Force and Finding Your Power
From New Age Village
'By Shepherd Hoodwin
An essential quality of the universe is dynamic power., which fuels all that occurs in it. Without power, there would be stagnation. This power springs from the Tao, the All That Is. You might envision a vast power station, “Tao Light & Power,” with cables moving from it into the universe. The universe is a construct of the Tao, and the Tao powers it through these “cables.” Everything is hooked up, or it could not exist, including you. Your power comes through your connection to the Tao.
If a toaster has a bad cord, the cord resists the flow of electricity, making heat in itself rather than in the toaster. Likewise, a person’s resistance to the flow of power creates excess heat. When you are releasing the blocks and distortions resisting the flow of power in you, you sometimes experience them more keenly rather than less, because you are no longer ignoring them. However, when you have completed letting go of them, greater power moves through you, bringing increased fulfillment, pleasure, and aliveness.
When power moves freely and fully, it tends to bring health. When it moves freely and fully on the level of the physical body, it tends to bring physical health. However, obviously human beings are not merely physical bodies; you have emotional, intellectual, and spiritual bodies that affect your physical body. When power moves freely and fully through all levels of self, true health is possible.
Letting power move in such a way that healing occurs is an art and science. Universal power has innate intelligence, but wholly manifesting that intelligence requires mature perception and understanding. Letting go of blocks is essential, but there is more to manifesting universal power than “getting out of its way”—you must be able to move with it. When you move with it on all levels of your being—physical, emotional, intellectual, and especially, spiritual—you might be said to be manifesting your force. Your force is your substance as a person, your birthright, you might say.
It is good to wish someone, “May the Force be with you,” but, in fact, you are the Force. Those who feel it necessary to force others or themselves to do or be something do not know that they are the true force. One of the purposes of spiritual studies is to acquaint you with your own force. The more you know it, the less dependent you are on outside sources. We are not speaking here of forcefulness; someone who exudes authority is not necessarily manifesting his force.
Why is it that most people are not familiar with their force? Many people fear it. As force passes through the personality, it magnifies distortions and pushes against blocks. If you wish to let go of what “clogs the pipes” of your force, you welcome the intensity of its experience. However, false personality [see Glossary] tends to resist an increased experience of force. We are not browbeating false personality. It is, after all, present for a reason; it has played its part in the development of everyone on the physical plane. However, there is a time and place for everything.
If you are aware that false personality is interfering with the expression of your force, find out what it is afraid of losing and assure it that you will look after its concerns. It may fear that if it is not in control, you will not survive. (It views itself as expert in protecting you.) You can then tell it all you are doing to ensure your survival, and that you will not accept more force than you can safely handle.
Some people tap into their force without much preparation and have a destructive experience because it brings out what is destructive within them more quickly than they can handle. It is usually best to move one step at a time. The fable about the tortoise and the hare applies: if you work on one block at a time and increase your acceptance of your force in small increments, you will more quickly reach the goal of fully manifesting it than if you try to do it all at once. In such a progression, there is more grace and less wasted motion.
When you are bathed in force externally, through a channel, healer, in group meditation, or whatever, it calls from you your own force—like attracts like. As you begin to resonate with this external force, you generate a harmonious atmosphere in which your own force can come forth. However, as with all things, this can be overdone. You could go several times a week to someone who channels energy, and would thereby experience an intensification of force. However, most people would, after a certain point, find this to be unbalancing. If you are listening to yourself, you will know when you are ready for another “dose” of external force.
Sometimes healers say that they do not heal you; rather, they draw forth from you your own healing currents. This is often true, but sometimes the healer’s force does do the healing. If that is the case, the client may not be able to sustain the healing unless he eventually allows his own force to come forth, at least in the specific area of illness. However, sometimes the healer’s force is adequate to heal the condition permanently, especially if there is not strong resistance in the client, even without a realization of his own force.
Force, as we are using the term here, is more than what is commonly called “life force.” Life force can be defined as the part of your force that applies particularly to your physical body. It can be projected in self-defense, for example, creating a field around the body; even animals do this. Perhaps we can call the overall force “spiritual force” to distinguish it from life force, since the spiritual level of self, being the highest, encompasses the intellectual, emotional, and physical levels; it expresses your wholeness. If you offer life force to someone in a healing way, it is like recharging his body’s battery. Spiritual force, however, can be healing physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually—it affects a larger portion of the person, you might say, than life force alone.
There are those, particularly among younger people, who have a strong life force but relatively little spiritual force, because they do not yet have the emotional, mental, and spiritual development to sustain it. There are also those, particularly among older people, who are frail physically but have a relatively strong spiritual force; enough universal power is manifesting in their bodies to support its manifestation, but the physical aspect of their force is proportionately minor. Your force is most potent when all four levels are adequately developed and strong, although each person has a different “mix”—some people naturally emphasize intellectual expression of force, for example, while in others, the purely spiritual is more dominant.
Are healers tapping into their own force, or some other universal source?
Many healers channel energy in addition to their own force. If you wish to heal someone and are not yet manifesting adequate force to do the job, you can ask that another source assist you.
Ultimately, all force comes from the Tao, so if a healer says that it is coming from God, he is correct. It does not matter whether the force is coming solely through his own cable connected to Tao Light & Power, or is routed first through other beings or energies to amplify the current.
If the channel or healer is carrying personality distortions or energy blocks, can he transmit them to the client, like a virus?
Generally not, provided that his primary intent in offering healing is loving. If he does not adequately put them aside, they simply stop or distort the flow of force, so that it does not have the desired effect. The force may magnify the distortions, but any damage that occurs is likely to be done to the healer, not to the client. The client may feel that the atmosphere is not quite right, but unless his own distortions and blocks resonate sympathetically with the healer’s, the client’s essence usually just shuts him down, limiting the inflow of energy.
But like does attract like. Isn’t resonance one of the reasons that someone seeking healing chooses a particular healer from the array of healers available?
Yes, but not necessarily resonance with distortions and blocks. In the example above, it could be that the healer is usually able to put aside distortions adequately to do the job, but on this particular day he is not. Perhaps the client has had good experiences with this healer in the past. You cannot generalize too much about such things.
It is true that in some cases, a person is attracted not only to the force but to the distortions in a healer. This gives them both an opportunity to work on their distortions. It is not necessarily inappropriate. It is just not going to be healing, at least not in the way expected.
Could you name some things that a person whose force is flowing freely and clearly would typically be doing, other than healing?
Such a person could be doing anything. If he is working in a nine-to-five job, he would have ease and contentment in it if that is what is appropriate for him to be doing. Everyone has a different capacity for manifesting force, in terms of both quantity and quality, so what is appropriate is also different. When your force flows freely at the quantity and quality that are now natural to you, without blocks and distortions in its way, whatever you do has a higher level of effectiveness with less friction or wasted energy than the same action with more resistance, and consequently, less force.
The quantity of force relates to presence: the more force you manifest, the more others tend to notice you. The quality of force relates to its intensity, depth, and refinement. A person who is allowing his force to flow freely and abundantly may still be manifesting a less refined quality of force than someone who is not. An actor or politician, for instance, known for having charisma may manifest much force, but the force is not necessarily of a refined quality. On the other hand, a spiritual teacher known for his healing presence may manifest both a high quality and quantity of force.
Also, a true spiritual teacher is likely to strongly manifest his force on a spiritual level, as well as physically, mentally and emotionally, whereas the actor or politician’s force may be more limited to the physical. Of course, there is no reason an actor or politician cannot have a refined, balanced force, and there is no guarantee that a spiritual teacher’s force will be refined and balanced. Sometimes, those on a spiritual path lack physical or emotional development, for instance.
Although someone must have a certain level of life force to support a high level of spiritual force, his life force may not be particularly strong compared to that of an athlete, for example. Life force to some degree depends on physical health, strength, and vitality. Those with a strong life force but not a strong spiritual force also tend to have a noticeable presence, but it is not as expansive as the presence of those with a strong spiritual force, since it also includes the emotional, mental, and especially, spiritual, which is the most expansive aspect of self.
Does manifesting your force depend on being conscious of it?
It is helpful to know consciously that you are your force so that you can deliberately open to it. However, it is not so much a matter of being conscious of the force itself as of being conscious in what you do so that your force can flow into it. To make an analogy, you do not give much thought to the electricity involved in cooking a meal. You cook the meal and the electricity is there, supplied in the proper amounts because the appliances are already plugged in. The point is to be plugged in.
Consciousness of the blocks and distortions resisting your force may be necessary in order to release them. Through practices such as meditation, you can increase your consciousness in general, as well as expand your capacity for force. However, if you are letting your force flow freely into whatever you are doing, your capacity will naturally tend to expand.
As mentioned, a person needs to have a certain amount of life force to provide stability for the manifestation of spiritual force, but most people are capable of more spiritual force at their present level of life force than they are manifesting. Also, the body’s capability to handle spiritual force can be stretched, depending on its “elasticity.” For these reasons, people with about the same amount of life force may have widely differing amounts of spiritual force. If someone is in ill health, his body’s energy tends to pull inward to try to deal with its problems. In that case, his body may not be very “elastic,” and increasing his spiritual force beyond a certain point can be harmful. However, if he has much unused capacity for force, which is the case for most people, he can take advantage of it without taxing his body much. An increase up to that point is beneficial for his health, and gentle stretching beyond that may also be. It is over-stretching that can be damaging. Even in a healthy person, stretching this capacity is not always a comfortable process, and sometimes, it leaves him tired. It is like stretching in physical exercise: respecting the body’s limits and gently taking it slightly beyond them when appropriate is beneficial, but forcing the body to stretch is harmful.. A healthy person can generally expand his limits more quickly than a sick person can, but most people can expand their limits to some extent.
A person’s life force potential grows from birth fairly steadily until around the age of thirty. It remains about the same for a while, and then begins to decline. The timing of the decline depends on how well he takes care of himself physically, and his mental, emotional, and spiritual state. It is possible to maintain your life force with little diminution for quite some time—thirty, even forty, years. But in this society, the decrease begins around the age of forty for most people. In any case, if you allow it to, your spiritual force can keep increasing when your life force stabilizes and even decreases.
In addition to your body, your environment is a factor in how much force you manifest. If you are inhabiting a highly troubled place, an excessive increase of force would intensify the problems. There must be a space beyond the person manifesting the force capable of receiving it. This really does not relate to the person’s own capabilities, but he will not be able to use his capabilities fully under highly stressful or troubled circumstances.
Primarily, though, a person’s capability to manifest force is a function of the specific nature of his essence. Each person is unique, having had his own pattern of experiences over eons dealing with force. In addition, some people are more attracted to working with higher intensities or quantities of force than others. It is not “better” to manifest higher rather than lower intensities or quantities of force. It is useful for there to be a variety in this regard. Someone whose life is low-key may not want to manifest as much force as someone more prominent—a lot of force might attract more attention than he wants, or there may be no place for it to move. If you are spending a lifetime as a monk studying, for example, a relatively low or moderate level of force is probably comfortable. Most people could benefit from some increase in force, but there is not a contest to see who can manifest the greatest amount. The point is to release your blocks and distortions so that you can manifest the force natural to you in your situation.
I thought of an analogy: one person is like a watch at 1.5 volts; another, a transistor radio at 9 volts; another, an electrical appliance at 120 volts; and so forth. Each person is right for where he is, and nobody could take his place.
To continue that analogy, if you put a 10,000 volt generator in your watch, you would not have a watch very long!
Is one of our problems that we compete with each other to have more force?
We do not think that most people are even aware of force, in the way we are discussing it. Certainly those who engage in power struggles are not. Perhaps there are a few in spiritual circles who feel competitive about it, but this is probably not a major problem on earth today.
Doesn’t force fluctuate?
Yes. It fluctuates based on the need of the moment. For example, the force coming through this channel is far greater when he is channeling than when he is washing dishes. When he is washing dishes, there would be no place to go for the power he experiences while channeling. It would likely just stay in his body and damage it. Also, there are variations when channeling. There is more force during a group session where there is responsiveness to the force than in an individual session where there is the same level of responsiveness. Also, some people have greater capacity to receive force than others, so among individual sessions, there is variety. One person with a high native capacity for force who is relatively free from blocks and distortions might draw more from the channel than a small group would. With another person, it might not be safe for very much force to come through.
Can we use force coming through a channel or healer to get rid of the blocks and distortions within us?
As you are bathed in force, it puts pressure on them, giving you a greater opportunity to recognize them and let them go. However, you must take responsibility for the process. Passively bathing in force does not alone remove blocks.
You do not process all blocks and distortions consciously. However, you must process them on some level, integrating their lessons, to release them. They are there for good reasons. Receiving lessons from your blocks and distortions is an important means of growth. If you tackle too many at once, you will feel overwhelmed—you can only grow so much at a time. However, most people are not taxing their capacity in this regard.
It seems that we can no longer afford to take our time doing this.
Those who excessively retard or postpone letting go of their blocks and distortions are going to have their hands full. On the other hand, as there is greater force manifesting on the planet, processing can occur more easily and quickly. What would have taken a year to process ten years ago might take six months now. In ten more years it might take a month, if there is willingness. Because the speed will have increased gradually, most people will not notice the difference very much.
Are we going to see more “miracle cures” resulting from people quickly releasing blocks that they’ve been holding for years?
Yes. When blocks and distortions are released, symptoms that sprang from them begin to heal. When that happens quickly, it is sometimes called a “miracle.” However, a cure is valid and “miraculous” whether it happens quickly or gradually.
MEDITATION
Go within and feel your own force. Allow it to push out any distortions or blocks ready to move. Sense how freely your force moves in you. Speak to it, welcoming it more fully into you. Ask that your force be integrated into your life as fully as possible.
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