“The living image of Heru receives the light of dawn.” That’s shezep, or shesep, three times if you’re translating. The living image thing applies to open statues, and more specifically to the great sphinx at Giza, sometimes named for Heru and sometimes for Amun. The shezep version of receive applies specifically to offerings. Open statues receive the energy of offerings, and sometimes that includes sun or starlight. I’ve also found reference to a pharaoh being called a living statue. So, statues don’t necessarily have to be made from stone. However, running that kind of energy through stone might be a lot less trouble.
When my energy started going haywire, about thirteen years ago, I tried looking for answers as to why. I discovered a forum about Kundalini burnout, and though parts of it sounded familiar, this definitely wasn’t traveling up the spine, but instead was centered in my chest and spreading out from there. Among the somewhat spiritually aware people I knew in person, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to ground, or to imagine tree roots. But instead of grounding out the energy, it made it even hotter.
I’ve asked around in the years since, and I haven’t met anyone else with the same thing going on. It shares some characteristics with chi burnout and some with elemental energy vampirism, but vampires usually hate sunlight, and thankfully, I don’t need to steal energy from others. Although Ra does help out if there’s not enough ambient sunlight. Why the huge energy demand? Your guess is as good as mine. They hardly tell me anything. The living statue explanation feels like it makes the most sense.
So maybe it’s a good idea to document what I’ve learned so far in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation, surrounded by people who have no idea how to help. Grounding did not work because I wasn’t holding an excess of energy to be drained. I was channeling an excess of energy. We’re not talking about emptying a bucket. We’re talking about managing a fire hose. Anything that speeds the rate of flow, or constricts the hose, will increase the pressure. The problem is that energy responds to consciousness. Just thinking about it can get it more excited. Tensing up or forcing it to move in any direction will only get in its way.
The best thing to do, when thinking about the problem makes it worse, is to try not to think about it, but even that only helps a little bit. I remember trying to keep my mind focused and calm at all times. I listened to music all the time. I read books. I wore sunglasses to reduce the glare even indoors. I remember going out to eat and pretending that everything was fine while gripping my drink and focusing on the cold to hold back the nausea.
When I lost focus, my mind felt strange, fuzzy and misaligned. I think now it was a symptom of partially being in two places at once. That was as bad as the heat, but in a different way. All that energy was going somewhere, through a hole in my chest where my heart would be. Somewhere in the distance, when the heat filled my body, I could hear someone screaming in the back of my mind. The sound was both hawk and human. It sounded like Heru. It was also Ib, my heart, the other part of my soul. As much as it hurt, we drank up that energy like we were dying of thirst. (Since Ib and I have integrated more, I no longer get the feeling that the energy is leaving to go somewhere else.)
This all happened before I started studying Kemeticsim, in fact it was a major reason why I felt the need to learn about it. Though I was probably born with this–I’d been seasonally affective for as long as I could remember–I knew that Ra had set it in motion. When I asked him about it, he said “The Thunder Being made you strong enough to receive my gift.” I had a few thoughts about him referring to it a gift. At least the initial trial ended after two seemingly endless months. It never got that bad again, but it also hasn’t gone away in the years since.
There appear to be four factors that determine how the experience is going to go. There’s capacity, need, sensitivity, and endurance. When it first started, need was extremely high, and capacity was very low. High energy flow, meeting resistance, created sensations of pressure and heat. The only way to help that was to either reduce flow or reduce resistance. Later on, need wasn’t as high, and my energy channels had been cleared out or stretched to handle more flow. Eventually, on most days, it wasn’t something I thought about unless I’d overdone the energy work and needed to refill.
The third factor, sensitivity, determines when the channel turns on. That one has been increasing. The channeling used to go dormant in the winter, but it didn’t do that this year. Instead of being flooded with more than I can handle, I’ve had to deal with straining to get every drop of it. That hurts too, but in a different way. I’ve compared it to the feeling of not quite getting enough air, or maybe something like a mild headache that you can’t completely ignore.
I make it sound awful, but when the balance is right, the feeling is bliss, like sinking into a warm bath after a long day, or enjoying your favorite meal, or–that other thing I can think of. (Honestly, thinking of that other thing can cause one to relax enough to turn a bad experience around, sometimes, not always. It’s like a spiritual anesthetic.)
Endurance becomes an issue when channeling intensely over a period of time. It can be exhausting, and it does cause some wear and tear on the energy body. Occasionally, I’ll have a morning where I feel worn out before even getting out of bed. When it started up, feeling like I had a sunburn underneath my skin was not uncommon. Even when the channeling feels good, it can still tire me out and leave me feeling a bit strained.
Some days I sleep right through it, and a few times, like last week, it will start up in my sleep and invade my dreams. It’s an almost physical sensation underneath the skin, like that frisson you feel when listening to good music, or when you think you’re falling, which caused me to dream of an airplane suddenly losing altitude. (Luckily we landed safely in the dream.) It happens involuntarily, whether or not I’m thinking about it, even if I’m not consciously aware. The channel works better when I’m half asleep or in a trance, but if the need is great enough, it will try to intrude no matter what I’m doing. Sometimes I give up and decide to take a “nap” and end up tranced out for a few hours. That’s not something my schedule will let me do on a regular basis, and thank goodness it doesn’t happen often.
I have found some things that help here and there. As I said earlier, if you’re burning up, don’t do anything at all. Stay focused and keep calm. For awhile, I was able to use a shield that was modeled after a cloud, but that was only a temporary fix. Since the energy seems necessary, it’s probably not a good idea to rely on that too much anyway. Cloud cover and dust storms do seem to reduce it. I’ve learned to dread cloudy days this past winter, but I was very thankful for the dust storm that gave me a much needed break when this first started. Being indoors and closing the curtains has only a minor effect. Closing my eyes has no effect at all, and can even make it stronger if I fall into a trance or half-sleep. Getting up and walking around to break a trance can help when things get intense, but it’s not something I’m likely to do because of the “need” factor.
When the energy is running higher than I’d like, but not to the point of feeling hot, some chi gung exercises can help tame it down. These are the ones where you carefully and deliberately move the energy through different parts of your body. You tell it where to go and what to do, rather than letting it run wild. It’s like taking a race horse around the track a few times to get it to calm down. Practicing also strengthens your channels and your endurance. I used to compare doing the tai chi form with drinking a cup of tea for a sore throat. It was soothing while I was doing it, but then the problem came back after I was done. (That was with regular Yang style. I wonder if Imperial Yang would have more of a lasting effect? I should get back in the habit again.)
When energy is low, chi gathering becomes important. A quick version of that is to imagine a small sun or a ball of energy in front of you and then guide it into your belly, and then focus on feeling that warmth spread throughout your body. A little sunbathing, though a window when it’s cold outside, is helpful too. Cut back on any energy work you may be doing to conserve what you have.
Asking deities for help can also be a good idea. Aset sometimes helps to cool me down, and Ra can give me a boost when my energy is too low. I can’t depend on them all the time, but they make it easier now and then.
None of these tips will solve the problem completely. They simply help with managing the symptoms. The sun varies greatly with the seasons, and the weather does what it wants. I keep hoping that someday I’ll learn the secret to balancing this out. But there probably isn’t any secret. It just is what it is.
Dawn of the Two Feathers 