If EFT tapping moves energy, and energy is real, and people can be gifted with it, what does that mean about finding our energetic gifts?
A lot of "ifs" leading to a freakin' big "then"
This published work is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon as medical, psychological, coaching, or other professional advice of any kind or nature. Enjoy my full disclaimer for more information!
Ten or twelve years ago, a neighbor handed out enormous lemons she'd bought in California to all the neighbors. They were huge fruits — not quite cantaloupe-sized, but definitely bigger than mangoes.
My lemon was really too big to contemplate using. Should I garnish 40 glasses of tea? Squeeze it over an entire school of steamed fish? Finally, I figured I should use at least part of it and I cut it open. Inside, right in the middle, was a tiny, perfectly formed lemon tree.
And I said, Hey, little buddy!
Of course, I could have composted the baby tree with the rest of the lemon. But it was so perfect and so alive, and it just wanted to grow into a tree. All it needed was the chance to root in soil, drink water, and see the sun, and it would become exactly what it was made to be.
I think of our gifts like that little lemon tree, alive and waiting to be discovered inside us.
When these gifts are the kind that are valued in the world, we tend to find them pretty early on. Some people have gifts for sports — guess what, our society loves sports. Our society loves people who can sound like leaders, I mean, dang, I do love a declarative sentence myself. And of course, all people do enjoy being safe, and so if we find anything in the toy box of our potential that will make us safer, you can bet we will go whole hog on developing it.
But implicit in all energy medicine techniques, even one that pretends to be a closed system like EFT tapping, is that they all presume that energy is a real thing. And if energy is a real thing, that means some people will be gifted at it, and everyone could at least do it and get better at it (same as how with practice anyone can get better at shooting baskets or speaking confidently even if that’s not really their thing).
But how to find your energetic gifts and work with them in a world that really isn’t into them (yet)? There seem to be three main ways:
Have a near death experience or get a spiritual visit of some sort (inconvenient and/or dangerous, DO NOT RECOMMEND and/or you can’t usually just summon an angel or we’d all do it all the time)
Start following your intuition, just going to what you’re drawn to and love, and it will reveal itself (VERY GOOD)
Have a horrible health or trauma experience that you have to resolve, and end up out of desperation exploring what you can find (BETTER THAN NOTHING)
Having spent a lot of time dealing with the third option in many different ways (heaven knows I’m dispositionally disposed to experience what I perceive as a crisis), I want to come out strong in favor of the second option. If you are young, or very lucky, you might not even be so bad off that you have to do too much of the horrible experience option! And even if you have a lot to work with in that area, moving toward what your intuition wants is still a good idea to start as soon as possible.
Think you’re not intuitive? You’re overcomplicating it. Eileen McKusick, the inventor of biofield tuning, says that your intuition shows up all day long. When you see something you dread or don’t want, you feel bummed out, like the sound uhhhh (or, if you prefer, like a frowny-face emoji). And when you see something you do want, you feel good, like an ahhhh! feeling. She says, follow the ahhhs! and you will be following your intuition.
Of course, you might not have the option to follow it in real life, or in the very second it happens (I see you, parents! I know you have to get dinner going before everyone starves!). But you should still catalog your ahhhhs. They are telling you what you like, and what you like is going to be related to your energetic gifts and to your most enjoyable experience of being yourself.
And really, the very best reason to follow your intuition like this whenever you can without crashing your life, is because if you don’t, the misery of not being yourself might come for you and you’ll have to figure it out anyway, but with more suffering:
Uhhhh!