The simplified Human Energy Vehicle
Let me explain more fully. As always, what I’m asking you to do is to temporarily put on the goggles through which I’m looking at reality. And like always, I introduce what I’m going to offer you with the caveat that my take on it is as one of the blind men feeling the elephant. I affirm that what I’m going to say is true, just not the whole picture. But nobody has the whole picture, except Reality itself and She only leaves clues, breadcrumbs for the semi-blind people to follow. I’m offering my view to you in a very simplified form so that when I teach you to discern between compassion and empathy, which is the practical point of this essay, you will have a cognitive container to put the idea in, turn it about, and see if it can be of use to you.
All creation is made of energy in different expressions. What we call material life- what some people would claim is all that there is, but they are wrong- is but one level of energetic denseness. There are layers more dense-see black holes- and less dense- see gravity, your feelings, or your own soul. This gradation of density also exists in the microcosm of your own Human Energy Vehicle. Your HEV contains the full energetic array of what you, its temporary inhabitant, have been given to navigate life on this most unique, glorious, multi-leveled planet. That energetic array goes from cells inside bones to spiritual bodies that link you to that expanded reality I’m referring to. It is because of the unfortunate narrowing of present day cultural/material scientific bias that I have to explain this. Our ancestors knew that, “there are more things in heaven and earth…than are contained in your philosophies.” By which I do not mean to deny or demean science. It’s one more blind man. But by the use of inherent intuitive and extra sensory qualities, that along with taste, touch, smell, and hearing are inbuilt to that HEV, we can ascertain the levels of our own little vehicle beyond what we have been conditioned to define as reality. And if you learn to relax, breathe and at least temporarily put aside the thought of “that’s all there is”, you can easily discern your expanded vehicle, your physical body and your aura, if that is a term you prefer. You walk around in, as my son explained when he was five, “an egg with legs.” Your Human Energy Vehicle is a tiny microcosmic universe. And it’s a rental.
The layers of your vehicle (think of an onion with 5 wide layers), which range from the physical to the spiritual, are constructed around an energetic sub-structure, the central pillar of which is a vibrating pole, a core, that runs in front of your spine. Emanating from that core are the energy centers, called chakras in the ancient texts written by people who could see, feel and assess them as the underlying vibratory anatomy to the physical body. My view tells me that there are nine of them. Some people see less, some more. The important point is that we agree that there is vastly more to us than we are used to defining. And that this underlying informing and forming energetic system is what defines us as incarnate beings. When your finer energy bodies dissolve, which is what happens when you, the inner you, exits the vehicle, what’s left is a quickly decaying abandoned lump of the densest layer.
The layers of the fully infused vehicle, that I call physical, etheric, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies, are formed by the collective emanation of the chakras as held in place and vitalized by the core. Each layer has its own characteristics, as implied by its name, and thus its job within the whole. The physical you know about, more or less. The Etheric Body holds the vitalizing energy for that physical mechanism and is the bridge between the physical and the more refined outer layers of the vehicle. The acupuncture meridians run through the Etheric Body. On top of the Etheric Body is the Emotional Body, which is responsible for the movement of energy, the dynamic flow of life force that defines life and determines our health. Next up is the Mental Body, that holds the thought forms that, when we interpret them, we call opinions and beliefs. It is our beliefs that define who we believe ourselves to be, and therefore how we interpret the world and how we present to it. Our mental constructs are filters through which we interpret what we encounter, internally and around us. The mental body of each of the chakras holds the beliefs that collectively define reality for us. And the beliefs that we hold so dear, that we cling to unto death, that we hurl at each other like spears and which motivate the literal throwing of spears and bombs, are actually thought forms, really just particularly shaped blobs of energy that populate the ring of Saturn around the central sun in your universe, which is your heart. They hold no more ultimate meaning than a tumble weed. The spiritual bodies hold our life lessons and provide the link to dimensions beyond the one we inhabit. They are our link to the universal forces.
Each chakra transverses each layer, creating sub-qualities that are defined by that intersection of a chakra with particular qualities and the energetic bodies that have their own general qualities. I’ll give you an example. (For a complete discussion of the system I’m describing, you can pick up my book, Gift of the Body.) The third, or solar plexus chakra has the general responsibility for organizing and manifesting your present life, your life on earth. The mental body of that chakra, which is for most of us located about 1 ½ - 2 feet in front of the stomach area, has as one of its jobs within that 3rd chakra this-life responsibility, the holding of the belief as to who and what you are in this life; your identity. What I am saying is that who you believe yourself to be, the fill-in-the-blank list of your characteristics that you present to the world and to yourself, literally has a discrete place in your vehicle where that collection of qualities that you call you resides and from where and through where the world is interpreted for you, and you for the world. That identity can morph and change as you grow and gain experience, and as the progress of your life calls up new impulses for growth from your inner self and your pre-programmed stages of development. As a result, that mental construct of identity can begin to unravel in service of the formation of a new identity. We call the resulting symptoms of that natural, necessary unravelling, which often show up in the solar plexus area as emotional, digestive, work, relationship, and life situation issues, by names like mid-life crisis, breakdown, anxiety, stomach pain.
What I’ve given you is not even the Cliff’s Notes version of an understanding of the HEV. What I hope to do is tickle you into an expanded view of yourself. The point of helping you see your own HEV as a multi-layered mechanism of earth navigation is so that I can introduce you to the central truth of this essay. Here it is: Your heart center, like each of the other ones in your HEV, has multiple layers stacked on top of each other in front of your chest. Each of those layers contains particular special qualities that normally you would associate with yourself- things you have in you-without ever thinking that they might have an actual, non-physical but identifiable, space in your vehicle where they live. Why is that important? Because if you know where something is, you can go find it. And when you find it you can claim it. You can learn about it. You can establish a working relationship with it. And if you discover that it was yours all the time, that it was waiting for you to come and claim ownership, you can then make conscious use of that thing. It’s like discovering that you already have a tool chest with exactly the tools already in it to do the task you’ve been contemplating but not knowing how to do. And if your life task is to do healing work and you consider yourself to be on the path of spiritual awakening, I’m telling you that your heart has everything you need for that work and that journey right there at your fingertips.
To read more about how this connects to embodying, working in, and extending Compassion to yourself and your communities, as opposed to empathy, which is not the same thing, read There is no such thing as compassion fatigue