Whether we look at politics, economics, or the weather, we sense how alive and unpredictable our environment actually is. Rapid changes in our world are evoking unease, fear, and anger in many. We have to stop expecting the world to provide us with a comfortable stability.
We live within a large pulsating mandala of flowing patterns of energy. With a flick of the mind, we can change the color, see new patterns, feel different feelings, and become a new person. When we take awareness into our many energy centers, we literally change our bodies, our minds, and our lives. We are vibrant and fluid. It works simply: Your attention is like the beam in a TV remote. When you shift your focus within your own body, you experience yourself and everything around you anew. Focus on one point and you become a healer, tempering wounds and softening discord. Focus on another and you have the intent of a warrior and you are filled with strength. Instead of simply reacting to issues, you choose the vibration you want to hold.
Where you focus attention in the subtle body determines how you will perceive and what you will understand. For example, a woman who was paralyzed with fear from seeing a boa constrictor in a cage, after considerable focus on her feet, was able to walk across the room and pet it. Purity of focus is like a laser. It allows us to perceive subtle energy fields quickly and dramatically.
Navigating with our inner guidance, we can feel how we are constantly affecting everything around us. When we can begin to "listen," the animals, plants, even the so-called inanimate parts of our environment have something to tell us. Our energy body is our antenna, receiving messages beneath the levels of ordinary consciousness. Normally we are unaware as we radiate all our thoughts and every shade of feeling. Our pets know our hidden intentions to take them to the vet or to travel - there is no way we can conceal ourselves from sensitive beings.
The earth itself is a sensate being that we are affecting at all times, consciously or unconsciously. We can use this workshop to become more aware of our presence and our effect. We can take guidance from our own perceptions, rather than rules, grandiose intentions, or external principles. We can stop playing the instrument of our body-mind randomly and begin to engage the magic of our energetic universe and its uncountable possibilities.
Gay Luce is a transformational teacher who personally understands both how energy moves through the body and how to teach it to others. She taught with Jean Houston in the Human Capacities Programs and Jean's Mystery School, a modern re-creation of the ancient academies of spiritual knowledge where the secrets of the mastery of energy shifting were taught. Dr. Luce founded and directs the Nine Gates Mystery School, an 18-day transformational program that is structured on the energy centers of the body and draws on teachers from many spiritual traditions. She was once a science writer with the National Institute of Mental Health and a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee. She is the author of many popular books, among them Body Time; Sleep; and Longer Life, More Joy; and is the founder of SAGE, a program that supported elderly people in self-transformation. Long an explorer of the mysteries of life and death, she is a compassionate, grounded, exceptionally clear teacher, and one of our favorite workshop leaders.