Energy Pollution in Consciousness

by Gregory Allen Butler

Growing up in the United States, I understood the importance of not swimming in polluted water. I remember a polluted creek nearby the house where I was raised. If I ever came home with wet clothes, my mother knew I was playing in the creek and I would get a spanking.

Now we, as a society, understand that most of our waters are polluted by mercury and that eating too much fish can be harmful. We are also, as a society, concerned about air pollution and the dangers of cigarette smoking. And so people sit in non-smoking areas and we look for more ways to clean our air. And that is all good.

But what about psychic mental pollution? Do little kids get spanked if their parents catch them watching the news? Do people even care that watching a typical television show weakens their immune system? Depression is a leading illness affecting more people worldwide than any other illness. Why?

In this world that we find ourselves living in at this time, the vast majority of people are sleepwalking through life. We accept the way things are and don’t even ask why. Forget about a George Bernard Shaw dreaming about things that never were and asking why not? The idealist is considered an escapist. But that is just the response of a conditioned society not knowing the nature of reality, of what they could be experiencing.

David Hawkins, in Power vs. Force states a simple truth: “Wisdom can ultimately be reduced to the simple process of avoiding what makes you go weak—nothing else is really required.”

This simple path of discernment keeps the inner streams of consciousness clear and incorrupt. As important as what we eat for breakfast before we go to work is what we focus on. The days I start off with gratitude are much more successful than the days I start off with an argument with my wife over why the dishes are still in the dishwasher.

Magnets for Negativity

Negative thoughts are magnets for more negativity, which in turn attracts even more. It’s a terrible cycle.

Positive and expansive thoughts attract more positive energy and help protect me from the gravitational pull of the negative and lower energies. With the positive energy, I assure myself a day full of creativity, joy, beauty and productivity. My perception is clear, my appreciation is more active, and my enjoyment of life is increased enormously.

A polluted mind is depressed, lethargic, and unresponsive to positive stimuli. But are we able to avoid it?

What books are you reading? Do they uplift you or bring you down? What music are you listening to? Does it lift your spirits or make you sad? What about movies? Do they inspire you or fill you with fear and terror with images of murder?

What about your friends? Do they encourage you? Do they make you feel good or bad?

Take an inventory of all these type of influences on your energy field. With honesty and sincerity of purpose, you will be able to clean up a huge amount of toxic waste running through your consciousness.

Do you get depressed by watching the evening news? If so, don’t watch it. The world will survive without you. Actually, the world will be in better shape if your energy is higher. It will help counter-balance other people’s negative energy.

Just as a recovering alcoholic cannot afford to spend time in a saloon without a precipitous fall backward in his sobriety, we, as aspirants of higher levels of consciousness, cannot let the forces of negativity get a grip on us.

One of the tools we can use to build up our spiritual immune system is to practice living in the present moment. In the present moment we are not concerned about what happened in the past nor do we worry about the future. Without those distractions, we can experience the joy of life. We can experience the presence of our inner state of being. In that inner state of being, we can respond to other people whole-heartedly. In other words, we can love more deeply, see more clearly, and respond more completely to any situation. It is an essential practice to keep the lower energies from polluting the higher.

Here is what Emerson had to say on this force of higher energy in his essay on Character:

This is the natural power, like light and heat, and all nature cooperates with it. The reason why we feel one man’s presence and do not feel another’s is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being: justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel.

This scale he refers to sounds exactly like the scale that Dr. David Hawkins refers to in Power vs. Force. The purity that Emerson refers to is the degree that the higher energies are unmixed with the lower, destructive energies.

There is no reason why we have to play host to negative energy or be under their influence. As the great poet and master Hafiz said, “if you want the presence of the Beloved, don’t make yourself absent.”

That absence that Hafiz refers to is caused by the gravitational pull of the lower energies. Their allure pulls us away from that divine state of Presence, back into our dream state of sleepwalking through life.

Strive for that purity that Emerson spoke of. It is as simple as making conscious choices. A continuous discrimination of the higher in favor of the lower is required. It’s a matter of being conscious instead of unaware, of being forgiving instead of resenting, of being respectful instead of demeaning.

Do you want to narrow your experience of life or do you want to expand it? If you can stay out of the polluted streams of low vibrational energy, you can create any world you want, and experience the heights of joy, peace, inspiration, oneness, creativity, and love.

I will leave you with these words of Rumi:

I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let’s buy it.