X = 100%: The Energy Journey of the Self

or

Freud vs. Einstein: The Sexual Enlightenment Theory 

    So what have I, and you, been up to this last month?  I look forward to reconnecting with each of you and listening.  I’ve been, and am, learning how to maximize 100% of my positive energy for enjoying life RIGHT NOW by appreciating my past but not being there now, and creating my future by acting now to make it happen.  Let me share some examples:

1.  I’m going to maximize my, and I hope your + energy for enjoying RIGHT NOW by playing for us all (violin!).  This is some of my soul nourishment!

2.  I missed a week with you because I was at beautiful, expansive, aquamarine-watered New Litchfield Beach with my 2 older sisters, older brother, and our spouses, the 8 of us for the first time with almost no children or grandchildren!  What fun it was to recreate with my siblings some of the fun, dynamics and sisterly bantering we enjoyed as children, leaving behind the distressing times!

 3.  I’ve moved and opened a new office, completing a professional fantasy my husband and I created many years ago, which was to work together in a beautiful setting on behalf of women’s and men’s health.  Planning and creating an upscale, colorful work environment with a New Orleans jazz and heritage festival theme feels right with my spiritual soul wants at this exciting stage of my life! 

All three of these experiences feed my own personal energy journey into myself which ultimately allows me to give more to others, now and into the future. 

       So what is this “energy journey” all about? Think for a minute--how much of your energy do you use each day in positive, joyful living?  Today, how much?  Caroline Myss, spiritual-medical intuitive, psychologist, and brilliant integrator of body, mind, and spirit states eloquently on her fascinating tape series, Energy Anatomy, that in the new millenium, the human race as a whole will have evolved enough to take on our challenge of energy management.  What is this?

 Each morning when we get up to live the day, we have 100% of our own energy available to us, theoretically.  How we decide to expend our energy, with whom, and on what determines the quality of that day in our life.    In this decade and into the next millenium, we are moving from the position, other people, events, &/or the environment are responsible for the quality of our lives, to, WE are each responsible for the quality of our own individual life based on the decisions and choices we make every minute of every day about how we use that 100% gift of energy we are given.

        Let me tell you a story. I worked with a delightful woman once who came to me for serious depression.  The day before our session, she told me that when she woke up, before she got out of bed, she had already used up 20% of her 100% energy for that day feeling sorry for herself.  Later, she had a 10-minute panic attack when she heard from a relative that her middle-age son had not yet arrived at the relative’s home in a distant city.  She gave away 40% more of her energy during that 10 minute attack, which did nothing for her son and only depleted her more.  Later still that day, she had another panic attack lasting 5 minutes over some other family member, losing the other 40% of her remaining energy.  She was predictably exhausted, having NO energy for enjoying any of the rest of her day!  Most was self-inflicted.

       Caroline Myss’ message is that, “Behind every event in our life, there is a message of divine empowerment for us.  We just need to see the events of our life that way---these messages to us are delivered when we open ourselves to receive them.  We need to plug into the higher consciousness circuit and trust that our life was set up for our own good.  We don’t need to know why--we just need to open our circuits to learning, giving, and receiving from others, to enjoying the loving energy exchange that others were put on our path to experience with us!

        So what’s so hard about this?  Most people live in half-consciousness or partially “unconscious.”  They live plugged into the circuit of human linear law and order, of human explanations, of human justice or injustice.  I.e., they live NOT in the present time fully, but with part of their brain plugged into old, past, negative experiences that drain their energy today, or with part of their brain plugged into anxiety about the future which drains more of their energy, or, they choose to plug their present energy into negative, unjoyful experiences or people. 

       It is our ability to consciously CHOOSE how we live in the present, and to consciously CHOOSE the reality of human experience or divine experience, that sets us humans apart from other live beings.  In short, we can choose how much of our 100% energy each day we give to distressed or to joyful living!  This decision creates the difference between health and joy, or illness and depression.

       This is often the main issue for people at midlife--to choose to live life as they have been even if it’s unfulfilling, merely existing, or in “quiet desperation”, OR, to take a risk, give up fear-based living and choose personal growth, living with integrity with the self, honoring and loving ourselves and others in the present with 100% of our energy each day--this is paying attention to the power of spontaneity of the divine order of living!  Wouldn’t it be more fun and healthier to make more love to self and others instead of being ill and sad?  “Lighter beings do it more frequently”!!

        Did you see the newspaper article, Where Family is Forever, in Sunday’s paper?  About the staff writer who visited his stepmother’s mother in Africa? He asked her if she missed her grandchildren and her daughter.  She replied, “You are here and that is enough.”  What a beautiful example of giving her energy positively and fully to her present and enjoying it!  It’s too easy for us to distract ourselves by the negative and miss the positive all around us every day. 

        So, to recap, we are each given the gift of 100% energy with which to enjoy each day.  How we manage our energy every minute of every day determines the degree of our contentment with our life.  If we live at the human level of living life, we will jam our positive living circuits often with unnecessary static/baggage.  If we accept and trust in a larger, individual plan for each of our lives, living at the divine level, we won’t always be comfortable but we will know that everything happens for a reason which we need only to discover, accept, and embrace.

 “YOU ARE HERE NOW AND THAT IS ENOUGH for me!”

Caroline Dott, PhD, LCSW, CGP

Midlife Specialist, Therapist, Professional Speaker

Riverbend Ob-Gyn & Counseling

993 Johnson Ferry Road, NE

Suite D-360

Atlanta, GA 30342

Office:  404-250-1350

Website:  www.midlife-passages.com

Dr. Caroline Dott  is available to lecture on the psychology of male and female menopause as well as issues related to the midlife-transitions of men and women.  She is particularly interested in behavioral issues affecting management level personnel at midlife and how midlife transitions effect function and performance in the workplace.   She has lectured on such related issues such as the impact of corporate downsizing on both male and female midlife executives.  She is available to travel and give seminars on the topics covered in this website both nationally and internationally.