“Latest casualty figures for March 11 quake, tsunami” (Kyodo, March 27)

“Japan Races To Stop Further Radiation” (Reuters, March 19)

“Radiation anxiety weighs on tsunami survivors” (Associated Press March 25)

People cope with anguishing world events in various ways. Some obsessively watch the news, with no idea of what to do next. Some avoid emotionally unbearable news. Others find solace in believing an outside entity is at play; “God’s Hand? 44% of Americans See Na­tur­al Disasters as Sign of End Times,” heralded LiveScience.com, citing recent US polls. Many address personal and global grief through their donations of time or money to relief workers and agencies.“Deepak Chopra leads meditation webcast” (UK Independent, March 21) “Labyrinth walk in prayer for Japan.”(Bahamas Weekly, March 23).

A part of the community reacts in a less tangible way, addressing the more spiritual and psychic realms of understanding.

Jean LaSarre Gardner, Buddhist meditation instructor and co-owner of Salt Lake City’s Red Lotus School of Movement, describes what the sanga (congregation) of Salt Lake’s Urgyen Samten Ling Gonpa Tibetan Buddhist Temple did. In its usual practice, after the Japan and Libyan upheavals, members generated prayers and a Buddhist practice called Tonglen for areas of the world needing particular healing.

“Tonglen is sometimes called the practice of ‘giving and taking,'” Gardner explains. “Spe­cifically, we generate compassion by taking on the suffering of others: We breathe in and visualize their suffering entering into our heart center in the form of black smoke. There it is transformed into healing light. Then we generate loving-kindness by giving this healing light as we breathe out and visualize this light transforming suffering into happiness and peace.”

The ideas of transmuting energy as a form of relief and of interpreting even highly negative events as platforms for future, constructive developments are natural to those on the cutting edge of a larger human realization. We could think of these people as energy workers, psychic workers or spiritual workers. Some­times we call them visionaries.

They are the people who understand that accessing different planes of awareness — global, earth, universal consciousness — is another path toward positive evolution in a shifting world. They believe individuals are more than just a physical construct, a belief becoming more widely held due to mounting supporting evidence.

In essence, each human being is comprised of a conscious energetic field that creates the perception of the physical body and surroundings. Each also interconnects to the web of the mass consciousness, a quantum field of sorts, and thus all other individuals. Information and energy exchange is available from not only this larger body of perception, but from all other types of sentient intelligences too, such as that of the planet and other parallel planes of nonphysical existence.

Shifts happen

Utahn Teal Scott is one who takes this larger view. An “indigo child” who is now in her 20s and coming into her own as a spiritual counselor, Scott agrees that these are times of challenging shifts, as has been predicted for centuries. Even disturbing-looking changes are not necessarily bad for individuals, the species or the planet. “To people living in sub­jective reality, however, these are often seen as negative. Humans worldwide are vibration­ally aligned with fear. You can deliberately control the way that you think about events such as natural disasters so as to not be a match to their destructive aspect.”

Citizen spiritual activist Craig Thygerson believes doomsday reactivity is the antithesis of a larger, more balanced understanding of when good can come from bad. “What matters individually is how we use the experience to make things just a bit better.” Activists have been working to reshape approaches to problems on a more holistic, inclusive level. There is beauty in generating a wider awareness on issues such as changing our energy technologies to more Earth-healthy processes.

Horary astrologer (and CATALYST cofounder) Victoria Fugit, who lives in Moab, agrees. She expects that after the nuclear crisis broke, every energy healer on the planet was working on it. She knows that energy workers can transmute harmful energy, but she questions whether it is always helpful, from a larger perspective, to solve problems that way. “Shouldn’t we wait till a greater groundswell wants to rebalance? We don’t think about how ethical it is to build a nuclear power plant on the ocean, on a tectonic plate, near people, in the first place. We don’t get that our heavy investment in technology is so out of balance with nature.”

Human reactors

Focused meditations, using crea­tive visualizations of sending healing and comfort, were Fugit’s choice in how to personally respond when intially overwhelmed by the news of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. Having always had a close connection with the Japanese people, she pictured them in their colorful dress and in their gardens, and then visualized a big Buddha over the whole island.

“We can all do this. Everyone has a gift with energy. People can do energy visualizations, work with energy spirits, God, or the Virgin Mary — however they sense it best.” Her affinity with nature has meant her most effective visualizations use nature spirits to transmute energy, which she calls Devas — representations of the life force that sustains all existence, in a form that makes it easier for her to envision the movement of energy.

An email spurred Todd Mangum, MD, of Salt Lake City’s Web of Wellness Center, to apply all his psychic healing abilities toward the nuclear breakdown in March. While in a mountain jungle of Costa Rica, he received a request, in strange sync, from a friend living in Oki­na­wa. US Navy Diver Sam Burgett, concerned for his Japanese neighbors in Fuku­shima Dai-Ichi to the north, wrote to Mangum via the wellness center’s email address asking if the two might work together, on an energetic level, over the next few days to see what could be done to help counter widespread fear and stabilize the situation.

It was a coincidence that Mangum checked his office email address that day. The next time he sat for deep meditation in the jungle setting, he felt himself go immediately to Burgett’s side. He asked what he could do to help and received a directive to go to one particular core of the reactor. Feeling Sam’s presence assisting him the entire time, he saw himself lean backward over the core. Using a complex meditation he has developed over the last 10 years, he began to weave a geodesic containment dome of light.

“It involved a series of yoga positions and fire spinning moves, and used the principles of the five elements, physics and sacred geometry,” he remembers. He had been doing yoga, fire spinning classes and meditation during his Costa Rican retreat, and was astounded to realize that all these tools were avail­able to him for his response. In his visualization, he duplicated the structure over the other cores. When done, he felt certain his prismatic fields would hold.

Does it work?

Across the world in Japan, Burgett was having almost identical experiences as Mangum. “From my side I saw a geodesic dome made of irides­cent light fibers that formed around the site. Then a huge light serpent came out of the sea and enveloped it in its coils. I was watching this from the air over the site and that’s precisely where Todd said he could feel me, without me ever telling him,” writes Burgett. An experienced meditator, even he was freaked out by what happened.

“While I wasn’t aware of Todd as an individual entity, I was aware of an energy flow creating the things I was seeing. The only difference between what he and I witnessed was my vision of the giant light serpent. But, who knows-maybe Todd became the serpent and that’s what I saw him as?”

What Burgett didn’t know at the time is that the symbol closest to Mangum’s heart (and in fact his personal email name), is the Rainbow Serpent.

Anyone who has had a precognitive flash will understand the efficacy of energetic and psychic information. Others perhaps would be leery to believe that there is a way to work beyond the physical boundaries. And yet, science continually finds evidence for what mystics have said throughout history.

In an interview with Doug Fabrizio on KUER’s RadioWest last month, physicist and author Brian Greene said the boundaries of reality as we know it now could change; time travel to the future is absolutely possible within the laws of physics. There is strong evidence that black holes exist, but it is not possible to see within the black holes. “Does it exist if we cannot see it? It doesn’t make sense to say it doesn’t.”

From her own personal experience, Fugit knows the power of transmuting energy. When faced with undergoing cancer radiation treatment, she felt tremendous fear. In a case where she felt she had little choice, she then decided to make the radiation her friend and work with the energetics of it. Every time she went into the machine, she asked her Deva energies to assist her in reducing any harm and becoming open to the radioactive energy that heals. “I’ve talked to cancer patients who had radiation treatment who think I’m crazy, but I didn’t have any of the side effects people usually get.” To this day, she knows that if energy healing methods worked for her so well, they can work on a larger scale.

Gardner adds, “As to whether prayers or energy/psychic practices ‘work’ — I saw on the news various individuals in Japan holding up signs that simply read: ‘Thank You For Your Prayers.’ In our greatest times of need, it is always comforting to know that someone in the world is generating prayers, thinking positive thoughts, or sending healing energy in our direction. This is how we connect, at a very deep level, as human beings.”

Does applying the metaphysical type of human energies make a difference? Many believe it does. Their willingness to further develop human understanding of what’s possible can make us more confident in what is probable. We consider that current events, instead of being cataclysmic, can become catalytic.

We are on the tipping point between contraction and expansion. You can be a catalyst, a human reactor. Because even if you don’t consider yourself an energy worker, you already are one.