Patients often ask me what they can do to protect themselves from other people's negative energy.

While there are many different methods for cleaning and clearing your field, the best method is to begin to understand yourself better. A great musician can keep pace and play a melody no matter what the musician next to her is doing. The music is such a part of her being that she is not disrupted. She is free to express herself because she does not perceive her freedom as threatened. Without a threat, there is no need to act against anyone. And, finding freedom within herself, she feels no need to attach to another's reality. She can simply continue to freely express herself and project her own reality. Her action is for herself and not against another.

This is a crucial point: To counter another person’s energy is to be in attachment or aversion to his or her projection. To try to compel another to change that projected reality is to try to take power over him or her. And, when power is taken, two people become enmeshed together and both forfeit their freedom. While the prisoner may be contained behind the projected bars of another's reality, the guard has given up her freedom by ensuring that the prisoner remains behind bars. 

If you feel bothered by another, it's best to focus on connecting to yourself. The mantra for this is your name. The more you can connect to your senses and gain awareness of the information in the present reality, the more the static projected reality of another will fade. There are parts of a river which get cut off from the main source of water. They pool and, in their static state, become murkier and cloudier the longer they are cut off from the life of the ever moving and changing river. Return to you, return to your senses, return to the river.

Not everyone respects others’ freedom, and there are many people who try to take energetically, whether consciously or unconsciously. Ultimately, that is not your problem. Your only concern is how to remain free for yourself.

The more you begin to recognize yourself and regain your reality, the more you can recognize others as separate. Protection begins to become less important when you can see that there is a shape and boundary to things. If you can find your limits and recognize that it is yours and only yours, then you can begin to see it as but one—and not “the one”—reality. And you can begin to identify the shapes of other people’s. So, if someone has “bad energy,” you can recognize it as part of his or her reality, which is a reality within a larger reality. And not one single person is the absolute holder of that truth.

Little by little, by connecting to yourself, existing for yourself and acting and projecting for yourself, you will begin to own and take responsibility for yourself. From this experience comes wisdom, and wisdom and experience are the best protection from people with negative energy.