Inner Work

For the week of February 5, 2018

Sensitive Energy Practice

(Climbing Jacob's Ladder: 2)

Spiritual practices directed at the sensitive energy run the gamut from contacting to accumulating to stabilizing that energy in our body. The previous installment of this series, Sensitive Energy Awareness, pointed us toward recognizing and being in contact with the sensitive energy.

To accumulate more of the sensitive energy, we look at two approaches open to us. First, the simple act of directing and holding our attention in a part of our body generates sensitive energy in that location. This happens because our attention works with the conscious energy. The wonder of attention derives from its bringing this higher energy to bear. When we direct and hold that our attention on one area, the conscious energy that accompanies attention interacts with the lower energies already present in the body to create more of the sensitive energy. So the mere act of sustaining our attention in our body enhances our energy stores.

That this possibility opens to us so simply makes it all the more remarkable. To pursue it, we begin with our limbs. We put all of our attention into our right arm and hold it there. When we notice that our attention has wandered off to a thought or anything else, we gently bring it back to the right arm. We diligently persevere in this: holding our attention in our right arm and returning it there whenever it wanders off.

By sustaining our attention we generate more sensitive energy, while also beginning the process of stabilizing that energy in the arm. Sustaining our attention in our body, stabilizes the sensitive energy. With enough work at this, we find the sensitive energy awakening there spontaneously and bringing us back to ourselves, even at moments when we were not intentionally sensing. This indicates that the process of stabilizing and fixing the energy has begun in earnest, though to complete that process of nurturing the growth of our inner body requires much more such work, sustained for years.

After sensing our right arm for some minutes, we can shift to doing the same for our right leg, then our left leg, then our left arm. Later we can begin sensing all four limbs at once. Later still, we add our torso and head to sense our entire body. This latter practice of whole body sensing sets up a qualitatively new level of inner experience. The wholeness itself makes us more complete.

Another approach to increasing our quantity of sensitive energy is by breathing it into our body from the energy atmosphere that always surrounds us. We discuss this method in some detail in the earlier section entitled "Inner Body Breathing." It entails using our attention and intention to draw sensitive energy directly from the air around us as we breathe.

To help stabilize the energy we breathe, we give it a place to land. For that, we begin by sensing our entire body. By sustaining our attention in our body, in a subjectively outgoing movement of attention, and at the same time engaging our attention to breathe in the energy from the air, in a subjectively ingoing movement, the two movements of attention combine, enabling our body attention to both receive and stabilize the energy. This practice can provide a remarkable boost to our inner resources.

For this week, please engage in sensitive energy practice, to increase the quantity in your body and stabilize it there.

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