While some might be tempted to speak of the aura as if it were some part of a mystical mumble-jumble of new-age-ism, the reality is that perceiving the aura is part of a spectrum of perceptual experience that is coincident with seeing. We know that by touching others we can heal. Babies that are not held will sicken and die. We need this energy, we are hardwired for it. Other animals have the ability to pick up on the subtle electromagnetic field put off by other life forms. Sharks can do this as do octopus. Sharks have been known to attack metal objects, some which were not at all shiny (it was likewise thought that maybe the metal was attracting them like a lure does for smaller fish). It was not understood until it was realized that sharks employ a way to hone in on prey by focusing their energy field on those of neighboring prey in order to track them during a critical time when they effectively will go blind. When sharks attack, they have a lid that comes down over their eye to protect them from their prey possibly injuring their eyes.
Metal puts off a charge which is part of its electrochemical makeup. Metals are used in creating batteries; the electric potential can be captured and used for things like your radio or computer. While science would have us believe that these fields are JUST fields of energy, the truth is that they are merely carriers for what that energy is, which is conscious. This is not mumbo-jumbo; however when I was younger, I did have a friend who asked me to read her aura, had her mother lay down a copy of the bible after our meeting which was open to a page that warned of consorting with people who were witches and worse! Sadly, we are a species that can willingly seek to remain ignorant or steeped in what an ancient tradition tells us, a tradition that shows no proof of thinking things through very well (or might just be so old that its more superstition than understanding).
Your own energy field, if detected by a special camera, might just show a blob of color or shape, but within that field of energy would ride the MESSAGE of your life. In the same way that we can detect radio waves (which are themselves empty of any meaning until they are used by a device like a transmitter in order to take those waves and encode them with messages that are then picked up by a radio that translates all of this into sounds) so can we pick up on this electromanetic energy which crosses over into our own nervous system and is picked up and understood by the consciousness of the body to be something from "outside" and is interpreted as such in the person who reads or feels the human life field (we all FEEL this I think, but some utilize their feeling in a a way that helps them detect illness or trouble spots in the body or energy body). So while the auric energy is electromagnetic, there is also consciousness making up that wave or field of energy, effectively being the "broadcast" with the radio waves being the carrier wave for this information. It is this energy that we pick up on when sensing energy fields like the aura.
Understanding energy is something that we very naturally do. Its in us to understand it at the most fundamental levels. This is so because we ARE energy. The trick is waking up enough to sense it. Over the years I have had what I would call small scale awakenings that have involved, in one case, beginning to see auras, then later, sensing energy at a deeper level, and then recently, an awakening of kundalini that continues to be active 24/7 that has seemed to deepen that sensing even more.
As someone who was aware of energy before all of this happened, the difference now is that I feel it much more deeply. Perhaps more intimately. Its as though someone turned up the volume. It has become much more intense. It is also much more personal in that it reminds me on a moment by moment basis that the energy that flows through all things is part of a sacred body, and this body is the All. Just as all our ancestors from the aboriginal tribes have said, everything is connected through a vast webwork, and so it is. I might be walking down to the store and pass someone and feel my insides feel like they are being crushed, or I might feel a nagging sense of sadness around the edges of my awareness. I might feel a sudden tightening in my body, say my heart or my solar plexus that has nothing to do with how I am feeling at the time. Ordinarily I do not feel these things in such a way; I know how to tune them out (otherwise I might lose it!) There was a time when I sensed all this energy at an arm's length. I feel like its good I can feel in this way, which is the deeper way than the way I used to. I suspect that my work will lead me to work with energy in some way (I do this in my creative and educational work but suspect it will expand into other areas). Learning how to remain neutral, how to allow the world to move through us without our having to become the hurt or problem or thousand other things that are part of anothers' concerns is I think where mastering this realm of sensing comes in.
Reading the aura is itself not difficult. It involves knowing how to See. We are picking up on subtle energy all the time and it begins to show up to our eyes as just that; like heat waves or something very faint. We really cannot see this energy, but our brains have a way of translating the experience so that it SEEMS that we can. Truth is, we are sensing energy but not seeing it in the usual way....our eyes simply cannot see into this wavelength. But we are ourselves receptors for this energy, our energy bodies are amazing at what they can pick up, and so the information flows into us and is largely subconscious in nature (absent some kind of awakening or event that brings new awareness into the moment), so the brain does not pay much attention to it, which is the situation where we are filtering out the stimuli and not seeing the auric field. When the sensing becomes conscious, then the brain begins taking notice of it, and the filters can fall. At that point, its a matter of time before the brain finds a way to translate the information in a way that is understandable. This all seems like mental gymnastics, and it is in a sense, but energy is one of those things we do not have a sense for in the physical (but we do inwardly which might be the rub for the brain who is so used to being able to put stuff in the right mail box for stimuli delivery and info exchange). What results is a translating of energetic information in a way you can begin to understand or relate to (or take notes on and learn from the "syntax" the brain is setting up for you).
It might be possible that something in you just wont SEE the aura, and this is not unusual. I know some people who are like this. They have all been excellent at FEELING the energy. If you ask me, this is the way we best pick up on life force energy. By utilizing our feeling selves we stay locked out of the mind and ego, which I find is a real trap in these pursuits. Maybe a little hard at first given that our culture has rewarded such ways of being (and now its at our peril because we NEED this feeling self so badly!)
I have been around a number of people who have begun seeing the aura for the first time. I realized that in each case I was putting out a very specific wavelength of energy in each instance. I suspect that we can actually help to remove those veils or help the consciousness of that other person to be focused enough to begin to see them. There is almost always a certain receptivity involved. In one case my college roommate began seeing auras as we sat chatting in our little dorm room. You have to know John. His eyesight was so bad that he wore these coke-bottle glasses. He could not see anything but a blur beyond two feet. But as we spoke and his face registered the surprise that caused me to ask him what was going on, it became clear that he seemed to be seeing something. To make sure he was not pulling my leg (and he was a real joker!) I asked him to do something that I knew he would not have known about in regards to seeing the aura. I leaned forward and looked at him and quietly suggested that he take off his glasses. He laid the thick glasses down on the desk near where we were sitting. When he looked up at me his face registered a mix of bewilderment and surprise; "The light!" he exclaimed. He looked like he did not believe what he was looking at. What I knew was that other people who saw auras seemed to be able to see them without their glasses, no matter how bad their vision was.
Having perfect vision, I cannot explain how different things looked for those who saw auras and who wore glasses. In this long winded way I am explaining to you that if you feel like you might be seeing auras, taking your glasses off might be yet another strategy for increasing your perceptual abilities. Some six months previous to this, I met the first person whom I personally knew who could see auras and he always took his glasses off. Zack would pull off his glasses and then begin to gaze around an area that looked like he was seeing behind me, or just beyond me. I never fully understood it until I myself began seeing for the first time.
I will admit that its quite possible that what is happening is we are utilizing some portion of the eye that can just barely pick up on the aura because this particular posture or method in sensing is reported almost universally in the literature. I also utilize this technique when I see auras, realizing that if I look directly AT the aura, I cannot see it. This is like NOT seeing...and begins to sound a bit like Yoda telling you some little Yoda-ism "no try, only do..."...its as though you are focusing into another world except you are still very much here, fully aware. Your awareness is perfectly fixed in this reality. You are merely picking up on something that is already here, has always been here. Perhaps this is what we are doing, in a matter of speaking. Perhaps this "posture" is in truth a way to remind our bodies what it is we are doing.
Our bodies? Yes. Your body has consciousness (and while its built into the matrix of your overall awareness, it can also act independent of your own consciousness...this is the very nature of consciousness....but to read up on that you need to read the book I am writing....), not surprisingly; its not all in your head. Its all over you. Through you. You send certain signals to your body awareness by developing certain rituals. It also is a signal to your other layers of self to come to the fore. I have always had the feeling as though my awareness does change, but only subtly. This shift in awareness feels, in my body, very much like what I do when I am focusing on the pages of a book and choose to use my far vision. Now I am far-sighted, so perhaps this does not jive with my near-sighted readers.....but I would suspect that you too can purposely choose to focus on a ground area (fore or background) in order to make a certain portion of your vision fuzzy sometimes. When I see auras, its very much like this in a sense; I do not focus on what I am looking at....I master "the gaze."
Some Strategies
Try looking at your own aura. Do this first by holding your hands up in front of your face as far from you as they can be. Take your fingers and bring them closer to the fingers on your other hand so that each finger has the same finger on the other hand pointing towards it. This will cause your aura to draw the energy from the other hand towards it. While you might not see color, you may be able to sense the strands of energy that make up the aura, and this is a beginning. The trick here is to remain patient and not try to force anything. Relax and just gaze and be aware of any kinds of lines or very light or subtle eddies or currents in the air. Bring your hands slowly together and then apart and see if the energy lines, much like the iron filings around a magnet trick we all learned in school, creates these lines (think Ley line....the earth has them too!). See how the proximity of your hands to each other effects how the field looks. Try looking beyond your hands, a kind of gazing in their general area but without even trying to focus physically with your eyes (and let me know how it works for you!)
Environment, Lighting
For me, even though I have said that I don't think the eyes can actually SEE this energy, I tend to like certain kinds of lighting, so hang on as I appear to contradict everything I have thus far told you about eyesight and the aura! I like to be in rooms that have a good deal of diffuse lighting. For as much as I dislike fluorescent lighting, it has over the years provided me with the best lighting for viewing the aura. It also seems to me to react with the aura somehow, so my sense is not that it brightens things a certain way but somehow creates an energetic contrast perhaps. Perhaps its the flicker rate or the pulsations per second that make a tube like this what it is (which is the hard part for me when dealing with fluorescent!). Being in a rather large room, like a classroom, with very diffuse lighting is always preferred for me. Having said that, I have seen auras in darkened theater rooms. I tend to like to be some distance from my subjects. I have seen auras up real close. I like to see them from at least six feet away. I like to be able to see as much of the person as possible since the energy will shift and move very fast all over the person. "reading" all of these changes helps me to begin to get a feel for what is happening to the person both on a spirit, emotional and physical level. And this is what an aura is; the matrix of all aspect of us expressed in the dancing light that can be like a fast moving aurora never the same twice!
I will pass on to you that I suspect that there is something that can happen when we silence the inner dialog that goes on almost ceaselessly within. When I first began seeing auras, I did so vividly just after having run across the entire college campus where I was attending. I was focused on not showing up late for a class where the professor was a real stickler for being late. When I got there my heart was pounding and my body seemed to be perched in a state of physical readiness as well as some fatigue. I was completely absorbed with trying to get oxygen back into my body after my long run no worries other than just my body)! I felt as though even my EYES were even throbbing and felt almost as though this blood flow was affecting my vision!
I will add that while all of this might seem an odd way to begin seeing auras, I was talking with a friend about a year after this who had heard my account of first seeing auras and confided in me that a friend of his had very recently explained how she had run across campus only to find that she was seeing auras around everyone! I think my friend and I kind of pinched each other and wondered over how coincidental these two events were. Actually I think there is something to it. I think at the bottom of it is how we can open those channels of sensing with things that help us to shift our awareness. Part of this is learning to silence something within that will allow us to focus on something that we have heretofore not been aware of. I think that meditation can do it, but so can something as vigorous as a run across campus to get to class on time!
So consider these things and realize that as you do, everyone has this sensing inside of them because its the very life force that makes up who you are that gets expressed as an aura. Your energy is a field that can pick up on any other field on the planet! While some might say that you have to be careful and protect yourself when seeing auras, I think its easier and perhaps better to simply remind yourself that you will remain neutral. We live, after all, in a sea of energy. I tend to feel that when we begin seeing auras its because we are ready for that level of responsibility. By not letting these things bother us or soak up our focus, they drop away from us. Its all a matter of where we put our focus. We can build barriers but all of my protection has been those things that caused me to let go. Perhaps by envisioning those beings who are your higher vibrational guides helping to protect you that your smaller self does not need to worry about whether you are protected or not....because you always are. By remaining neutral energetically you are always best served. And if you start seeing auras, do let me know!
Seeing auras can put you in touch with your own inner sensing. It can also teach you a lot about energy, and also how different this energy plays through different people. It can help you learn to avoid certain people whose colors are off. People are very good at covering up things, and this can provide you with additional insight. It can also lead to your learning how our energy can be used in healing. Many healers have an intuitive awareness of the auric field if not the ability to sense it visually. We are really quite amazing creatures, with a kaleidoscopic color field constantly changing. Seeing or sensing them in this way can also lead to a greater appreciation and awe of how amazing our world is (and how some of it remains out of view for some but ready to be known by all). For myself, an understanding of energy is fueling a means toward describing a means by which we can activate higher portions of our consciousness through a process which I will begin describing in the book I am currently writing.
Good luck with your seeing and sensing!
