Osmosis and Your Energy Body

We have all had the experience of being around someone who seems to leave us drained. Whether it is a colleague, a friend, a family member or even a stranger, interacting with them literally "takes it out of us." This article proposes a way of looking at our energy bodies and the interactions we have with others that might help explain this common phenomenon.

The human energy body is what sociologists would call an "open system": our energy bodies are constantly interacting with the environment around us, specifically with the energetic environment around us. An open system allows inputs from outside the system and discharges outputs which leave the system. This process makes the open system susceptible to the quality of the inputs.

This energetic environment is something in which we are literally immersed. It surrounds us and to some extent permeates us. Part of our difficulty in navigating through this energetic environment is that it is not commonly seen by the naked human eye. Without developing the awareness of energetic environments, we are often blindsided by the energies we come upon each day. Today, we have many practices and modalities, especially in the healing arts, that can, over time, increase our awareness of energetic environments and the energy bodies of people in our lives. This article does not survey those modalities, but instead provides suggestions for developing a stronger energy body that obviates the need for avoiding everyday energy drains.

Osmosis is defined by the American Heritage® Stedman’s Medical Dictionary as: "Diffusion of fluid through a semipermeable membrane until there is an equal concentration of fluid on both sides of the membrane." Osmosis is a physical process, applied most commonly in biology, to explain how fluids move through the membrane of a cell. Cells are open systems, interacting constantly with the environment around them. If we were to replace the word "fluid" in the definition above with the word "energy," we could say that our energy bodies are a semipermeable membrane through which energy diffuses until there is an equal concentration of energy on both sides of the membrane.

It is well known that higher vibrational energies dispel lower vibrational energies; a bright light turned on in a gloomy room dispels the gloom. Recent researchers have developed similar hierarchies of energy vibration, although coming from different perspectives. See, for example, C. Robert Cloninger’s book Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being (2004) and David R. Hawkins’ book, Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (2002).

Each of us, through life experiences unique to each of us, develops a framework to view the world. In the framework I have developed to view the world, humans receive energy from two general categories of sources: from the spiritual plane and from the material plane. Energy from the spiritual plane is divine energy – of the highest vibration, always available and in unlimited supply. Energy from the material plane comes to us through the filter of other humans, and it can be along a wide spectrum of vibration. While some is of high vibration, other energy is of lower vibration, carrying with it the energetic charge of traumas the person has experienced. Often people are unaware of the lower vibrational energy they are outputting to the environment around them.

From what we know about osmosis, the system works toward balancing the energy on both sides of the membrane. If our energy body is filled with vibrational energy, which is higher than the vibrational energy of the environment we are experiencing, higher vibrational energy will be output from our system, moving through the membrane from inside the system to the environment. If our energy body is depleted of higher vibrational energy, then the lower vibrational energy of the environment we are experiencing becomes input, moving through the membrane into our energy body.

This proposed explanation has survived the test of my personal experience. When I attend to my relationship with the divine, and am faithful to my daily practice of connecting with the divine, I find myself much less susceptible to lower vibrational energies around me. When I do not attend to my relationship with the divine, lower vibrational energy has a much stronger impact in my life. What remains a mystery is why sometimes lower vibrational energy gets in even when I have a strong connection to the divine.

If you have some ideas on that, I would love to hear them!

Copyright © 2005 Thomas Capshew. All rights reserved.