around. We cast a net of attention into the air around us and draw that net, full of those particles of energy, back into us. The energy already in us connects with the energy from around us and gives it a place to land when we draw it into our body. We can practice this anytime we have enough spare attention, including for example while we walk. We just maintain enough ordinary attention to our surroundings to stay safe.

So often when we walk, we get lost in thoughts. Now we reclaim ourselves, our attention, from that passivity and move actively into our body, into our sensation, into our energy and energy breathing, as we walk. This changes the very nature of our experience. Everything is more vivid. We are more vivid, more alive. A new life opens to us. We now have an inner life, in the realm of inner energies, as well as the physical, outer life. Our inner life is worthy of the name, no longer just a chaotic jumble of thoughts and emotions, now an organizing and stabilizing body of energies, a true inner being.

For this week, please practice walking in energy.

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