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The power of habit

The power of habit

Psychic or spiritual self-defense

Defending your light

Overcoming Toxic Energies

NOTE: This discourse is an excerpt from the book The Inner Path of Light.

At this point you might be thinking, “If I have to go through the trouble of developing a new world view based on the idea that everything is energy, then it sure would be nice to know what a new world view can do for me. What are the practical implications and how will it help me on my personal path?” The coming discourses will address this question.

We have already seen that to be successful on the path, you need to develop a deeper understanding of yourself and your situation. We can now see that this new understanding must incorporate the fact that energy affects every part of your life. As you develop a greater understanding of energy, you begin to see that every condition in your life can be understood in terms of energy. Your outer conditions are the effects of causes that are set in motion at a deeper level of reality, a level where everything is energy.

The most effective way to solve any problem is to remove the cause. If you will make an effort to learn how to free yourself from negative energy, you will be amazed at how seemingly insurmountable obstacles will suddenly start to disappear, much like the morning dew disappears under the rays of the rising sun.

The power of habit

By developing a better understanding of energy, you can gain a new perspective on one of the major factors that opposes your personal growth. Many people find it difficult to change their lives because they do not understand the existence of a force in their own psychology which opposes change. This force is like a magnet that pulls you back into old patterns of behavior. We will later take a closer look at this force, but for now let us call it the force of habit.

Every human being has certain habits, and many of them are so subtle that they go unnoticed. Habit is not just a matter of outer behavior. Some types of emotional and mental habits affect the way you think and feel about yourself and about life. You also have a number of habits that determine how you respond to certain situations. Many people fail to realize that these mental and emotional habits often oppose their progress on the path.

Human beings tend to be creatures of habit. A habit is formed by repeating certain thoughts, feelings and actions until a pattern is created. After the pattern is created, a magnetic force pulls you into repeating that pattern over and over again. The more you repeat the habit, the stronger the magnetic pull becomes, and the more difficult it becomes to break the habit. You might say that your life has been locked in a groove, and every time you try to step out of that groove, some unseen force pulls you back.

What is this unseen force, or magnetism, that makes it so difficult to break a habit? What if it is an accumulation of energy in your subconscious mind. Such psychic energy might create a magnetic pull on your conscious mind and pull you into certain patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions. To fully explore this possibility, we need to once again look at some of the scientific findings about energy. However, let us first consider a visual image of this phenomenon.

Imagine that you get into your car to drive to work. You turn the key, put the car in gear, release the parking brake and step on the gas pedal. To your surprise, the car goes nowhere. The wheels are spinning on the pavement, yet you are not moving. The reason is that during the night someone placed a huge electromagnet behind your car. This magnet pulls your car backwards, and your engine cannot overcome the magnetic pull. You might be able to overcome the pull by revving up the engine. Obviously, this will put strain on the engine and cause you to use more gas. If you had to drive around all the time with a magnet pulling you backwards, you would probably wear out your car faster than normal. You would also waste a lot of money on gas.

The electromagnet that is pulling your car backwards can be compared to a negative habit. The magnetic pull is caused by an accumulation of energy in your subconscious mind, and this energy is preventing you from changing your life. You can look at this energy as a form of emotional energy that pulls on your feelings and gives you a desire to continue the habit. It can also be a form of mental energy that pulls your mind into thinking about a situation in a specific way, making you unable to find new solutions to old problems.

Obviously, many people start smoking because it fulfills an emotional desire. Once a habit is formed, emotional energy starts to accumulate in the subconscious mind, and this energy reinforces the emotional desire to smoke. In other words, to stop smoking you have to break both an emotional habit and a physical addiction. It will be far easier to break the physical addiction if you first break the emotional habit, because that habit undermines your resolve to change your behavior.

Many people find that when they try to break a negative habit, the magnetic pull is so strong that their willpower cannot overcome it. Other people manage to use their willpower and their intellect to suppress their emotional desire. While these people might succeed in changing their outer behavior, they have not actually freed themselves from the emotional pull of the habit. They might have to battle this magnetic pull for the rest of their lives, and it obviously puts strain on their emotional engine and causes them to waste emotional energy.

What would be the most effective way to deal with the magnet pulling your car backwards? Is it to rev up the engine in an attempt to overcome the pull of the magnet? Or would it be better to seek to understand the cause of the problem, and then switch off the power to the electromagnet? Some people are not willing to step back from their situation and consider the cause of their problems. They simply keep stepping on the gas until something breaks. If you are reading this, you are obviously not one of these people. You are willing to take an inner approach to life and look for the causes behind the effects. Therefore, let us move on to consider how you can turn off the power to the emotional magnet that pulls you into negative habits.

Your mind is an energy field

You are probably aware that your outer actions do not appear out of nowhere. Any action is the effect of a process that takes place in your mind, or psyche. If you want to change your actions, you must first change something inside your mind. Therefore, the key to any kind of personal change is to take control over your mind, or psyche. The first step towards doing this is to develop a deeper understanding of the mind itself. Let us consider the question, “What is the mind?”

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity made it clear that the human mind, like everything else in this universe, is made of energy. Scientists have discovered that energy is not always a wave traveling through space at the speed of light. Energy waves can be captured or organized into a pattern, or matrix. When energy waves are organized into a pattern, scientists talk about “standing waves” or energy fields.

During your school years, you might have seen the teacher place a bar magnet under a piece of paper and spread iron filings on top of the paper. As if by magic, the iron filings spontaneously organized themselves into a very distinct pattern of curved lines. You were probably told that the cause of this phenomenon is that the magnet creates an energy field around itself. The energy that is captured in the magnetic field moves along certain lines, and it pulls the iron filings into a distinct pattern. Obviously, this invisible energy field has a very real and tangible effect on visible matter.

Think about a magnet with a magnetic field around it and ask yourself, Does the magnet produce the magnetic field or does the field produce the magnet? When you consider the scientific fact that everything is energy, you might reason that it does not make sense to say that the gross matter of a stick of iron can produce the more fundamental energy that makes up the magnetic field. If people are caught in a sensory view of the world, they probably assume that the visible magnet creates the invisible field. This reaction is exactly what caused medieval people to reason that the Earth was the center of the universe.

In reality, it must be the energy in the magnetic field that produces the material phenomenon which we perceive as a magnet. One might say that what we see as a stick of iron is simply the most dense part of the magnetic field. The energy waves of the field are so concentrated that our senses perceive them as solid matter.

To the end of his days, Albert Einstein was working on what he called a unified field theory. He was attempting to show that the entire material universe can be understood in terms of energy fields. Einstein did not complete his theory, yet the scientific facts do indicate that the entire universe is made from energy that is organized into fields.

It follows that the human mind is an energy field. You might visualize the mind as a container for energy. The mind is made up of mental and emotional energy which has been organized into a certain pattern, or matrix. A simple way to visualize your mind as an energy field is to compare it to the field that surrounds a magnet. Your mind can be visualized as an energy field that surrounds your physical body.

At this point, you might wonder if we can find scientific evidence for the existence of an energy field around your body, and indeed we can. Much research has been done about the electrical and magnetic properties of the human body, and some of it points to the existence of an electromagnetic field around the body. One researcher, Valerie Hunt at the University of California in Los Angeles, has spent decades researching the human energy field, and she has documented her findings in the book Infinite Mind.

Among other things, Valerie Hunt found that the energy waves in the field are connected to a person’s mental and emotional state. People with a pessimistic or materialistic outlook on life tend to have a lot of low-frequency energy waves in their personal energy fields. People with a positive or spiritual outlook tend to have a lot of high-frequency energy waves in their fields.

In recent years, digital cameras connected to computers have been used to show visual images of the energy field surrounding the human body. Also, the science of acupuncture has recently become more accepted by Western doctors. This science is based on the idea of an energy field that affects the health of the physical body. As research continues, scientists will learn still more about the human energy field. Within a decade or two, the existence of a personal energy field is likely to become common knowledge, but you don’t have to wait that long. You can use current scientific knowledge to increase your understanding of the energy field of your mind.

No energy field is an island

If your personal energy field is a storehouse for energy, then where does the energy come from? In the following discourse, we will see that some of the energy in your field comes from inside your own mind. However, your personal field is not isolated, and energy can flow into the field from outside sources. Your personal energy field is constantly exchanging energy with your surroundings. When you come into contact with other people, your energy field can interact with the energy fields of those people. In fact, because everything is energy, it follows that all of your interactions with the outside world can be described as exchanges of energy.

Once you realize that your mind is an energy field and that it is connected to an energy field surrounding your body, you gain an entirely new perspective on your interactions with the world around you. We have seen that all of your thoughts and feelings are forms of energy. Energy is characterized by the vibration, or frequency, of the energy waves. You have probably observed that certain thoughts or feelings can have a negative effect on your mental and emotional well-being. If another person becomes angry at you, it might make you feel angry or depressed. In reality, that person is directing certain mental and emotional energy waves at you. As these energy waves enter your personal energy field, they start affecting your state of mind, your life experience. Therefore, what you consciously experience as a negative emotion can be understood in terms of energy waves in your personal field.

One way to illustrate this is to compare it to your body. You know that certain chemical substances can have a negative effect on the chemical processes that are constantly occurring in your body. Some chemicals are toxic and can cause disease or even death. As you grow up, you learn to protect your body from toxic chemicals. Unfortunately, you have not learned to protect your mind from toxic energies.

What happens when you are exposed to negative emotional energy from others? Hatred is obviously a negative feeling, and love is a positive feeling. One difference between love and hatred is a difference in the vibration of the energy waves. One might envision that love is a high-frequency energy and that hatred is a low-frequency energy. You know that certain chemical substances will make your body stronger while other substances can kill your body. Similarly, high-frequency energy waves have a positive effect on your personal energy field and thereby on your sense of well-being. Low-frequency energy waves have a negative effect on your energy field. The logical conclusion is that if you are serious about personal progress, you need to learn how to protect your personal energy field from toxic energies just as you have learned to protect your body from toxic chemicals. You need to develop a form of mental and emotional self-defense, a sort of psychic karate. This becomes even more significant when we consider another scientific fact about energy.

One of the most fundamental laws of physics is called the first law of thermodynamics. This law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. One form of energy can be converted into another form of energy, and this can be done by changing the vibration of the energy waves. The consequence is that energy will remain in a given state of vibration until it is transformed into a different state. Once an energy wave has attained a certain frequency, it will retain that frequency indefinitely or until something changes the vibration of the energy.

Consider that your personal energy field is a storehouse of energy. Your thoughts and feelings are forms of energy, and as you engage in certain mental and emotional patterns, you generate energy waves. Some of these energy waves can be stored in your field. As you interact with other people, mental and emotional energy enters your personal field, and some of it might remain in your field. The question now becomes, What happens to toxic mental and emotional energy after it has entered your personal energy field?

The first law of thermodynamics makes it clear that this energy will not simply disappear. It can remain in its current state of vibration for an indefinite period of time. Therefore, after toxic energy has entered your field, it will remain there until you do something about it.

You know that if your food contains certain chemicals, such as lead or mercury, these chemicals will accumulate in the cells of your body. While small amounts of these chemicals have no effect on your body, the accumulation can eventually reach a critical mass that leads to various forms of disease. What do you think happens when negative energy enters your personal energy field? Does it not seem logical that at least some of this energy will end up being stored in the field? As you grow older, more and more negative energy will accumulate in your field. After this accumulation reaches a critical mass, the energy can start affecting your mental and emotional well-being.

To understand how energy enters your field, we only need to consider the saying that Like Attracts Like. In reality, this saying refers to the law of gravity. Because we have now realized that everything is made of energy, we can gain a new perspective on gravity. Most people were taught in school that gravity is a force that affects matter. In other words, a large body of matter, such as the Earth, creates a gravitational force that pulls on all matter that comes near it. In reality, gravity is a force that is created by energy, and therefore it also affects energy. Einstein theorized that a large gravitational field would bend light waves, and this has been confirmed by scientific observations. Let us consider how this can affect you.

A self-destructive spiral

If you allow negative energy to accumulate in your personal energy field, that energy eventually reaches a critical mass that creates a gravitational pull. This has two potentially very negative effects:

• The gravitational force in your personal energy field will attract negative energy from your surroundings. In other words, the negative energy in your energy field pulls more negative energy into your field. Only very few people live in surroundings that are completely free from negative energy, so for most people there is plenty of negative energy to attract.
• The gravitational force in your energy field will have an internal effect on your thoughts and feelings. Because you are not consciously aware of the stored energy, this energy must be stored in your subconscious mind. However, your conscious mind is also made of energy, and the gravitational pull of the energy that is stored in your subconscious mind can influence your conscious mind. The more negative energy you have stored in your personal energy field, the easier it becomes for you to become caught up in negative mental and emotional patterns.

When you put these two factors together, it becomes easy to see that you have the potential for the creation of a negative, or downward, spiral. As negative energy accumulates in your energy field, the gravitational pull causes you to engage in negative thoughts and feelings, and this generates even more negative energy. Some of this energy is stored in your energy field, and it intensifies the gravitational pull. This gravitational pull also attracts more negative energy from your surroundings and every bit of it only adds to the force. The more negative energy you have in your energy field, the stronger the gravitational pull will be and the more negative energy will be generated and attracted.

In the beginning, the gravitational pull might cause you to engage in certain habits. They start as mental habits that affect the way you think about life. Then, they become emotional habits that affect the way you feel about life. Eventually, the mental and emotional habits give rise to certain patterns of behavior that affect what you do about life. At first, these habits might seem innocent, yet as the gravitational pull becomes stronger, it might reach a critical mass that overpowers your conscious mind. No matter how hard you try, you cannot use your willpower to pull yourself out of the negative habits. The gravitational pull of the negative energy has become so strong that it starts running your life.

You might visualize that as people allow negative energy to accumulate in their energy fields, the energy forms a maelstrom, or vortex, that pulls everything into itself. Perhaps you have heard about black holes in space. Perhaps you have seen film footage of a maelstrom in the ocean or a tornado over land. These phenomena are caused by matter swirling so quickly that it sucks everything into the vortex, and this is a visible illustration of what can happen in the invisible world of your personal energy field.

If you imagine that you have a raging tornado of negative energy in your personal energy field, it becomes obvious that this is an undesirable situation. If you have not yet reached this state, you need to make sure you never get there. If you are already caught in such a pattern, you need to make a determined effort to break the negative spiral.

Psychic or spiritual self-defense

If you are serious about the path, the idea that negative energy can form a downward spiral in your personal energy field is extremely important. Being forewarned is being forearmed. If you do not understand what is happening on an energy level, then you are likely to become a helpless victim of unknown forces. When you understand how energy affects you, you can do something about it.

When you consider the potential effects of having a maelstrom of negative energy raging in your subconscious mind, it becomes easy to see that this phenomenon is a major factor in almost every negative pattern of thoughts, feelings and behavior known to human beings. Your actions spring from feelings, and your feelings spring from thoughts. As negative energy begins to accumulate in your subconscious mind, the gravitational force of this energy starts affecting your thoughts. Your conscious thoughts are pulled into certain patterns that cause you to focus on undesirable or negative aspects of your life. If the gravitational force grows beyond a certain point, you will experience obsessive thoughts that you cannot willfully shut out of your conscious mind.

As the gravitational pull grows stronger, it starts to affect your feelings. Your feelings are pulled into negative and undesirable patterns. You might start getting irritable or edgy, and small events can cause you to lose your temper. You might start experiencing negative feelings about yourself, about certain aspects of your life or about life in general. If the gravitational force grows beyond a certain point, the negative feelings might overpower your conscious mind and prevent you from enjoying life. This is a state of mind that psychologists call depression.

As the negative energy keeps building, your personal energy field becomes a very unpleasant place to live. Unfortunately, your conscious mind has to live in your field. If your mind does not know how to remove the pressure of the negative energy, your mind will naturally start thinking about how to escape the pressure. As the intensity builds, your mind just wants to get away, and this leads to a desire for escape. One way to seek this escape is to dull the mind with a chemical substance, such as alcohol or drugs. Unfortunately, this does nothing to permanently remove the pressure, and it actually lowers your defenses so that more negative energy can be attracted. As the temporary relief wears off, the intensity returns with extra force, and it creates an even stronger desire for relief. This negative spiral can quickly become so intense that your conscious mind no longer has the strength to pull itself out of it. In extreme cases, it might give rise to the desire to end it all through the illusory escape of suicide.

Obviously, you can break such a negative spiral by learning how to protect yourself from the gravitational pull of psychic energy.

If you truly want to break any negative habit, including an addiction, you must begin by learning how to free yourself from the gravitational pull of negative psychic energy. Unless you reduce this negative pull, all other efforts to break a habit will be overpowered by the raging tornado of energy that roars through your personal field.

Throughout history, people have been wondering why they so often do things that their conscious minds do not want to do. Why do people feel compelled to do things that they know are harmful to themselves or to other people? Why do people engage in negative patterns that eventually lead to their own destruction? Why do some people find it impossible to pull out of such a destructive pattern? Why do some people become insensitive to the suffering of others? Why do some people become insensitive to their own impending destruction?

We can now answer all of these questions. The answer is that the negative energy in your personal energy field has created a gravitational pull so strong that it overpowers, or, one might say, consumes, your conscious mind. Often, a person’s willpower is not strong enough to overcome the downward pull of the negative energy.

When people first hear that their lives might be controlled by a gravitational pull of psychic energy in their subconscious minds, they often react with disbelief or denial. Who likes to admit the existence of some uncontrollable force in their own mind? However, the eternal truth remains that denying the existence of a problem will not make that problem go away. And although the existence of a gravitational pull might seem like a heavy and depressing topic, it should truly be a cause for great hope and rejoicing.

A few hundred years ago, many diseases were considered incurable because people did not know what caused them. Then, scientists discovered bacteria and realized that these microorganisms cause many common diseases. Armed with this knowledge, scientists quickly discovered ways to kill harmful bacteria and thereby cure many diseases that had previously been considered incurable. Likewise, by acknowledging the effect of negative energies, you will be able to overcome many of the negative conditions in your life that have so far seemed like insurmountable obstacles. You simply need to learn how to build a spiritual defense against negative energies.

Defending your light

To build an effective spiritual defense, you need to learn how to do the following:

• Minimize the generation of negative energy by preventing yourself from engaging in negative thoughts, feelings and actions.
• Remove the negative energy that is already stored in your personal energy field.
• Create a shield around your energy field that keeps out the negative energy in your surroundings.

The concept of spiritual self-defense might be new to you, and therefore it might seem somewhat strange. However, to build an effective spiritual defense, you just need to continue and expand the mental retooling process that has been mentioned throughout this book. This is not nearly as difficult as it might seem. You can use the knowledge of how to defend the physical body and transfer it to the defense of your personal energy field. For most people, protecting the body has become second nature, and they often do things to take care of the body without even thinking about it. If you consider what you do to take care of your physical body, you will see that a lot of it applies to taking care of your “energy body.”

You might think that because your personal energy field is invisible to your senses, it is more difficult to care for the field than your physical body. However, many of the things you do for the physical body are designed to defend it against invisible enemies. For example, you cannot see bacteria, but you know that if you leave food outside of the refrigerator, harmful bacteria start to form. You know that food or other substances can contain chemicals that are harmful to the body. You cannot see nuclear radiation, yet you probably would not select a nuclear waste site as the place for your next camping trip.

The many things you do to take care of the physical body have already become a natural part of your everyday life. For instance, when you cross the street, you automatically scan for approaching cars. If you will commit yourself to learning how to take care of your energy field, doing so will gradually become as natural as protecting your physical body. After an initial learning process, you will begin to defend your energy field without even thinking about it.

In discourse 6, we will look at specific techniques for building an effective spiritual defense. However, if you want to bring about real improvement in any aspect of life, you need to start by increasing your awareness. Increased awareness leads to greater understanding, and when you use common sense to apply that understanding, you have a strong foundation for producing positive change in your life. Therefore, let us consider how you can use common sense to defend your energy field.

To keep your body alive, you must feed it. However, to keep your body healthy and thereby keep it alive for a long time, you must feed it foods that contain the proper nutrition. This also applies to feeding your soul and your energy field. Many activities have a spiritual, or inspirational, effect on your mind and feelings. If such activities are not already part of your life, it would be beneficial to find one or more that appeal to you and incorporate them into your daily routine. Many activities can have a beneficial effect, but you only need to choose the ones that most appeal to you. This could be taking a walk or bike ride in a beautiful park, in a forest or along the beach. It could be reading spiritual or inspirational books or listening to uplifting music. Or it could be using various self-help or spiritual techniques.

To keep your body functioning well, you must give it the proper amount of rest. If you are running, your body will eventually get tired and you will naturally stop running. However, many of your daily activities can be so stressful that they get your thoughts and feelings running at high speed. People often get so caught up in these activities that they ignore the need to prevent their thoughts and feelings from running wild. It is essential to make a commitment to watch your mental and emotional state on a daily basis. If you feel that things are becoming so stressful that your thoughts and feelings start running wild, then you need to make a conscious decision to stop this negative spiral. You need to take a time-out and engage in activities that will give your thoughts and feelings a rest. You can use the activities mentioned in the previous section, because anything that feeds the soul will calm your thoughts and emotions.

You are probably not consciously aware of just how many things you do to defend your body against visible or invisible dangers. By increasing your awareness of how energy works, you will gradually begin to realize that just as your body is exposed to physical dangers, your energy field is exposed to many dangers on an energy level. When you realize that everything in this world is made of energy, you will understand that all human actions have an effect on an energy level. You can develop a sensitivity that allows you to feel which actions generate negative energy. Activities that disturb your sense of peace and harmony often generate toxic psychic energy. This has many implications, but let us look at just a few.

Decades ago, no one realized that smoking had negative health effects. As awareness of the dangers of smoking has increased, many people have elected not to smoke. Likewise, as your awareness of negative energy increases, you can choose to avoid certain actions that cause you to generate or receive toxic energy.

You have probably run into people who are difficult to please. You might have noticed that the mere presence of certain people can make you feel agitated, uncomfortable or depressed. You can now see that such people might have allowed the accumulation of negative energy in their personal energy fields, and this energy has reached a critical mass that affects others around them. People can be radiating negative energy to such an extent that it can overpower others. We will shortly look at how you can defend yourself against such negative energy, but a commonsense precaution would be to avoid such people if you possibly can.

So far, we have only talked about an energy field around your physical body, but in reality everything in the material world is made from energy fields. For example, a house has its own energy field, and this field can accumulate negative energy. Therefore, a physical location can have a large accumulation of negative energy, and this energy can be so strong that it forms a maelstrom, or vortex, that pulls you down. One way to identify such places is to consider what actions commonly occur in a given location. A constant repetition of negative, inharmonious or destructive actions will gradually create a vortex of negative energy. If you can identify such places, you have the option of avoiding them if at all possible.

To keep your body healthy, you must keep it clean, and this has an inner and outer aspect. You must keep your body clean from dirt that clings to the outside of the body, and you must protect it from toxic substances that enter the body and might be stored in the cells.

Likewise, negative energy can be directed at your energy field from outer sources, and it can cling to the field or enter deeply into the field. To keep your energy field clean, you need to employ specific techniques, and we will shortly consider such techniques. However, you can still do something by applying common sense. One obvious way to defend your energy field is to avoid people, places or activities that contain or generate negative energy. You would never even consider jumping into a sewer pond, yet many people inadvertently jump into a sewer pond of negative energy. It would be better to avoid following the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.

If your body has absorbed toxic chemicals, you can do various things to cleanse your body. Likewise, many activities will help you cleanse your field of toxic energy. Engaging in uplifting and inspirational activities will help cleanse your field, as will getting mental and emotional rest.
If you will make an effort to apply your new knowledge of energy to your daily activities, you will gradually increase your sensitivity to toxic energy. Just as you have developed an intuitive feel for potential danger to the physical body, you can develop a feel for dangerous energies.

As you increase your awareness of negative energy, you don’t need to be afraid or paranoid about the existence or toxic energies. In discourse 6, we will see how you can defend yourself from the various energies in this world. However, to build such a psychic defense, you need to know that toxic energies exist, just as you need to know that bacteria exist before you can defend your body against their harmful effects. To avoid becoming fearful of negative energies, you need to do more than use common sense. You need to use specific techniques to defend yourself against the negative effects of harmful energies. This will be the topic of the following discourse.

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Copyright © 2003 by Kim Michaels