obtaining permission to serve

About a week ago, I was praying about what to blog about, and the word came into my mind: permission. I started working on this post. Then, shortly afterward, I read a post on Facebook by a woman who had received unwanted energy work without her permission. I knew this post was important! Permission matters!

First, a quick story. Once upon a time I had a friend who loved service... without ever checking to see if what she was doing was actually service.

Once she worked really hard to fix my garden fence, which had been disassembled. Unbeknownst to her, I had intentionally disassembled my garden fence because I needed to amend the garden soil. I'm sure it was a lot of work for her to put my garden fence back together again--but she hadn't asked permission to "fix" it and she had no idea that her "service" had actually created a significant problem for me, and I had to undo all the damage she had done by "fixing" my fence that wasn't actually broken.

This friend did stuff like that all time--martyring herself for "service" that was actually either useless or even counterproductive. Literally, the only helpful service she engaged in was the stuff that was specifically, verbally requested. When we "serve" others without their knowledge or permission, it is not real service.

Permission. Always. Matters.

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What is permission?

Seems obvious what permission is, right? Well, I'm going to cover it anyway. Permission is consent, authorization. The idea that you don't do something unless it has been authorized by the proper authority.

In the real world, there are lots of examples of a need for authorization. Authorization is needed when a person is doing something involving someone else's property.

If you're renting, you probably shouldn't drill a bunch of holes in the ceiling without obtaining your landlord's permission first--that would be a violation of the landlord's authority over his own home. If you're visiting a friend's house and they say to not let your kids stand on the furniture, and then you let your kids stand on the furniture, you are ignoring the principle of obtaining permission for the things you do to other people's property--even and even especially if the homeowning friend is not home at the time. The authority still stands even if the person owning the property isn't there to guard it. If you're at a museum and the museum says "don't climb on the exhibits," that is hopefully a clear sign that allowing someone in your party to climb all over the exhibits is violating the museum's authority over museum property. All of those are examples of violating a person or entity's authority over their own property.

Permission comes into play when personal property is involved: be it a house, furniture, land, or a building. But the most important personal "property" is your own body.

Obtaining permission to work

As an energy worker, you must obtain permission before doing any work on anyone. It's bad enough to have people violate your authority or consent with something like your house or furniture, but when it comes to the body and subconscious mind, that is magnified many times. Violating someone's agency is a big deal.

It should be obvious that permission is necessary out of respect for others, and out of honor for the law of agency. Everyone has agency and it is up to them to use it and up to everyone else to respect it--at least when it comes to using their agency for their own selves. Obviously, if a person uses their agency to violate another person's body or personal property, there should be consequences. As they say, we're free to choose our choices, but not free to choose our consequences.

Trespassing agency

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When an energy worker does work without the person's consent or knowledge, that is a violation of agency and sets us squarely alongside the adversary, whose big plan for all of us was basically just that: to fix us without our consent. Being on Christ's side means being like Christ: He has all power to heal, but does He? Only when people choose it. When people come to Him, willing to work, willing to change, wanting to work and change. We've all seen those pictures of Christ knocking on the door with no handle. The idea is that Christ can knock, but the homeowner has to let Him in.


It's the same thing with energy work. It can feel pretty cool to be able to do things like release trapped emotions or clear kidney stones or whatever. When you see someone struggling and know that you could fix things with one half hour session of emotion clearing or healing touch something, it's really tempting to just do that, especially since it can be done remotely. But it is wrong to do without their consent. Obtaining permission is absolutely crucial.

Agency is the defining feature of our life journeys. It is so important to obtain permission for the things we do--both temporally, when we interact with other people's belongings and property, and etherically or aurically when we deal with things of an energetic nature.

Obtaining permission

How do we obtain permission?

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Obviously, we can ask for it! Explain your thoughts to the person's conscious present self and ask for permission to help. If the answer is no, the answer is no.

Muscle testing to see if you have a higher self's permission to do the work, to me, is typically not enough. The conscious mind needs to be involved.

Sometimes a "higher self" will come and ask for help; in that case I feel it is appropriate to act exactly in the capacity requested by said higher self; going further than that is a no-no. This is different from muscle testing on if you have permission from a higher self. You are not seeking to avoid the need for conscious permission in well-meant but perhaps unnecessary or harmful "service"; you are being specifically requested for a specific bit of work.

Even if people have given verbal or written conscious permission for energy work to be done on them, it is always important to muscle test for the subconscious mind's permission as well. Sometimes a person will consciously give permission, but their subconscious mind will deny it. In those instances, it is up to you to follow the Spirit and intuition to figure out which permission trumps which.

Permission is necessary from both the conscious and subconscious mind.

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Permission from those who cannot speak

Obviously you need parental permission to do work on minors--but once children are capable of understanding the work, it is appropriate to ask for their permission too. In the case of very small children, if the mother's permission has been obtained, that can be enough. Again, you still should muscle test on if you have the child's permission to do the work, even if you have acquired parental permission. A person's personal agency trumps all.

Blanket permissions

Sometimes energy workers have clients who just say, "You have permission to do anything you want!! JUST FIX ME!!"

That's a nice idea, but not really. First off, it violates the principle of agency, because it involves the client actually giving away their agency to the practitioner, and that is not appropriate.

Second, acting on that kind of "permission" can actually prevent real healing from going through. A lot of times, the subconscious mind won't heal all the way until the conscious mind realizes it's been healed. Every change to the subconscious mind needs to be ratified by the conscious mind. It's not just that leaving out that part is a violation of agency; it's that the work won't even be effective. It is crucial that the person know and understand exactly what is happening, because the acknowledgement of the conscious mind is a very, very big deal.

For energy workers who are more advanced and more capable of recognizing what is going on in their subconscious minds, blanket permissions may be acceptable--when working on each other, as directed and influenced by higher selves of those involved, etc. But for run-of-the-mill energy work on people who can't always reliably feel it when someone is working on them, it's important to seek permission every time.

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Good intentions are not enough. It is so important to remember that our ideas of service are not infallible. Like my friend who "served" me by "fixing" my garden fence, we can be so caught up in ideas of service that we forget to even bother with asking questions like--will this actually even help them?

Not all "broken" fences are actually broken.
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Am I sure that what I am doing is actually service?

Sometimes things that seem broken are not. Like my garden fence. Sometimes people need particular struggles that we want to "fix" for them. My brother was very, very sick before he died, but his struggles were not something that energy medicine--or any medicine--was meant to "fix." He looked broken and in many ways he was broken, but he was living his life journey as it was meant for him to live. When we "serve" people without permission, we are indulging in self-righteous pride. And that is wrong. We do not know better than them. Each person is the authority over their own life. It is wrong to step in, even with good intentions, to "fix" something without their permission just because we assume we understand what the problem is.

Conclusion

It is always wrong to do work on--to "serve"--someone without their permission. Well-intentioned service is not a substitute for informed consent. Obtaining permission and acting within the boundaries of authority are critical ways that we honor each other's agency.