Posts Tagged ‘PersonalStory’

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What if Your School Guidance Counselor had Recommended Energy Healing?

Monday, January 2nd, 2017

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I graduated high school in 1998. I’d loved energy since 5th grade, but how did a person make money doing that? There were no jobs. There were books and training courses, but no way to know which were worth the investment. I didn’t seriously consider energy healing as a career path, but if I had, it would have looked risky and uncertain. Instead, I went to college, learned computer science, got a safe job that I could enjoy enough, even if it took hours and years away from the study that truly called to me.

But what if there had been salaried positions for energy healers?

The job requirements would list courses, certifications, and other programs. And that’s not just an energy healer saying, “I like these courses” — it’s a company saying, “We find these courses to be useful for new hires, and seek out people who have taken them.” And knowing there’s a job waiting, I would have felt good investing time and money in those requirements.

Fresh out of those training programs, I would have joined that company, worked under experienced energy healers and researchers, and been assigned projects and cases suited to my skill level. I might have started by giving healing sessions in the techniques I was already certified in, then learned more techniques on the job, and eventually developed new techniques for others to use.

I imagine the company funding energy healing research, both developing new energy healing techniques, and performing placebo-controlled trials to demonstrate their effectiveness. Maybe there would even be research-focused positions, where we pick a particular health condition that no one knows how to help, only see people with that condition, and work to develop techniques for them. I think I would enjoy a role like that.

Other people might go into management, mentoring a team of energy healers, or marketing or training or any of the other roles that most companies need. I imagine those folks would be interested in energy healing too, but just don’t want to make it their full time job.

Eventually, I might leave the company, start a solo practice, develop my own techniques. If I did, I’d probably maintain a certification in their system of healing, paying an annual fee and taking their training courses, so I could keep using their ethereal software and learn their latest techniques. Or maybe I’d stay, lead a team of researchers working on life extension, or on using energy to enhance cognitive function.

And what about you? How might your life be different if there were energy healing jobs when you graduated high school?

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Posted in Learning Magick | 1 Comment »

Imposter Syndrome

Sunday, July 3rd, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

We all have stories in our heads, unrealistic expectations that keep us from fulfilling our calling. Sometimes they even keep us from contemplating our calling.

Here’s my paralyzing story: If I were skilled, I’d be able to produce instant, unmistakable results from energy healing, then pluck any information from the ether through manifesting. I’d be able to demonstrate magick for anyone who asked, and it would be easy.

Do I really think that? Of course not. That’s maybe what a mature science looks like, or perhaps a company that’s been operating for decades. It’s where we finish, not where we start.

And yet, when I focus on learning magick or creating Healing Lab, that story creeps up, oozing doubts and fears and resistance.

Everyone has these stories, but nobody talks about them. So these stories isolate us, and they become stronger. That’s why I’m sharing this today.

What are your stories? And what are you waiting to start?

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Posted in Personal Stories | 3 Comments »

Case Study: Side-Effects of Energy Healing, Part 2

Sunday, May 15th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

It seems that biofield energy can have emotional / psychological side effects. That’s what I discovered this week.

First: Yes, energy healing can have side-effects. If you’ve every gotten an energy headache, that’s an unwanted result of something you did with energy — a side-effect. Any time we influence the human body, we’ll produce multiple results, some intended, some not intended. As we get better at producing larger influences, those unintended results will also intensify, and eventually reach a threshold where we can’t ignore them. When that happens, we label them “side-effects.” I wrote about this previously in 2015, while working with a friend who had cancer.

Here’s what happened this time. On Friday, I opened more power to the deeper parts of my biofield, parts that are normally powered just by my physical cells. I drew that power from the same power source that supplies my ethereal muscles and the outer parts of my biofield. I call that power supply my “core.” You can think it as connecting to a non-personal soul if you like. I discuss it here, from a time when I called ethereal muscles “mental areas.”

My goal was (is) to increase power for my entire body, to give me more resources as I explore techniques to create sensations. (Erotic energy, which seems to produce sensations in non-energy-workers under the right circumstances, is the first step in unraveling those techniques.) But for this first attempt, I only increased power to my stomach, because a smaller test seemed like a good idea.

(Why my stomach? My arm didn’t seem interesting enough — I wanted an organ. But my chest seemed too risky. Stomach seemed reasonable.)

I increased the energy flowing into my stomach. Remember how energy has a signature? That’s the type of energy, corresponding to the state of the tissue. So normal, inflamed, etc, all have their own signature. Here, I used a broad energy signature, which includes normal, inflamed, anxious, plus any other state my stomach might wind up in. I figured, let’s just power it, no matter what state it’s in.

That was Friday afternoon. That evening, I had a disagreement with my girlfriend — nothing serious, just something to talk through next time we connected.

Saturday morning I woke up deeply bothered by that disagreement. I wrote and mulled and distracted myself and returned to it and wrote more. It had turned into a big deal. My stomach felt odd too, but Friday night I’d eaten a bit of an eggplant dish with lots of garlic that had bothered my stomach, so I figured it was just that. I resolved that I’d check the energy once I got my head around this disagreement.

Around noon, still bothered, I decided to just check the energy in my stomach. It looked wrong. Muddy, to pick a word. It wasn’t just the signature of an unhealthy stomach, it was a signature that didn’t correspond to any state I could recognize. Just wrong.

I fixed it. Reduced the total flow of energy into my stomach. Changed the signature, so it was primarily the signature for a calm, happy stomach, with only a little bit of energy for any other signatures. And within seconds, I felt better. Not just physically, but emotionally. My stress disappeared. I went from cycling about this disagreement to thinking about it calmly — it was still something to talk about, but not something to obsess about anymore. It seems that the wrong energy in my stomach had caused my emotional state. The shift into that emotional state was slow, it happened overnight, but the change out of it was abrupt, profound, and surprising.

How did that happen? I know it sounds strange, but psychology research indicates that emotions come from the body, not the brain. The brain notices what’s happening in the body, interprets it as an emotion, then comes up with a cause for that emotion. There’s some elegant research on this. My brain noticed the weirdness in my stomach and concluded I must be really bothered by something, then focused on that disagreement as a result.

I have a few take-aways from this. Side-effects can show up in unexpected ways. Testing is important.

And the one that excites me: How can we turn these side-effects into healing techniques?

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Posted in Case Studies | 2 Comments »

How I Designed a Life Around Healing

Saturday, April 9th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Often called “work-life balance,” today I’m reflecting on how I’ve designed a life and career to support my healing work and magick.

It’s Not a Balance

Balance implies that both are equally important. They’re not. I want to tip the scales toward life and passion as much as possible.

I work to support the life I want. I’m not trying to balance anything.

Choose Lifestyle, Not Salary

At some point in every career, the person has done good work, is valued by their colleagues and employer, and has the social capital to make a request.

Don’t spend that capital on a promotion. Instead, spend it on lifestyle.

For me, that was consulting. In 2010, I changed from full-time work to consulting, getting paid well when I work, but making nothing when I don’t. If my goal were to maximize my yearly income, this would be a problem. But my goal is to work a few months a year, earn enough to support myself comfortably, and spend the rest of the time on other projects. Consulting is perfect for this.

Your lifestyle option might look different. It might be working from home (where you take 2 hours every morning for your own project), or some other sort of freelance work. But if you want to work on your passion, choose lifestyle over promotion.

Live Frugally

One related choice: I live in a studio apartment. It’s enough space for me, and it keeps my costs down, which gives me more freedom in designing the rest of my life.

Why cut back on the apartment, rather than dining out or other luxuries? Because I can easily save $500/mo by living in a small apartment, and it doesn’t really affect my life. But to save that kind of money on food, I’d be eating nothing but microwave ramen.

You might choose another way to live frugally. But the point is, spending less than I could creates flexibility in my life, which gives me options for designing a lifestyle with time and space for what I care about.

Create Your Art

With no one to tell me to work, and no one to report to, it’s so easy to skip a day. Especially when I hit resistance. (That’s why I write about resistance so much.) Then it’s easy to skip two days, and more.

I find it helpful to remind myself that this time is limited, that another consulting project will come along soon, and that I’m purchasing these days of creativity with days of work I’d rather not do. Because, when designing a life that allows healing or magick or art, the real challenge is actually doing that creative work.

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Choosing the Hard Path

Monday, March 14th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I’m learning energy healing the hard way, and it’s forcing me to become a better healer.

I want to demonstrate my healing techniques (among other goals). And it’s so tempting to do a healing session, see that the person sleeps better or hurts less or whatever other result, and call it a success. So, so tempting.

But that path invites placebo and luck. That isn’t the demonstration I’m looking for.

And facing my goals, really truly facing them, is forcing me to realize the space between where I am now and where I want to be. The space between “skilled” and “skilled enough to know I’ll create obvious results, if energy healing and magick are the only tools I’m allowed.” And facing that gap is the only way to close it.

It’s hard. At times I hate it, at times I resist learning. But I’m figuring things out and practicing techniques now that I never would have otherwise. I’m only doing them because the scientific method is forcing me to do it the hard way.

It makes me wonder: What other ways have I convinced myself I’m skilled? And if I got serious about testing, how much better would I become?

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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What is the Biofield?

Sunday, February 28th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

A friend asked me, “What is the biofield?”

That’s like asking, “What is gravity?” Or “What is magnetism?” There’s no simple answer, and perhaps no known answer. The best we can do is give you examples, and describe how those phenomena behave.

Examples include Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Chi Gung, and many more. “Biofield” is the term used by the NIH and medical researchers to describe the energy used by all of those healing modalities.

How does the biofield behave? It seems that living cells emit some sort of field. The state of those cells — inflamed, injured, healthy, etc — determines the state of that field. Normally, the field flows out of cells. But it seems that the flow goes both ways, and that influencing the field can also influence those cells. (This has been demonstrated with cell culture studies, for example.)

That’s my answer. But there’s also a story here. The question came up at a writer’s potluck — bring food, bring something you’re writing, share both. I read the start of my vision for Healing Lab, got asked that question and flubbed it in front of a dozen writers. Just went off on a tangent, focusing on how no one knows instead of giving examples. Not a good answer, and I got gentle, kind feedback to that effect.

Today, this feels ok. That’s what practice is for: To make errors, reflect on them, plan a better answer next time. Better now with friends than later with investors.

But in the past, that writer’s potluck would have terrified me. I wouldn’t have read my work, wouldn’t have taken the question, would have frozen up instead of reflecting on how to answer it better.

I think bloggers too often share only our successes. Only the good answer we’ll give next time, not the failed answer we said in the moment. So I’m sharing that failure, too. If you’re afraid of flubbing an answer, know that us experienced folks mess up, too. I hope it helps you share when you get the chance.

The world doesn’t need your silence. The world needs your art.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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Death is Wrong

Sunday, January 24th, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

Death is wrong, and we should end it. That’s one of my core values. That’s part of why I do biofield healing. I discussed this with a friend last week, and decided to share it here, too.

Death is a tragedy. An error of evolution that we should fix with medical technology. Researchers are currently working on this, and we collectively should be doing more to research and fund it. One of my goals with Healing Lab is to one day participate in that research.

I’ve had this conversation before. You’re probably thinking of an objection. What about overpopulation? Slower social progress? Or the drive that death gives us to appreciate each day? It’s normal to internalize some of the ways we cope with death. Here’s what I always say:

Imagine it’s 2316, three hundred years from now. You and I are still alive, healthy, in what is today a 30-50 year old body. People occasionally die from accidents, though less often because of increasing safety standards. And very rarely, a person decides they want to die, and we let them. But mostly, we all expect to live for another 300 or 3000 years or more.

The problem you imagine comes up: Suburbs become cities. Meat becomes expensive. Transgender rights took 100 years instead of 50. People spend less time appreciating each day. Whatever your scenario is, it happens.

What happens next? I imagine engineers designing taller buildings. Scientists developing non-animal meat, and social mores changing to allow us to eat insect protein. Political rights movements learning new ways to reach people from an older age, and as today, change is slower than it should be but still happens. New spiritualities emerging to help us appreciate each day, simply because it is an enjoyable practice.

What I don’t imagine is someone saying, “The solution is simple: Kill everyone over 100.”

That’s not a political platform. It’s not even a comic book villain. It’s eat-Irish-babies level satire.

It’s also our status quo today. That’s wrong, and we should do everything we can to fix it.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

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How Money Improves Art

Sunday, January 3rd, 2016

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

If you speak at an event, should you expect to be paid? To at least have free admission? Taylor Ellwood started a good discussion, and others have interesting additions.

For me, this is part of a bigger discussion about money and art. Here’s where I stand:

Do what’s best for your art.

Usually, money improves your art. (Why? Keep reading.)

It’s scary. Do it anyway.

Your Art

Art isn’t just painting and writing. Art is whatever creative work you do: Energy healing, ritual, teaching, event promotion, engineering, computer programming. Whatever you bring to the world, that’s your art.

Do what’s best for bringing that art into the world.

Money

Money refines artistic vision.

Yes, really. Free speakers can be mediocre. But if you expect someone to pay, you need to be compelling.

So decide to be paid. Then do the work to get there: Read and take classes on speaking. Practice, at free venues and toastmasters and wherever you can. (“I’ll speak at your event for free, but I need a recording of my talk so I can review it and improve.”) Write, to learn to explain your ideas and to build your resume.

Those are all hard and scary. Deciding to make money forces you to face them. That’s the point.

These days, my art is Healing Lab. I want to be paid to develop new healing techniques. And getting serious about money has been excellent:

Before I was serious about money, I thought about doing healing sessions some friends, getting some referrals, building up a small practice. Unremarkable.

Then I embraced my goal: To develop high-price healing techniques for people with serious conditions. And realizing that, the path changed. I’m focused on publishing double-blind studies to demonstrate my techniques. I’m focused on refining healing techniques through case studies, so I feel confident publishing and selling them. And I’m practicing explaining my system of healing, in writing, and among friends, and among strangers at toastmasters and other venues. All of that is hard and scary. But all of it is necessary.

It’s Scary. Do It Anyway

Whatever your art, getting good is scary.

At a minimum, it requires honestly assessing where you are right now. Every time I’ve done that, I’ve been less good than I thought I was. And I’ve repeated a mantra:

I’d rather become good tomorrow, than believe I’m good today. Recognizing a weakness doesn’t make it any worse. I’ve gotten this far with those weaknesses, so fixing them will take me even farther.

(Money forces an honest assessment of how good you are. That’s the point.)

Getting good also forces you to face your limits. Can you become so good at public speaking that people will pay for it? (Answer: Yes, but it’ll take 10,000 hours of focused work.)

Can I develop healing techniques so obvious and reliable, I can demonstrate it to university researchers, doctors, and investors? I don’t know. But I’m committed to doing it anyway.

(Why don’t I say “I’m going to try?” Because my goal isn’t to have tried. My goal is to succeed. Good post on LessWrong.)

Getting good is scary. Do it anyway.

Artistic Vision

What about visionary art? Doesn’t money poison that?

I’m not qualified to say. But I want to share two images. Before Picasso did this:

picasso

He did this:

95424-Picasso_Cast_Drawing

The first step is getting good. The visionary art comes after.

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My Reasons for Magick

Sunday, September 13th, 2015

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For sanctuary. A private hobby to explore and experience. Safe but also isolating.

For curiosity. A deep need to understand experiences. The drive behind science.

For healing. Today we understand the biofield as well as 17th-century doctors understood the body. What could we do with a 20th-century understanding?

For power. Manifesting to solve problems and improve my life and the lives of my friends.

For a dream. A worldwide community of magick researchers, advancing medicine and biology and physics.

For transhumanism. Ethereal muscles to expand our mental capacities. Biofield healing for life extension and, eventually, immortality.

I’ve had all these reasons. Still have most of them. (I’m shedding private sanctuary as I embrace vision and transhumanism.)

They’re all valid. They all lead to different explorations, different achievements.

What are your reasons? Where are they taking you?

—————————————————

And here’s a wonderful webcomic ode to the dreams behind science. I found it last week, I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Priorities and Sacrifices

Monday, July 27th, 2015

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

I want to be fit. But my friend who biked from San Francisco to LA? She wants to be fit in an entirely different way.

But if I could be fit without the sacrifice? Sure, I want that.

To find your priority, see what you’re willing to say no to.

A few of mine:

No to a party, so I can write and sleep and focus again the next day.

No to a lucritive-but-tiring job, so I have the energy to study magick.

No to traveling, so I can focus on Healing Lab right here at home.

Those are my sacrifices. Yours may be different. But whatever your priority, there will be sacrifices.

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