by Jean Haner
This part of your energy also relates to what Chinese medicine calls “Heaven,” or the sky. If you’re looking down at your life from up above, you can see the big picture and more easily decide what’s most important and valuable to focus on at this point in time. Clearing this field can improve your ability to hold an open awareness and see the long view. It’s with this frame of mind that you can truly fulfill your soul’s contract.
Authenticity
Another meaning to “Heaven” is to feel a sense of the sacred in your life. This can mean being a spiritual person, but it can also have to do with feeling free to live your truth, to be authentic. If you struggle with self-worth or perfectionism, this can cause such a sense of anguish, as if living authentically always seems just out of reach. Clearing in this field can bring a dawning of a new awareness, that you actually are good enough exactly as you are right now.
When you can reach a place of knowing there really is nothing missing, that you’re not inherently lacking as a person, then you can finally feel comfortable in your own skin and be your authentic self. This kind of release can bring you to a place where you feel back on track in life.
Although a sense of such an open awareness is beneficial, there’s also a downside. Clearing in this field is so valuable for people who are highly sensitive because they’re too wide open. In this case, it means they’re physically affected by the energy of the people and places around them. You can be highly sensitive because you were born that way, or you can become highly sensitive because of life experiences that have made you so. Either way, you may have what Chinese medicine calls “thin skin,” the tendency to too easily absorb the energy around you. The result can be frequent overwhelm and even somatic reactions such as physical discomfort, allergies, or environmental sensitivities.
This can lead to a constant undercurrent of anxiety. It can make you keep your life too small because you are fearful of taking risks, or you may avoid social situations in trying to prevent overwhelm. This can cause misunderstandings with others who may misinterpret your coping mechanisms and judge you as standoffish, or too controlling, needing everything your way. What they don’t understand is that these are just your attempts to manage your experience. Further, when you feel criticized by others, it’s impossible to feel like you have permission to be your authentic self.
Clearing in this field can help you develop better boundaries so you’re no longer taking on the energy around you. Your system can then become more robust and better able to move through the world without feeling under assault by all the invisible information coming at you. It can awaken your ability to be more true to your nature because when you’re no longer spending energy contending with everything around you, you can turn your attention to yourself.
Recovering from Loss
Chinese medicine describes the emotion associated with this field as “grief.” The full concept, however, embraces much more than someone dying or the loss of a love relationship, which is usually how people define grief in their minds. What can come up to be cleared in this field has to do with any losses you’ve experienced in your life and where you are in the process of recovering, letting go, and moving on.
Each of us is unique in how we go through the grief process, and there are no rules about how long it takes for us to emerge at the other end of that journey. However, it’s not uncommon to get stalled at some point along the way. Some people repeatedly look back with regret about the loss and torture themselves with how they might have prevented it or done things better. The regrets can be endless: If only I hadn’t said that. If only I had tried harder . . . been a better person . . . listened to my intuition . . .
Clearing here can help you look back less and less often; instead, you’ll turn to face forward and focus on using what you learned from the past experience to add quality to your future. Then when you do look back, it’s with a sense of profound gratitude for how you were enriched by that part of your life, even including the loss, because it made you a deeper, wiser, and stronger person.
Clearing this field also affects your ability to let go in other ways. If you’re struggling with a loss, you can be afraid of letting yourself really feel your grief. You may believe that the feelings would be so intense, you’d be overwhelmed and unable to cope. Or you may view grieving as a sign of weakness, and so cut yourself off from your feelings and try to just get on with life. But this never works; there is always a hole in your spirit. No situation exists in isolation, so if you try to avoid your emotions, your energy contracts in other ways as well. As you control your feelings, you can become more and more rigid, more distant with others, and more cut off from your joy; eventually, even your health could be affected.
Grief must be honored. The process of grief is one that leads you to a place you can’t imagine when you’re lost in the pain. The gift that comes after you allow your grief is the recognition of how much you’ve actually gained—not despite the loss but because of it.
Clearing the Metal Field
Again, make sure you’re still in balance, and then ask if there is anything to clear in the Metal field. If you get a “yes,” proceed. If you get a “no,” just move on to the next step: integration.
Remember to trust the answers the pendulum gives you and to pay attention to even the most fleeting of impressions. Assume it has something to do with the clearing even if you don’t understand it.
The Two Final Steps of the Clearing
Once you’ve cleared the Metal field, there are no more personal energy fields to clear, but there are two final steps before you’re done: integration and grounding. This is because, although it often looks like nothing is happening during a clearing, there’s actually deep and significant change occurring invisibly. The person’s energy has been moving, shifting, releasing, and processing. It’s important to create an opportunity for the changes to integrate within their system on every level, and to then ground the person to make sure you leave them feeling complete and centered in their body and spirit.
Integration and grounding are always necessary steps, so there’s no need to ask if they need to be done, the way you do when clearing the six previous fields.
Integration
Start by simply letting your pendulum swing just like it does when you’re clearing. This time, hold in mind that you’re allowing whatever integration is necessary to happen; continue until the pendulum indicates the process is complete.
You should not try to make the other person’s energy integrate; don’t visualize some result or intend some specific change. Doing so would be forcing the process, which would immediately bring things to a halt. Just tell yourself that integration is happening. Trust that when it’s complete, the pendulum will let you know.
If you can do this, you’re staying present. Then, not only will the integration be successful, but you may also feel it as it happens, which can be quite a lovely experience.
Grounding
To allow grounding, simply hold your pendulum and go into clearing mode as usual. Remember, you don’t have to do anything to make it happen. Just hold the thought in mind that their system is “grounding” and stay aware of what you feel as the pendulum swings. With some people, you may notice a pleasant sort of whump! sensation as they ground quickly and easily, and you’ll see the pendulum change motion to let you know you’re done. With others, you may not feel anything, or you may sense that it’s not so easy for them to get grounded. In that case, this step may take a while before the pendulum signals that this last part of the session is finished.
Congratulations—you’ve now completed the clearing! In the next chapter, we’ll discuss what you should do after a clearing and what’s most important for you to know from here.
chapter 6
After the Clearing
* * *
advice, answers & reminders
You now know how to do a personal clearing. You’ve learned the preliminary steps to take beforehand and how to do the
full clearing, all the way through integration and grounding. Now, in this chapter, we’ll go over how and when to have a discussion about any feelings that came up during a session, how you might feel after doing a clearing or having one done for you, and what might unfold in your life afterward as a result.
Finally, I’ll end the chapter with advice about what to keep in mind during a clearing and answers to the most frequently asked questions I hear in my workshops. I also include a step-by-step how-to list you can refer to when you do a clearing for someone.
Sharing Your Feelings and Impressions
When it comes to having a conversation about what you felt while you were clearing your friend, you have two options: You can pause between each field while you’re doing the clearing and discuss the thoughts, emotions, sensations, or impressions that you each had while it’s still fresh in your minds. Or, if you prefer, you can complete the entire clearing, and then once you’re done, sit and quietly share about what came up.
Your friend may say they had some feelings similar to yours, or that something you said made sense to them in ways you couldn’t possibly have known. That can be a confidence booster for you. For instance, perhaps you mention that you felt some heavy feelings of worry pass through your awareness during the clearing, and they respond that they’re not surprised to hear that because they’re so concerned about an urgent family problem right now. You might have felt some waves of exhaustion, only to have them report that they’re struggling with chronic fatigue.
Some people have old memories come up while they’re being cleared, things they haven’t thought about in years but relate to the impressions you were getting in some of the fields. This is because, when you do a clearing, you’re connecting with their entire life history, not just the stresses of the moment. In so many ways, it can be valuable for both of you to compare what you felt or thought during the session.
Even if nothing you felt seems to make sense to the other person, it doesn’t mean you weren’t connected to their energy. Much of what we feel during a clearing can have to do with how our own systems are sensing the information. So if you felt a twinge in your shoulder, but they say they’ve never had a problem with their shoulder, it can simply be that this was just how you experienced the energy moving.
Remember that it’s also common for the other person to feel nothing at all as you clear them. Clearing is a subtle process, and most people aren’t used to being aware of fleeting thoughts or feelings. And if you didn’t sense anything while you cleared, remember that you’re still learning. Much of your attention will be on recalling what to do when, and how to drive this pendulum-thingy! As you practice doing more clearings, you’ll start to notice sensations, emotions, or impressions; it just takes time to work at that level.
How Someone May Feel after Being Cleared
During your conversation at the end of the clearing, it’s helpful to briefly explain to your friend how they may feel in the hours afterward. For instance, it’s normal to be mildly relaxed, like you might feel after a massage, and to want to have some quiet time alone. Another standard reaction is to become tired and crave a nap. However, it’s also common to feel exhilarated and energized. I’ve had people feel so revitalized after a clearing that they cleaned their house from top to bottom or created a complete new business plan!
Alternatively, they may feel a little unsettled for a while as they get used to the changes in their energy. It’s normal to occasionally have an emotional release after a clearing, so they might have a good cry or an upset with their spouse. This is not at all a bad sign! Remember the image of a garden hose with a kink in it—when you unkink that hose, the water might spurt out dramatically as it’s finally released after having built up a lot of pressure. In the same way, there can sometimes be a surge of energy as a result of a clearing due to feelings being stuck, suppressed, or unspoken for such a long time. After that initial release, things smooth out and there can be remarkable new developments from there.
How You May Feel after Doing a Clearing
After doing a clearing, you might feel so much better yourself, like you’ve also been cleared, and that’s not your imagination! When you do a clearing, energy is moving for you as well, and this is one of the reasons people love to do this work. So don’t be surprised if you feel exhilarated and like you’re walking on air!
It’s also not unusual to feel very peaceful, quiet, and in touch with your feelings afterward. Sometimes, you may feel tired, and this can be due to your own system relaxing and allowing you to feel for the first time the tiredness that’s actually been in your life for a while. If we push too hard in our own lives, we tend to suppress how tired we are so we can keep going, but this isn’t a healthy way to live. At the extreme, it’s like the person who’s so stressed out that they get sick on their first day of vacation. This is what Western medicine calls the “letdown effect”: when someone gets sick after a stressful period, when they’re finally beginning to unwind. They’ve been holding it all together for so long that the moment their body gets a chance to relax, everything falls in on itself. So the clearing may not be what makes you tired; instead, it allowed you to sink into your own feelings for the first time in a while and notice what’s really going on for you.
However, sometimes the reason you feel in need of rest is due to your just having done a clearing. You’ve been connecting with another person’s energy fields, feeling things shift and move during the process, and you’re still getting used to that experience. It can take some effort at first as you practice a new level of awareness, sensing the energy and tuning in to intuitive impressions. After you’ve been doing this work for a while, this all becomes more and more effortless.
If you do feel too tired or unsettled after a clearing, it can be because you were trying too hard. For one thing, as a beginner, it’s completely normal for you to think you’re not doing enough. Your brain tells you that just watching a pendulum swing and paying attention to your feelings couldn’t possibly have any effect! It can be hard to understand that there are actually invisible yet powerful shifts happening as you do this because of the energetic exchange between you and the other person. So instead of trusting the process and allowing the clearing to take place naturally, you may try too hard, or push a bit energetically to be sure you do a good job! But that means you’re trying to do something, rather than to be with the energy presenting. And if you’re “doing” something, that does take effort. So you not only end up tired but also the clearing won’t have been very effective.
Another reason you may unintentionally try to “do” something is if you have an attachment to a certain outcome. It’s easy to fall into this because you so earnestly want to help your friend. It’s also possible that as a consequence of your sincere desire to help, you might unconsciously try to take some of their stress and end up carrying it home with you and that will definitely make you feel tired! (These are things that happen only to beginners; once you get more practice, they won’t occur.)
But experiences like these are easily resolved. First of all, any feelings of tiredness or being unsettled will naturally fade after a bit of a rest, a hearty meal, or a good night’s sleep. It can also help to clear yourself or to reach out and ask someone to clear you. This is why the online community is so wonderful; someone is always awake in the world to see your request and do a clearing for you. (You can find this resource at www.facebook.com/clearhomeclearheart.)
Results of a Clearing
Sometimes there’s an almost magical result immediately after a clearing. One time, the phone rang the moment the session was over—it was my client’s sister, who hadn’t spoken to her in 20 years, calling to ask to heal their relationship. I’ve done clearings where the very next day, my client was offered a multimillion-dollar contract or had a lawsuit that had been dragging on for years suddenly resolved in their favor.
Other times, the results unfold after a series of clearings and in unexpected ways. My client Sara
h had scheduled three monthly sessions because she hoped to bring better relationships into her life. The day after her third clearing, she learned her mother was coming for a visit for the first time in years. Sarah was apprehensive because her mother was a very negative, critical woman, and any time spent with her had always left Sarah extremely stressed and upset. But a few days after the visit was over, she e-mailed me to say it had been like a miracle. From the first moment her mother walked through the door, Sarah didn’t brace herself for an onslaught of negativity. Instead, she said, “I saw her as just a person. It was like I no longer had the baggage of the past to deal with, and I could see her without the old filter of pain and hurt.” To the amazement of both of them, they spent the week together sightseeing, eating out, and laughing. Sarah said, “I realized that it had been my relationship with my mother that first had to be cleared before I could attract better relationships overall.”
You can never predict the results of a clearing because you don’t know what has to clear first in order for something else to be released, or how or when the shifts need to happen. Don’t assume that you know what has to occur in order for balance to be returned to the situation.