Self-reflection techniques

Thoughts as Food for our Vibration

EQ and Energy Series: Part 2 Thoughts as Food for our Vibration

As I integrated recent EQ and energy lessons, I began to see tattoos on people jump out at me during daily walks. I saw tattoos as a visual vessel able to carry a lot of energy in them with the power to elicit bundles of thoughts and emotions. It occurred to me, if we could take an inventory of our weekly thoughts, bundle and transmute them into tattoos, we would see what kinds of messages we are carrying with us. Or in other words: we could see what kinds of messages we are feeding our vibration.

In part 1 of this series on EQ and Energy, the focus was about becoming more aware of how often we feel good in our bodies as a foundation to building our emotional intelligence. Now, with that growing awareness, we can learn to see energy in one of its most obvious yet elusive forms: thought.

Thought and Vibration

Gone unobserved from a neutral place for a large portion of our lives, our thoughts and thought patterns are often inherited and conditioned by the environments and influences we grow up with. Certain thoughts induce or support certain vibrational states. So, if you want to learn to sustain certain “feel good” vibrations for longer amounts of time, your thoughts need to not betray your intentions.

When you make “feeling good” a higher priority in your life, eventually you may butt heads with energy in your space that doesn’t seem to want to let you feel good. This is what I experienced for myself about five years ago when I began to meditate regularly. I practiced sitting in stillness and watching my thoughts. At first, I could not control the quality of my thoughts or even the number of them, there were just too many. On top of that, many of the thoughts I had told me that I wasn’t doing things right in various aspects of my life–including meditation. Some of my thoughts initially seemed to be growth-promoting, but upon closer observation elicited a feeling of not being good enough just as I was in that very moment. From this self-thought examination practice, I learned a lot about how I was or was not nurturing my own vibration.

What I did not anticipate happening during these meditation experimentations was the strengthening of a muscle that I did not know I even had. I began to notice a space between my thoughts and the observing aspect of myself. As this space grew I began to disidentify with my thoughts– their ability to elicit an immediate reaction from me weakened. For example, I could see the quality of a thought approaching that was going to tell me I needed to do something because it was urgent. However, because the gap had widened so much between my awareness and the thought, I saw I had a lot of inner space to choose how I wanted to respond. I could choose not to have that thought all the way. With this new development, I would no longer immediately feel my body react or my vibration shift in reaction to the thought. The thought was not me, and there was a lot of space inside of me to “see” that.

In the world of energy, this is probably akin to learning your ABCs, but boy was it a powerful milestone. I learned through experimentation that thoughts are like food we feed our energy body, and depending on what thoughts we feed it, our vibration rises or lowers. In other words: thoughts have the power to both influence how good we feel and, when accumulated, can create momentum in our space which directly can affect our perception of reality.

The Energy on Words

*What words appear often in your thoughts? How would they look tattooed on your body?*

Through deeper and consistent examination of my own thoughts both during and outside of meditation, I came to view my own thoughts as tools that I could use to affect my own vibration at any moment throughout any given day. I began to recognize myself getting sucked into that conceptual game of tag between past, present and future selves. I saw more and more the illusion of self in many forms and realized that going into my body and connecting with it in any given moment could bring me back to the present moment. I play with different questions that help me bring my awareness back to my body and my vibration.

“Is something missing from this moment?” (RESISTANCE to this moment.)

“Is something wrong with myself or someone? (Passing JUDGMENT)

“When is the only time that feeling good happens?” (Right now.)

I love to watch my body release tension too, as these personally customized questions help me to settle further into the present moment. The present moment is the only place I experience myself existing. It’s the only place I actually vibrate and am part of the bigger vibrational universe. This is where I can read energy, and where I have free will. The more deeply I choose to accept everything about this present moment, the more resistance (a very physically heavy and draining energy!) I clear from my space. And the less resistance there is, naturally the more flow we experience.

In addition to feeding ourselves thoughts in the form of questions, Sometimes it’s the energy on words themselves that when we hold it in our space for a little too long, can begin to lower our vibration and throw us into a state of subtle resistance to the present moment. For example this is how I experience the shift in my energy field when I try to encourage myself by saying: “I am becoming successful.” I get thrown into the future when I AM successful and thus, my present moment becomes somehow lacking–I am incomplete, and my future self has all the glory. Feeding myself this thought does not actually raise my vibration and allow me to flow in present time.

*Reframing our thoughts about ourselves and others is a powerful healing tool.*

In this way, as we discover our own blind spots and learn to raise and maintain higher vibrational states, our sensitivity to how others are affected by our words shifts too. The more unique we discover ourselves to really be, the more space we naturally feel inclined to create to allow others to be as they are and at whatever point of their own journey they are on. When we send words in someone’s direction, the vibration of the communication is first held in our own space. Anyone who intends to lower someone else’s vibration actually holds that lower vibration in their own space first. Thus, one of my most favorite side effects of this shift in ability to read energy is experiencing taking things people say to our faces (or not!) less personally.

As one of my teachers in this field puts it so well:

What you think of me is none of my business.

Ignorance as a Uniting Principle

The more emotionally honest I become with myself, the more ignorance I come to notice in my own space and then recognize as naturally occurring in other people’s space. We don’t need to feel shame when we catch a displeasing energy in our space, we can face it, recognize its vibration and not confuse it with who we truly are. Just as our thoughts are not who we are, the energies super active in other people’s spaces need not define them as a human being. At my lowest vibrating point in my life I would not want to be labeled and categorized based on my vibration, so why do that to someone else?

Emotional intelligence includes our ability to see the level of emotional honesty in others. We learn from self-examination that the more emotionally honest we are with ourselves, the more connected we are to our own vibration and ability to feel good in our body. When we see others behaving in ways that show their own lack of emotional honesty with themselves, we see the self-inflicted suffering that comes with it, not because we are “better” than them, but simply because we have seen it in ourselves.

*It’s fun to borrow from other cultures. We can see beauty or an aesthetic within their culture where others from that culture might take it for granted.*

How we all Create

This brings me to one of my most recent and liberating epiphanies: how we all create. Many people say they are not creative and usually end up mentioning they can only draw stick figures. Somehow, a lot of people carry around the picture that creating means making something in the physical. However, this is just not true. There is one thing that we all create all the time, and that is permission.

In part 1 of this series, we touched on how increasing our own permission to feel good naturally leads to deeper levels of emotional intelligence and the ability to read energy. Another powerful kind of permission we can create is the permission for ourselves and others to make mistakes and have accidents. Accidents and mistakes are natural occurrences in life and need not be held onto energetically after the fact. The ability to let go of the accidents and mistakes caused by both ourselves and others returns our energy bodies to higher vibrational states.

Another, perhaps more familiar word for this kind of permission is: forgiveness.

Forgiveness as an Energy Body Experience

Forgiveness is one’s ability to return to a healthy vibration after something happens that causes our vibration to lower.

We can rise from the ashes of our former selves; whether from a mistake made 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago. Like the phoenix, we can repeat this cycle of rebirth throughout our lives by giving ourselves permission to let go.

I love my new understanding of forgiveness because it gives me all the power of my own energy body by making forgiveness about no one else but me. Let me elaborate. Forgiveness is entirely our own responsibility. It is a form of energetic hygiene that clears our space of lower vibrating energies. With my new understanding of forgiveness, I don’t even need to say that I need to, “forgive someone else” because all I am doing is clearing the energy in my own space which has nothing to do with anybody else. The sequence of happenings that led to the lower vibrating energies in my space could have very well involved other people, but the moment I fall into thoughts of blame and injustice is the moment that I let lower vibrations STAY in my space–defeating the whole purpose of forgiveness. Every time I have ever let myself believe that someone else MADE ME FEEL a certain way, and that I need them to do or say something in order for me to raise my vibration back up, I give my power away. In the world of energy and vibration, blame is just another word for avoiding responsibility.

Test your own ability to forgive:

-Maybe someone hit you with their car and they apologized over and over.

-Maybe they hit you with their car and apologized but didn’t really mean it.

-Maybe they hit you with their car and blamed the accident on you.

It is easiest to remove energy from our space and return to a higher vibration when others provide a sincere apology. It is much more challenging when others try to blame us for their own mistakes; but it is not impossible. One more test:

-You slept through your alarm and missed your flight.

-You promised your friend you’d pick up their child from daycare, but didn’t set a reminder and forgot.

-You procrastinated doing something for too long and it led to irreparable damage and the loss of a lot of money.

How quickly can you bounce back from honest mistakes? How about from not so honest mistakes? What causes you to hold on to lower vibrating energy in your space after a mistake has been made? These are questions we can ask ourselves to understand our current limitations when it comes to practicing forgiveness.

It is a practice, but it is very possible to stop vicious cycles of self-criticism or blame when we learn to see energies in our space as being our sole responsibility to handle and under no one else’s control. This not only helps us learn how to self soothe (raise our vibration back up by ourselves), but helps us learn to notice what energies often trigger us and linger in our space. And THIS is exactly what emotional intelligence is.

*We’ve all stuck our head in the sand for one reason or another. Self soothing is about learning to raise our vibration back up by ourselves.* *This is a power we all have* *over our own energy system.*

Cultivating Forgiveness with our Thoughts

Creating permission for ourselves to observe our thoughts as food for our vibration and choosing to feel good over and over again is an extremely powerful act of creating. Here is the progression I see:

-In practicing observing one’s thoughts we naturally disidentify with them as we learn to suspend judgments.

-In practicing observing how certain habitual thoughts elicit various shifts in our vibration, we learn what energies those thoughts carry and we can begin to see some of our blind spots.

-As we see more and more of our own blind spots, our understanding of our own true power increases as well as our ability to have compassion for others who have yet to take more of their own power back. We learn to see ourselves in others without judgment; just heightened awareness and discernment.

-This increased fluency in reading the energy in our own space naturally affects our ability to tune into energy around us and beyond. The way we perceive reality greatly shifts and we experience longer sustained periods of higher vibrations in our space–we begin to really be able to distinguish what is our pure essence energy!

*“Heavy” thoughts will weigh down the body. When we are used to heavy thoughts, it may be a great challenge to reset our thought “diet” to include more lighter vibrating ones.*

One final food for thought.. (Or thought to feed your vibration =P)

Postulate just for this moment, that happiness and access to your highest vibration is not found outside of yourself, but is already a reality inside of you.. That access is just blocked by a lot of energy in your space that isn’t your essence energy and so lowers your vibration.. That it is possible to call your energy back from the past and the future, back to this present moment.. And that it is possible to learn to tell the difference between your own energy and energy that isn’t you.. So you can let go of all that is not you. What could it possibly feel like to grow energetic boundaries that allow you to keep yourself separated from energy that isn’t you that tries to enter your space? What could it possibly feel like to experience your own energy field and body with only your energy in it.. To be you minus all the blind spots, limiting beliefs, and illusions you’ve inherited from the world, your conditioning and life experiences?

What could it possibly feel like to be just you?

Permission to Feel Good

EQ and Energy Series: Part 1 Permission to Feel Good

In honor of the many lessons I have learned and continue to learn from the birds here in Hawaii, I am featuring their awe-inspiring behaviors as captured by my husband and gifted photographer, Norman, in this post.

This past year as Nature guided us inward by limiting our ability to go outward, Norman and I discovered our own way to still find wonder and beauty in our corner of the world through birding. Watching birds just be themselves oddly gave me a lot of permission to do the same in my own life. I noticed that every time I watch birds, I simply start to feel good.

Emotion is described as energy in motion. In order to have emotions and understand them, this requires us to have an energy system through which the energy flows. More and more we are hearing about energy these days and perhaps still feeling somewhat separate from it (because we don’t see it with our physical eyes). Yet, more and more the understanding of ourselves through the lense of energy and having an energy body is resonating with many people.

I see that this is happening because the average person is becoming more aware of their own emotions and, therefore, on a collective scale we are becoming more emotionally intelligent. We do this by not repressing our emotions as much or making excuses for why we should not listen to or allow them. We hear the words “self-care” more and more, and especially since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have been bombarded with questions like, “What is healthy and safe for me?” “Am I allowing others to make their own safety choices?” Our understanding of both compassion and free will have been tested. Regardless of any conclusions each of us have come to, over this past year we have all been studying emotional intelligence.

*Red cardinal. When it rains, it takes the opportunity to bathe itself*

Feeling Good

I see the foundation of emotional intelligence as beginning on the individual level: being able to recognize emotions when they arise inside of us, having realistic expectations of the behavior of emotions (including the ability to accept their presence), and being able to discern for ourselves what feels good in our body and what does not.

When I look at Nature I always feel a little bit of envy at how everything just flows. I’ve never seen a bird sit around being depressed, bathing in self-loathe, or seeming to be on some endless quest to figure something out. I am the most moved when I see a bird just sit and rest on a branch–not singing or looking for something to eat– but resting. Wow. Birds don’t have the same minds as humans, but they listen to their inner rhythm and they even know that feeling good matters. Resting is an act of self-care that allows the body to rejuvenate and helps the mind calm as well which creates a wonderful balance that naturally invites good feelings back into the body.

Up until the pandemic hit, much of the world was fixated on things like progress, productivity, and efficiency. I’ve heard voices out there that say, “I’m going to juice every drop out of life and live it up to the max, yolo! I’ll rest when I die.” The enthusiasm is REAL, but the idea that rest and self-care is not part of the equation is where the idea of living a great life and actually feeling good during our everyday experience of life becomes incongruent.

Also, our idea of resting does not always yield its intended results. Maybe we sit down, pour ourselves a cup of coffee, check our phones and browse the internet. Only half of us (the body) is actually somewhat resting. What is behind this inability to settle the mind? I see that it is often some seductive idea we carry that tells us that doing something is better than doing nothing. We are in many ways addicted to the idea that we need to be productive. In such a society, being productive becomes a primary way for us to feel self-worth. Therefore, no good feelings will come (that are worth our time) by stilling the mind.

*Mina bird. This bird is very territorial and has a hard time relaxing when other birds are around*

This is where experimentation yields us our own answers. Is it just me or do others out there find it difficult to feel gratitude without stilling the mind? I have never observed myself fill up with gratitude and maintain that high vibration WHILE multitasking. A part of me feels it is possible, but when I am honest and observant of my own capabilities I see that I’m not able to do so at present. I can feel a gratitude ‘ping’ that comes and goes like a text message, but is that all I am capable of? Actually, to fill my energetic body with gratitude and just sit in it is still not an easy state for me to achieve despite having kept a regular meditation practice for several years now. This is because I’m still detoxing my belief system of these addictive patterns of multitasking and of continuing to associate being productive with the highest form of feeling good.

Trust me, I enjoy feeling productive, but gratitude feels WAY better both in the body and mind. Enjoying productiveness yields a positive state of mind while the body is in movement or the mind is creatively engaged in something. However, clinging to the feeling of being productive does not go with Nature’s flow, because we ignore our own need for rest and create more permission to work hard often at the expense of our health.

When we are addicted to the energy of being productive, duality sets in and naturally the idea of resting becomes synonymous with being lazy. We create rules for ourselves: “No indulging in rest until you achieve xyz.” “Complete this checklist and then you are allowed to feel good.” Life becomes a waiting game to allow ourselves to feel good and this pushes us further away from the present moment which is the only time we ever actually feel good. These rules make up our own personal equation for allowing ourselves some amount of self worth, but the moment something in life interferes with our ability to be productive (like a pandemic), those feelings of self worth can dwindle away and feeling good can feel far from possible.

*Rose-Ringed Parakeet*. *Eating something tasty is a quick way to feel good*

There is the conceptual idea of feeling good, and then there is the actual physical and emotional experience of feeling good. When you dive deeper into the study of energy, you eventually are forced to become more emotionally honest with yourself and this means monitoring yourself throughout the day, not just summarizing your idea of how good you think you feel over coffee with a friend on the weekend. This daily self monitoring is a practice that grows one’s inner awareness and its byproduct is more emotional intelligence–more awareness of energy.

Growing Inner Awareness of Feeling Good

Reflecting on just one or two of these kinds of questions daily can deepen our awareness of our own emotions and help us discover our own blind spots.

-What percentage of your day do you feel good in your body?

-What is your idea of feeling good? Is it simply the absence of pain or discomfort?

-How much permission do you have to feel good? Is it something you have to earn?

-How much of the energy that keeps you from feeling good in your body is self-generated?

-Do your thoughts determine your ability to feel good? If so, do you feel like you are a slave to your thoughts? Do you have tools to help you separate from your thoughts?

-Do you believe you have much control over your ability to feel good?

-When you catch yourself feeling good, how long does it usually last? How could it last longer next time?

-Some forms of feeling good come in a big intense rush, do you expect feeling good to always feel THAT good? What expectations do you have about your body’s ability to feel good?

*Rooster. The rooster’s crow is a signal to awaken*

Even as I compose this blog post, I am practicing my awareness of and ability to feel good. As much as I feel in flow and deeply moved by what comes through me and out on paper, I am not WHAT I write. I am not the final written product that I will share. I do not have to buy into those equations of self worth that create imbalance and the inability to find congruent stillness between mind and body. I can practice a higher level of self-care–a truer restful state that isn’t grasping outwardly as if permission to feel good exists only outside myself.

*House Sparrow. We cannot always rely on external stimuli to always be uplifting*

Perhaps it isn’t what we see that matters, but with what mind and heart we see.

The sunset we see the evening we celebrate an anniversary, and the sunset we see the day after a loved one has passed.

Perhaps it isn’t where we go that matters, but with what mind and heart we go.

We go somewhere new to get away from our problems, or we go somewhere new because we feel an inner calling to go there.

Perhaps it isn’t what we create that matters, but with what mind and heart we create.

We might create a product because we believe it will be helpful to others, or we might create a product to prove to others that we have talent.

Perhaps it isn’t what we say that matters, but with what mind and heart we speak.

Telling someone we are happy for them and truly feeling happy for them, or telling someone we are happy for them when inside we want them to fail.

*Orange-Fronted Yellow Finch.* *How aware are you of the energy behind what you do? Can you observe the energy behind what others are doing?*

In the dimension of energy, there is the healthy vibration of a truth and the warped vibration of a lie. As humans, we depend a lot on our ability to communicate with words and, therefore, give a lot of our power away to words that come out sounding “good.” However, trusting in words alone is the reason why we experience being lied to. If we could all read the energy behind words, we would always know the quality of the vibration being directed our way. We would never look outside of ourselves for the truth, because we would see it for ourselves. This is the power of energy–emotional intelligence.

Increasing our permission to feel good is a great first step to deepening our emotional intelligence. It takes inner work and practice, but as we further understand our own mind and heart connection, we learn how to manage our emotions rather than ‘become’ them. I am excited to share more insight into this wonderful journey that I’ve embarked on, including how I stumbled into this practice of not only learning about energy in motion, but learning to see it with my inner sight.

Mo-Chan

Articles with Self-reflection techniques

Thoughts as Food for our Vibration

Permission to Feel Good