Find your habitual and familiar Scattered and Fluctuating patterns. See how often you can catch yourself in one or the other. Where do your transitions not stick?

This week, you will explore the energy configurations of Scattered and Fluctuating. Generally, Fluctuating happens when your system(s) can’t decide what to transition toward. They shift from one configuration back to the original to another, back to the first, on to a third, back to the second, etc. When the transition doesn’t stick, it is Fluctuating.

Scattered happens when you divide your energy and attention between more than one construct at the same time. Fluctuating bounces between configurations and Scattered configurations try, ineffectually, to multi-task. Scattered is half-assing multi-tasking.

Fluctuating energies are fear bubbles bursting to get your attention. Scattered energies happen when you try to keep your attention on multiple bursting bubbles. Scattered will often follow fluctuating and scattered will oscillate between Fluctuating and Scattered.

Fluctuating is the on-going process of beginning to deconstruct as soon as something is constructed. In Legoland, it would be putting a piece in place and then immediately take it apart again. Scattered is trying to build several Lego projects simultaneously without a clear idea what you want to end up with, which you want to finish first, and what you’re going to do with them when they are done.

As you find yourself scattered or fluctuating, make a decision. Do something. Purposefully move out of those configurations by taking action. The action doesn’t even have to be related. For example, if you find yourself fluctuating on what to have for breakfast, do 10 pushups, and then eat the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t ruminate, masticate.

My garage is an unorganized mess. There is stuff in there I don’t and won’t use, stuff that I should sell, donate, recycle, or trash. The stuff I use regularly is dispersed amongst the mess. It is unsightly and inefficient. The energy configuration for my garage and my relationship to my garage is scattered and fluctuating. It would probably be a solid eight hours of work to declutter and organize my garage.

Let’s explore the energies of resistance that are keeping me from doing that. First and foremost, I have resistance. I can feel it every time I walk in there. If I have resistance, I have fear.

I could fill a book with the intricacies and complexities of that fear, so let’s look at the basics. Every fear has at its center a fear of death. How might cleaning my garage connect to my death? Remember, your subconscious mind looks at things in absolute contrasts. It is either life-giving or death-giving.

Death is usually connected to not enough of something or too much of something. My fear is that if I let go of my unneeded stuff, I might have to do without it later. My subconscious fear is that I will not have enough stuff. If I don’t have enough, I will suffer – which will lead to the absolute of starvation – which will lead to death. Cleaning my garage becomes death-giving.

It is not realistic to believe that an organized garage will lead to death, but my subconscious mind is rarely realistic – it is fatalistic. It feeds on the energy of fear and I have more energy tied up in the fear than I currently have in wanting a clean, organized garage.

My subconscious mind is addicted to creating fear, drama, and indecision because those things lower the possibility for change. My subconscious mind wants me and my garage to stay scattered and fluctuating.

My garage also houses my distraction potential. Keeping my garage unorganized gives me something to ruminate on. It grasps and clenches onto a portion of my usable energy. I spend a good amount of time, focus, and energy fluctuating between wanting and not wanting to clean and organize. That fluctuation leads to a constant drain on my energy (which you will explore in the Bleeding week).

Find your Garage Drama. What houses your distraction potential? What exists in your life like my garage? How much time and energy do you spend maintaining the fluctuation?

My scattered and fluctuating garage drama creates a distraction and diffusion for all my bodies and every component.

Bodies: Physically, I waste time looking for things, moving things to get what I want, and my body expends a ton of energy getting tense whenever I walk in or even when I think about the drama. Typing this, I can feel my heart rate increase and the muscles at the back of my neck tighten. My garage is a trigger for physical tension.

Emotionally, the fear battles with recrimination – I feel self-judgment at my lack of determination. I feel weakness. I feel anger and I feel a desire to get started. My emotions are scattered. My garage is a trigger for emotional volatility.

I feel my thoughts cycle between doing and not doing, shoulding, and stagnating. I think about my untidy and unorganized garage every day, sometimes several times a day and when I do, I lose my focus, momentum, and drive to make progress on my intentions. My garage is a trigger for mental distraction.

My relationship with my garage is toxic. I burn loads of energy and nothing changes. It is the monster in the closet.

Components: My garage drama makes it harder to focus, makes it harder to relax, destabilizes me, and the energy I am holding reduces my capacity. My immovability reduces my flexibility and it slows me down. The constant drain lowers my endurance for everything else I do.

… it might be time to make the time and remove the cancer. Deconstructing my garage drama has definitely shifted the energy. I can feel my desire for change beginning to percolate. ­­­­I am going to get started on it … as soon as I finish this week’s content … take a run … shower, eat, nap, and stretch. I really should get a run in. And stretching really is more important than tumor removal … right?!!

Spend the day feeling for your resistance to resolution. Where does the lack of determination live in your body, how does it feel, and how attached are you to it?

What exists in your life that is like my garage drama? Where do you spend most of your time fluctuating and scattered? As you work your way through this week’s foci, make sure you are feeling your resistance. Track it through your day. Feel how it drains and pains you.

Most of what you do is habitual and doesn’t require all your attention. Your mind has the capacity to process a ton of data. When it isn’t asked to decide, it starts deciding for you. It starts looking for things to fluctuate and scatter. It might be your garage or anything else that is proximal, familiar, or habitual.

When your capacity is unused, your subconscious mind starts looking for something to evaluate, value, construct, and judge.

When you are focused on a task and your phone rings, you shift your focus from the task to the phone. If you don’t want to answer the phone, your focus might fluctuate between answering and not answering. Your focus might scatter between several alternatives before deciding or letting your voicemail settings decide for you.

Essence allows you to disregard the bulk of your mind’s chatter. It softens and devalues the cacophony of thoughts and allows you to place more value on the things your Hara is directing you toward. Essence and Hara help your thoughts, emotions, movements, and energy merge into a unified, intentional, and motivated trajectory.

As you get better at feeling your resistance, you will be able to feel more subtle levels of resistance. As you get better at expanding your Essence and empowering your Hara, you will get better at devaluing resistance. You will be less scattered, and your energy will fluctuate less. Less fluctuation and scattering leads to unification of direction.

Increasing your Hara will help you settle on a beneficial direction when your energy fluctuates or scatters. Expanding your Essence will increase the momentum for change and the energy available for intentional and beneficial actions.

What are your drama’s underlying fears? What stories do you tell yourself? What are the projections for wanting and not wanting to resolve it? Is it a fear of too much or not enough?

Alright, let’s look at the influence the scattered and fluctuating energy configurations have on your components.

Focus: Fluctuating and scattered distract. It is pretty damn tough to maintain a high level of focus when your focus is constantly dividing or drifting. Picture yourself as a kindergarten teacher with 27 crying, fighting, and escaping five-year-olds. How completely could you use your mental, emotional, and physical capabilities on each one? Your decision, empathy, and corralling skills would be divided between each of them.

Hara calms a fluctuating focus by prioritizing what you focus on. Essence gives that priority more Umph.

Stability: Fluctuating and scattered configurations will always lack stability. Fluctuating stability is like trying to jump from one foot to the other on top of a couple of wobbly rocks. Scattered can feel stable when you have settled into it, but the stability will be minimal or fractured between several smaller and poorly formed foundations. Essence and Hara are inherently stable. It is an integral part of their nature. Bringing Essence and Hara to fluctuating or scattered configurations will always bring about a beneficial change toward stability.

Speed: Fluctuating will always slow you down because it kills momentum. Just when you start going in one direction, you turn in another and then turn again. The to and fro, hither and yon, stop and start nature of scattered and fluctuating kill momentum. Scattered limits the influence of momentum because not all your scattered thoughts, emotions, or movements are going in the same direction. They pull and slow each other. They make it feel like every course change is starting over. That is the reason drag racing is done in a straight line. Hara keeps you on course and Essence provides the momentum.

Explore the value you give to your drama. How attached are you to it? How entrenched does it feel? Does resolution feel impossible or inconceivable? Explore possible incremental changes.

Strength: Fluctuating and scattered configurations fragment your strength. If your intention is to bring a maximum amount of your energy to something, that energy must be available. If your energy is scattered or fluctuating, it is not available. You will be able to do far fewer pull-ups if you are juggling with one hand.

Essence consolidates and gives you access to the totality of your strength. Hara concentrates and unifies your strength to increase efficiency and success.

Flexibility: This is the most interesting of the bunch. Fluctuating/scattered and flexibility would seem to be kissing cousins, but alas it isn’t so. Fluctuating and scattered are wrought with fear – when they flex, it is away usually away from beneficial transitions and toward familiar, less beneficial, transitions.

Essence and Hara optimize flexibility. They help you bend into current intention potentials with the greatest efficiency and productivity. When flexibility is optimized, it is very stable, unified, and without fluctuation. Optimized flexibility is fluid and graceful. It helps to expand your possibilities of success by allowing you to bend your patterns to collaborate with current potentials and intentions.

Practice softening your resistance to your drama. Counteract resistance with playfulness. Laugh, give your drama the Rika scowl, and begin allowing transitions to happen.

Endurance: Fluctuating energies drain your reserves without really getting you anywhere – like changing outfits a dozen times without ever walking out the door

The inefficiency of scattered configurations reduces endurance. If you are getting pulled in several directions, every movement will require more energy. Like walking six dogs all want to pee on a different bush.

Hara helps to keep you on track. It encourages the transition out of fluctuating and scattered while it increases efficiency. It gets your dogs all walking in the same direction. Essence adds an easy confidence, a lowering of fear, which also helps the shift toward intentional actions. Essence allows your dogs to joyfully walk in the same direction.

Rejuvenation: Fluctuating and scattered energy configurations make rejuvenation superficial. They keep you from deeply saturating bodies and components with energy. Picture racing through a smörgåsbord grabbing assorted crumbs and the occasional hors d’oeuvre as you spend the majority of your time and energy running back and forth between the tables, looking at what others are getting, and worrying about germs, calories, and someone stealing your seat.

Hara prioritizes rejuvenation and helps you to absorb energy to the most critical areas first. Essence greases the mechanisms for absorption. It reduces the resistance and fear allowing vital energies to be metabolized fluidly, fully, and effortlessly. Essence and Hara help to saturate your bodies and components with energy.

Next week, you will play with the Tug-O-War of isometric and isotonic energy configurations.