along your path.
You may experience loss, pain, or even anger when a relationship ends. Love can even turn to hatred, but it is important to remember that these are two poles of the same spectrum and the energy may make a pendulum swing back to love at times. The opposite of love is indifference; the energy you choose to spend on feelings is a value you transfer onto someone else. Hatred is just the other side of the love energy spectrum—after all, why expend energy hating someone unless you want to spend that energy? When focused on the end of a relationship, you might get stuck on the details of who was right or at fault, who put in more work, or what your partner should have done.
By taking a step back and witnessing with gratitude and compassion, you can take a new vantage point and realign with your intuition and logic, or what Dialectical Behavior Therapy refers to as your “Wise Mind.” In this place, both logic and emotion work together to help you arrive at your best outcome. It is the perfect space from which to vibrate as it is one of clarity and understanding. Zoom out of the experience to see how the experience can serve your highest good and realign your vibrational frequency. Relationships often end when neither partner is able to support the other’s goals any longer, or when two people stop growing together in the same direction. The ending of a relationship creates space for support, love, or taking time that you might need in order to feel fulfillment of your truest goals. And sometimes, in this place of reflection and openness, you may realize at your core that you always sort of knew this relationship needed to end in order for both of you to grow and experience your truth. Relationships are not limited to our chosen romantic partners but can include family, coworkers, and friends.
It can help to retune our energy with a crystal ritual to release the energy, forgive yourself and your partner, practice compassion, and open yourself up to new experiences. It can also be helpful to process grief for the relationship’s ending, whether that relationship was ended by someone’s behavior or by something we cannot control, such as death. Choose any crystal that resonates with you. It should feel peaceful and calm when you hold it in your hands. It might even be warm to the touch or cause you to smile when you touch it. On a slip of paper, write yourself a note to release and reopen. You might say something like, “I am sad that this relationship has ended. I am grateful that this relationship allowed me to learn something, and I will carry that lesson with me. I forgive myself. I feel compassion for you and for me. I release you and all the thoughts and feelings I have about this relationship, and I now open myself to new and joyful experiences.” Fold the paper and place it beneath the stone you selected. If you are so inclined, light a candle nearby and watch the light flicker over the stone. Soften your gaze as you observe how the flame dances over the stone’s surface. Focus your vision on the stone and focus your sensation on your breath. Stay here as long as you need to feel complete. When you are through, snuff out the candle and tear up the paper, or burn it if you are so inclined and can do so safely. This releases the energy of the note. Now, carry the stone with you as long as you need to remind yourself of your release.
Grounding and Centering to Self-Heal, Reduce Burnout, and Relax
Before we begin to work with any self-healing method, it is a good idea to ground in the moment, center yourself, and set intentions. “Grounding and centering” is language borrowed primarily from the modern pagan movement, but the principles are recognizably the same as those in most healing, therapeutic, or mindfulness strategies regardless of background or context. The matter of setting intentions allows us to tune into ourselves carefully and ensure that the energy we put into our relaxation work is focused in the direction that serves our greatest good.
Ever feel like you are just working really hard and accomplishing nothing? It’s almost as if this is the nature of stress and frustration. We expend all our energy, but it’s like revving the engine to try and get a car out of a muddy trench. We just keep spinning our wheels, wearing out the motor and using up all our fuel, only to end up stuck in the same place and covered in mud. Stressful situations—even those stressful situations we invite into our lives, such as the stress of a new project or job—deplete our energy supply both in the activities related to the stress and in our efforts to relax and calm things after the fact. Relaxation, of course, is necessary both in happy situations and unhappy ones, because we cannot stay at high velocity permanently. Energy, though limitless in nature, is finite within the human subtle body field, as it must be restored to maintain harmony and balance. You reach your best state of wellness when you become aware of both the present state of your stress levels or overall energy and the knowledge that you have the power within yourself to restore peace within.
The social, physical, and emotional demands of life have increased over the past several decades. Over a century ago, during the dawn of the industrial revolution that made our supply of food, water, and resources more efficient and pulled people out of the farm fields and into the factory, early students of sociology began to examine the nature of labor and commerce, concluding that the critical thing people had to exchange for food and water was their time. Not everyone could be wealthy or born into royalty, and so survival of the poor and working classes depended on our ability to trade one commodity for another. Since the poor tended not to have land or objects to trade for resources, they came to trade their time for the financial resources necessary to survive. It was during the early days of this social experiment, when the labor forces were unable to till the fields and instead found opportunity in the factories, that we began to recognize the impact and value of labor in terms of its toll on our bodies. Labor takes time and energy, and that energy is depleted from our bodies and must be restored consistently.
Labor and energy go into many more activities than simply those that earn us the financial resources we need to eat, drink, sleep, and remain safe. Labor and energy go into all our activities, whether they be studying for that big biology exam tomorrow, caring for the needs of a houseful of toddlers, packing up our household possessions to move across the country, or even going on vacation.
Mental pursuits, such as programming software applications or designing websites, also expend our labor and energy. Unlike the industrial revolution, during which we moved from farm fields to the Ford assembly line, this technological revolution has had a tremendous impact on our bodies and minds. Even though we are not toiling in coal mines beneath the ground or riveting bolts into the beams of a skyscraper a mile above it, we are still expending energy on the hidden costs of our new technologies—and of our addiction to them. While modern technology has given us the potential to research any topic, work at our professions remotely, or source inspiration for our next meal, it has a downside. It is difficult to unplug; we reply to emails at two in the morning when we should be sleeping, or we spend hours mindlessly scrolling through social media with little awareness of how the images or messages we’re absorbing might be affecting our psyche, let alone our vision or our sleeping patterns.
On one side of the burnout spectrum, we have stress which occurs when we expend our energy in hyperactive ways. Stress is a form of anxiety that stems from the “fight” part of our fight-or-flight instincts left over from our tiger-fighting days. Stress rises when we experience a rushed need to expend energy in a difficult situation, such as managing conflicting priorities or saving lives during a natural disaster. It also arises when we experience the need to expend energy for positive situations, such as finishing that painting or playing basketball with your friends.
Prolonged stress results in burnout. It is the exhaustion of your energetic body where you disengage both mentally and physically. Burnout resembles depression; with both, you feel less interested in things and people. When you are burned out, your body—both at the subtle and physical levels—is crying out for you to slow down and let things cool off for a while so you may return to your optimal energetic state.
Many psychological
