Energetic Wellbeing
Maintaining your energetic wellbeing, in detail, looks differently to everyone because it relates back to your authentic self. The exact methods you take to engage in the care of your mind, body, spirit, and energetic connections are unique to you. How deeply those methods or other methods affect you relies on your personal beliefs, values, experiences, and goals. What do you yearn for? What ignites a fire inside you? What path are you heading towards? What are your fears or concerns? Where are you at currently? Who are you? All of these things play a huge role in formulating your authentic self.
Unless you already lean on the self-aware side, determining where to start articulating and nourishing your authentic self can be a conundrum. However, through the teaching of various innovators we can piece together a starting point.
Pyramid Dynamics
Sigmund Freud explains that a healthy personality is composed of the balanced parts of the self: the id, ego, and superego. The id being your primal, subconscious desires. The ego as your consciousness. And the superego as your morality guide. All three are in constant conflict, as theorized by Freud, but if the ego dictates the management or integration of input from the id and superego, all is in balance.
This theory has more of a pyramid dynamic than a balanced triangular expression. Whereas the ego resides over the id and superego for functionality. Within every day life, this theory is certainly questionable. It’s unrealistic to go through life 100% conscious and in control of your impulses or actions. To rely on the ego to hold the id and superego on a leash is not ideal nor constructive. Even psychology studies are drifting away from this theory on personality structures simply because Freud’s explanation of the id is described mostly of sexual and aggressive impulses which does not incorporate the true complexity of our individual personalities.
If we “update” the concepts of id, ego, and superego to more modern day definitions such as subconscious, conscious, and superconscious, we still have a similar problem of a pyramid dynamic. Various spiritual spaces use these terms frequently, or their own version of these words, to describe mental levels with a goal of aligning to their higher-self/superconscious. This makes for a spiritual approach to a redefined Freudian theory, this time instead of the ego/consciousness being at the top, the superego/higher-self/superconscious reigns.
Aligning to your higher-self sounds admirable in theory. But in practice, it can very quickly lead to toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. To make this theory healthy for yourself, you have to define your own boundaries and learn when to implement this push to be greater or when to take responsibility, acceptance and dive deeper into your personal “darkness”. This requires you to articulate who you want your higher-self to be, what values and goals are flexible and adaptable and which ones are fixed. Striving for better is not 100% “love and light.”
Living in complete alignment with your higher-self becomes virtually impossible unless you integrate your own humanity, flaws, and mistakes into the idea of your higher-self. Because we ARE human. Having the goal of being more authentic, living your best life, being your best self, etc. is a strong motivating force. But being realistic, adaptable, and accepting of your current self is the foreground for moving in that direction.
Triangular Dynamics
Branching away from pyramids into triangular dynamics, the multitude of mind-body-spirit concepts that span the world is a rabbit hole in and of itself. A good amount of holistic, esoteric, and religious groups have their own adapted mind-body-spirit understandings. In general, positive functionality results from equal contribution and prioritization between these three parts of the self. Energetic wellness now comes into play with the introduction of equality within this triage. By addressing the needs of the body, the needs of the mind, and the needs of the spirit, satisfaction in life can theoretically be achieved. It’s no longer a sense of exerting control of who you are but meeting yourself where you’re currently at and allocating to the energy and emotionality of ALL your needs.
Mind-body-spirit can be universalized because it leaves the definition of what equal distribution and detailed acknowledgement of each part means up to the person. There’s no hierarchy, so a positive relationship with the self is developed by incorporating whatever feels good to the person and more difficult necessities. In practice, whenever a person begins to feel imbalanced, they’re less inclined to blame themselves or their thoughts and more likely to look at the mind-body-spirit structure for actionable components. For example, they could figure out which part of the triage they’ve been neglecting and then make an adjustment to their routines to compensate in order to help balance things out again.
Broadening the Scope
I’d like to take this a step further, with some inspiration from my knowledge on the Norse soul-parts concept, by adding a fourth component of outward connection. Addressing mind-body-spirit needs is focused on the individual’s values, goals, likes, ideals, faults, concerns, health, etc. But addressing an outward connection inspires community, purpose, and favorability or “luck." All four of these concepts are heavily entangled, but breaking them down like this provides a multi-leveled sense of “structure” towards wellbeing.
Our energy is affected by all of these components. It’s reasonable to see the affects of our mental, physical, and spiritual stimulation and health on our energy levels and satisfaction with life. However, it becomes even more so apparent how an outward connection affects our energy when we look at society as a whole being connected to us as individuals. Humans are social creatures. We all need varying amounts of socialization to feel happy, some more than others. But we begin to find our own interpretation of purpose as we expand outside of ourselves. Purpose in family or children, careers, hobbies, or services to others, for example. So this fourth component of energetic wellness being outward connection showcases the unique ways you could bridge the gap between individualism and community. This is how you express yourself and engage with the world around, not just other humans.
When we feel imbalanced, hopeless, or lost we can look to these four areas to try to pinpoint where the blockage is in our general energy. Feeling more unstable, apathetic, or dissociated could be a mind-body-spirit discrepancy. Feeling more directionless or incognizant could indicate an outward connection block. Now we can piece together not only our energetic health within ourselves but a positive energetic flow towards connection. This inward and outward energetic dance is really what it takes to thrive!
In my experience, you don’t necessarily find your purpose, instead it finds you exactly when it needs to. We don’t start off knowing who we are and who we want to be. But as we advance in that journey it’s important to take care of ourselves and tend to our energetic needs. We can’t pour from an empty cup. Nor should we be pouring from our cup at all. The excess “liquid” or energy we have overflowing from our cup or selves is what we use to establish this outward connection of giving to others or existing in harmony with community.
In that sense, taking care of our mind-body-spirit needs could take the forefront above outward connection. However, the goal I’m trying to emphasize is that instead of a triangular dynamic, we construct a square model. All four parts flowing equally in congruence AND convergence. This definitely doesn’t happen overnight and having your capital “P” purpose be articulated may take years of soul searching. But allowing yourself to be more present with your needs and who you are with a priority of balance, joy, and your inner/outer self, this square of wellness can offer guidance for your journey.
Ask yourself how often you tend to matters of your mind? Of your body? Of your spiritual needs? Of your connections? In what ways are you nourishing these areas? Are you neglecting things that once helped you feel grounded and centered?
The truth of the matter is that we will always be oscillating between being balanced and imbalanced. Satisfaction within life isn’t about perfection, it’s about adaptability. If we can accept the oscillation within ourselves and rely on an energetic wellbeing structure as guidance, we begin to flow in harmony with existence, coursing through the mountains and seasons. Ebbing and flowing, just as we should. Creating our own unique dance with authenticity.
You discover your Truth when you embody authenticity in all its faces.
—
Alyssa
Sources and Further Reading
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-id-ego-and-superego-2795951 https://skaldskeep.com/norse/soul/
