On the Energies that Move Us

 For those of us who pay attention to the energies that move us from within, changes or shifts in those energies are critically important.  I remember my mother laughingly saying, "I can do nothing until the spirit moves me."

In my own life I have suffered through or enjoyed energy shifts as they occurred.  They included changes in important relationships, a passionate interest giving way to another, or at times the unavailability of any energy that ushered in a depressive period.  

For decades I thought I was the one doing the shifting, making the changes, accepting or rejecting challenges, suffering the ennui while inexplicably believing I was responsible for it.   Only after months of Jungian psychoanalysis did I begin to realize these energy shifts did not originate in my will; they were largely autonomous and carried me along with them.  Learning that I was not in control of them was both liberating and frightening.  If not I, then who assigned me my passions and, seemingly ripped them away or shifted them so irrationally?  For a time, I blamed others.  I blamed the fates.  I blamed death.  

Step by step, I learned that resistance was futile.  The shifts, though both liberating and painful, were like small rivers yielding their volume and force to something larger.  I learned to "go with the flow," generally liking the outcomes or at least adapting to them.

I learned, with Jung, that the energies that flow through us can be both divine and demonic, and must be dealt with that way.  They are autonomous.  I also learned I could wrestle some of them to the ground only to have them emerge in a different guise.  I learned I could cooperate with others and be exhilarated in doing so.  Each defeat and each victory convinced be anew just how autonomous the energies are.

Through these experiences I eventually came to realize I had dramatically revised my god-image.  The god of my childhood, sort of a super-Santa who kept track of my every transgression, gave way to a more mature understanding.  My revised god-image is that of an incarnating bipolar god whose energies are channeled through me and whose standing in my world are affected and only partially determined by me.  But the small part assigned to or accepted by me gives my life dignity and meaning.  It's not an exaggeration to say I have had to humanize autonomus energies.  The mystery is that they appear to desire being brought into the world but need help from the human realm.  

It appears that demonic energies also desire incarnation into the world.  The tip weight seems to be the human will hanging in the balance.  Even a small benevolent willful energy can effect significant change.