Protecting Your Energy - Friend or Faux?

By Chris Atley

I'm looking forward to the long weekend! We have lots of baseball, parties and down time planned! I hope you have some fun stuff going on too. Life's too short to be so serious right?!

Before I sign off for the weekend, I wanted to share something interesting that seems to keep popping-up. It's the topic around protecting one's energy. I remember being taught years ago when I was just getting into all of this "spiritual stuff" to protect my energy from other people. To imagine a ball of white light around me so that no one's negative energy could penetrate in and so I could stay surrounded by white light. Read on to learn why this actually caused a lot of anxiety and what's really behind protecting your energy anyway.

Protecting oneself was taught not only by spiritual healers, but also business coaches particularly around sponsoring events. We came into contact with a lot of people. Some not always so nice.

I went to a lot of trouble, and I mean a lot of trouble, trying to get this "right". I used to imagine the thickest of glass surrounding me in a ginormous bubble. I mean this stuff was 10 feet thick. It was bullet proof, blade proof, you name it, the best on the market!!!

I would imagine people's negative energy like tiny pebbles bouncing off of the glass, all the while surrounding myself inside the glass with the whitest, most loving, sparkly energy I could dream up.

This process took about 20 minutes at least, and if I'm being completely honest caused a lot of anxiety. Anxiety around if I was doing it right, or heaven forbid if I forgot to do it! Then I felt completely screwed.

It was one more ritual to add to the collection of my OCD habits. My old rituals of habits like having to check if doors were locked, were replaced with these new "spiritual" ones in disguise, conning me into thinking I no longer had any symptoms. Sneaky.

AND it never worked. Shit still showed up. People were still mean and I still took offense.

Hmm...

Let's try a different perspective on, even if just for a minute.

If we believe we are a soul, a spirit, at the highest level, that we truly are eternal beings and that we are all connected as one, then what is a body?

I'm going to go "Course in Miracles" for a minute here.

The Course in Miracles says that the world we see is a projection of our minds, our consciousness. We are the dreamer of our own dream. Doesn't it make sense then that the body is a part of that dream? If we truly think about the body as being a part of the projection then we can start to let go of this tight grip we have around it. We can stop trying to "protect the projection" as my best friend and I like to call it. It doesn't mean we need to get all whoo whoo and crazy, but it does help to put things into perspective and for me has been the ultimate way to LET GO. Let go of the thoughts and stories we have so nicely convinced ourselves of, that keep us so attached to the projection - which is basically a whole lot of drama. Drama in relationships and how we think the world needs to work. Stuck in fear and control. I get sucked in all of the time and so do you. It's a constant wake-up call.

Here's what my take is in terms of protecting our energy. Protecting our energy is all about the body and it's one more way for us to stay separate and disconnected from one another. At our highest level, we are connected and we long for that sense of connection, love and belonging every day.

So what exactly are we protecting ourselves from?

Heavy thoughts. The reality is that we all have an ego and can slip into lack and fear based thinking. Even the most enlightened.

When we feel the need to "protect our energy" it really just means that we don't want to take on someone's "negative" energy. Meaning we in-turn don't want to think and feel negatively. It has nothing to do with our body and putting some type of energy around it.

If we are speaking at an event and felt the need to protect ourselves, it's because we don't feel safe deep down. It's therefore not a coincidence that we would then attract someone who does something thus enforcing the need to protect ourselves. We need to tackle the thoughts and feelings around feeling "unsafe" instead.

This is about controlling our own thoughts and emotions.

When we encounter someone "negative" we can easily choose to not let it affect us.

It's a choice.

We can choose to see it clearly - that they are hurting for some reason - to not take it personally - this is the huge part - and send them good thoughts and LET IT GO. Knowing we are safe, and we are loved and when we come form this pace, those "unsafe" and "negative" people show-up less and less. Why? Because we're no longer projecting it.