The Astral Ocean: Space isn’t empty

We live in an ocean of spiritual energies. Like the vastness of the sea, the spiritual world around us is unimaginably abundant and constantly flowing and evolving. An Ocean is the perfect metaphor for the spiritual realm, because like an Ocean everything exists in the astral. There are higher astral planes, lower astral planes, and so many multitudes of astral kingdoms with every flavor your can imagine. And everywhere you might go is like an ecosystem of vibration. When you truly begin to open yourself up to spiritual vibrations that complexity becomes quickly apparent. It’s important to know how to ground yourself, but also know how you sense the energies around you.

There are many ways people perceive spiritual energies in their lives. The more work you put into opening that capacity the more you can learn to consciously perceive, but no matter where you’re at we all have the ability here and now to listen to our intuition. Intuition is the most fundamental psychic perception, and we should all invest in both learning to trust our intuition, and invest in a practice of discernment and understanding of our inner perceptions.

The most common ways to perceive spiritual energies are Sight, Feeling, Hearing, and Intuition. Think about your own perceptions, and how you sense the subtle world you live in. What is the sense you primarily rely on to gauge the energy in a room, or a person in your life? Do you feel it in your body? Do you see someone you don’t like and it just seems like you’re looking at a texture or color you find unpleasant? Perhaps you just know but you don’t understand how you know?

Many energies in that ocean aren't right for us. Without judging them as good or bad, it's simply not healthy for us to be around the energies that don't belong in our personal ecosystem. Surely there are energetic predators, both incarnate and disincarnate, but many energies we interact with are more like kelp, jellyfish, or barnacles. And, like a barnacle to a whale, many simply hitch a ride without understanding us at all, making our life difficult or draining our energy if we don't clean ourselves off.

My absolute favorite depiction of the Astral is from Miyazaki's Spirited Away. The chaos, the mixed bag of beings and their various fixations, and the necessity for knowing yourself and standing firm in who you are are all very well represented in this film.

You may or may not have heard of this idea before, either way the truth is that you've been living inside this oceanic reality all your life (and before) and nothing has changed just because you read this blog post. You swim past these things all the time, and have learned to tune them out or interpret them through a simpler lens. This post is merely about stretching that understanding and our own awareness to consider how we 'swim' just a little more deeply. Think about the Ocean you live inside. What things do you know about your Ocean?

What kind of Astral forces do you encounter, and how do you belong to the astral ecosystem in your world?

Can you identify ways you perceive your ocean? Are you swimming healthy and in harmony with the energy in your world? Are you being starved for the kind of energy that you thrive in? Or are you being fed upon and drained by the environment you're in? *************** One of the great gifts of energy medicine is that it can help us to adapt and thrive in our particular ocean. Through cleaning us, helping build our awareness, firm our boundaries, and increase our sensitivity we can engage more meaningfully with our ecosystem. If you feel called, come work with me or join us for a class or sound bath to deepen and evolve that understanding. May the Divine walk with you, David Silvermoon