The Energy Trinity

As both a psychotherapist and a human being, I regularly relate to the role that destructive energy plays in every person's living experience.  We often feel as if we might be "destroyed" by outer circumstances or inner mood states.  In fact, the reason people sometimes seek counseling in the first place is out of fear that certain relationships are at risk of being destroyed.  Or perhaps a person has an experience that threatens to destroy their own belief systems about themselves or the world around them.  I know we've all been in one of those places on more than one occasion (maybe even more than one occasion per day).

Typically, we think of destruction as something that is categorically bad all of the time and so there is usually a deep sense shame associated with this experience as well.  But after years of witnessing this process in both myself and others I have come to a slightly different conclusion about the nature of destructive energy.

Something that helps me relate to this particular energy with curiosity instead of judgment arises from the wisdom I've encountered in the Hindu tradition.  Similar to Christianity's effort to grasp the mysterious nature of The Divine, Hinduism also suggests that this can be best understood via the idea of a Divine Trinity.  The Hindu names for these figures are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.  The represent Creative Energy, Sustaining Energy, and Destructive Energy respectively.  I won't go into great detail here - but suffice it to say that the legacy of this triad teaches us that without all three players in place, each of those particular energies would become wildly unchecked and throw everything in existence off balance.

Consequently, I like to think of these three energies as representations of the conditions of this particular time-space reality.  In other words, these manifest energies are the three laws that govern our existence.  And because we are subject to the conditions of this reality, we owe all three energies equal attention and reverence at all times.

Additionally, as both offspring and inhabitants of this particular time-space reality, we are constantly manifesting energy that is linked to creation, preservation, and destruction whether we are conscious of it or not.  We can see this most readily in many of our biological processes, which is why discovering how the individual and collective body works gives rise to such remarkable achievements in areas like medicine or personal athleticism.

So, the really exciting news about this whole notion is that we can also bring this same light of attention to our psychological, relational, and emotional realities.  From that vantage point, we may even begin to develop our kind of intelligence about how to utilize these three forces to promote healthy balance in those kind of processes too.  Consciousness about this reality allows us to have some personal agency in the process, which is hugely empowering!  The alternative option (i.e. choosing to remain unconscious) will not change our necessary relationship to any of these energies, but it will certainly block our capacity to make decisions about the ways in which they are wielded in our lives.

And here's the fun part:  developing a conscious relationship to how these energies operate within you can become one of the best practices for re-discovering your own natural, sacred genius.