Spiritual Energy- from David Spangler
DAVID SPANGLER - SPIRITUAL ENERGY

Many of you will know the affection and respect I have for the Seattle based author & teacher  David Spangler. What follows is his latest newsletter. If you want to be on his list, visit www.lorian.org 

A friend of mine wrote to me recently and commented that we needed to "bring spiritual energies into the world situation." I heartily agreed. But later I got to thinking, just what was I agreeing to?

What are spiritual energies?

This is one of those concepts that we use and assume that everyone knows what we mean. And I think on the whole we do have an intuition about what spiritual energies are. We may well agree that whatever else they are, spiritual energies are good and helpful and thus to be desired. On the other hand, what you mean by this phrase and what I mean by it may not be the same. To one person, bringing spiritual energies into the world may mean converting people to a particular faith or belief, while to another it may mean something more intangible and subtle, a kind of vibrational uplift.

I don't intend to produce a definition of spiritual energies that will satisfy all people under all circumstances. Mrs. Spangler didn't raise her little ol' boy child to be that presumptuous—or stupid! But I would like to share my own thought process as I considered just what this concept means to me; perhaps you will find it helpful and stimulating to your own thinking.

One way to think about spiritual energies is to put them into a category like "Washington apples," "Idaho potatoes," or "French wines." This is to say, they are energies that come from a particular locality or source. If they come from "spirit," they are "spiritual energies." If they come from the world, they are, well, "world energies." OK, that makes sense. It's certainly a simple and satisfying way to look at it. Until, that is, I begin to ask, "What is spirit?"

My mother and father are both in the non-physical realms, having died some years ago. If I receive energy from them, is that spiritual energy? They are, after all, spirits in a sense. What about energy from an invisible nature spirit. Is that spiritual energy? Or how about a blessing from an angel, or even (let's go all out) an archangel? Surely that must be spiritual energy! But then, what about energy from the Sacred?

In other words, what part of the non-physical realms is the source of "spiritual energy." All of it? Some of it? Some levels but not other levels? What makes one layer of being capable of expressing spiritual energy and not another layer?

Thus there are problems when I define spiritual energy by source. For one thing, we use the word "spiritual" in two distinct ways that are often confused. It can mean "holy," "uplifting," and "life-affirming," or it can mean "not physical" or "not material." For many people, if it isn't made up of matter or doesn't have a body, it's a spirit and thus spiritual. But just as all French wines are not alike in quality or taste, and some Washington apples are good for cooking but not necessarily for eating raw, not all non-physical manifestations or energies are uplifting or life-affirming. Is a haunting spiritual?

A Granny apple has a different taste from a Pippin, a Macintosh or a Honeycrisp. A merlot is different from a champagne. Given all the different kinds of energies we might experience, what "flavor" is a spiritual energy? How do we distinguish it, if not by its source? Here is where the effect of an energy, what it does to us, for us, or within us, is important.

So far, I've been focusing on the word "spiritual," but the word "energy" is also equally undefined in this context. What, after all, is a spiritual energy? What is energy anyway?

In physics, energy has a very clear definition. It's a measure of the capacity to do work. Or put another way, its a measure of the capacity to promote or produce an effect. Energy makes things happen.

What work does spiritual energy measure? What does it make happen?

Here I am helped in my deliberations by a quick trip to my dictionary. It tells me that the word spirit comes from a Latin root meaning "to breathe." Spirit is the power to breathe, or in a broader sense, the power to animate and to give life. It is the energy of life. Spirit makes life happen. Life is the effect of spirit. And life here means more than just biological existence. It means the whole measure of possibility, wholeness, relationship, emergence, creativity, and potential that any organism may possess—and humans more than most. To breathe is to provide the energy that makes thought possible, feeling possible, love possible, creativity possible, whole cultures and civilizations possible.

This puts me in mind of something Jesus said in the gospel of John, "I come that they may have life and have it abundantly." This seems to me an excellent example of what spiritual energies do: they promote and foster life and do so abundantly on all levels and in all ways that life may manifest.

This means several things to me. First, it means that spiritual energies make possible the expression and use of other kinds of energies, energies of the mind or the heart, of the body or of the soul. For all these other energies proceed from and express life. Second, spiritual energies quicken and enhance the capacities of life, not only to grow but to be whole and coherent, to connect, to relate, and to engage. Life is an integrated open system that produces energy and gives of itself. Spiritual energies enhance this capacity to be open and giving, to be alive.

Third, it means that spiritual energies refer to a function rather than to a source. The effect of spiritual energies is independent of the source of those energies. Water is necessary for life, but it doesn't matter whether the water comes from a lake, a river, a well, or a rain barrel. (Of course, the source of the water can affect its purity and its taste, but that's another matter…and a matter of taste!)

This means that spiritual energies don't have to come from, well, "spirit." They are not the sole province of the non-physical, transpersonal, transcendent realms. They can come from us. We as physical, incarnate, personal individuals can be generative sources of spiritual energy.

Fourth, spiritual energies don't have to look "religious" or transcendent. If the effect is to nourish life, to promote the conditions that help life prosper, and to empower someone to "have life abundantly," it is a spiritual energy. This could take the form of a smile, a hug, an act of courtesy, a moment of listening that helps another move through a stuck energy, a gift of kindness. The spiritual energy doesn't have to be "big," the kind that moves mountains and transforms whole nations. Helping a single heart or mind to be more open to the possibilities of life changes a world. We do ourselves and the universe a disservice when we think that spiritual energies must be spectacular, extraordinary, or dramatic.

Fifth, spiritual energies can and often do transcend limits, enabling us to go beyond boundaries, but they don't have to. I don't have to have unconditional love to express the spiritual energy—the life-affirming, heightening, quickening power—of love. If I can love only one person, and even that perhaps imperfectly and with limits, but my love still enhances the life of the other, am I not expressing a spiritual energy? I say this because I have seen people beat themselves up emotionally and mentally for "not being spiritual enough," when in fact within the limits of their capacities in the moment, they are acting in loving and empowering ways. After all, my well may not be very deep and the water from it not as pure and tasty as some, but it can still sustain life, and I can still give it freely.

Liberating the idea of spiritual energies from a purely transcendental or transpersonal context—and from the expectation they need to be extraordinary—is part of the teaching of incarnational spirituality. It let's me understand "spiritual energies" in a broader, accessible context. Then when someone says, "We need to bring more spiritual energies to the earth," I don't need to feel I have to be a spiritual Olympian to do so or depend on non-physical beings to do the work. The flow of spiritual energy into the world may begin with me, right now, just as I am, in the welcoming smile I give a stranger or the helping hand I offer a neighbor.

David Spangler  www.lorian.org