by Jean Haner
There are a total of six energy fields, which we clear one at a time during this process. This is part of what makes clearing so powerful; its gentle and subtle approach circumvents any resistance in the other person’s system and prevents you from trying to work with too much at any one time. You’ve learned how to clear the first energy field, so let’s move on now to clear the other five fields!
chapter 5
Continuing with the Personal Clearing
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the inner fields
The second through sixth fields are known as the inner fields; they are the ones that have to do with your own personal stress and imbalance. This takes us to the heart of this work.
Much of clearing is based on the ancient principles of Chinese medicine, including what is called the Five Element Cycle, which is said to be like a map of the energy system of any living being. If you’ve read books about feng shui, face reading, or Chinese medicine, you probably encountered this concept before. The elements are named Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. However, it’s not that the Chinese believed the world was literally made of these substances. Instead, they are simply descriptive terms for the different qualities of energy that make up your system.
Each of the inner fields corresponds to one of the elements. With each, there are many different types of stuck or stressed energy that can release or rebalance. But there are certain patterns of issues that can consistently come up to be cleared in each field. Knowing these patterns can help you recognize possible meanings in the impressions you may get as you clear. But it’s not at all necessary to know anything about the elements in order to do energy clearing because this book gives you a description of the most frequent issues each field includes in terms of this work. So you’re not at any disadvantage if these are new concepts to you; in fact, you may well be better off because you won’t have to unlearn any misconceptions!
Second Field: Water
(Fear, Trust, Ancestors, Inherited Issues)
The second energy field you will clear has to do with what’s called the Water Element. In the Water field, the following are common themes that the clearing may deal with.
Fear
Clearing the Water field often releases any issues where fear is blocking you. This isn’t simple anxiety or worry; it’s the kind of deep, cold, primal dread that can be a paralyzing force in life, causing your energy to freeze and keep you from moving forward because no matter what direction you consider, there’s something to be afraid of.
This fear can be below the level of your awareness but can imperceptibly affect your feelings, your choices, and your perceptions. Even when you’re conscious of fear blocking your progress in life, you often don’t recognize how pervasive it is under the surface, like underground streams running beneath the earth.
Trust
Sometimes the imbalances in this field aren’t ones you’d immediately identify as “fear”; instead, they show up as a tendency to be insecure or have a constant sense of being all alone in the world. They can also be associated with feeling like an outsider, or a belief that others are leaving you out in important ways, or at the extreme, abandonment issues. These problems all still revolve around fear, which actually comes from a lack of trust—in your own natural courage, strength, and wisdom; in whether the people you need will really be there for you; and even in Life to care for and protect you. You might carry a certain degree of these kinds of issues at times, but in some cases, they could flood into all aspects of your beliefs and behavior. If the world is a scary place, how could you ever feel secure about venturing out to fulfill your life journey?
You can be born with an innate supply of fear and lack of trust as part of the patterns of your personality, or you can also develop it through life experiences that leave you convinced that you’ll always be alone, no matter what you try. Either way, these feelings can make you tread water in life rather than trust that you can swim with the current and enjoy the wonderful adventure you were designed to have.
Every time you clear this second field for someone, it releases layers of their fear and allows them to relax a little bit more into a sense of trust that Life loves them, that others want them to succeed, and that they have the strength to deal with whatever comes their way.
As fear starts to clear, what emerges is faith in your own deep inner power and your intuitive wisdom to know how to navigate life on your own. You start to feel more secure in the place you stand right now, instead of believing you’re all alone and in peril. Clearing this field allows you to move forward with a sense of ease and flow.
Ancestors
Another kind of issue that can come up for clearing in this field has to do with the concept of what the Chinese call “Ancestors.” There are two sides to its meaning, one beneficial and one detrimental.
In Chinese culture, when a family member dies and passes over, they’re believed to transform into an “Ancestor” who beams blessings from the other side to their living relatives. All the wisdom and power they accumulated in their life is now available to be transmitted to their descendants, to bless and benefit them for the rest of their lives on earth. This is actually the purpose for which feng shui was first developed thousands of years ago: to select the sites of graves. Where do we bury Grandfather so his blessings will be beamed toward our house and not the neighbor’s by mistake?
In most of Asia to this day, their sense of connection to their ancestors is much more a part of the culture than it is in the West. We Westerners operate on the assumption that it’s all up to us to make our way in life. We have to figure it out ourselves and work hard to make things happen, to reach our goals so we can be successful. We’re told to “lean in,” to put forth effort or we’ll never achieve anything. But to the Chinese, it’s ridiculous to think that we’re somehow disconnected from our source, our ancestors, and are all alone in the world. They believe that the essence, power, and wisdom of our ancestors support our journey, if we would just open to that rich resource.
In the body, Ancestor energy is said to be stored in the kidneys. You have two kidneys, one on each side of your back. You can visualize them like the two hands of your Ancestors being held up to support you, and download their deep power to help you on your way. Rather than “lean in,” we’re actually meant to lean back on those hands, with the trust that it’s not all up to us to figure everything out. Rather than exhaust ourselves in the hamster wheel of work-work-work, we become one with the flow. We receive intuitive guidance and effortlessly move forward in the right direction.
Clearing this field can help us recover our connection to our essence, which is the inherited power of the generations who came before and a deep source of life-energy. We relax and are carried along like a leaf riding the current in the river.
Your connection with your ancestors has a powerfully beneficial impact on your life. But if you’re one of the many people who came from a dysfunctional family, you may feel an aversion to the thought of an energetic connection with your ancestors. It can help to consider that no one carries their earthly dramas or toxic personalities with them to the other side! However, an option you can try is to imagine the ancestors as not part of your actual family line but instead wise sages on the other side who are available to help you in the same way, with strength and wisdom accumulated over the ages.
Inherited Issues
There can also be a detrimental effect from your lineage. Inherited issues are energetic imbalances that are passed down through the family line. In other words, if one of your ancestors had a traumatic experience that changed them and caused a problem in their life, that imbalance could be transmitted in the family DNA to each subsequent generation until it lands in your life to create a problem for you as well. No matter how much personal work you do to try to heal the issue, it won’t succeed because the issue didn’t originate with you—it’s not yours to heal.
Even Western science is now discovering this aspect of inherited issues. Through
the new field of epigenetics, we’ve learned that things that happened to our ancestors can change their DNA, which can then be passed down through the family line to future generations. Researchers have found lasting epigenetic effects in the physical health as well as the emotional nature of descendants. A traumatic experience for Great-Great-Grandfather Henry in World War I could have created an energetic imbalance that you might inherit, but it might not be apparent that it began long ago in the family history. Instead, it might show up in your life in ways that make it look like a personal problem of your own or a pattern of problems shared by family members, each of whom is struggling with it in their own way.
When you clear the Water field, it can address the release of detrimental inherited issues and/or connect you to the beneficial support of your ancestors. However, do not ask to specifically clear inherited issues or reconnect to ancestors’ power. Just hold the thought in mind that you’re clearing “Water”; then, if there is anything that can be released or rebalanced at this time, it will do so. When an inherited issue is cleared, or when a connection to the blessings and support of your ancestors is reestablished, it can have a transformative effect on your life, freeing up what had previously been trapped positive life-force!
Clearing the Water Field
To clear this field, you simply continue on to it after clearing the first field, DEO. First, check whether you’re switched by briefly holding the pendulum over your palm, just to make sure it makes the expected movement. If all is well, then take your palm away and let the pendulum continue to swing.
Silently ask, Is there anything to clear in Water? If it says “yes,” then proceed to clear.
Tell yourself, I’m clearing the Water field, and your pendulum will go into its clearing movement.
Stay present and be aware of what you’re feeling. When this part of the clearing is complete, your pendulum will change its movement.
At this point, you can share any feelings or impressions you had with your friend, or you can wait until the entire clearing is complete to talk about it. When you do discuss it, let them know that they can talk to you about anything they felt or that came to their mind.
If you got a “no,” that there isn’t anything to clear for Water, trust that. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing here to clear, just that the time isn’t right, you’re not able right now, or the person isn’t ready to release anything here yet. So if you get a “no,” don’t do any clearing for this second field; just go on to the third field.
Third Field: Wood
(Anger, Forgiveness, Vision)
The third field has to do with the energy of what’s called the Wood Element. In the Wood field, the following are some common themes in the energies that can need rebalancing.
Anger
What often comes up for clearing in this field are any issues where your feelings of anger are interfering with your life. We usually think of anger as a bad emotion because we mostly see it expressed in destructive ways. But Chinese medicine teaches that there can also be healthy, positive anger. If we trace this feeling back to its heart, it’s actually a strong desire for change, a need to stop what’s wrong, to create a new future. Healthy anger is what stimulates your drive, your ability to set a goal and achieve it. It’s desire, like a booster rocket, that gets you moving into self-actualization.
But due to difficult life experiences, your healthy anger can get suppressed or be expressed with disharmony. The result is that despite your best efforts, you’re not making the progress you want. This can be due to an old, old hurt that has lingered inside for so many years that it’s no longer recognized for what it is. Or it might be because you are dealing with a current frustration in moving forward, one that keeps you locked into angry reaction far too often. Whatever the cause, when the energy of anger is out of balance, your sense of feeling in charge of your life is diminished.
If feelings of anger get stuck in your system, you can be caught in negativity or easily irritated or upset but not recognize the cause of this pattern. It can affect your sense of vitality that helps push you on toward your goals. If this continues over time, your vibrant outward drive, which is supposed to focus you forward in life, can instead gradually turn around to aim inward, with angry thoughts toward yourself. In other words, it creates depression, which Western psychology often defines as “anger turned inward.” And if the depression continues, eventually what develops is total apathy, which is a complete absence of any drive, whether positive or negative.
Clearing this field can often result in reclaiming your hope and optimism, and the clarity and confidence to take action to achieve your goals. When this field is in balance, you feel more in control of your destiny, and you can become a benevolent force in the world to help create positive change and growth for us all.
Forgiveness
If someone has been hurtful to you in the past, it can be difficult to get over, no matter how many years have gone by. There can even be a sense of shame that this happened to you, as well as anger at yourself, as if you were at fault for letting it happen. This is part of what can cause anger to become stuck in your energy field for years into the future, and this blocks you from moving into the next stage of the process: the emergence of forgiveness.
When this third field is cleared, there can be a softening into forgiveness, a letting-go of blame for yourself and for the person who harmed you. The result is that the hurt from this old mistreatment no longer affects how you choose to live. This can happen naturally and invisibly during the clearing.
It can also help to remember that no one behaves unkindly unless they are emotionally damaged. As the saying goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” In other words, someone who was healthy in their heart of hearts never would have treated you that way. But because they were basically emotionally disabled, their behavior was hurtful.
If someone is physically disabled, it’s usually apparent; for example, you can see that they’re in a wheelchair. And if someone’s in a wheelchair, you don’t expect them to be able to climb the stairs with you. You may have to wait for them to find a ramp or an elevator or make special accommodations for them, but you don’t get upset. You understand that their behavior is due to their physical challenges.
On the other hand, when someone is emotionally challenged, it’s often not so obvious. They look like a whole, functioning human being, so when they behave in an unhealthy way toward you, you take it personally and feel hurt. But what if you could reframe your view? They aren’t able to behave in a healthy way because they’re emotionally disabled. Visualize the person’s emotional handicap as a physical one; picture them as physically challenged or ill in some way, and this can really help you move toward a place of soft forgiveness.
This forgiveness can extend to yourself as well. It’s likely there was no way you could have known that the person was going to be so unkind to you. You had unrealistic expectations of them because their disability wasn’t visible. But now you’ve gained important knowledge that empowers you to protect yourself better in the future.
When Jessica came to me for a clearing, she was trying to recover from a difficult divorce. Her husband had been abusive, and he was still trying to harm her in every way he could during the divorce process. She was in such pain, not only from the abuse but also from blaming herself for being so loyal and giving him so much power over her. As I cleared this field for her, she suddenly got a vivid picture of looking down at her husband as a tiny little man barely as tall as her waist. Jessica said it was this image of an “emotional pipsqueak” that made her recognize who he really was, and she finally felt able to take back her power.
Vision
The Wood field also has to do with how easily you can create a vision of what you really want in life, and how well you can summon the insight to then form a realistic action plan to reach that destination.
Some people’s personalities come packaged with a naturally low level of self-confidence that interferes with t
heir believing in their vision and ability to accomplish it. Others started out inherently confident but were dis-empowered by someone early in life and so lost that sense of self-assurance. Either way, this kind of uncertainty can narrow the possibilities they can envision. They may struggle with believing they can even dare to dream or lack the clarity to form more than just vague ideas of where they might go with their life.
Additionally, if you’re stuck in an endless cycle of constant work, it limits your ability to envision a different future or how you might achieve it. Or if you tend to put everyone else’s needs before your own, it prevents you from focusing on what you want. You may even feel guilty, as if it were selfish to think about your own needs.
An image in nature for healthy Wood Element energy is that of a plant breaking through the ground in the spring. Although it’s just a tiny sprout, it can even crack solid concrete in its drive toward the sun. There’s a plan programmed deep in its being that activates this strong “push” forward. We all have a plan like this, and clearing can release whatever is blocking us from accessing that plan, so that we regain our sense of direction in life.
Clearing the Wood Field
Just as you did when you cleared the first two fields, briefly check the pendulum over your palm to make sure you’re still in balance. Then ask if there’s anything to clear in the Wood field.
If you get a “yes,” then go ahead and clear. If you get a “no,” skip this field and move on to the fourth. There’s not always something available to clear in each of these inner fields every time.
Fourth Field: Fire
(Love, Joy, Healing the Heart)
The next field to clear is associated with what’s called the Fire Element. The following are common themes in what often comes up to clear in Fire.