Chapter 3 What is life?
What is the difference between a human body
and a sculpture? There must be «something» that makes us human
beings to live, whilst the things around us are «dead» and
static. When we study this with philosophical eyes, we find that
growth is what divides. It is development. It is movement. It is
propulsion. From this, we can conclude that there is something
in the human, in the animal and in the flower that is not in
stone and metal. This “something” must be there in addition to
the atomic and molecular structure. We remember what we learned
in nature science lessons; it is energy that provides propulsion
and movement. In other words, this “something” must be a kind of
energy.
As we see, life energy is easily evident when
we ask questions about existence. There is no doubt that it’s
there. It’s a riddle for me that science, until now seem to have
neglected this angle by the human being. Where medical science
stands today it seems as if life energy is seemingly invisible
because we are used to take it for granted. As long as we look
for something we can measure by an instrument, we may need to
search for a long time… but if we ask: What kind of energy is
providing for propulsion? Gasoline? Coal? The mechanical
thinking keeps us stuck in old thinking. The prevailing thinking
may say that food is the energy that gives propulsion. Yes, it
is, related to the biological devices we are, but if we think
non-mechanical, and think about ourselves as the wonderful
versatile beings that we are; what is then the driving force in
human beings?
It is our feelings and thoughts!
Our feelings make us want to do something,
and not something else. It is our thoughts that make us able to
reflect, reason and draw conclusions. We do that, among other
things based on feelings. It’s our feelings that make us like
something so that we develop in one direction and not in
another. It is our feelings that make us grow and “bloom”! I
have found that it is primarily our feelings that are the
driving force for life itself. From that I have drawn the
conclusion – and discovered by my own self-development work,
that the life energy must be some kind of feeling energy. A
basic energy form that we haven’t explored because we take it
for granted? - Because our feelings are a subjective, private
part of the human that cannot be measured or weighted?
It is actually rather obvious, and we have
all experienced it: Negative feelings lead to negative thoughts
that make our energy to halt. When we are depressed, we don’t
want to do anything at all. Then we have very little propulsion.
Positive feelings and thoughts make us happy and give us energy
to express and develop.
To find out more about what life energy
really is, I have approached it through the following reasoning.
All human beings all over the world have life energy whatever
religion, culture or nation they belong to. The life energy
simply let life unfold whatever human beings do. Not even humans
who kill other humans loose the life energy so that they die.
From this, I have concluded that the life energy is an accepting
energy.
Another feature that everybody can observe:
The life energy doesn’t take side in conflicts. It is in all
human beings, even in those who are in war with each other. It
is in other words a neutral, non-judging energy, or humans who
do bad things to one another would loose their life energy.
Thus it is up to us to choose how we use the
gift that life is. It is we humans who judge. Why do we do that,
you may ask. That’s exactly what this book is about. I have
found that the emotional wounds that we carry along make us
create conflicts, criticize and judge each other.
Think about this: Even if we do something
criminal or stupid, our heart doesn’t stop beating. Our body
continues to live, seemingly as before, even if we do really
nasty things. However, only seemingly… because most people are
affected by the fact that they are doing something that harms or
hurts others. The energy that sustains the body is the same,
while our emotions, and thus our thoughts, change. Guilt,
despair, shame, fear, self-criticism or sorrow of what we did
would affect our whole life. When someone continues to have life
energy, even after doing awful acts such as killing, we can
characterize the life energy as forgiving ... otherwise the
person would experience to die immediately - or shortly
thereafter?
Let’s do a thought experiment.
If someone you know well…
- Accepts you just the way
you are…
- Let you unfold just the
way you want…
- Allow you to be the one
you are without judging you…
- Forgive you when you do
stupid things…
What do they do then? They love you
without demands. Unconditional love. That is the way we can
describe the nature of the life energy. An energy that gives
and gives life. – Which continues to let life on Earth grow
and develop. These considerations all together have made me
draw the conclusion that the basic life energy in the human
being is love.
Love is the driving force in life! Sure, that
fits with the perception of most of us. Perhaps that is why we
long for love if we don’t have it?
As I have worked with these issues, I have
discovered another aspect of the life energy. I think it
contains joy. This opinion is based on observations related to
my work as drama teacher. An exercise where I ask the
participants to fill themselves with joy while they walk around
looking at the floor and stoop their necks, is almost impossible
to do. They simply must move and many of them just have to
laugh. Try it! When the participants get the order to be sad
whilst walking with straight back and open and easy posture,
they have big problems to carry out the exercise. Through this
they discover something crucial in themselves: - The feelings
are situated in the entire body and the body’s natural condition
is to be happy. A happy human being feels the need of being it
with the entire body. Both by my own release work and when
guiding others I have discovered a quivering joy when a trauma*
is released and a negative thought pattern is gone. It also
indicates that the life energy contains joy.
An experience that made me convinced about
another aspect by the nature of the life energy, is an
experience I had during a meditation. I have hardly meditated at
all up through my life, so the happening I refer to is unique.
The task I had got was to meditate at a flower and I chose a
coltsfoot* when it awakens to life at the roadside in the
spring. I closed my eyes and sat a long while to imagine that I
was the coltsfoot… and suddenly I was it really! I felt like
the thick, leaf-shaped stem and the beaming, yellow crown. – And
I was filled with a tremendous sense of love by being a
coltsfoot, joy to delight those who came on the road and saw me
- and the pride of being a beautiful coltsfoot! - A powerful
experience that taught me a lot about existence, to which I have
related in many cases later. The experience was so strong that I
do not doubt that it contains true information - even if it was
subjective.
Therefore I am convinced that life energy,
not only contains love and joy, but pride also. Think how
proud young children can be at what they manage... and how sorry
they are if we do not have time to look at them or what they
want to show us. I think that this also underlines a feature of
the energy that life is. I mean this, because young children
have not been able to limit the life energy because of emotional
wounds, like so many adults have.
Another important feature that I have
observed by life energy: Every single moment we have the
possibility to live a new moment - and then a new. It is up to
every one of us to choose to do things different every single
moment. The life energy is there for us in the present. Physical
life is actually only being lived in the present. Everything
that was, are experiences and memories. What come are plans,
hopes and dreams. However, everything that is behind us also
contains the wounds that form the experience of the present.
Therefore our thoughts contain, not only optimism and wealth of
ideas, but limitations formed by the wounds, like lack of trust,
prejudices and worry for what might happen.
The studies of life energy have shown me what
makes life difficult for humans, are small and big painful
memories. They make us hold on to the past so that they prevent
us from life joy and life multitude. It means that the wounds we
carry prevent us from being the way life energy is, which is
love, joy and pride. Can you see, that it is the painful
feelings that we carry from the situations in our lives, that
prevent the life energy so that we get ill and eventually die?
My discovery actually is, that illness occurs
as a result of feelings that have got "stuck" because they are
not worked through and released, but suppressed. Our nature is
to feel pleasant, so we'd rather not feel the bad feelings, but
I've found that is what we have to learn, if we want to stay
healthy and live a long life.
When I discovered what I have described
above, I had already for a long time worked to love myself. I
had read it and knew intuitively that it is important, but I
didn’t realize at that time why it is so important. Within the
last two years, after I understood that particles are conscious,
I have had several aha-experiences. I have found that the key to
what life energy is, lies in every single cell. There must be
programmings on all cells that make them contain love when life
starts. The driving force behind growth and development is
already present in the fertilized egg cell. From biology we know
that it divides and the two cells have the same qualities as the
first. Then the cells continue to divide and after a certain
numbers of dividing they have ability to different functions. At
the same time in each of them there is a kind of
self-preservation / energy that causes them to continue to grow,
develop, cooperate to renew, repair and enable cell structure.
Based on these considerations, I believe that life energy is
love in every single cell.
