Energy – As real as we allow it to be………

Radiance by Kathy Koch

Energy. It’s the basis of all healing, all matter, life and the universe. As healers, it’s the raw ‘stuff’ with which we work, yet at very best it is poorly understood, even by those who claim to know and understand it. In healing terms, it’s incredibly simple, but even then, hard to define and frustratingly intangible until you experience it for yourself. For myself, I know it will make my hands tingle until painful, it will make me feel burning hot or icy cold in an instant, and for my clients, it has been known, on occasions, to deliver electric shocks from my hands strong enough to throw them from the chair, or leave burn marks on their skin. Most importantly of all, it will stimulate a healing response in their body, which can generate apparently miraculous cures, beyond the hope or possibility of medical science.

In my world, working with energy is absolutely normal. It allows me to view the universe as an interconnected and unified consciousness, where we are each responsible for whatever we create. For you too, I suspect you have accepted ‘energy’ to be part of your life, and an integral part of your healing work. We accept energy, unless we choose to be sceptics, in which case we reject it, despite being unable to even define what we are rejecting. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been told healing energy does not exist, but when I ask for an explanation or a definition of energy, the ‘thing’ that has just been dismissed, I am met with a blank face. The person who has denied the existence of healing energy does not know what energy might be, and doesn’t actually know what he or she is denying. Their opinion is born of prejudice, misunderstanding and cultural arrogance. It does not arise from any examination of the evidence. Even the greatest quantum physicists are unable to effectively define energy, but at least they are open-minded enough to accept the energetic nature of the universe is still full of mystery and the unknown, and are not so arrogant as to assume they know all the answers.

I have no intention of trying to prove the existence of healing energy. What would be the point ? Those who have experienced it will believe it, those who have never experienced it will continue to doubt it. Having successfully treated over twenty-thousand people and animals, using the self same healing energy, its existence is not in question to me, and if you have felt it, and used it too, you’ll have the same opinion. We know that healing is subjective, based on the individual’s personal experience. How can it be otherwise ? So why waste time to trying to prove what we already know exists ? What is far more interesting is the nature of energy, its characteristics, and the way it works within the physical body. What is it that we are actually working with, and can that mechanism be understood, at least in terms of patterns and behaviour ? It is that area which I intend to explore in this chapter.

Lightball on the Stones by http://www.lightart-photography.de

I liken energy to love. Imagine trying to explain love to someone who has never experienced it. Where would you start, and can you imagine their incredulity and scepticism ? You’d describe the power of love, how it makes you view the world differently, how it can change your character and your very sense of self, and how it can become a force powerful enough to overcome any obstacle. You could describe how great works of art and literature have been inspired by love, and how empires have been won and lost over love. You might even quote some Shakespearian sonnets, or some Sufi love poetry to illustrate your point, and when questioned about where love might come from, you’d have to say it can start with the flash of a smile, the tenderness of a voice, and the cry of newborn baby. It sounds wonderful, but although we all know it exists, your explanation is unlikely to convince the hardened disbeliever, who looks to denigrate anything he cannot touch, buy or control.

Scientifically, love cannot exist. It’s too subjective, individual and dependent on personal experience, expectation and cultural and social factors. Science in its current form is reductionist and rational, based purely on objective observation, ignoring the human experience. Love cannot be dissected or reproduced in a laboratory. Yes, we can talk about hormones as catalysts for chemical reactions, but that is not love. Love takes place in the consciousness, not in a test tube. Energy is very similar. There is absolutely no doubt it exists, but how does it exist in a form which we can actually define and use, in healing terms ? Are love and energy the same thing ? Is love an energy ? Is energy pure love ? And where does consciousness fit into the equation ?

It is fascinating to know there is no actual definition of energy. The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman stated “It is important to realise that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is”. Now, Feynman was mischievous in the way he worked, and had no problem in challenging and upsetting the great minds of science. He was an iconoclast, and loved to provoke people. But by making that statement, he was also making a pertinent point. Feynman was exposing an inconsistency at the heart of physics. Effectively, energy is a mathematical abstraction. A human construct. Most of the ways we define energy are actually characteristics of energy, rather than energy itself. Yet it clearly exists. We know energy can neither be created, nor destroyed. But we still don’t know what it is.

The core of the problem, from the human perspective, is in separating our perception of energy with our perception of self. Where does energy stop, and matter begin ? Your body doesn’t exist, according to the ‘standard model’ used by modern physicists. You are composed entirely of atoms. But these atoms are 99% empty. They are almost entirely devoid of matter. If an atom was the size of the average football stadium, the nucleus would be sat in the centre, and only the size of an apple. Electrons would be whizzing around, but they would be smaller than a pinhead. Tiny pinpricks of light, disappearing and reappearing apparently at random. Effectively, the football stadium would be completely empty. And so it is with an atom. The atom, and as a consequence, your body, is almost entirely composed of empty space. Matter, as you imagine it, exists only at a sub-atomic level. Smaller than the atom. But that is where the problems start. Some would argue that even the atom, the basic unit we all learnt about in school, barely exists at all. An atom has absolutely no physical structure. Therefore it cannot exist. But it does exist, only not in the way conventional physics expected. The atom is composed of energy. Einstein’s famous E=MC2, a model of understanding, effectively states that mass equals energy and energy equals mass.

Any model, no matter how well it agrees with experiments, is still a model. It is not reality. The map is not the territory. It is just the map. Nobody can really explain what is going on, as it is inexpressible. All we can say is that the model, or the theory, makes good predictions. No more, and no less.

Extract from Strong Medicine – The Handbook of Healing