Why Use These Journeys?

Consider this; you are the only one you can depend on to change how you feel about your life. You cannot depend on your parents and family to live differently, your significant other or friends and coworkers to treat you differently, your children to behave differently, only you can change how you interact within the construct of your life. What better time than now to take a serious look at your life, and how you honestly feel about it.

How do you spend your day? Sit for a moment and make a timeline of how you allocate your time. When you take a close look at your day, do you excuse your own behavior, justifying what you do and how you go about doing it? Do you tell yourself you do certain things because you are overwhelmed, you are in pain, you are out of control, too weak, or unable to cope? Do you wish you were doing things differently?

Or, are you proud of what you are doing in your life each day? Are you well adjusted and happily balancing your day between work and play, or participating in whatever your inner guidance system dictates you are to do in the present moment? All of these questions are to assist you in triggering insights into your own behavior.

I believe everything boils down to energy; energy to spare, or not enough. We live our lives differently depending on how much energy we have, or don‘t have. When we have the energy to interact correctly, for our highest good, we are creating the next moment(s) to be harmonious, and leading to more growth and abundance. When we are tired or lacking energy we tend to behave badly, we make mountains out of molehills, spawn disharmony in all our interactions, and lead ourselves into our own misery and self undoing.

You are given a certain amount of energy daily, from your body and the life force available to you from the air you breathe, the food you eat, our Sun and the planets, the list goes on and on. You use this energy to fulfill your physical needs, as in bodily functions. You use your daily allotment to do the daily chores that keep us all going. You use this energy to fulfill your obligations as a member of society, whether you work, and/or raise a family. This is your conscious understanding of how you use your energy. But there are many unconscious ways you delegate your energy, at times using it up, without even understanding that‘s what is taking place.

It takes energy to sustain a thought. Whenever you react consciously or unconsciously to something, as in a response to a stimulus, it takes energy. It takes energy to accomplish your response, sometimes lots of energy, as in a reaction to fear. Every moment of your life, you are expending energy on accomplishing how you participate in your life. People tend to spend more energy in this day and age than they have available to use. We find ourselves growing more and more tired, with “dis-ease” like Epstein-Barr, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and others that limit our ability to participate in life fully.

Why is this taking place? Why do people act unconsciously, draining ourselves of our vital forces? How can we co-create our lives and live out our destiny in a fulfilling way?

The goal of this book is to redirect your energies to accomplish that which is for your highest good.

We are constantly leaking energy. What do I mean by that? I mean we are spending energy supporting thoughts, lies, old dreams, fears, angry convictions, etc. of which we are mostly unconscious. Most of the times we don‘t even remember why we have these convictions. We just know our life and survival depends on them, regardless of how stupid they seem. When we do this, we are draining ourselves, leaking all of our vital energy into the wastebasket of our own self-undoing. We leave ourselves vulnerable to illness, exhaustion, and dysfunction in our relationships due to our own unconscious behavior.

What can you do to correct this? What tools are available to you to redirect your behavior so to consciously participate within your life?

One tool you can use to consciously understand how you direct your energy is learning the workings of the Chakra System. What a brilliant tool it is! Once you experience how the Chakra System works, it becomes a tool for knowing whether you are in balance, or not, and in which areas of your life.

What is a chakra? The word itself is Sanskrit and means literally, wheel. Webster‘s Dictionary says, “any of several points of physical or spiritual energy in the human body according to yoga philosophy.”

A chakra is a whirling vortex of energy, likened to a waterspout, or cyclone, that receives energy into the body, and sends energy from the body. There are major chakras, and minor chakras, and even smaller chakras. Each of your chakras is working to cycle energies through your energy bodies and fields, into and out of, your physical body. These energy bodies and fields are also known as the “aura”. The chakra system then cycles the energy out of your physical bodies through the outer energy bodies. It cycles to the people around you, our planet Earth, and solar system, and so on. The purpose of this cycling is just like breathing in and out. We take in what we need and can use, and release what we don‘t need or use.

Your body is constantly surrounded by living energies that run the full spectrum of variations. Not only are we discussing the energies mentioned earlier, but also the “invisible” energies you may not be familiar with. This is a study unto itself, but through these journeys you will find what is available to us as human beings. We are vulnerable to all energies unless we are conscious of them, and understand how they work. As with anything in life, knowledge is power.

In this book you will be working with the 7 major chakras. Each chakra has a vibration; a color, or “hue”, and an area of your life/physical body it is responsible for. For instance, the first chakra‘s color is red. It is positioned at the base of your spine, spins toward the ground and back to your spine, and governs the foundation for your being. It cycles energy in and out of your body from the “ground”, or the earth. It regulates the energy, and is interdependent on whether or not you feel “worthy” enough to allow yourself to receive this energy, and sustain your life comfortably. It speaks of or shows you all the beliefs you‘ve built your life upon, and how they feed or drain your energy in your body.

Each chakra governs certain systems of the body, along with the glandular system that corresponds with those parts of your anatomy. Each chakra relates to your physical well being, your emotional well being, your intellectual well being, and your spiritual well being. The health of each of these chakra systems is imperative. They work together, interdependent upon each other, to keep your body/life healthy and functioning properly. You can actually use this book as “Preventive Medicine”, as you will have the opportunity to see the issues that are creating the lack of health in your life, and do something about them before they need to create illness in your body. In the back of the book you will find a page called “Your Chakras and You” that will detail this information. The journeys in this book will introduce you to each chakra system, and will show you how yours are performing.

Chakra studies are a treasure of insight, into the mystery of who we are and why we behave the way we do. You may wish to study chakras in depth, and there are many great books written on the subject. What you learn will inform you as to what directs your subconscious, how you use your energy, and whether or not it is appropriate for you to still direct your life in these ways. This is accomplished by learning what to look for in the health or lack of health in each chakra.

Through these journeys you will be learning to be a conscious individual. You are learning how to work with the energies that surrounded you throughout your life, rather than allow yourself to be bombarded by energies that drain you of your life force. You are becoming an ENERGY MANAGEMENT TECHNICIAN.

Just what is an Energy Management Technician? It is a term that illustrates the job of every human being that wishes to engage in life in a healthy and fulfilled way. To become a technician, we must learn how the system works in order to maintain and manage it. The rules of the game are clear and simple. They are described in the Golden Rule, “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

We humans were created to be simple joyful beings. We complicate our life by attaching to the complexity of our feelings, rather than reacting clearly. It is the job of an Energy Management Technician to come to terms with what directs our actions in relation to our feelings and subconscious cues. Do you ever think to yourself, or say out loud, “I don‘t know why I do that?” That is a subconscious cue, spurring you on to action, reacting to a button that is being pushed in your life.

As babies, most of us came in open and receptive to our environment. Along the way you began to react to certain stimuli that presented an emotion other than love and safety. You began the trail of decision-making, value judgments, and set up your beliefs and boundaries.

These boundaries, limitations, or identities you set up along the way were for safety. Say, when you were a baby, you heard a loud crash, and watched your Mom‘s face as she began to sob. The shock of the sound and the look on your Mothers face impacted you tremendously. You joined her in crying in your crib. Forever after, when hearing a loud crash, you will automatically log in and feel those emotions. It doesn‘t even matter why there was a loud crash. It could have been from a television program, with a touching story that your Mom reacted to. But it is the stimuli and reaction that your subconscious records. When that set of circumstances occur again and again, the body connects to all of the information like a flood of energy leaving your form. The stress of reliving this scenario, consciously or unconsciously, actually robs your body and energy field of life giving “prana”. Prana is life force, given freely to each of us by our environment. Your subconscious, or “inner child”, still responds to stimuli like a fearful, unprotected, innocent baby. So, as a consequence of this issue, you may steer away from environments that are loud (boundaries), keeping yourself in only quiet surroundings in your home and work (limitations), seeing yourself as a peacemaker, not an aggressor (identity). You will keep yourself limited and uncreative in order to stay safe and protected, until you become conscious of this activity and reverse it. Becoming conscious of an otherwise unconscious response frees you and your energy up to be used more creatively.

You may want to look at the energy you need to accomplish your day as having a net worth of 100%. All you are allowed to use is 100%. You are not to go into the bank of tomorrow and the “future‘s” energy allotment, and withdraw more than your daily %, or, you will have to pay interest somehow. Here is one example.

You are seeing your energy flowing as usual, content that you are accomplishing all of your responsibilities, and you get a phone call from a relative. They say they need you to listen to their dilemma. So, even as you answer the phone, and you hear their voice, you feel the drain begin. You lend some advice, sit through the conversation, and wind up without realizing it, giving away 20% of your daily energy. This is because you and the relative have an unconscious agreement that one takes and the other gives, and you play into their hand each and every time. Maybe you were raised to believe you should always be polite and care for those who reach out to you, at any cost.

In the background throughout the conversation, you hear your dog whining as she is sick in the other room. The dog winds up having an accident on the carpet, and 10% of your energy is spent getting upset and dealing with the cleaning up of it. (We are down to 60% as another 10% is being used just being alive.)

A while later you pick up your children, and are asked if so and so can come over today, and then it turns into, “we‘re so hungry,” and another 15% floats away in your accommodating everyone else‘s needs. Now it is time to clean up before your mate comes home, and make dinner and get into homework with the kids. (We are down to 2% energy now)

Before you know it, as you‘ve already spent so much of your energy accomplishing your responsibilities, these unplanned expenditures leave you at a minus %. Now, your husband wants you to stay up late, after the kids are asleep, so you can have some quality time together. But with a minus allotment, you wind up falling asleep, and leaving him alone for one more night. This is not efficient management of your energy supply.

In learning that you are choosing how you spend your energy, at all times, in how you react to all stimuli, you realize you have an option as to what you are going to choose. And the truth is, you and only you are choosing, at all times. There is no excuse anywhere that doesn‘t translate into fear somewhere else.

Give yourself any scenario: for instance, you get up early for work feeling wonderful and optimistic that the day will be a productive one. You have other interests, besides your work, and hope that when you get home you can accomplish them. You get in your car, and realize you need gas before getting on the highway. You get there and the line is long, so the stress begins, as you watch the clock wondering if you will get to work on time. (You lose 10% on the stress.) Then, somewhere there has been an accident and traffic is horrible. You watch the clock getting closer and closer to the time of your normal arrival at work, and you are no where near work. You see, finally, there is an accident that accounts for the slow traffic, but it‘s on the opposite side of the highway! This really gets you. (Now you‘re down to 70% for the day.)

Your boss sees you arrive 15 minutes late and comments that this is not good for the business, and you will have to make up the time later. Your temper is already flaring and it is all you can do to react thoughtfully and favorably to your boss.

As the day goes on, you are behind on all of your duties and the stress of it all starts to make you feel sick inside. (Down to 50% energy now.) You decide to eat off the truck outside of work rather than take a lunch break, and wind up with heartburn, which takes more energy still to deal with. You finally catch up, only to have your boss tell you in order to make up for your late arrival he wants you to take on another task for him. You know you already made up that time, but telling him that will only make things worse. On and on it goes, and by the time you get back into your car to get home, there is traffic again to contend with. All of the way home you stew over the day‘s events, only to drain the balance of your energy by the time you get home. Now, all of your hopes for your time spent doing your “other interests” have dwindled, and you still need to interact with your wife and kids. Sorry family, there is nothing left for you. And not only that, but you most likely will blow up at those who least deserve it, and for reasons that would be simple under other circumstances to deal with.

If you had already been working on yourself through these journeys, your guidance system would have alerted you of the gas shortage the day before, and rather than argue with it, you would have stopped on your way home and taken care of it. You would have gotten on the highway in plenty of time, as you would have a “feeling” leaving early today is a good idea. You see the accident; pass it calmly, even sending some “light” to those who were affected by it. And so, the day would continue to go, inspired, guided, and efficient. In order to move in this direction in life, we need to be clear and unaffected by old inner programming that would block our guidance system.

Or, how about this one? You wake up in the morning and you are inspired to take a bath and have a good soak. But you negate that possibility and decide that making the beds, cleaning the kitchen, which leads you to the garage and piles of laundry stacked to the ceiling, is more important for you at that time. (Old programming in place that you should get your work done first in life. Guilt.) Your body clearly wants a soak in the tub, yet your mind tells you that you have too much to accomplish in a short amount of time. You don‘t take the body‘s lead.

Hours pass while doing your chores, and you feel run down, bordering on a headache from the chemicals in the cleaning fluids, and the physical toil of all your hard work. Now, you decide it is time to take that bath, and all that happens when you fill up the tub is the phone rings with demands that you feel you cannot neglect.

You‘ve missed the bath and the nurturing and calm it provides you, as well as cleanliness. You are overly tired from the demands of the later part of the day. You surrender to a nagging headache, and find yourself lying in bed in a darkened room, trying to overcome a migraine headache with pills, and mask the pain of having not listened to your body. You could have begun your day right to begin with. In all truth, the house could wait, the laundry could wait, but instead, it is you who wait for your own well being.

The purpose of this book is to help you make the right choices, to live a more passionate and fulfilling life, to find ways to “recharge” your energies through living the “Eight Paths of Truth:”

Right Meditation
Right Speech
Right Nourishment
Right Association
Right Study
Right Recreation
Right Conduct
Right Work

What are the eight paths of truth? Throughout time there has always been a code to live by to achieve certain levels of enlightenment. Each religion, each “mystery school”, each inspired truth has a system. This relates to one of those codes, one version of one path. These eight paths of truth lead to you becoming unlimited.

Right meditation has to do with finding a way to communicate directly with spirit (your understanding of a Higher Power) through quieting the conscious mind and accessing your unconscious. Through this part of your mind you can co-create with your higher self, and gain assistance in accomplishing your highest goals. You will gain insight into the correct timing for different activities in your life, freeing you up to be more efficient in your day to day life.

Right speech has to do with communicating in such a way as to connect your heart/caring self to each of your communications. That way the encounter will be profound and full, without defensive tactics. It is honest communication with clarity. Here you learn to save yourself from spinning tales to yourself or others that keep you from doing what spirit directs you to do.

Right nourishment has to do with ingesting correctly, whether it is food, drink, or information; “you are what you eat”. You must treat your body as a temple. Here you learn to “feed” yourself what is for your highest good, rather than taking in that which isn‘t.

Right association has to do with spending your time with those who you look up to, those you honor and respect, and can learn from, rather than those who are beneath you in moral character. Not that you neglect the world and lack compassion for it, but that you reach higher up the ladder for those to associate with.

Right study means to keep an open mind and to use that which is given to you, such as inspiration, inquisitiveness, and curiosity. This is how spirit speaks to us when we need to head in a direction. Study without passion is empty learning.

Right recreation has to do with energizing your physical self through movement of some kind. It could be exercise, dance, yoga, you name it. It must be right for you and who you are in the process of your unfolding.

Through the journeys in this book you will learn a great deal about how you walk these eight paths. You will see through the symbols and story of your own journey just how you really run your life. You will learn without a doubt what is most significant to you, and why. You will see how you operate in relationships, and why. You will see how you view yourself as a creative individual, and why. The list goes on. Before now you may not have wondered why you do things, but I guarantee you, the quest is a worthy one, and for all of the right reasons. In reaching for this understanding you will gain more self-assurance, confidence, clarity of purpose, steadiness, as well as gain momentum in your life‘s path. You will make new choices in how to live your life. These choices will bring you new opportunities you would not have had, had you not taken the first steps toward self-awareness and transformation.

Once you take this path you will find you have a renewed faith in life, and how it all works. You will see we all have choices we are making daily, and these are what make the world go round. I hope you find a deeper understanding of yourself through these journeys.