The Energy Within....The Gift of Knowing Yourself

Praise for The Energy Within

This is a great book for those of you who have watched or read the secret. The secret tells you why, The Energy Within teaches you how! Marie obviously has years of experience and puts everything you need to know into plain English. With stories from her own past it’s easy to see why Marie is so passionate about what she teaches. With some great quotes you won’t be able to put this book down!

S.W. Wirral. England

"This new book takes the reader beyond the ‘law of attraction’ theories seen in the likes of The Secret, and explains the practical ways to bring them into practice, by learning how your past experiences and old ‘programming’ still affects you, how you can change this and develop your own healing abilities. It’s a fascinating book of great anecdotes from Middlesbrough-based healer Marie Cunningham, as she’s gone on her self-development journey.

Feel informed and empowered after reading this book."

Spirit & Destiny - February 2011

Marie manages to make subjects such as Quantum Physics, Chakras and self healing easy to understand. Her use of analogies and personal anecdotes definitely lead to plenty of ‘aha’ moments. If you’ve watched ‘The Secret’ or ‘What the Bleep’, then this is a great book to follow on with.

S.P. Middlesbrough. England

Thank you very much for the book. It has answered so many questions and given me so much insight into my recent problem with my bad back!

Kathy - Teesside. England

Can I get another copy of your book please? I’ve read it and really enjoyed it but I gave my copy to my sister and I’d like to loan it to one of my friends and read it again. Thanks for your help.

E.D. Middlesbrough. England.

This is a very informative simply written book I can recommend purchasing. Not glib, as some of the US pundits, but presented in an easy and down to earth way.

Mrs B. Leeds. England

The Energy Within

Marie Cunningham MA

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 Marie Cunningham

All rights reserved

Edited by Sarah Cheeseman

First published in Great Britain by Q-10 Publishing/Kildimo Books 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publishers in writing

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Dedication

To my wonderful children and grandchildren who are so special to me.

I thank them for their love and inspiration along the way. I love you all dearly.

To my friends who have supported me through good and bad times.

I also dedicate it to anyone who has touched my life, past and present, who brought in the experiences I needed to learn from.

Contents

Chapter 1: Letting Go

Chapter 2: Full Circle

Chapter 3: A Loving Creation

Chapter 4: Back to Basics

Chapter 5: Auras and Chakras

Chapter 6: Archetypes

Chapter 7: Energies of the Earth

Chapter 8: Orbs and Ghosts

Chapter 9: Metaphysics

Chapter 10: Body Language

Chapter 11: Crystals

Chapter 12: Reiki

Chapter 13: Healing

Chapter 14: Angels & Guides

Chapter 15: Feng Shui

Chapter 16: TLC

The Mouse Story

Epilogue

About Marie

Recommended Books

Contact

Chapter 1

Letting Go

A few years ago, I seemed to have everything. I had family, friends, house, car and a successful business. However, I still felt that something was missing in my life! I’d begun to feel unfulfilled and the grip of this wasn’t to let go of me for a long time. The more I listened to my language when serving in my crystal shop or teaching the students that attended my classes, the more I realised that I taught people to live in the now; not to live for tomorrow, as tomorrow never comes and will always be tomorrow.

I taught them to be happy NOW - in the moment. I also taught them to clear out clutter from their homes and from their lives. But I had to ask myself, was I doing that? Was I walking my talk? The issues that come with ‘walking my talk’ are very important for me, as a childhood of hypocrisy had left me scarred. I started to look at my own life with a magnifying glass.

I realised that for a while I’d had a great longing to be in the sun, where a much slower, more natural pace of life existed. On previous holidays I sat watching families sit around tables, spending endless hours talking to each other and watching beautiful sunsets, signifying the day was coming to a close.

On one of those holidays I had the opportunity to start a business on the beautiful island of Crete, but after spending months of happily arranging my new life, I changed my mind at the last moment. My family had left after having a meal and, as they waved goodbye, I closed the door and knew that moments like these could not happen if I lived in another part of the world. I became frightened. I let in that old cookie, FEAR. I changed my plans there and then, and decided not to go ahead and to put them on hold for ‘another time’. Years later, I’m realising the consequences of that decision, as nothing in my life seemed to go right from that point. Within months of changing my mind, our house set on fire.

I went to work one morning, not knowing how my life was about to change.

The good news was that my daughter had stayed over at her boyfriend’s and my son had left for work just after I had. But I didn’t know that when I got the phone call from my friend to say that four fire engines were attempting to put out the blaze. We lost practically everything, but the most painful part was losing our cat. He had been asleep in my bedroom when the fire happened and, needless to say, losing him broke our hearts. It took a few hours to get the raging flames under control, but watching them carry the cat from the house was the hardest part.

The firemen were so thoughtful and treated our feline friend with so much care. They even put an oxygen mask over his mouth to try to resuscitate him, but it was no use; the smoke had been so thick and black. It was only after the third run into the house that they found him huddled under my duvet.

Everyone kept telling me I should be grateful it wasn’t a child and I was, but it didn’t take away the pain of losing him, as he was part of our family. I also found it strange that many people around me couldn’t allow me to grieve the situation. It was a case of I should be thankful for what was safe, rather than be grieving for what I’d lost.

I knew that if I could have had all my possessions back or the cat, then I would have chosen the cat. This might sound like an easy choice to make, but I had no house insurance and had to start from scratch to get the things we needed. Friends and neighbours were amazing, taking us in until we found somewhere to rent, and they even had a collection for our basic needs, such as towels, etc. We had to move into a rented house for six months while the top floor and attic of our home were being rebuilt.

Many times after the fire I would go to look for something and search frantically, actually forgetting for a moment that the fire had happened. Then it would hit me that the item had probably melted in the heat; after all, if a television could melt away, what chance would something as fragile as a photo have? At first, when I realised my first-born’s shoe and beautiful blonde curl of his hair were gone forever, my heart ached.

But we store things up in the attic to visit the memories, to remind us of happy times, yet really those memories are in our hearts, so they’re going nowhere. I started asking the questions, why do we hold onto so much? Why do we keep things for so long? Why do we need to remind ourselves of the past?

I knew a little about the subject of Feng Shui and this helped me to understand a little about energy in general. I realised that everything in our life is symbolic of the self. I picked up my folder and began reading this ancient wisdom. It told me that the house represents the self, and the loft represents our mind, where we store away so many things to remind us of happy times.

However, in our subconscious we bury information of sad events, etc., and just like the attic, now and again we need to clear it out. But clearing out is hard for many people, as it’s like losing a part of the self. I know when I stayed with a friend recently and suggested it would be good for her to have a clearout, she nearly had a nervous breakdown at the thought of it.

I also learnt that fire is symbolic of anger that’s stored, and eventually, like all energy, it has to explode (as energy expands). It’s a little like a volcano, or a pressure cooker: when too much pressure builds up it has to be released, and humans are just the same. All of our trapped emotion (energy) has to go somewhere, and when it isn’t allowed to be released in a healthy way, it stagnates in the body.

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist

I’d been reading Living Magically by Gill Edwards on a regular basis and would often come across the term ‘we create our own reality’. I fought myself for a long time; after all, why would I bring such a horrific event into our lives? As I lay in a strange bed in another part of town, away from my friends of twenty years, I’d go over it in my head as to whether it was my ‘fault’.

Remembering the experience of watching my life go up in smoke, and holding onto my daughter as we heard the creaking windows expand with the pressure of the heat, the last thing I needed to believe was that I’d brought it into our life. It took me a long time to get my head around why the fire happened.

As with a lot of things in life, it’s only after the event that we can look back with a certain level of detachment and see the bigger picture. Could I really have created it in some way? On what level would I have wanted to do this?

I suppose in all honesty I loved my home. I had my friends nearby and many good memories there, but I also had many bad memories of the house. A lot of pain, hurt and anger were stored in that house, including that hardcore, gut-wrenching pain of relationships breaking. So, if I am honest, I’m not surprised it eventually exploded, with all the emotions of twenty years crammed into the building.

What I found extremely difficult was the fact that I was doing an Angel workshop when the fire started, and I cried to God as to why they couldn’t show me a sign so that I could go home and at least save the cat. After all, I had had many insights for other people in the past, so why not for myself on this occasion? I had to realise there was a higher purpose.

It has certainly been a learning curve for me, especially in terms of how to be honest with my feelings, as I would always try to keep the other person happy rather than myself. I now know that was not the best or healthiest way to live. Mind you, I have lost a few friendships since I started to be true to myself!

Thankfully, most people sort out and vent their feelings in a healthy way, but there are many who are not in a position to do so; those who rarely let their true feelings show and, if not careful, could end up with problems such as arthritis, cancer, etc., as these are usually signs that a person is holding onto energy, especially anger.

Illness is one of the main reasons people get into ‘new age’ thinking, or it could be due to heartache, bereavement or a crisis in general. Then the questions start: What’s life all about? Why are we here? Where are we going? and so on. Then we want answers, and quickly. It’s not enough that someone points us to the right book; we want them to read it and explain it to us.

We often don’t want to put in the hard work of finding out how IT, the universe, works. I don’t mean the solar system, I mean our own universe, our central point of being. By central point of being I mean our head office, or our higher self.

My soul is the central point; it resides within the temple (ME).

Just as I, the physical body, reside within my home, which resides within its village or estate, which resides within a town, country and so on. Therefore, I am the centre of MY universe. I create what is going on around me; how can I not? If I am energy first and physical after, then it all has to start with me!

I now believe that if we sort out what’s on the inside, we’ll understand what’s happening on the outside. I’d started reading books on metaphysics, crystals, etc. around seven years before the fire, so I had a little knowledge on the subject, although many times I’d put down the book and not have a clue what I’d just read because I just didn’t understand the language in many of them.

I found that many of the books I read just made me feel stupid; many of the words were alien to me. I remember hearing the word metaphysics many times in a class I was attending, and it took me until about the fourth class to get up the courage to ask what it meant! Anything outside the physical, my teacher said; meta = beyond.

Gill Edwards’ Living Magically was a godsend to me, as I understood her language and she didn’t make me feel that the crap in my life was my ‘fault’. She taught me, however, that it was my responsibility, that I’d created it, not as some form of punishment from God, but as an experience that my soul could learn from.

This was a huge statement for a woman who thought life just didn’t like her. I’d come to believe that the saying ‘The harder your life is, the closer to God you’ll be meant that I’d one day be sat on his knee. I must admit, I threw her book away three times before finally reading it properly. I just didn’t want to hear her language. How could I create all the pain and hurt I’d had in my life (and there was a lot) and, plain and simple, why would I want to?

I’ve come a long way since reading that book and I must take my hat off to the author’s outstanding work; I’d like to think I might meet her one day, just to say thanks for helping me to get my life in order. A couple of years before I started looking at metaphysics I came across the subject of chakras and was curious as to what it was all about. I looked at the poster for a long time before putting the book back on the shelf, as I didn’t understand what chakras were. They had different colours, which all had a meaning, and a Sanskrit name, etc. I decided they were too complicated for me and left the shop.

"Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown." Claude Bernard

I’d do the same with crystals, as although I liked them I didn’t understand what their properties were. I kept thinking I was not clever enough, as I’d never even sat an exam at school! That’s how the idea for this book came about. Customers in my shop, The Crystal Cave, started mentioning the fact that I spoke in ‘normal’ language, making this subject easy for them to understand.

The seed was planted for a book that speaks to the average person on the street; the person who may not know where to start with this fascinating subject. The aim of this book is to help those who want to step into the world of ENERGY.

I’d like people to understand that to be a healer, or a psychic, you don’t have to be born a ‘seventh son of a seventh son’ or into any special family group, or to have lived in an ashram for years. We are all healers. Anyone who can love can heal.

We all have a sixth sense, we’re just not educated on how to use it. You’ve probably had the experience of knowing when the phone’s about to ring, or when someone is ill. That’s using your sixth sense.

Over time, I noticed I was changing. My tastes began to change, such as the music I listened to, as did my attitude towards everything around me. My world started to take on a different view. What I didn’t know was that I was getting ready to switch on, or wake up as it’s known by some people. There are many terminologies for this: walking the path, finding the self, to name a few, but it simply means learning how to be aware of the self. It doesn’t mean being all love and light, or being some fluffy bunny. This would not serve us, as we are made up of positive and negative energy (like the yin/yang symbol). A lack or too much of either will put us out of balance. To achieve balance is our duty.

The basic intention in life is to be truly happy, and balance will achieve this. Our responsibility to our self is to learn how to read beyond what we see physically and to understand the messages being given and received daily. Once we do this, our lives become so much easier, happier and joy-full.

When we become disillusioned or powerless in a situation, we’ve usually taken our attention to the past and we look at who/what we lost, or we look to the future to a time when things will be different (better). Yet, if we could stay centred in that moment and experience the FULL experience and FEEL the feelings, we would empower ourselves.

Being in the moment isn’t easy in today’s climate, as we are bombarded with products that won’t allow us this luxury. We are encouraged to buy Easter eggs in January or Christmas cards in September. But all we have is the moment! The words you have just read in the last line have gone and the pages to come have not yet arrived; all you have is the moment you are in now.

Being centred and in the moment is to be self-empowered, meaning not giving our energy to anyone/anything else. Try to remember that any discomfort you are feeling at any particular moment in your life is trying to show you something. I now think the term healing, or letting go, is a little misunderstood, as any experience we’ve had is part of us and has made us who we are. The fire in our home taught me a great deal about myself and my life in general. The most important thing it taught me was how to unload the useless emotions I’d carried for so long. But this didn’t happen overnight and certainly not with ease, as the past few years have been event-full to say the least and I am sure I could write another book on what’s happened.

I needed reminding that the most important things in my life are my family and true friends, as they will always be there for me. I learnt that love is the only thing that’s real and that our health is of vital importance. To make the change I needed, I had to start with being honest, not only with others, but also with myself. This isn’t always easy, as we are brought up to be polite more than honest, especially in the English culture. Often, fear takes over, as we’re frightened that if we offend the other party we may hurt or lose them.

"In your life's defining moments there are two choices, you either step forward in faith and power, or you step backward into fear." James Arthur Ray, Creator of Harmonic Wealth®

So, more often than not, we swallow our true point of view to keep the other person happy, and in the process we make ourselves unhappy. We literally swallow our words, often causing ourselves throat/neck problems.

After the fire, without realising it, I started to put all my energy into my business, making it my life, even to the point where it came before my family commitments. I no longer had time for anything; I was too busy! This way I could avoid my true feelings. It meant I had no time to look at why my back ached or why I had a cold, and I didn’t realise what an effect it was having on me, or those around me.

I didn’t want to show my feelings of pain and anger or all the other emotions that were swirling around inside.