|
Punishment
Energy
Attachment to
invalidation, alienation, & harm
|
Everyone
has their own quantity and quality of punishment energy. It's the first,
most obvious energy field a psychic reader/healer encounters in the aura.
It's yicky, sewage-y, olive/brown/gray, sort of greasy and looks visually like a
nasty storm - but without the vitality of a storm. It is that dark cloud
you know all about sitting on the horizon...
Ill people - especially addicts - usually have a lot of it.
Moving punishment energy out of one's space is a priority for health, but
the person must want to/be ready to do it. One cannot get started in
the clean-up if one is clinging overly to ego attachment.
If the native is
too invested in the anger/frustration/invalidation cycle, subconscious
desperate clinging will prevent release. And
there has to be replacement energy available to surge in immediately after
the release.
Often, such a sophisticated & elaborate network of ego-responses to the
punishment energy has developed over time, that the person's
entire identity seems to depend on staying connected to the punishers (who
dole out the guilt & grief).
The elaborate ego-protective
mechanism for surviving the punishments so dominates the field of
awareness that one is unable to see the possibility of breaking
away from the punishers.
Their reality - their necessity - is
unquestioned; the survival instinct rules; all resources go into developing
more and better ego-responses to the pain.
But at some point the karma of bondage to ignorance reduces through
compassionate actions, and as a result the field of awareness will
slightly expand. An objective view emerges.
The connection
between the punishment energy, its agents, and the patterned
ego-responses it invokes becomes fairly obvious, and the person is
motivated to break the chain.
Or, as the psychics say, one tires of
"being the result of someone else's energy" and wants to
create a more self-directed path.
This is what stuck energy is all about, allowing
oneself to become the
result of things forgetting that one is a participant-creator of things.
Luckily, it's easy to fix.
A few heartfelt moments spent in deep, intentional meditation will usually bring along the
replacement energy!
|
"Yes" on small changes, self-management, and
developing spiritual strength.
"No" on tolerance for exploitation or injustice.
[Do you have any thoughts about how a person could go about
increasing their feeling of autonomy or freedom at work?]
H.H. "... it will completely depend on the person's individual
circumstances, what position they are in.
Let's take the example of a prisoner. Now of course it is best not to be in
prison, but even in that situation, where a person may be deprived of freedom,
he or she may discover small choices that they are able to make.
And even if somebody is in prison, with very rigid rules, they can
undertake some spiritual practices to try to lessen their mental frustrations,
try to get some peace of mind. So they can work on internal development
...
if people can do this under the extreme conditions of prison, in the
workplace people may try to discover small things, small choices that
they can make in how to go about their work.
And of course, somebody may work on an assembly line with little variation
in how to do their tasks, but they still have other kinds of choices in terms
of their attitudes, how they interact with their co-workers,
whether they utilize certain inner qualities or spiritual strengths
to change their attitude at work even though the nature of the work may be
difficult. Isn't it? So, perhaps that would help.
Of course, when you are talking about rigid rules and lack of freedom, that
doesn't mean that you are required to blindly follow and accept everything
others tell you. In instances where the worker might be exploited,
where the employer thinks of nothing but profit and pays a small salary and
demands a lot of overtime, or where one may be asked to do things that are not
appropriate or are unethical, one should not simply think, "Well,
this is my karma," and take no action. Here it is not enough to
think, "I should just be content."
Misplaced Tolerance
If there is injustice, then I think inaction is the wrong
response. The Buddhist texts mention what is called "misplaced
tolerance," or "misplaced forbearance."
So ... misplaced patience or forbearance refers to the sense of endurance
that some individuals have when they are subject to a very destructive,
negative activity. That is a misplaced forbearance and endurance. Similarly,
in the work environment, if there is a lot of injustice and exploitation, then
to passively tolerate it is the wrong response.
The appropriate response really is to actively resist it, to try to
change this environment rather than accept it. One should take some action ...
perhaps one could speak with the boss, with the management, and try to change
these things.
One needs to actively resist exploitation. And in some cases, one
may simply need to quit and to look for other work."
~~ H. H.
Dalai Lama, & Dr. Howard C. Cutler, M.D. (1998, 2004). The Art of Happiness at Work
, Riverhead Trade Pub.
|
|
The practical
selfishness of clean living
"Sometimes people mistakenly look on vows and pledges as if these were a
type of punishment, but this is not at all the case.
For example, just as we
follow certain methods of eating and drinking to improve our health and
certainly not to punish ourselves, so the rules the Shakyamuni Buddha
formulated are for controlling counter-productive ill-deeds and ultimately
for overcoming afflictive emotions, because these are self-ruinous.
Thus, to relieve oneself from suffering, one controls the motivations and
deeds producing suffering for one's own sake.
Realizing from his own
experience that suffering stems from one's own afflictive emotions as well
as actions contaminated with them, he sets forth styles of behavior to
reduce the problem for our own profit, certainly not to give us a hard time.
Hence, these rules are for the sake of controlling sources of harm."
~~ Dzong-ka-ba & H.H. Dalai
Lama. Yoga
Tantra: Paths to Magical Feats. Jeffrey Hopkins (Trans. &
Ed.). www.snowlionpub.com
|
|
updated: 19 June 2010