Swami (Dr) Snehananda Jyoti on Psycho-Spiritual Energy?

There are three types of primary energies: physical, psychic, and spiritual. The physical energy is the substratum of all other energies. The psychic energy consists of cognitive and affective aspects. Our cognitions and emotions contained in our mind guide our physical energy and our entire life. Our spirit or soul gives ultimate direction and purpose to our life. Our focus here is the powerful combination of psychic and spiritual energy. Psycho-spiritual energy gives us identity, coherence and consistency, and makes us who we really are. Every person has a limited amount of physical and psycho-spiritual energy. When our physical energy is depleted, we experience tiredness or fatigue.  When we are drained of our psycho-spiritual energy, we become disturbed and disordered, lose our anchoring and our very purpose in life. Everyone’s well-being depends primarily on the efficient and effective use of our psycho-spiritual energy. There is a great deal of waste of this precious energy. As a result the individual, and ultimately humanity at large, suffers great damage or stunted growth. The purpose of this short article is to make the best use of our psycho-spiritual energy. Before examining our own psycho-spiritual energy, let us very briefly and cursorily foray into the history and progress of humanity.

Primitive human was a hunter and gatherer, and used all energy to stay in existence. With better planning and organizing, and developing better tools, the primitive person found time for socializing and empathizing. Empathy led to cooperative living and forming a society. Empathy is the foundation for altruism and human rights. Side by side with empathy and altruism grew selfishness and egoistic individualism. Extreme selfishness resulted in power, domination, and control by any means, and using of one individual by another at that person’s pleasure, whim, or fancy. At the societal or national level, conquering and subjugating whole nations or peoples ended up with slavery, caste and race systems, and apartheid. Authoritarian systems arose wherein humans became kings, queens, dictators, or even gods, and wherein humans were bought or sold, killed or saved, expended or used at will. Humanity in its progress witnessed to horrible immorality and crimes. We are not out of the woods yet. This is the background in which we need to make judicious moral and ethical choices in using our psycho-spiritual energy for our fulfillment and human destiny determined by the creator or organizer and adjuster.

Most of our psycho-spiritual energy is spent in basic survival and relationships. In this day and age, relationships have the primary place in our life as the quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships. Relationships are fostered or ruined by the way we use our words and express our emotions. We waste enormous amount of psycho-spiritual energy due to faulty reasoning, inappropriate emotional expressions, and impulsive behaviors. That energy is not available for a rich, happy, and purposeful living. Our uncontrolled words and impulsive emotional outbursts make the goals, that we so much want and desire, unattainable. As we bid good bye to 2015, we need to examine our thoughts for their soundness and positivity. We need to look at how we control our emotions and modulate their expression.  Thoughts and emotions are neither good nor bad. We have them as humans. And it is good to have them. Our intentionality makes our thoughts and emotions good or bad. It is up to us to give consent to the thought that we want to have and act on; it is up to us to express our emotions appropriately after feeling them. This way we have our psycho-spiritual energy for growth and happiness. This way we can build a strong, healthy, and loving humanity.