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Taking Back Your Joy of Living

Balboa Press

The Journey Begins

We humans are complex creatures, far more than mere flesh and bones. We can think, feel, and respond to both seen and unseen forces. You already know that within our physical bodies our synapses, nerves, and circuitry continually send messages to and from every part. Every second of our lives, energy is in continual movement within us.

The energy that sustains our physical bodies comes from many different sources. Every day, we take energy from food as calories, vitamins, and minerals and convert it into energy to do physical activities and sustain our bodies. We take energy from the air we breathe and the water we drink. We release energy into the air through breath and sweat. Our skin absorbs vitamins from the sun and allows us to react to our physical environment. The physical body is a complex machine that can do many things, but it's only one side of the human equation.

You've probably heard at some point in your life that you have both a physical being and a spirit or soul. Throughout our lives, it is the soul that defines who we are. This essence guides and teaches us what is right and wrong; it helps us grow into the best version of who we can be. What you may not be aware of is that before you were born, your soul selected both a physical body and spirit body (energy body) with the characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, and gifts needed to navigate life's challenges. In utero, your physical and spirit bodies adhered to each other. Your physical body is the machine, while your spirit body is the operator that puts your soul's essence into action. Although your soul and spirit body are distinct entities, together they comprise your spirit.

From an energetic perspective, we experience life through both our physical and spirit bodies simultaneously. For example, after a long cold winter, you may feel happier or more positive when you sense the first essence of spring. You may find that going to a specific place or looking at pictures of a vacation where you thoroughly enjoyed yourself can calm you or makes you feel happier. This is a result of the deep connection between our physical and energetic bodies. Although they connect, each retains the ability to act either singularly or in tandem with the other, depending on the circumstances. Without this essential connection between spirit and physical bodies, we would not be living here on planet Earth today.

Through your spirit body, you process life events and energetically record what you learned from the experience in your soul. Your spirit body sustains your connection to the divine, the universal energy grid. as well as connecting you to others. Through your spirit body, you can feel emotion, and you can experience love and a host of other feelings. Whenever you feel as though life has beaten you, you have probably sustained damage to your spirit body, and it hurts. Many life events can damage your spirit body, including neglect, withdrawal of love, blows from energetic missiles of hurtful words and actions geared to inflict pain, or actual physical pain, illness, or disease.

Although you may feel hurt by the actions or words of another, how do you know the extent of the damage those words have done to your spirit or psyche? There are times when the hurt, anger, and sadness have an immediate physical manifestation, such as crying or getting angry. We can measure many types of physical energy scientifically, but I am not aware of any scientific way to measure the level of tension in a room after an argument, even though the air may feel like it is electrified. Nor am I aware of anything we can use to measure the strength of another's anger in the midst of an argument other than measuring how loud the person's voice becomes, which doesn't always help because some of us don't yell when we're angry.

It's hard to measure the emotional energy in a space, yet we know it exists. At least once in your lifetime, you have probably been on the receiving end of a blast of white-hot anger from another that left you feeling burned, angry, or hurt. Unfortunately, the full scope of damage resulting from the harshness of others may not be obvious until an additional life event occurs that releases the floodgates of hurt energy within us.

Even though you cannot scientifically measure the degree of damage to your spirit, the carnage is real. Regardless of how well you mask the impact of emotional energetic attacks, if you do not protect your spirit body, the damage profoundly affects your joy in living. For some, energetic or emotional damage manifests as mental-health issues or physical ailments as the spirit body notifies the brain that there is a problem. Others may lose their ability to trust or develop anger issues. Regardless of how the energetic damage manifests, you'll need to work on both your physical and spirit bodies simultaneously in order to heal.

Energy affects us regardless of whether it comes from the physical or energetic world. Within your physical body, you continually manufacture energy from the nutrients you ingest and use it for movement, speech, and thought. Without this energy, your body would not be able to function as the highly sophisticated machine it is. Our spirits need energy to thrive. They take energy from our environments or from the universal energy grid and convert it into energy we can use to rid ourselves of negativity and heal our spirit bodies.

Like our physical bodies, our spirit bodies are unique. Although we share characteristics—including how our bodies function—the degree to which we each connect energetically with our world is different. As the physical environment nourishes or harms your physical body, so is your spirit body affected by your energetic environment.

One role of your spirit body is to process life experiences and warn you of potential threats. When your spirit body senses physical danger, it sends an alarm to your brain to activate your flight-or-fight response. Your brain puts your physical body on notice that it may need to defend itself at any moment. When this response happens, you tend to pay closer attention to the environment around you to assess the potential threat to your physical being. Your spirit body also alerts you when others throw negative energy at it. By listening to it, you are in a better position to heal your spirit body and ward off future attacks.

Some people can feel this energy manifest in their physical body. They experience it as a wave of white-hot anger, a wall of flames blasting at them, or a strange prickly feeling when they walk past a person, a home, a car, or anything else associated with someone who hates them. Whenever you feel anger or fire connecting with your skin, pay attention to where it strikes to determine whether there is residual pain in your physical and spirit body afterward. If there is, your spirit body was injured and needs energetic attention to promote healing.

Others experience a general sense of unease when they are around those who mean to harm them. At times, this may be a sense that your skin is crawling or that someone has wiped something slimy on a part of your body. The way in which your spirit body communicates with you that something happened also gives you a clue as to the intent of the energy thrown at you. For example, if you feel slimed, someone may be trying to deceive you, take something from you, or they may be trying to deceive others by smearing your reputation. Although your spirit body warns you of potential threats, not knowing how to stop them or limit the impact leaves you helpless against a tsunami of negative energy coming your way.

People around you can profoundly affect your spirit body and personal energy. For example, you may find that when you are socializing, you get a burst of energy and feel happier or more alive. Conversely, you may find that being in large crowds leaves you emotionally and physically tired and looking for the nearest escape route. Some experts would tell you that how you react to crowds of people depends on whether you are introverted or extroverted. However, regardless of how extroverted you are, if you are in a situation where the crowd is hostile or angry, you too may feel like you want to run to the nearest exit in self-preservation.

Energy from people influences us in meetings, lectures, or classrooms. Regardless of the reason we gather, when everyone in the group collaborates, openly sharing ideas to solve a common issue, we create synergy and positive feelings toward each other. During any type of meeting, if someone is posturing, disagreeing, or devaluing the contributions of others, that behavior can release a host of energy into the environment that may leave you feeling upset, angry, or unsettled afterward. If you are in a situation where someone is devaluing your ideas or suggestions to promote their own agenda, it can feel like they are trying to undermine your credibility or force you to change your stance. Other times, you may be left feeling as though you have just gone five rounds in a ring with a pro boxer and lost.

The energy of teachers, trainers, or instructors may also affect your spirit body. If you've ever attended a seminar delivered by a motivational speaker, you have experienced firsthand how someone can emotionally charge a large group of people to do something or act in a specific way to better their lives. While you are in the presence of the motivational speaker, you feel like you can do anything. However, not all instructors or speakers are motivational. If you have ever sat through a class or lecture delivered by a teacher who lacks passion or interest in the topic, it can be exhausting, boring, or simply de-motivating, preventing you from learning or applying the material. Regardless of the situation you are in, it is important to assess how the collective energy affects your spirit body.

As energy beings, our simultaneous connection to both the physical and nonphysical realms of energy nourishes us and allows us to do our life's work. However, we also have a spark of the divine in us—our soul. Regardless of how you define it, the soul is a vital element of who you are. Your soul defines your essence and governs how you present yourself in interactions with people, animals, nature, and the environment. It warns you when you do something that is not in your soul's best interest.

The soul is the spark of life that transcends both the physical and spirit bodies you inhabit. It is the final element of the trinity comprised of your physical body, spirit body, and soul. Your human trinity facilitates life in the physical world while connecting you with your environment, other people, the universal energy grid, and divine energy. You are probably wondering, How does it do this? How does it connect our physical and spirit bodies to give us life?

The Sona

Your soul drives energy concurrently through your physical and spirit bodies through an energetic structure that houses your soul. I refer to this as the sona. The word sona loosely translates to "Orion's belt." Just as Orion's belt points to Sirius, which some believe to be the source of life, the sona houses the source of life within our human trinity. Through this energy mechanism, your soul drives energy through your chakras, spirit body, and physical body simultaneously.

Typically, just after your soul jumps into your sona, your heart muscle beats for the first time. Once the soul enters the sona, the only way it can leave is if the sona breaks or opens to allow its departure. A sona opens when the physical body fails, when the spirit body gives up, when people contribute to their own physical death, when the spirit body fails, or when the sona's time to fuse the human trinity together has expired. The moment your soul completely leaves the sona, the separation of the physical and spirit body occurs, causing instant death for both bodies. While the physical body breaks down into dust through fire or decomposition, the spirit body returns to the universal energy grid for recycling. This will eventually happen to all of us.

When visualizing the sona, think of it as an oblong hollow belt with no beginning or end, much like the serpentine belt on a vehicle. The serpentine belt drives energy into many different devices—including the alternator, where energy converts into a form that the vehicle can use. The sona behaves similarly and drives energy through our human trinity. It drives energy through our physical and spirit bodies, which convert it into a form we can use.

Damage to the sona can have a lasting effect on your spirit body. Like the serpentine belt, your sona drives energy in a primary direction. When it is moving in this direction, you cannot feel the movement. It is like standing outside. Although the earth is spinning fast, unless the ground is shaking, we typically cannot feel it moving. However, if the earth starts shaking hard, we can. The same premise applies to how you experience your sona. Unless something happens and your sona is not driving as much energy into your physical body or it changes direction, you are probably unaware of its presence.

How the sona connects your soul with your physical body and spirit body determines your polarity. The easiest way to think of your polarity is to consider the direction of a clock. Those who have energy driven through their spirit body in a clockwise fashion have one polarity type, while those with energy going in a counterclockwise direction have a different polarity. There is no "best" direction. Rather, the right direction is the one in which your energy is accustomed to flow. It is similar in this respect to handedness. Most of us have a dominant hand and are either right- or left-handed. The same is true of the energy direction in our bodies.

Simple Loop Sona

The most common sona orientation for energy flow through the spirit body is a loop pattern. Although this is a simplified version of the multidimensional way your sona drives energy, when you flatten the movement, it represents the primary direction of energy flow. With this loop orientation, energy flows in a single direction very efficiently and effectively. Since there are no twists or turns in the loop, very little energy is lost, and your sona can efficiently send energy into your physical and spirit bodies. If a life experience affects your sona direction, a simple loop is typically the easiest orientation for your spirit body to restore energy movement to its preferred direction.

Infinity-Loop Sona

A less common sona orientation is the infinity loop. People with this sona orientation often have boundless energy when they are young. Although most children are busy, these individuals are like supercharged energy machines in continual motion. They often play very hard and fall asleep in strange positions on a regular basis. If you have an infinity-loop sona, you may also have internal organs flipped in either the upper or the lower portion of your physical body. If so, this begs the question of whether the physical body dictated that the sona connect the human trinity with an infinity loop or whether the sona forced the flipping of the organs.

The energetic pattern for individuals with an infinity loop is a little different. As illustrated in Image 1, if you have an infinity-loop sona, energy goes in both directions on each side of the loop, and the middle does not touch. Remember, this is a highly simplified version of the multidimensional way that your sona drives energy.

If you have an infinity-loop sona, you'll experience some unique challenges. The first is that you need to be more vigilant in taking care of your spirit body. If you do not, your sona could start collapsing in on itself. Then, instead of being full of energy, you'll feel chronically tired and unable to catch up on the rest you desperately need. Since your sona typically crosses in the center but does not usually touch, if it begins to collapse, it may rub against itself. Remember, this energy is traveling in opposite directions! Touching can cause a short in your spirit body or a general feeling of deep sadness and depression that reaches your soul. For some, this manifests as physical pain or a feeling of heaviness in the area where the energy crosses.

Remember, your spirit body and physical body can transfer feelings of pain or hurt to each other. If you are able to see the energy of others, you may notice the sparking energy emanating from their spirit body.

Injured Sonas

Regardless of how energy moves in your spirit body, if your sona becomes injured and is not able to move energy as effectively as it did before, seek out help in order to start the healing process. Consider what happens when someone gets hurt in an accident. In the acute stage, physically the individual does not even want to move—it is just too painful. Sometimes surgery is needed to repair damage to the physical body's structure or muscles. Once the individual begins to heal a bit, a doctor may recommend a physiotherapist to help restore movement. The physiotherapist assesses the damage and then creates an individual exercise and therapy program to start the injured person on the path to recovery. Even though it hurts to move, as the injured person performs the prescribed exercises, some movement returns to the injured areas, and the person beings to feel better.

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Excerpted from Taking Back Your Joy of Living by J. L. Reynolds. Copyright © 2014 J. L. Reynolds. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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