Good vibes: what they are, and how to make them

When we feel good energy, seek good energy, experience the flush of a quick run, long yoga session, new love, deep sleep and feel the inspiration of good energy— what do we mean? What is energy? What is good energy? What is unique about human energy, what draws us to one another, and how can we make more of the good vibes, feel more of the big love?

Science splits energy into:

• electric: your heart beat, nerve impulses, staticky hair

• magnetic: the hemoglob of your blood is magnetic, which is how it carries oxygen and can be tracked by the enormous magnets of fMRI scanners, which detect blood flow and therefore brain function by showing where blood has been used/deoxygenated

• sound: humans are noisy. Our joints crack, stomachs growl, we sing, speak, jump around and land with big thuds (if we are wasting energy) or land whisper softly (if we have a close connection with our center of gravity). We often forget how energetically demanding it is to speak for long amounts of time! And how rejuvenating silence— especially inner/mental silence— is.

• heat: our metabolism, our digestive fires, our passions— we burn energy that we felt as heat on our skin, warmth in our blood, transformation of food and water into the substance of our bodies, dreams into realities.

• light: we perceive one another, colors, shapes, the beautiful of the world and our place in it, all through light.

We can also split energy into kinetic, active energy, and resting, potential energy. This is closer to the qualia that yogi philosophy describes in the Gita and many other texts:

• rajas: the energy of activation, heat, kinetic, thee energy of activation, maintenance, and change

• tamas: the lowest energy, dullness, staleness, inertia; the energy of the unconscious and habitual chain reactions

• sattva: this is the pure, good energy. light, consciousness, the good, the serene.
  

Rajas must be added to tamas in order to convert the latter into Sattvic energy. These qualia, the gunas, are present in every aspect of nature, from the level of thought to the leftovers in your fridge (tamas…).

Humans are able to direct mental energy, and this is called attention. When we sustain directed attention, this is concentration (dharana; the 6th limb of Patanjali’s Ashtanga). When we expand our steady attention to include al, this is meditation (dhyana; the 7th limb). When we live in the still point of Sattvic energy, this is bliss (buddhists call this nirvana; Patanjali called Samadhi and it is the 8th limb, the culmination of the yogic path, a state of being).

So what are we talking about when we talk about energy, human energy, good energy?

Here are the facts: every human will die, and energy never dies.

When we talk about energy, we are talking about the immortal, the divine within.

While we live, we are filled by, sustained by, and constantly creating eneregy— the immutable. We are living batteries, charged and charging by something we struggle to describe but cannot help but feel.

How do we know when the energy is good? We just know.

How do we charge ourselves with good energy? We made good decisions.

• We eat what is closest to pure energy, food with high prana

• We attend to what uplifts and inspires the mind

• We steady ourselves within

• We stay close to the people who share our love and support our joy

• We recognize that dark/light, positive/negative are not good/bad. Transcending the dualistic perspective allows us to appreciate and cultivate true balance, which is wholeness. We learn to see in the dark, we learn how to reach for the light. We see how neurons, when negatively charged, are in a state of readiness, of rest— and that this is just as valuable as the positive charge of activation. We feel how we must exhale to inhale; release to replenish.

• We recognize our role and boundaries as fluid, flexible. Our skin is porous, permeable to the energy of our environment, so we choose our environment with care.

• We clear our space for freely flowing time.

Space-time is the larger-than-life fabric of energy, always in dynamic equilibrium. We live within it, can manipulate it at will. When we compress space-time, narrowing our lives into years and scheduling our days into hours, we narrow our minds and feel the physical pressure of stress. We can consciously expand body-mind to see past these artificial boundaries, to relax un-real structures, and experience a broader view of life energy. We can fine tune our perception for optimum productivity and presence, choosing when and how to work our consciousness for our intentions, our desires. When we do that, we are playing with power.