There is a curious phenomenon, when a blind person can sense and react to certain visual stimuli despite having no visual experience of it. Like sensing a light source or movement. They can reach for an object without consciously seeing it.
This can happen due to brain damage, when the eyes are intact, but the brain fails to translate the visual input into images.
This is also how people react to energy. They underlying dynamics of their interactions are invisible to them, but they still react to it. They move towards the source of energy and try to extricate themselves when in the grasp of a vampire.
Think about it next time you flinch from a verbal insult. Or blush because of shame. When your heart rate changes just because you’ve seen something. When you change course due to a piece of information reaching you. You have very physical reactions to non-physical stimuli, and yet, you cannot see them.
The implication is that people’s interactions are often dishonest on the energy level. They wouldn’t allow themselves the same degree of manipulation, violence, and aggression if it was physical.
Unseen interactions can be nasty. They are deniable. Hard to question. Impossible to quantify.
It reminds me of old times, when people could simply be owned by other people. They could be made to work throughout their lives on the fields of their landlord, they could be raped and made pregnant by their masters, they were made to marry or stay celibate depending on what their family or owner needed.
And then money came to the scene, and this degree of exploitation suddenly became impossible.
How much is someone’s life, when you pay by the hour? Would he even sell all his time? Say, he would sell his weekdays and evenings. Maybe even his weekends, and all his waking hours. But it would be more and more expensive, because he could wage the benefits of having some time off against the money he could earn by selling it. His time would suddenly have a price and an opportunity cost. How much would he ask for to cut back on sleep to work more on the field?
If you have to put a price tag on giving birth to the baby of your violent slave master – how much would you ask for it? It was self-evident back then, so it went for free. But it comes at a horrendous cost. So if you have a choice, there is a price, and it is suddenly too expensive to exploit people.
No wonder so many people resent money. They are the creatures, who could exploit their dependents and families if it wasn’t for the pesky habit of calculating costs and benefits. They don’t want a win-win. They want to suck out as much as possible and keep it deniable.
Money was a visible and quantifiable proof of exploitation. So people had to scale back and play it more civilised.
The same thing is needed for energy. People’s interactions are shamelessly manipulative, exploitative, and unfair. But only because they are not visible.
People’s ability to sense and acknowledge it is severely limited – just as a blind person is insecure about his uncanny ability to reach for objects he can not consciously see. It can be frustrating. Some people are trying to learn it. To understand their underlying games and play it clean. But its visible ‘currency’ cannot come soon enough.
Image: Ben Sack – A Single Note
Those Who Are Not Seen 