You live in an energy sphere. You cannot see it, you won't even notice that it is there. It is different from your aura or the energy of your chakras. This sphere has one purpose: to create separation between you and the hurts and slights of the world. It monitors, edits, filters, distorts and otherwise manipulates everything that comes in and goes out. This is done to minimize conflicts with your beliefs. Nothing gets through, in or out, without being made to conform.

The sphere cannot control events, so it manages your interpretations and responses to them. If you believe you are unworthy or that you do not deserve to be loved, the sphere will orchestrate what you hear and your reactions in order to conform to your beliefs. When you believe you are inadequate or unworthy, you must create barriers (both to others and within yourself) to your feelings. In your separated space, there is unworthiness, there are insults, shame, judgment and criticism from which you must protect yourself. You do not live in the truth because your system is not prepared to handle it. Therefore you are surrounded by self-created deceptions, what the Hindus call "Maya." This keeps your psyche from being threatened. You will not hear what is said, deny reality or rationalize situations to fit your preconceptions. When you live in the God Space you live in the present. You deal with what is really happening. The ego (the sphere), cannot operate in the present. It lives in the past and projects events into the future.

The key factor in this interplay are your emotions. Emotions mask what you really feel. You experience rage, or anger in order to hide your real feelings of hurt and vulnerability. Bewilderment allows you to obscure and hide what you really feel. Denial does just what it says. Jealousy and envy project your feelings of unworthiness onto others. Hatred, disgust and contempt allow you to not have to deal with "them." Being unkind builds a wall to the threat that others present. Lust allows you to be titillated without having to take the risk of being rejected.

Consider how much of your daily existence - your thoughts, choices and reactions - are driven by what you believe about yourself and the world. These behaviors are so ingrained that the process is virtually automatic. As you sit there, take a breath, close your eyes and simply imagine all your beliefs falling away. For just a moment, feel what life might be like if you were to drop all of them. This is a very freeing moment.

It is not just our fear and anxiety that separate us from life. Our positive emotions also mask our real feelings. If I really love you, my feelings will pour out of every pore of my being. My actions toward you will be a natural expression of what I feel. You will not need to be told, you will know. Conversely, if I need to tell you that I love you, then I am compensating for the part of me that is afraid to open to you, or perhaps unable to open to anyone. Real feelings just are, whereas emotional substitutes must be manufactured. Emotions, even the positive ones, allow us to avoid vulnerabilities we do not feel ready to address.

Because emotions within the sphere must be managed, structured and rationalized, the environment inside the sphere is quite different from the God Space on the outside. Living inside the sphere means a limited and inherently unsatisfying existence. Beliefs are watered down or contradictory versions of the truth, and they are nowhere as nourishing, substantial or satisfying as the real thing. But, although it is chaotic and unsettled inside the sphere, at least it's your mess. But managing everything creates a good deal of stress and requires a great deal of your personal energy. However, if it is all you have, or perhaps more accurately, all you think you deserve, you settle for less, which is what most people do.

The forces of fear - fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of unworthiness, etc. - drive your beliefs. And fear-driven beliefs and the emotions they engender cannot exist in the God Space. Although truth exists in the God Space, it cannot be accessed from inside the sphere because beliefs inherently conflict with the truth. The light annihilates them. Truth is never created nor constructed. You don't have to think about or decide what is true, truth simply exists.

If you are accustomed to living in the protection of the sphere, moving into the God Space is an unsettling experience. There is a great deal of energy in the God Space, and unless you are centered, the constant flux and lack of coherence will be threatening. Things in the God Space feel chaotic. Energy moves freely and easily, there are no boundaries, and therefore there can be no protection, no manipulation and no games. It is like standing in the middle of a busy freeway or being in very bright sunlight without sunglasses. To exist there you must learn to allow, not control.

The God Space creates conflicts with the ego and the views people hold of themselves. Without boundaries, the self dissipates into "the great beyond." And losing "me" is a death, and an especially scary one when you think it is all you have. Accepting the God Space means the death of the ego, and all its attendant protective mechanisms. For many people there is an additional fear that if they release the ego, there will be nothing to replace it.

Living in the sphere precludes having deep connections with others. With a couple of exceptions, other people cannot come into your sphere and you cannot enter theirs. Therefore relationships carried out from within the confines of the sphere are filtered and insipid by design. They are like beliefs, they provide little real nourishment. To really connect with another person, you must leave your refuge and stand in the God Space. So, most people go in and out like turtles, responding to their levels of anxiety. They come out and relate a little, then pull back inside when they feel threatened. For many couples and friendships, this arrangement is tolerable, although not deeply satisfying. It does not ask either party to "overexpose" themselves. A few people never come out of their spheres at all.

If you have a lot of ego territory to protect, you will have a large sphere. Although this creates a sense of security, you also end up hauling around a lot of extra stuff, and that is exhausting! People with large spheres spend a lot of their time being vigilant and insuring that their boundaries are intact. Other people, with less need for protection, have smaller spheres and live more on the outside.

Although the spheres of most adults become calloused over time, the spheres of children are fragile. Young children, just like puppies and kittens, live in the God Space. That is why we are so drawn to them.. But, their spheres can also be easily penetrated and their individual space easily violated by an uncaring or predatory adult. The next time you are around children, pay attention to their emotional fragility. Children pop in an out of pain or fear quickly because they have not calloused their spheres. Children do have a certain natural resilience, but every cut still leaves a scar. If the intrusion is a physical violation, the resulting scar will be difficult to heal.

There is a self-limiting quality to the sphere. Since it is created out of untruth, it cannot be sustained against the eternal harmony of the truth. Cracks will occur in the sphere, allowing the light of truth to occasionally penetrate. Another way to say this is that the sphere is designed to encourage you to leave it. Not only is living in the sphere unfulfilling, it is unpleasant and unrewarding to live a life dominated by fear and anxiety. I apologize for the crudeness of this analogy, but it is like an animal living in its own feces. Not only will you get sick and tired of living in your own stuff, but conditions in the sphere become increasingly toxic over time, leading eventually to disease. This has been designed into the concept of the sphere to make it difficult for you to remain there any longer than necessary. This is not done out of insensitivity or unkindness, but rather from a loving desire to help you grow. However, this is rarely how we view it.

Some people transition out of their spheres with relative ease. Others take more prodding. A third group resists change until they are in so much pain that their spheres simply explode under the stress. This is known as a healing crisis. From the outside this looks like disease or major life crises. The ancient root of our word "crisis" is the Greek word "krisis" which meant "to make a decision." To have a crisis then, is to be given the opportunity to change.

Think of the sphere as training wheels to help you transition to something greater. Training wheels are intended to provide support until your skill level and confidence reaches the point that you no longer need them. The sphere provides protection until you realize the ultimate truth that you have nothing to fear. In the ideal, you experience the disharmonies created by your beliefs and step beyond them into the harmony of the God Space. But, this requires a leap of faith. And as author James Baldwin wrote, "Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch." You are asked to leave the familiarity of the sphere for the unfamiliarity of the God Space. And that brings you to look at your relationship to The Creator.

Here ends Ross Bishop's series on Healing.
Thank You for joining us!

© Ross Bishop, 2008

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

There are two kinds of Shaman. Some people have a gift and study for years to develop that gift into a healing art. Ross Bishop is what is called a natural Shaman, someone who seems to have been born blessed with a gift for healing. Ross has brought the core of the ancient traditions of Shamanism into a form and practices that can be easily used and understood by the Western mind.

In a former life, Ross was president of an advertising agency and a communications executive for Northern States Power Company (NSP) in Minneapolis. After leaving NSP, with a colleague he founded Creative Power Workshops and traveled the country teaching creative thinking to advertising writers and art directors. Seeing the limitations fear placed on people's creative passion led Ross to undertake a spiritual journey in search of answers. That journey covered many miles, years and brought him to many teachers. Finding some answers, Ross also found his natural Shamanic gift for healing. He returned to this country and conducted vision quests for spiritual pilgrims throughout the Southwestern United States. Today he concentrates his energies on writing, raising birds and on an active healing, teaching and counseling practice in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Visit Ross online at www.rossbishop.com, and check out his books and cds, including his new book, Journey to Enlightenment which was just released in January of 2008.