What exactly are you trying to achieve by doing energy work?

[Seeker of Matter]

I have been doing some reading about energy work, and I have even tried to practice it myself. I used NEW and I felt the tingling and so on that is to be expected with it. But then I stopped and thought for a moment. What is it that energy work supposed to do you? Is it supposed to make you happier or stronger or smarter?

I have tried to understand chakras and how they are connected to the different kinds of feelings of a human being. I then read that if you are hurt emotionally – ex. if your girl- or boyfriends breaks up with you, then it can affect you hearth chakra. Well that sounds logical. Then a closed down hearth chakra is the indication of that you feel bad but not the cause of it (very important).....
Let me put it in another way. You life is not caused by you chakras, you chakras are caused by life and by affecting your life you affect your chakras and NOT the other way around. Please comment.

Is it just me or do you people (sorry for generalizing) think that doing energy work will make you happier in life? I would have loved to weave that question a bit around so it wouldn't seem so direct and childish but that was my core-thought.
Are you people who are doing energy work unhappy for some reason? And is it not true that people that have never ever done energy work or heard about it can actually have much much higher energy levels than people that have done it for years?
Is it then not just an illusion that energy work will do anything for you but make you tingle a bit? Should the "real" energy not be used to correct the physical problems in stead of manipulating energy?

I can give an example. Yesterday I went to my Danish test-exam where I had to write an essay. I had been very nervous for that exam many days before, and that of course made me feel bad. So by some sort of reflex-thought I began doing some energy work. Then I stopped and realized that it was not going to help anything – the only thing that would help was going to that exam and finishing it. The reason I felt bad was because I doubted in my abilities to analyze a text and find the message of it.
When I had finished my exam I felt greater than I had felt and there was no energy work involved!

Can some of you relate to that?

Do you do energy work in order to overcome problems in your life? Or do you at least think that energy work will easy your lives?
In the end is energy raising not just caused by fear and doubt in one self? "oh I must do more energy work or I will have low energy – perhaps even lover than others' and that will in the end make me less of a human than them!!"
Can we call it a more accepted quest for power (and perhaps even more extended as you will take it with you when you die) do you think that it will make you more powerful in the afterlife?

Please prove me wrong.....

[Tom]

Have you considered regular exercise programs like lifting weights? That has got to be the stupidest thing anyone can do. The weights are picked up, moved through a simple pattern, and then returned to where they were stored. It accomplishes nothing, and it uses a lot of calories. It isn't even like the weights are used to hit something to break it. Sure, the idea is to have bigger muscles. It only makes sense when you consider that bigger muscles are not built up for the purpose of lifting more weights.

Same thing with working with energy.

[Seeker of Matter]

But can we agree that the motivation behind weight-lifting and energy work can be of the same selfish kind? That it is in order to make us seem better and stronger than others and that thought alone is considered to be NOT GOOD? and therefore the main purpose is corrupted. no matter if the way it is accomplished is good.

A pirate ship with a good crew is bad. A good ship with a pirate crew is also bad. Only a good ship with a good crew is good.

[Tom]

Anything, no matter how good, can be spoiled by a bad motivation. Fortunately with meditation and energy work, a bad motivation is not likely to lead to the extensive training required to hurt other people.

[Seeker of Matter]

Ok then. tell me your reasons for doing energy work and meditation. i will bet my right arm that you are doing it for a purpose (i write it because i have been trying to do things without a purpose - which is hard!!) and if so would you elaborate on your purpose and what you think your core-motivation was and then tell me if it cannot be tracked back to something selfish?

i will not be shy to admit that i consider myself selfish!

[knightlight]

I do energy work specifically to "tune up" my body.  My immune functions are better, my sleep is more peaceful, I am healthier.  I do meditation to tune up my mind.  My mind is under my control, quiet and satisfied.  I guess my motivation is to rise above the usual existance, under the assumption that this life is the limit of what there is, or buying into a dogmatic religion.  I use the energy work and the meditation to pull back the curtain so to speak, to attune with myself.  Selfish is a concept, as is everything else.  When doing things of a spiritual nature I tend to leave the concepts behind, erase all thought and just be.  Expand my grasp of the wider reality i guess.  Without the use of these 2 things, I would still be stuck in the rut of modern day life, lacking the spiritual muscle to explore things people only dream of, literally.     I can understand your feelings that it is selfish, and in a way, anything we do for ourself is self-ish.

[Tom]

If we don't take care of ourselves, other people will have to do it for us. If we take care of ourselves first, we will have the resources to also help other people. Energy work and meditation lead to a feeling of being connected with other people, so it becomes increasingly natural to want to help them for selfish reasons. Being spiritual does not require avoiding selfishness; it is just about changing the object of those feelings.

Doing things for no reason sounds crazy to me. That is why I ignored the whole thread. Almost as bad would be doing things without knowing the reason. Either way it is like choosing unconsciousness. Some people would even say that a rock sitting in the middle of nowhere has its purposes. It is okay to have purposes for doing things; the thing that all the texts advise it to do things without attachment to the results.

[Seeker of Matter]

I tend to leave the concepts behind, erase all thought and just be. Expand my grasp of the wider reality i guess. Without the use of these 2 things, I would still be stuck in the rut of modern day life, lacking the spiritual muscle to explore things people only dream of, literally. Cool I can understand your feelings that it is selfish, and in a way, anything we do for ourself is self-ish.

That is what i am trying to say. That everything we do very deep down is based on something simple as selfishness. and that this selfishness is the core-cause in everything that we do, and that it apparently also follows us into the realms of spirituality and that some people choose to think themselves above it when they are actually as entangled in it as the average everyday human.

and as i wrote before this spirituality journey seems (when i look at it with my paranoid eye) that this is just another level greediness, just one step up the ladder from physical materialism. i bet that you are happy with what you have achieved now. and you treasure your state of "enlightment" with the same intensity as the one has worked his entire life to buy himself the house of his dreams. This will make him rise above the crowd and shine just a little brighter. and he likes it - the feeling of being MORE and BETTER than others is intoxicating. just as the feeling of having build up so much energy that you feel you could electrify somebody. it gives the exact same satisfaction as having collected of a lot of valuable physical stuff. but in the end it makes you happy and secure because that you feel better than others.  
i am not saying that it is totally unmoral to feel that way. i have already myself come to the rather harsh conclusion that there are some people that are able to run faster, stay healthier, be more kind, have better moods, think much sharper and so on than others. and i have come to live with the fact that the indeed ARE better than other humans in terms of performance - and i mean performance at every level of what a human can - like in  forgiveness and in the ability to love. so they are better and they are therefore also allowed to feel better (lol)!
yes i guess this was what Hitler referred to as the "Übermensch"  (not that I share any of his other concepts like the killing of the Jews.)

I guess that what i am trying to do is to get YOU people to admit that even this house of enlightment and spirituality is build of the same stones of selfishness as everything ells!

Come on people say it: "We are selfish, we are selfish, we are selfish"

[XenXheng]

Yep, it can be quite selfish.

Then again, selflessness is kind of pointless when nobody wants to be helped.

Chris

[Tom]

Before enlightenment, attempting to be selfless is the most selfish thing a person can do. After enlightenment, there is no need for effort because the ego drops away.

[Scorpyn]

I don't understand your arguments at all. Just because you take care of yourself you're selfish? It doesn't make sense.

[Seeker of Matter]

yeah i have read something like that too. But i am having great difficulty in imagining a human being without an EGO. i would find that impossible. that would make you somewhat NOT human..... a desire-less being. i really do not believe in that. do you find yourself to be enlightened and without an ego then?

[Seeker of Matter]

I don't understand your arguments at all. Just because you take care of yourself you're selfish? It doesn't make sense.

well i don't think it is so difficult. most things that we do are selfish, in one way or another. well when it benefits you and you know it is it not right to call it selfish when you consciously practice that action?

i actually had trouble sleeping last night as i thought this thing about selfishness over and over again. and i must admit it almost gave me a headache. but then i realized that the reason it annoyed me so much was that i have always thought it was very bad being selfish.

i have come to doubt that now. perhaps being selfish is good, at least it would justify it.

am i just way off here? sigh....

I guess I will start taking my pills again and go to sleep wearing the straitjacket which my mother has so kindly sewn for me.

[XenXheng]

Simple, my friend.

Divide "selfishness" into two categories:

1. Something you do that benefits yourself.  (Lifting weights, eating food, going to a movie)
2. Something you do that benefits yourself despite what it may do to other people.  (Eating pizza in front of starving children, putting shopping carts on railroad tracks, cutting people off in traffic)

Practice #1 and there's no problem, in my opinion!  You're not hurting anyone...

Chris

[Scorpyn]

I think the problem is that I don't really consider #1 to be selfishness. To me, selfishness is only #2.

[Seeker of Matter]

Practice #1 and there's no problem, in my opinion! You're not hurting anyone... Smile

well that is the thing. that is also what i would consider as being purely selfish without the side effects of benefiting others. if one can be okay with that. then he/she would have great peace of mind in every other action he/she would make as the person acknowledges being selfish but lives on anyway not feeling bad about it.

can anybody come up with an action that helpes others and in no way makes you feel good?

[XenXheng]

I'm confused... please explain to me how doing something for yourself is a problem.  And what would be the truely "good" thing to do in its stead?

Chris

[knucklebrain1970]

What's wrong with selfishness. One of the major problems is that people limit themselves, thinking "oh, there's not enough for everyone else"

I call Bull Sheit. It's not bad to want energy, or money. It's what you do with it. You could use either your money or energy for unjust purposes.  You could raise enough energy to become psychic and use that for ill purpose. Same goes with money. Just because you have it, or want excess isn't necessarily bad.

I'm working on manifesting 10 million dollars or more. Not for selfish reasons. I'll have a normal house, as I do now. I will build my daughter and her mother a house, and I will never ever ever work another day of my life in any corporate environment.

I will open a spiritual center where I teach people how to open their eyes. Teach people how to be themselves and not your average clone. I look at all the teenagers nowadays. They all wear ripped jeans or Dickies, tshirt, messy hair and trucker hat. There is no individualism. There is no hope. The younger crowd has a bad bad outlook on the future. Not there is anything wrong with Dickies and trucker hats, but I can't tell one from the other.

This is in fact due to the loss of family values and the media jamming down your throat "what you need to make you happy"

It is my destiny to help people out of that trap. I know this is kind of off topic. I do energy work because it gives me a body buzz. I haven't done it lately out of lazieness and watching too much of the IDIOT BOX (which I'm about to throw out the window)

It is not selfish to want what you want, whether it be energy or money. One mustn't forget that we really all are interconnected. Tom is right about what he said in an earlier reply that the energy work will enable us to heal ourselves, instead of wasting tons of money going to a "GUESSER" that will just ram something from "PHIZER" or "ABBOTT" down our throat which will probably only make the problem worse.

Remember what Jesus said. "You can also do as I do and even better"

Kevin

[knightlight]

To me, selfishness doesnt exist.  In my eyes, if it was remotely practical, I would no longer speak, use math, or keep track of time.  All 3 dont truly exist, aside from what we impute.  I dont believe that these words mean anything, but for practical application they do.  It would be hard to get by without talking or writing or keeping track of time.   If you would point to a chair and ask me "what is this" I would say "a chair".  If you would ask me to tell you what it really is I would say nothing.  It is.  It isnt even that simple though!!  

The word is, when you think about it, is in itself a meaningless word.  What is is???  You ask anyone what a chair is and to them it is a chair.  If you would ask them what it REALLY is, they would look at you in a confused fashion and say "a chair?"  The basic wiring of western minds in todays society isnt inferior to mine, the concept of me being superior has faded long ago with the act of using labels, there is no superior or inferior.  Nothing is its label.  A chair isnt a chair, it is wood, put together with nails and paint.  But wood, nails and paint are not wood nails and paint.  You break it down to the particles that make up the basic atoms and we cant go any farther, so basically we dont know what anything is.  Notice how we come back to the word is.  All language is tied together and comes back to words that mean nothing and have no concrete explanation.  I am basically rambling and am not sure if I am still making sense, or if I ever did, its hard to explain my views with language for obvious reasons I attempted to explain above.

[Ryu-Kanjin]

I'm with Tom and Nucklebrain here lol

I admit, the when i first started playing around with my energy, when i was 12 ( 6 years ago   ), i wanted to fly......yes, I'm a dbz fan  

lol it only took me a week to realize that wouldn't work lmao. So i experimented with my energy more, and i discovered that i would heal myself quickly, sooth almost all my aches and pains, and discovered my sensitivity to the world around me. (I'm working on healing others know that i know more about myself)

I do energy work as a habit, and because of it i have become a LOT less greedy, happy 98% of the time, calm all the time, and able to solve a lot of problems other people cant (they just cant seem to step back and look at the problem   if they did that they could solve it lol).

Lets put it this way, thanks to my energy work, i followed the path that felt right to me, and never went off that path. I'm not going to say that i give everything to help others, because i ha vent, i live in the modern world to.

I will be the first one to admit I'm greedy when it comes to certain things (my books, dragon statues, and swords/daggers) but I'm in no way selfish like your describing  

One of the greatest memories i have is the day i went to the Denver museum of art. When i was walking in, i seen this elderly man, he was pulling a oxygen tank behind him and was at least 80 years old. I noticed no one was even looking at the man so i held the doors open and helped him out. He smiled at me the whole time, just remembering that smile worms my heart.

I walked out with him after the doors closed and told him to be careful and have a good day. He turned to me and said a sentience that i will never forget, and it still confuses me to this day.

"Good things will come in your future" he said wile pointing at me and grinning before walking off.

After doing energy work for a wile, you do reach a state of enlightenment that is all ready in yourself, you just couldn't see it.

I never hold it over anybody, in fact, i tell them how to find it, but they never listen. I put up with a lot of weird looks and comment from my family (all of them are VERY religious), but i don't hold it against them.

There isn't a reason for me to do energy work anymore, but i still do it. I help people when ever i can, its in my nature now and i cant change it ( i don't want to). Energy work has changed my life, made me a better person.

I still don't hold it over anybody, i feel as if I'm in the back round, watching the world rush around me, a lot like a tree. I want to help everyone, but i know that's not possible. If i find anyone who listens, i hope that it helps them to lead a life like mine.

Am i selfish?


EDIT: I agree with nightlight, its very hard to explain, just incase i didnt explaine it right

[knightlight]

Very very well said.  I guess I kind of got off the beaten path with my post, and you basically summed up how energy work changed me as well, but I had changed greatly from my dedication to Buddhism as a *philosophy first, and energy work came as an add on, almost as a spice on top of my already developed *beliefs.  The old man's comments shouldnt be confusing for you.  I believe you know why he said what he did.  

To continue my explanation a bit more to hopefully clarify a bit, maybe moreso for myself    since I have never really put it on paper due to the difficulty,  I also believe that my experiences with "out of body" states has changed me just as much if not moreso than my *beliefs established before.  Once you cross that threshold, of experiencing another reality that is just as crisp and real as the physical by inducing it just by will, not with drugs or through dreams, you cant look at this life the same.  

Who says this is the reality?  For me I cant take anything here seriously.  All I have left is to aid others to experience it as well.  I am thinking that through further exploration I will find that this reality is the illusion.   If you havent escaped this reality yet, imagine laying in your bed and suddenly you are standing in the parking lot of a gas station a mile from your house, glancing about, perfectly aware of your surroundings and YOU CANT TELL THE TWO REALITIES APART.   You can move about, touching objects, speaking aloud, all sensory input matching your waking reality exactly to a tee.  It gets to the point that your mind questions its validity so highly that you are forced to reenter your physical existence, sitting up in bed and are completely blown away.  This is just one of my recent experiences.  Clinically I would be put in a straight jacket and a padded cell, pumped full of drugs and sedated.  Maybe you agree with this.  I am going to stop here again and I hope to get feedback from the original poster.

* = words that I am forced to use because there isnt a word to explain what they are to me.

[Seeker of Matter]

Thank you all very much for your replies. it seems as if you are having a bit of trouble in understanding what it is that i am saying. and i do not blame you at all. i find myself very hard to understand

But maybe it is because the thing that i am asking is very very simple, and i have perhaps made the question in a a too confusing way.
well, firstly can we agree that if somebody tells that you are selfish, that is a bad thing. nobody wants to be selfish, and i can perfectly understand that.

I guess my statement is: everything that makes you glad by helping others is selfish, because that it makes you feel good.
If somebody wants to object then i guess this is where you do it!
That "good-feeling" must come from somewhere right? there is a reason why a action makes you feel good. there is some thought passing through you head that tells you, from what you know, that you did a good thing and that induces the good feeling.

a brilliant example of that is what you wrote Ryu-Kanjin  

One of the greatest memories i have is the day i went to the Denver museum of art. When i was walking in, i seen this elderly man, he was pulling a oxygen tank behind him and was at least 80 years old. I noticed no one was even looking at the man so i held the doors open and helped him out. He smiled at me the whole time, just remembering that smile worms my heart.

It made you feel good, and i it should, because the effect of your action made the old man pass untroubled through the door, and that is good. but would your hearth has been as warm if it was the guy standing next to you that had helped the old man? i guess not, the reason why your hearth felt warm was not because of the fact that the man could go through the door, but because YOU enabled him to do so, it is YOU that could harvest the potential credit for that.
let me say that if it actually does warm you hearth to see other people do good things to others in the same way it does when you do good things to others. then you have evolved above my imagination and i will not question your actions.
i hope that you can see what i mean because this is what i would define as selfish, even though you might have only have been willing to recognize the good feeling as being the result of helping the old man only, not that it was YOU that helped him.

i am not trying to put you down or anything, i am just trying to make you see the true face of your corrupted actions.... lol

XenXheng

I'm confused... please explain to me how doing something for yourself is a problem. And what would be the truly "good" thing to do in its stead?

Chris

i guess that the opposite thing of selfishness then would have been to kick the old man and feel really bad about it afterwards, that would clearly not make you feel good about yourself, and i do see how this does not really  resonate with the term "unselfishness". i hope that you can see that i myself have great problems in finding the recipe of doing true good.

and i guess i can attack all of your actions in this way.  

Knucklebrain:

I will open a spiritual center where I teach people how to open their eyes. Teach people how to be themselves and not your average clone. I look at all the teenagers nowadays. They all wear ripped jeans or Dickies, tshirt, messy hair and trucker hat. There is no individualism. There is no hope. The younger crowd has a bad bad outlook on the future. Not there is anything wrong with Dickies and trucker hats, but I can't tell one from the other.

well, if your goal is to enlighten people then i guess that you will feel as good about it when your neighbour opens HIS center and teaches people the things that you would have taught? no? i thought not.
I guess that what matters most to you is that YOU do it, that you somehow make people aware of you and remember you. and if that is just remotely true, then will it not be fair to define that as selfish?

Knightlight, i found very much meaning in what you wrote about that the chair and that it in reality does not exist.
"Chair" is as you write a term created by humans, there is no such thing as a universal true description of a chair, it just something we have called this thing made by by nails and wood put together in a special form. and i can also follow you in that ""we are" is also a human created term, and also not an universal law.
i guess that if you continue that line you can say that "selfish" does not exist. well perhaps you are right if you consider selfishness to be like the chair - created by humans and therefore not "true" or not existing. well we can go beyond the label and look at the action itself just like you ended up splitting the chair into atoms. selfishness does not exist only actions, and that leads us further on to define whether these actions are good and bad. and since good and bad are also terms made up by humans describing how we experience various of actions on our body, then i guess we can't make up if the actions are good or bad because those terms are false, and therefore we cannot define selfishness and therefore it does not exist.
well, this only applies when we try to find ultimate truths, beyond the humans. well i am not trying to do that. i am choosing to stay narrow-minded and hold on to these terms as selfishness and good and bad even though they are build on a non-existing foundation.
i am just trying to explain to you what it is that i see here and now, and what i have come to realize about it. well the theory that nothing really exists is indeed intriguing, but since that i find myself to exist here in this world of non-existence i would like to discuss this non existence before i cast it away.
now i think that I am rambling... lol


I guess that if you are unselfish, i will never know it because the moment you come and try to defend your unselfishness, you become selfish. "look at me, i am very unselfish, and i will even write a book about it to SHOW you how unselfish i am bla bla bla!!!"

from what i see, the truly unselfish man is the one that is able to sit all alone and feel good about the good that everybody ells does and not say it.

well fire up your gear and flame me already

EDIT: it does not help to say things twice lol....

[Scorpyn]

By your definition, anything that has any possibility of making you happy is selfishness. If you want to live a miserable life then go ahead, but it doesn't make sense.

[Tom]

If you do something good and feel happy about it, that encourages the tendency to do more things like it in the future. It is the same way with seeing someone else do something good and being happy about it. Both a good action and the feeling of happiness are causes of good karma. It is even possible to have more good karma from someone else's good action than that person earned through the particular action.

[Ryu-Kanjin]

I guess my statement is: everything that makes you glad by helping others is selfish, because that it makes you feel good.
If somebody wants to object then i guess this is where you do it!
That "good-feeling" must come from somewhere right? there is a reason why a action makes you feel good. there is some thought passing through you head that tells you, from what you know, that you did a good thing and that induces the good feeling.

a brilliant example of that is what you wrote Ryu-Kanjin  

One of the greatest memories i have is the day i went to the Denver museum of art. When i was walking in, i seen this elderly man, he was pulling a oxygen tank behind him and was at least 80 years old. I noticed no one was even looking at the man so i held the doors open and helped him out. He smiled at me the whole time, just remembering that smile worms my heart.

It made you feel good, and i it should, because the effect of your action made the old man pass untroubled through the door, and that is good. but would your hearth has been as warm if it was the guy standing next to you that had helped the old man? i guess not, the reason why your hearth felt warm was not because of the fact that the man could go through the door, but because YOU enabled him to do so, it is YOU that could harvest the potential credit for that.
let me say that if it actually does warm you hearth to see other people do good things to others in the same way it does when you do good things to others. then you have evolved above my imagination and i will not question your actions.
i hope that you can see what i mean because this is what i would define as selfish, even though you might have only have been willing to recognize the good feeling as being the result of helping the old man only, not that it was YOU that helped him.

i am not trying to put you down or anything, i am just trying to make you see the true face of your corrupted actions.... lol

I understand what your saying Seeker, and I'm having trouble explaining it  , so I'm just going to put it plainly.

My actions are not the only the that warms my heart like the grin from the  old man did. I also get that feeling when i see birds flying above my head, children playing and laughing, watching the tree in our yard and the birds that rest in it, our cats enjoying a good petting, and so many more.   Its not just my actions that make me feel like that, its everything around me that does it as well

Again, its really hard to explain ^^;  

I do understand why you are questioning why we do this, its all to human to want to understand. I'm constantly asking questions, whether it be about the actions of the ones around me, or how something works, I'm a scientist at hart