Article first published in Balanced Live Magazine, winter 2011 issue
I am stuck. I’m depressed, anxious, out of sorts. My relationships are conflictual. My life is an incongruent representation of who I really am… Who am I? Holistic healing practitioners receive a range of clients with various objectives in healing, personal growth, and transpersonal development. Some are acute in their self-diagnosis of what is amiss or needed. Others just feel dissonant and can’t pinpoint what’s occurring internally that calls for support and understanding. What most everyone has in common, I would submit, is the struggle with unconscious layers of “self” that filter and obstruct the intentional, natural, and coherent expression of their life force.
If consciousness were regarded as a vibrational spectrum, we could consider that awareness vibrates high and unconsciousness vibrates low. Implied is an intermediate range where we might deem previously unconscious material potentially emerging into awareness as subconscious, not fully exposed, yet hinting into more direct perception.
While there is a substantial body of research literature on the intricate workings of the human brain and nervous system which explains the neuropsychology and biochemistry of why we react to life as we do, let’s acknowledge their sophisticated findings then turn our consideration to the subtle body and human energy field, which has not historically been so amenable to measurement with the traditional scientific method but increasingly makes sense through a holographic lens. The holographic perspective, while not reducible to the familiar metrics of the traditional scientific method, does not have to be seen as contradictory to what the scientific method can evaluate; rather, much more comprehensive. After all, the subtle body interfaces with the physical body. This perspective allows us to value what we realize experientially, intuitively, and qualitatively and relieves the confinement to a logical framework that is strictly left-brained, politically influenced, and quantitative. From a holographic perspective, there is really no aspect of self that exists in isolation from the rest of the self. Because we humans reflect multispectral consciousness, certain aspects of self are more brightly lit while others are dimmed out of awareness yet still wielding great influence from the shadows.
With regard to unconscious layers, how do we recognize their influence? One indication of many may be fatigue or depression. Both of these conditions, although potentially explained by obvious factors such as sleep deprivation or the process of adjusting to a major life change, imply a kind of weight. Heaviness is consistent with density, which is lower vibrating consciousness on the consciousness spectrum. Does this apply to individuals who carry excess physical weight? Let’s not oversimplify here. For certain individuals, excess physical weight, especially when it’s hard to lose despite concerted efforts, could potentially reflect the residue of particular past experiences as they’ve been accumulated and held by a respective mind-body (hologram of soul) that have so far not been fully processed or integrated with sufficient awareness. However, humanity is filled with individuals whose lean physical structures conceal their energetic density. Whether beginning to be excavated and aired or still buried within layers of energetic armor, the density of the undigested past can be a drag on the subtle body that further diminishes self-awareness or that invites the kind of inward attention that illuminates ones consciousness and therefore enhances self-awareness.
Most people hold allegiance to a particular belief system—which includes values and judgements, conscious or not—so that whatever defies the belief system, including unwanted perceptions and emotions, may not necessarily be admitted into full awareness. Life force must therefore be used to block or veil the contradiction between sub/unconscious (suggesting embodied, dreamt, intuitive, or felt) information and conscious (implying cognitive) interpretations. The tension between opposing forces represents a polarity. Psycho-spiritual and psycho-somatic polarities affect us in countless ways, but the effort to manage competing thought-forms that are not equally conscious can be extremely depleting to one’s available life force. These polarities may be carried in a way that fatigues one’s will from the struggle between trying to embrace life and simultaneously defending against it, not unlike driving with the brakes on.
Energetically depleted, we tend to run on autopilot wherein the mind-body is governed by habits at virtually every level of being. This default mode requires little presence. However, when attention is shone inwardly, pockets of life force previously trapped in the archives of one’s compressed unconscious begin to dislodge and release or circulate, liberating circuits of energy capable of vibrating at a higher frequency and in the perceptual range of new possibilities. This paradoxical remedy involves awakening layers of consciousness that don’t realize they’re asleep…until awareness begins to activate, like energetic enzymes that begin to metabolize, process, and gradually shed and eliminate the hidden, residual layers of the unprocessed past.