Invest your energy in yourself and your work

Last month, it was my turn to experience the coronavirus for the first time (and hopefully the last). It was brutal. I understand the experience is different for each person, however, for myself, I had every one of the potential symptoms. Every single one. The worst, though, was the headache pain. It was like a vice grip being slowly tightened around the circumference of my head. The pressure was so excruciating, I couldn’t sleep and I vomited anything I tried to ingest, including water. After seven days of this, I wanted to die. I suspect I wouldn’t do well should I ever be subjected to torture. It only took one week for me to break. But apparently, I needed to be broken.

Before this, I had been doing my best to minimize my exposure to the virus. I’d already been hospitalized twice in the past for being unable to breathe, so the virus’s effect of causing respiratory problems only served to heighten my resistance. When it eventually took hold in my lungs, I waited for my mind to freak out and my nervous system to go into overdrive, however, the unexpected happened instead.

Obviously, I survived the ordeal. In fact, I’m grateful for it. It turned out to be one of the most profound experiences of my life. The coronavirus is an energy virus, and while I can’t tell you the science of it, I got an up close and personal look at the energetics of it. It forever changed how I access and use my own energy, which has also had a significant impact on my relationship with my work.

Notice where energy is being sourced

As the virus ravaged my body, I became feeble. It wasn’t just my body that was limp, my mind was also dull. I couldn’t muster up the resolve to care about anyone or anything. But the look of concern I could see reflected in the faces of those closest to me was that the usual light that was my spirit was dim to the point of almost having flickered out. I had lost my desire for life. I was a shell of a human lying comatose in bed, as if I already were dead.

The reason for my depletion was understandable. My body’s energy resources were all being utilized by my immune system to battle it out with the virus. However, another reason for my lifelessness was that because of my illness, the usual places I sourced energy were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t walk outside, so recharging in my beloved forest was out of the question. I could barely walk to the bathroom. I couldn’t work, so the joy I received from meeting with my clients was out. So was my ability to “make money”. I couldn’t eat, so any pleasure I usually gained from the sensual enjoyment of food was definitely out. I had become unplugged from every source of energy outside of myself, and I was dismayed at how little access I had within. This awareness was both a surprise and an embarrassment. I have spent the last fifteen years of my life studying and teaching on the subject of inspiration, yet I didn’t realize the extent my energy had still been so externally sourced.

Of course, my human instinct for survival kicked in. I witnessed myself grasping for energy anywhere I could. And what is the easiest way for us humans to feast on energy? Yes, you know it – mental drama. My mind would default to the old stories and old patterns that were easy fodder for stoking my anger, anything to get me riled up. I suppose some part of me believed feeling anger was better than feeling nothing. But this time, I was the observer of my behaviour and I could see its shortcoming. The quality of the energy from this type of feeding was so deficient, it couldn’t fortify me in the way I wanted to be nourished, so I rejected it. The result was, I went back to lying in bed, lifeless again.

The quality of the energy from feeding off of mental drama was so deficient, it couldn’t fortify me in the way I wanted to be nourished.

After cycling through this pattern several times to the same tired outcome, I finally came to recognize that the virus was actually helping me have a better understanding of my relationship with my own energy. That was when I started to feel a prickle of aliveness within me again.

Sourcing energy from within

The awareness that our energy is accessed from within each of us is not a new concept. But until I had this experience, I’d not felt ready to talk about it out loud in this manner. The weird thing about energy is that nobody knows exactly what it is or where it comes from. We know what it does, but we don’t know what it is. Even the scientists who study energy will tell you the same thing. That leaves us with having to theorize and postulate stories that help us make sense of it.

The story that makes the most sense to me is that energy is a gift from consciousness that allows us to create the realized experience of our manifest reality. Even though I just wrote that sentence, it still requires some mental gymnastics for me to grasp what it means. I’m going to break it down into more bite-sized thoughts.

Energy is a gift from consciousness that allows us to create the realized experience of our manifest reality.

I believe that we humans are an extension of consciousness. We are both the non-physical expanded state of consciousness and the physically-focused aspect of being a human. I also believe that energy is the “resource” that allows us, as consciousness, to express in physical form. Not only do we have the joy of having the physical human experience, it is through that experience that we also get to perceive ourselves as consciousness. It’s a clever design.

To be able to source energy from within, first I have to acknowledge that it exists and that it is “mine”. In other words, it is a gift from “me” to “me”, and it is here to serve me. If this story is true, then when I say the energy is “mine”, I mean that it is a communication between my soul self and my human self. And it is mine to use in service to creating the experience of “reality” I wish to create. I use the word reality in quotes here because more and more, I have a less fixed idea of what reality truly is. To me, it is the potential through which I am experiencing life, however, I am coming to understand there are infinite potentials that could also be realized. I no longer see the physical world as determinate as I used to.

Be that as it may, in the reality where I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, ill with the coronavirus, I turned my attention inward to feel into the bodily sensations of what it means to experience the energy as “mine”. I was instantly flooded with a sense of internal peace. A sense of stillness. Suddenly, there was no need to reach or grasp for energy. It was already there. It brought me into the present moment. I felt solid and steady in my existence.

The fatal flaw of believing that energy isn’t accessed from ourselves is that it means we have to “get” it or “earn” it instead of simply receiving it. However, this can be a very difficult shift in our beliefs as we are indoctrinated since birth with the idea that energy is outside of ourselves and that we have to work for it. The harder, the better.

As I allowed myself to be in a dance with my own energy, I could feel my body starting to physically recuperate. One-by-one, the cells in my body came back online. I felt again as though I belonged in the physical world. As my recovery progressed, I regained interest in participating in life. I made a determination that in moving forward, I was going to be much more aware of my relationship with my energy. Not only from where I was sourcing it, but also where I was choosing to invest it. Upon scrutiny, I was surprised once again to make the realization that I had been investing my energy in everything and everyone but myself.

Choose where to invest energy

I have dedicated my work, and my life, to being in service to humanity. But I had been overlooking a critical piece of the service equation – me. No matter whether I had been sourcing my energy from within or without, my disposition was to immediately dispense it to others. I was the last person to receive its benefit. This was especially true in my work.

I help people create their own work and for many that means building their own business. Given the limited resources I had available each day – be they time or attention – I would always choose to invest my energy into my clients’ work before my own. I wasn’t prioritizing myself and my own business, and I was suffering for it. This is not to say I’m not interested in serving my clients, quite the opposite. But I want to serve them from a state of sovereignty, not sacrifice.

What is different now is that I perceive my energy as a closed loop. I receive my energy from myself and I invest my energy in myself. Then from this state of wholeness, I am free to serve without needing anything from anyone. This has actually been my message all these years, however, the mistake I had been making previously was the misunderstanding that I was sourcing energy for the reason so that I could give it to others. Now I understand that my energy is not meant to fuel others, it’s intention is to sustain me so that I can be in service to others. Each and every human has their own energy to draw upon and utilize, they don’t need mine. In fact, I was actually doing them a disservice by giving them mine.

My energy is not meant to fuel others, it’s intention is to sustain me so that I can be in service to others.

What this looks like in the real world is that I schedule in time for my own creative projects – first. I prioritize the activities that allow my business to grow and prosper – first. It also means that what I create is created from a place of true passion and desire, not because it’s what I’m being asked to create or because I think it’s something someone else needs.

I get this might be perceived as selfish, but I’ve actually come to realize this is not selfishness, it’s physics. It’s how our physical universe was designed to utilize energy. Contrary to popular belief, the “universe” does not have its own agenda, other than to expand. It is we humans who have an agenda and our energy is here to serve us in response to our own desires. The energy is not partial or biased, it does not judge us, it simply serves us. So, that leads me back to the question of where are we choosing to invest our energy?

Because of my recent experience, I’ve been asking my clients lately if they are investing their energy in themselves. I’m not surprised at how many cringe at the notion. We’ve been taught that it’s selfish to serve ourselves first. I think this is a misstep on the part of humanity. If we are not giving our energy to ourselves, then we will set up the dynamics where we are energetically feeding off of each other. This is what we see playing out in the media, in our families and communities, and in our businesses every day. This outsourcing of my own energy was the pattern that broke within me as a result of having the virus.

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When I was lying in bed pleading to be relieved of my suffering, I asked myself if I actually wanted to die, the clear answer was “no”. What I truly wanted was to live fully resourced with my own energy and to be able to utilize that energy to create an inspired life.

Of course, this includes living my inspired work. I intend to continue working until there is no longer breath in my body, as to me, work is a pathway to joy and abundance and creativity, and who wants that to end?