Spend the day exploring the feeling of energy accumulating. See if you can feel it in one or more of your bodies. What types of energy accumulate quickly?

This week, you will explore what energy does after metabolization. You will get to know the energy configurations of accumulating and expansive and the influence your Essence and Hara can have on them. The basic difference between expansive and accumulating is that one radiates, and one doesn’t.

As the name suggests, accumulating energy is the one that doesn’t radiate. You accumulate energy when you take in more energy than you expend. The accumulating energy configuration can happen sporadically, or it can be systemic.

Accumulating energy is associated with things like impatience, nervousness, anxiety, lust, etc. It also happens in the milliseconds before snap judgments. You see Sally wearing shoes that clearly don’t match her dress and then you judge. You accumulate energy about the stylistically bereft combo and then expend it.

Accumulating energy can also be systemic, in specific bodies or components, or it can be targeted at an image, belief, person, relationship, event, or construct. You can accumulate energy toward past, present, or future things. Accumulating energy is often targeted at something static. Getting nervous before a public speaking engagement is an example. You accumulate energy leading up to the event like asking your boss for a raise, telling your spouse that you bought a new $1800 Cappuccino machine, saying goodbye, getting your blood drawn, remembering the time your partner cheated on you with Dumbo behind the Tea Cups at Disneyworld, etc.

Accumulating energy allows your subconscious mind to prepare for fight, flight, or freeze. It prepares your bodies for a projected assault, battle, or defense. It couches or harbors energy for a projected burst or keep the energy bottled up.

Who in your personal or work life instigates or initiates an accumulation of your energy? What do they do, or have they done, that warrants a fear response? What are you consciously afraid of. What might you subconsciously fear?

Sometimes energy can accumulate slowly over time. Resentment and jealousy are the accumulation of energy toward something specific. They can build slowly or quickly but tend to linger. They accumulate and then usually compress. If you are constantly voicing your resentments and jealousies, they will accumulate and then bleed or percolate. They might accumulate and then explode.

Accumulating energies are inherently unbalancing because they are targeted a person, place, thing, event, or construct. The exception is when you accumulate energy with Essence and Hara. In Layer 18, you will begin exploring Kriyas that will help you accumulate energy in a balanced and invigorating way.

You get to a party where you don’t know anyone and start to mingle. You take in tons of environmental energy from the others in the room and it accumulates. If you do nothing, it will feel uncomfortable. If you start a conversation or quickly down a cocktail, you will start to burn it off. The energy that you are bringing in accumulates into your fear or expectations in social situations. It might be a fear of crowds, being rejected, being propositioned, getting drunk, or acting inappropriately. The energy might accumulate toward the possibility of meeting your soul mate, seeing an old lover, or being cornered by that super creepy guy from accounting.

Accumulating energy has a focus.

Social anxiety is the accumulation of energy that you have configured into the future projection of how you might feel when you are overwhelmed in the proximity of others. Accumulating energy is rarely about what is happening right now. It is displaced.

Identify some of the slowly accumulated energy in your system. What resentments or jealousies are you holding on to? What fears take up an increasing amount of space in your life? What stories, beliefs, or personality attributes lead to accumulations of your life force?

As you metabolize energy, it either accumulates, gets used, or is circulated. When energy accumulates, it rejuvenates or compresses. You will learn about circulating energy in Layer 18. Accumulating energy configurations can lead to compressed energy configurations when the energy overfills and is no longer able to move freely. Compressed energy is energy that has over-filled to the point of inertia. Thanksgiving dinners have a lot of accumulated energy that compresses. You eat until you can’t move.

Let’s look at resentment. As I write this, Kelly and I are camping in our camper van in the Jefferson Wilderness area of Central Oregon. The night before last, our dog Ed had very bad gas. It was so bad, it woke me up 743 times. The next morning, I was sleep deprived and very resentful. There may or may not have been pejorative comments directed toward the guilty party. It unbalanced me, I was grumpy, distracted, and unsociable. Not sleeping had triggered a fear and I was accumulating energy to fuel that fear. My fear was/is being weak or not enough. It was unreasonable and brought on by a lack of sleep. Luckily, I realized I was being unkind, made myself a cup of strong Pu’er tea and actively released the resentment. In a short time, as long as it took for the caffeine to kick in, I was back to being myself. We took some great hikes, got these pics, and completely enjoyed ourselves.

How about nervousness? When you are nervous you are accumulating energy toward a specific future possibility. If you have unprotected sex during ovulation and you will begin accumulating energy toward the possibility of being pregnant and the subsequent consequences. When you lie, you accumulate nervous energy toward being caught … unless you are a serial liar, in which case, you probably don’t – you probably wake up and eat your Rice Krispies without a snap, crackle, or pop.

Fear accumulates energy so that it has a reserve in case of need. The best way to overcome your fears is to actively release their accumulated energy. That is where Essence and Hara can play a part. When you identify and acknowledge a fear, you can increase your determination and upwell your Essence toward allowing the held energy to flow. It may be as simple as setting an intention and then feeling empathy and self-affection.

Find an area of your life that is important to you but feels stagnant. Is it stagnant because there is no energy or because the accumulated energy has compressed? If it has value, there will be accumulated energy. Allow yourself to feel what is there and see what happens.

Expansive energy happens when you radiate your energy outward from its source. If you radiate love, you probably feel it radiating from your heart area. If you radiate jealousy or resentment, it usually comes from your third eye, between your eyebrows. Sexual expansion comes from your low belly … unless it is rooted in control or manipulation, in which case, it comes from your solar plexus and/or third eye.

Expansive energy can be balanced or unbalanced. Kindness can be a balanced expansion of your energy … unless you have an attached demand. Then the energy is constrained to the underlying demand. When you are doing something kind so that you are perceived in a certain way by certain people, it is unbalancing.

When your energy expands equally in every direction it becomes Spherical. Spherical expansion is balanced – linear expansion isn’t. Radiating energy spherically is a practice. Doing something kind without any expectations of gratitude or return is something you learn to do. Here are some of the previous movements where you have explored spherical energy movement: Charging Vibrations, Higher Consciousness, and Kindness is Enlightenment. You will explore more ways starting in Layer 18.

Expansive energy is the energy of connection, collaboration, and intimacy. It is how your parts communicate and connect and how you connect and communicate with your environment. And conversely, it is how your environment connects and communicates with you. When you expand spherically, without a target or destination, your energy stays balanced. When you expand linearly, with a target, it is unbalancing.

When you are nice TO someone, expansively affectionate, you target your affection. If you are being affectionate because you want something in return, you have a demand. That demand limits your ability to accept reciprocal energy. You will only accept the energy that is in-line with your demand. Any energy that is out-of-line triggers a reaction. Expansive energies that have a demand also have accumulating energy. You prepare for rejection by accumulating energy for your reaction. When you are universally and spherically affectionate, you can expand without demand for reciprocation. You are equally affection to everything within your environment, internal and external. You are affectionate without fear or limit.

Play with radiating energy from different places in your body. Start with your third eye, then your heart, low belly, diaphragm, and throat. Picture a whirlwind of energy getting bigger and spinning fasters. Can you feel the energy expand?

Let’s use a martyr’s expansive energy to track energy flows. Martyrs use their energy to influence their external environments usually to the detriment of their internal environments. Mother Teresa is probably our generations most famous martyr. Her kindness had several demands. One, that everything she did serve her God and the church. Two, that people accept her help in the fashion it was offered. Thirdly, her help had the caveat that her help not be reciprocated. She demanded that she could continue to be a martyr. She helped thousands of people and didn’t do a very good job of taking care of herself. Not surprisingly, her heart failed. She gave until she had no more to give.

Now let’s use something closer to home. Identify someone in your life that has the martyr energy. It might be your mother, spouse, friend, neighbor, or co-worker. Find someone who feels like Eeyore. Find someone who is regularly exhausted, generally has a pained look on his or her face and is dour, deflated, and dejected. They will usually have a habit of putting others needs in front of their own, of doing more than is required or wanted, and finally, they will have a very high degree of should and shouldn’t. Martyrs are usually very judgmental.

Energetically they push their energy in very specific directions. They expand linearly … which leaves them habitually unbalanced. Does the martyr you identified seem balanced or do they seem like they are constantly in some sort of crisis, unhappy, or complaining? Do they regularly expound on how much they do and how unappreciated they are?

How about you? When can you feel yourself being a martyr? Can you feel your energy flowing linearly toward someone or something? Does it feel balanced? Does it feel like you are a victim?

Healthy, expansive energy will have some universal qualities. It will be balanced, and it won’t have the hook associated with judgments or demands. Each of the components associated with it will also feel balanced. You will feel strong, flexible, stable, and rejuvenating. It will feel focused, effortless, and fluid. The energy will expand quickly without resistance. It will expand from each of your bodies equally.

Healthy, expansive energy will be infused with Hara and Essence. Essence will always radiate spherically. That is its nature. It doesn’t have an agenda and is without demand or judgment. Hara ensures that the expansion maintains its integrity. Hara keeps the sphere from getting lopsided or turning into any other shape.

How, when, and why are you a martyr? In what situations do you subjugate yourself in an unbalanced way for others? What might happen if you didn’t? What fears are present and how does your martyrdom include manipulation or coercion?

Let’s explore the accumulating energy configuration and each of the components – starting with the most obvious, rejuvenation. Accumulating energy fuels energy storage … until the energies start to overfill. What happens when someone compliments you effusively? How much can you absorb before you go into your overload reaction? Healthy accumulation leads to rejuvenation. When accumulation becomes subconscious or overwhelming, it leads to reaction or compression.

Focus, Speed, and strength require energy. To have endurance, you must be aerobic, accumulating more than you expend. Stability is challenging when you are under-energized. Flexibility happens when your mind, emotions, and body are saturated with energy. Accumulating energy can help keep you saturated.

Most of the mental and emotional states that feel uncomfortable are the result of an over-accumulation of energy. All the components are adversely affected by over-accumulations of energy. Too much energy is unbalancing to each body and every component.

One of the things we will explore starting in Layer 18 is how to circulate energy so that it doesn’t accumulate to the point of imbalance or dysfunction.

When you accumulate energy generally instead of specifically, you are much less likely to feel anxiety, overwhelm, or stress. Without specificity, your subconscious mind doesn’t have a label to attach or fears to trigger. Specific accumulations of energy overfill very quickly. Overfilling your entire system takes much longer. That added time gives your system a chance to adapt.

When do you find yourself in healthy and balanced expansion? When do you radiate presence? When does your expansion feel universal rather than targeted? What is the single biggest thing you could change today to be more expansive?

How about the expansive configuration and each of the components? Strength, speed, focus, flexibility, stability, rejuvenation, and endurance can each be expansive.

Physical strength requires that accumulated energy amalgamate and coalesce toward an intention. You bring your strength to bear in a particular vector. If you allow your strength to expand in more than one direction, it is diffused. Energetic strength is about usability, maintaining energy flows. Emotional strength and environmental strength require presence, distraction diffuses accumulated energies. Mental strength requires following an intention. The key to expanding and increasing strength is to add mass or maintain volume as it expands. Get stronger as you expand.

Speed facilitates expansion in each of the bodies. You can outrun your ability to be aware, conscious, and present. When speed outruns your ability to keep pace, it is a flight reaction. If you start to create mental stories faster than you can discern their validity, you are fear reactive, not expansive. When you emotionally vent accumulated energies, it is a fear reaction.

Focus is like strength, to effectively expand your focus requires that you have the capability and capacity to manage a greater depth and breadth of focus. If you expand without increasing your presence, your focus will be diluted. Multi-tasking is a great example. Before you can be an effective one-man-band, you have to learn to play an instrument, then two instruments, then three, etc. Trying to learn to play 12 instruments simultaneously would be a folly.

Flexibility is similar to focus. You learn to be flexible in multiple directions to create expansion. To do that, you need to learn to be flexible in one direction, then two, etc. To be patient with everyone, you start by practicing being patient with one other person and then you take those skills and multiply them as you are able.

Accumulating energies add stability as long as they are balanced. Expansive stability begets fluidity. Before you can achieve fluidity, you must be stable and then allow that stability to expand in the most efficient and beneficial manner. Picture yourself as a paramedic at the scene of a train collision. To be effective, you must maintain your composure and then prioritize victims hierarchically.

Next week, you will explore more fully the fluid configuration, where metabolization, accumulation, and expansion happen simultaneously.