My Philosophy On Reading and Healing

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

ONE OF MANY

There are many spiritual and energetic healers, and each of us has our own perception of the work, our own gifts and limitations. I work in the way that comes to me from spirit and that comes out of my experiences, personally and as a practitioner. Here I outline my current understanding and approach to the process as best I can. With the caveat that I am always open to spirit showing me new ways to work, it should give you some feel for what you may experience in working with me. If this speaks to you and your process I would be honored to work with you.

THE READING AND HEALING PROCESS

The prayer that sets the energy at the start of a reading refers to “spiritual growth, awareness, understanding and amusement”. This choice of words is purposeful. The ultimate goal of the work that I do is spiritual growth and spiritual freedom, helping others along their path. In practice this involves addressing various manifest aspects, such as jobs, relationships, abundance, etc.

Awareness of the full situation or energy from a spiritual stance allows us to begin to work effectively with it. This is always the first and important step. Awareness gives the possibility of conscious choice, and conscious choice is freedom. So the first goal of a reading is to provide information and awareness. Often this is enough to start the healing process all by itself.

With awareness comes understanding, which is useful for growth, and perhaps more importantly for forgiveness, for letting go. The insight into how a situation has grown or developed, what our role is, or the role of others allows us to begin to rise above it or to step outside of it. This is not understanding how someone else has “done it to us”, but how we have worked with the universe to give ourselves a chance to learn and grow. What does it all look like from the place of spirit?

Amusement is a great tool for finding neutrality, or realizing when you have got there. It is a state that is near to spirit, where we can laugh at the complexity and silliness of the dramas that we create for ourselves in the manifest physical world. Grounded, but not serious, it allows us to take a step back, or to recognize when we have done so, moving out of attachment and resistance. Finding neutrality we are neither chasing, nor running away, but are centered in who we are. This place allows us to heal, to forgive, to let go and move on.

FOCUS ON PRESENT TIME

When I read or do healing work I focus on present time, what is the energy right now? What energies are in or around your space? Which of your aspects are you as spirit working on? What energies are there to help you or possibly to hinder you? The present is where we create from, where we make our choices, and to be there consciously allows us to release, to heal, to consciously create our experience, to bring the people and situations that we want into our lives.

As the present is generally an evolution of the past, or may contain past energies that have been carried forward, we will often touch on the past. The focus however is on understanding the present, bringing your energy up to date, and releasing energies set or stuck in the past. Often an understanding or insight is helpful in releasing something that is being worked on in present time, but we always bring it back to the present and the goal of gaining greater freedom.

When I work with past lives it is likewise with the intent of addressing the present. Whether you have actually lived these lives or whether they are merely allegorical, they can speak to your present in useful ways. The ones that show up are usually either causal, in the sense that the present situation was set up or grows out of something in that past life, or you are in the process of remembering information or skills that you have worked with before and have need of at present.

I don’t work much with visions of the future, as that is not my gift. This does not mean that I can’t address the future, but I do so mostly from the standpoint of the present, because this is what I usually see. Also I believe that the future is fluid, and depends on our choices and other people’s choices in the evolving present. This is the blessing of free will. We can make choices. Therefore while I might see that things are headed in a certain direction, you may choose to change course, or someone else may.

I can read the energies of people, places, or organizations and look at how they match, conflict, or complement each other. I can look at energies, beliefs, and pictures that are involved, either in your space or otherwise, that are affecting a process, situation, or relationship. Extrapolating from the present yields possibilities, even probabilities, but not, I believe, certainties. In this way I give you information so that you can address issues and the make decisions to take you where you want to go.

FOCUS ON YOU, THE READEE

Likewise I tend to focus on you when I am reading. Even in relationship to others, a job, or a life situation, we look at what is your picture, your lesson, your role? In interactions we each have our own role, often our own view of the whole affair, and this is what is ultimately important.

In this life we can, in the end, only be responsible for ourselves, only heal ourselves. We must do our own work (though we may ask for, and receive, help, or even grace) and we must let other’s do their own work. It is our reactions that we can control and most profitably work with, not the actions of others. Understanding the other person’s role may be helpful for understanding your own, or for finding neutrality, and will be addressed as far as it supports your process, but it is often less important than we think to getting to the places we want to go.

I can also work with other spirits, embodied or otherwise, with their permission of course. In this case though it is on the basis that they are my “client” in the process even if they are not paying the fee. I am glad to help you gain insight into the situations of loved ones, when you are trying to support them or understand your role in a situation or relationship.
Your Empowerment.

While I may share my understanding and experience, as well as my ability to perceive energy, and even outline what I see as possible choices, I will always encourage you examine it all for yourself and make up your own mind. My goal is to help you take ownership of your life and being, not to tell you what to do or how to live. I aim to empower people to take ownership of their journey or process, so I will often teach you basic tools that you can use for yourself.

WHAT I DO

People have energy bodies, as do animals, plants, and places. Groups, including pairs, and organizations also have an energetic aspect. These energies can be read, as can the energetic relationships and interactions. With permission, and to the extent that the owners agree (at least as spirits) I can assist in the processes of release, transformation, or calling in of energies that are involved in healing or spiritual growth. This can be done for all the entities mentioned above.

While I do not specialize in medical intuition, and am not formally trained in the medical arts, I am glad to look at the energetic aspects of physical or mental imbalances, diseases, or injuries. This is not meant to replace the advice and assistance of trained medical professionals but may prove beneficial in understanding a situation or in assisting the healing process.

In reading or healing there are two stages. The first is being aware of the energy through inner sight, sound, feel, or knowingness. This I find to be generally accurate. The second is understanding, or interpreting that perception. This is a process that tends to involve more of my own experience as a being in my current body. Sometimes what something “means” to me may not be what it “means” to you. So it is important to check what I say against your own understanding, memory, or feeling.

My experience is that we can all benefit from having some one help us at times. Even experienced energy workers find it is often useful to have a friend or college say hello to something that they are trying to clear, or hold space for them to safely work on something themselves. I enjoy working with people at all levels of awareness and experience with spiritual and healing work. Whether you are just beginning to say hello to your own space and being as a spirit, or have been consciously walking on your path for many years, I would be honored to work with you.

(© 2/2002)

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Introduction to Energy Healing, III: Karma

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

In earlier parts of this series (I,II) we introduced the main concept of the human energy body, discussed basic aspects of how we create or acquire vibrational distortions (or pictures) in this body, and how judgement, which gives rise to attachment is the glue that keeps them there. Our spiritual and healing journey is one of coming to places where we can release these vibrational pictures, where we can become neutral, finding non-attachment, and let them go.

The dance and drama of our lives, of “karma” is all the means to this end. The only judgement involved in karma is our own self-judgement that things are good or bad, which causes us to keep them in our energy space, or hinders us from releasing them. The cycle of rebirth is due to needing to come back into a body to allow the pictures to manifest so that we can let them go. It is not that we have been bad, but that we have energetic work to do. How and where we come back are not punishment or reward, but a matter of setting the stage to work on certain specific energy or pictures.

The universe helps us to create situations that allow us to work on releasing our pictures. This occurs often by mirroring, in which people reflect back aspects of ourselves, often ones that we have trouble with. So those people who annoy us the most do so because we carry energy that we are reluctant to experience, energy which these people match. When we can release what we are holding in judgement in ourselves, not only do we get a part of ourself back, but the annoying people either go away, or we find that they no longer bother us. There is no button for them to push any more.

Other times we find ourselves in situations that challenge us to work through our fears, or to bring out the strengths that we have kept hidden from ourselves, often in reaction to other peoples judgements which we took too much to heart. It seems that lessons that come too easily are often repeated on another level, until we come to fully appreciate what it is we are achieving.

The metaphor of the tuned string, or perhaps that of a radio helps illustrate these interactions. When we have a picture in our space it has a certain natural vibration or frequency, and acts much like a piano string or a tuned antenna. When it is active and vibrating it broadcasts, and other spirits with a similar “string” become aware of this. Likewise if the vibration is in a potential, unactive state, like a still string, when someone who is vibrating at that frequency comes by we pick up energy by resonant transfer, and our picture is activated.

In this way we interact with others that are similarly tuned. By broadcasting we attract others who are vibrating in the same way (or perhaps an opposite way), while as receivers we are sensitive to those who broadcast.

The vibrations that we hold are often not in consciousness, especially if they are associated with the “negative” emotions, or we have judged them negatively. So when we fear anger we tend to attract and be sensitive to anger. Perhaps it is even our own anger that we fear, and so we avoid it at all costs. But it keeps showing up around us. It is there to “wake up” our own repressed anger. When we are able to address and release our own anger, then we are no longer tuned to it, and the whole dynamic changes for us.

The healer or the spiritual counselor plays the role of assisting their client in arriving at understanding, so that they may work with these natural processes and events, and at compassion for oneself and others, so that forgiveness may usher in the ability to let go. They are there to provide a safe setting and tools for moving energy. Then one is able to vibrate in a wider range because we are no longer stuck on a few notes. Releasing all the energy that has been stuck in our being we become clearer, lighter and more whole, more of who we are as spiritual beings.

(© 11/2001)

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Introduction to Energy Healing II: Judgement

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

In part 1 we introduced the concept of the human energy body: the primary existence of a human being as an energetic being, having the capacity to vibrate and to hold frequencies of all varieties. We also started a discussion of how we create vibrations (or pictures) in our mind, i.e. in part of our energy body, and how these vibrations and patterns may become stuck. A very general way to view the healing process is that it has to do with releasing the stuck pictures or energy, allowing our being to relax back to its original state.

Not all of the energy or pictures in our space are our own creation. Some of them have come from other people or society. We learn lessons about how to survive, how to behave, what not to do or be. Some things we take in an effort to heal others, especially loved ones (our Mother’s sense of powerlessness, our Father’s anger, a friend’s pain), some we are forcefully given. The variety is as endless as the human capacity to create.

These pictures we acquire from others may have been in our space so long we come to think of them as part of us. While all energies or pictures, foreign as well as our own, may be useful or harmful, they are limiting, and we need to be able to let them go in order to return to our original relaxed state. They are stuck because of judgments about good and bad, pleasure and pain.

Judgment is what gives rise to the two sides of the coin of attachment: attraction and resistance. Judgments about the experience necessary to release an energy or picture, do we have to give up something we like, or undergo something we don’t like. Judgments about others, they were wrong to do something to me, so I can’t forgive them, can’t let go. Judgments against oneself, I’m not OK unless I take on other people’s pain to heal them.

This is not to say that we are all wrong to have judged others or ourselves. The capacity to judge has been an essential survival tool, will this thing/animal/person help me or hurt me?, i.e. is it good for me or not? But like many things that have been useful, judgment, as opposed to observation and discernment, can outlive its usefulness. In energetic terms it is judgment that maintains the vibration or picture, either in actual or potential form in our space, what prolongs the action or delays the reaction. This is the source or “karma” or samskaras, which need to be released for us to return to our pure state.

For example, as a healer it is good to be able to discern when a condition, either physical or energetic, might not in the client’s best interest, at least in the long term. It may be clear that muscles are tense, or energy is stuck. However, if one approaches the matter from a place of judgment: “There is something wrong here and I have to fix it”, the healing process is impaired. The client, or perhaps their physical or emotional body, senses the judgment and will react to it as an attack: “I am being judged, I am bad or wrong, etc.” and often this produces resistance. In cases where the condition is the result of internalized judgments to begin with, the practitioner’s judgement reinforces the resistance that is holding the condition in place.

The effectiveness of compassion in healing work, is simply being able to approach the client’s condition without being in judgment of it. This assists the client to release their own judgments. Now instead of having a problem that needs fixing, they have certain energy in their space, which they might choose to release. This is no longer as threatening a position, it is not about good or bad, it is simply about what is and what might be.

This is called neutrality. The condition or situation can be there or not be there and we are OK with it. Of course this is much easier with some things than others, and is not a recommendation to put up with all situations just because they are there. But being able to find neutrality, or in Buddhist terms, detachment, is a very freeing place, and one that allows release and healing to take place.

In clairvoyant work there are a suite of tools and techniques that assist the practitioner to work from a space of neutrality. Often from that space merely saying hello to an energy will result in its being released. One can see the same principle in the emphasis on being relaxed in applying Zen Shiatsu or in the T’ai Chi practice of push hands so as to avoid triggering resistance.

So while judgment holds things in our space, neutrality allows us to release them.

(© 8/01)

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Introduction to Energy Healing: Energy Body

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

The physical body can be approached on several levels: as a mechanical construction of bones and muscles, as a biochemical soup of interacting organic molecules, or as a collection of electric and magnetic fields. Each approach emphasizes particular aspects of the body’s functioning. Each may become stressed or out of optimal balance. Since the body is in fact a single whole; the energy body, each level is intimately related to the others. Stress and imbalance at one level will appear to some degree on the others as well. If a bone gets broken, there is the mechanical process of setting the bone, but there are also biochemical reactions that bring supplies to knit the break, and electrical fields that arise to guide the healing process.

In an analogous way the physical body is just one aspect of our total being as incarnate spirits. We may consider emotional, mental and spiritual bodies as well. These are also interrelated and interdependent. A mental self image (facilitated by the electrical network of neurons, and modulated by the biochemistry of hormones) will generate an emotional state in the body (through hormone chemistry) which can lead to a variety of physical actions. When there is stress, or an imbalance in a being, there will be affects (symptoms) in all the bodies. We are a single entity with multiple aspects.

While this may seem a complicated picture (and the variety of disease and treatment are testimony to this) a certain conceptual simplification can be achieved by considering all these bodies as being aspects of a single energetic being. Modern physics shows us that even the most mechanical parts of the physical body may be considered as a collection of atomic wave forms. The way energy manifests in the different bodies is still varied, but the simplification comes from the fact that all energy follows certain rules.

Consider a being with a unified energy body, which is capable of vibrating across a wide range of frequencies. Something like a string instrument with an very large number of strings. In its prime state it simply is, at rest, no particular vibrations, but having the potential to vibrate in many different ways. This energy being then encounters other energy beings (perhaps by getting born into a human body) with which it is possible to interact. This involves creation and manifestation. To act one first creates an image, a vibration in the energy body, which may radiate outwards, manifesting to others, or may be held in the energy body without manifestation. In our experience thought creates the picture, though it may or may not be physically carried out.

One of the basic laws of physics is that for every action there is a reaction. The same is true for every mental picture we create, whether it is physically manifested or not. The reaction can take many forms, both internally and manifested, but is such that the energy we put into the original image will be released. This is like plucking the strings on a guitar or harp. We pull the string to one side, adding potential energy. The string is now tense (stressed) and will, when released, relax to its original position.

Often things may happen quickly, we yell at someone, they yell back. But not infrequently the reaction is delayed. Perhaps we have placed our creation in the future, or we continue to imagine an action that we do not act out, or we manifest something that we like so much we continue to place energy into it, prolonging the action, rather than postponing it. If we have created internal images of pain, or fear, we may freeze them so as to avoid experiencing them, keeping them dormant (in potential form). In terms of our guitar string analogy: we may pull the string out, but not release it; or continue to pull it over and over, sustaining the note; or damp the vibration when we hear a note we do not like, but in a way that the string is still stretched.

In all these cases the energy body is no longer at in its relaxed original state, it carries various fixed energetic distortions or on-going vibrations. This is the energetic equivalent to the chronic aches and pains that we expect to accumulate as we go through life, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger. We may acquire distortions, stress, disease in all of our various bodies. The healing arts are all aimed at helping us to release the things we are holding in our being at various levels. Some work with the body, others with the emotions or thoughts, some even with aspects of the soul.

(© 5/2001)

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Cultivation of the Energy Body

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

We are all energetic beings, interacting with each other and the world around us all the time, through various levels of energy. Your full “energy body” starts with the energetic aspects of your physical body, but also includes your emotional and mental levels, finally there are your purely spiritual aspects. Collectively the garden of your being.

Like your physical body your energy body can interact with others and exchange energy with others. Much of this energetic interaction is unconscious, or only partially conscious and as a result we all have energy in our space that has come from others and conversely some of our energy is always in other people’s spaces.

It is as if you have a garden that many other people have come and planted flowers in, other have grown from seeds drifting on the wind, or perhaps you have borrowed flowers from others without paying attention.

This is the usual state of affairs, part of the general human condition. The good news is that you will learn to be aware of what is planted in the garden of your being. You will learn how to choose which flowers (energies, programs, habits) to keep, or plant anew, and which no longer serve you and can be left behind. You will learn how to uproot, replant, and release or transform the different flowers in your garden.

Learning how to cultivate the garden of your being you become more aware of how you interact on an energy level. You learn about yourself and your relationships with others. You take charge of your life, choose how to set your energy, how you respond to things around you.

What trees and flowers, what thoughts and emotions do you want to cultivate in the garden of your being?

(© 1/2001)

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