Living Energy

How you manage your personal energy levels is integral to your success and effectiveness.

But why is energy important? How does managing your personal energy levels affect your levels of achievement and success?

Because of this very fact:

Energy is the foundation of existence.

Without energy, there is no physical matter, there is no universe. There are no galaxies. There are no stars, no planets, no moons, no sun. There is no life. There is no you.

You are alive because Life is living. You live because Life is sustaining you with its infinite, abundant energy. This energy flows in you, through you, as you.

It is not your energy, it is the Universe’s energy.

Just as a leaf of a vine is sustained by the flow of sap from the vine stem, so too you are sustained through the life-giving flow of energy from the Universe.

The vine leaf does not sustain itself; if the leaf should detach itself from the stem, it would wither and die.

As long as it remains attached to the stem, the vine leaf is vibrant, energised, alive—it is the expression of the living energy that flows within it.

Do not think that your body and energy are two separate entities. There is no separate body ‘here’ and energy ‘there’.

There is only energy and it manifests in many forms, including your body. But it is the same energy nonetheless.

Energy Matters

At the deepest level of physical matter, energy exists as packets, waves, and fragments.

Scientists used to believe that the atom was the building block of the universe. But then they discovered that inside the nucleus of atoms were smaller atomic particles called protons and neutrons, and spinning around that nucleus of protons and neutrons, like little moons, were even smaller atomic ‘bits’ called electrons.

Then they discovered even smaller particles of matter, known as elementary fermions, such as quarks, leptons, and bosons. A photon, the most basic element of light, is an example.

These fundamental or quantum-level particles are considered to be variations of pure energy.

This means that all matter at its most fundamental level is energy.

Just as a wave cannot form or exist without the water across which it travels, so too everything in the universe cannot exist without quantum energy.

Think of matter as vibrational ‘glitches’ in an infinite quantum energy field, or as ripples across the universal ocean of energy.

Carl Sagan, the American astronomer and cosmologist who narrated and co-wrote the original Cosmos series, famously said that we are all stardust.

All the trillions of atoms that make up your body were first created (through the process of nuclear fission) in a star in a distant and long-gone solar system, maybe even in a galaxy far, far away.

That star exploded, ejecting all its material across interstellar space, where it found its way to Earth, and from that very stardust your body is created.

Over 100 years ago at the turn of the 20th Century, the German physicist, Einstein, discovered that all matter is energy and he described how this occurs in his special theory of relativity with his famous equation: E = mc²  (where E = energy, M = mass, C = the speed of light).

This equation revealed that matter and energy are the same basic entity that can change or be substituted into each other. The great advances of our modern technology is based on the fact that all matter at its most fundamental level is energy.

Just as Newton’s laws spawned a whole new era of technological advances 300 years prior, Einstein’s theories spawned our modern era of technological advancement: television, radio, space exploration, computers, the nuclear age, and even the internet.

But the theory of relativity isn’t restricted to technology; it is everything that exists, including biology, cosmology, geology, and everything else in the universe.

This means that not only are you stardust, you are also pure energy.

You are pure energy that has taken the form of you.

This formless energy takes form in your muscles, your bones, your blood, your nerves, your hair, your eyes, your hormones. Your 5 senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

Energy is the foundation of everything you are.

It also includes all your non-physical attributes, such as your thoughts, ideas, emotions, desires, your feelings. It includes all your hopes, your dreams, your memories, your beliefs.

So energy is not only vital for life, it is also who you are. Without it, you cannot be. Without it, you cannot do the things you like to do.

Without it, you cannot think, speak, feel, breathe, play, dance, sing, write, create, build. You cannot love.

Energy is the clay from which not only you are moulded, but that which you create the world in which you live.

It is the substance with which your imagination conceives, gestates, and gives birth to the ideas and concepts you wish to make real.

Energy is the force that allows ideas to manifest into physical reality.

In a previous thought experiment (see The Power of Focus), it was demonstrated how you are the sole creator of your experience.

What you focus on, you experience. In this way, your mind is very powerful.

You, in fact, are an extremely powerful creative being. You are creating everything you think, feel, say, and do. And because everything is experienced in the mind, you manifest your reality.

This you do every moment of every day. Up until now, however, most of us haven’t used our creative power in any focussed or directed manner.

It’s been generally unfocussed and undirected, and this is mainly due to our lack of awareness of how powerful we really are as a mediator of our experience.

That’s why it’s been said that if you only knew how powerful your thoughts were, you wouldn’t waste them.