A warm hello to Kate North of Energy Literacy School for this month's guest blog. Kate is an intuition and energy literacy coach who teaches how to intentionally engage with intuition. Welcome, Kate!
Manifesting has become a flashy, trendy word of late. But for those of us who regularly engage in creative pursuits, manifesting is nothing new. This term refers to the realization on the physical level of what started as inspiration. It’s also what we’re doing when we write a story, design a graphic, or choreograph a new dance. Did you know that when you’re flexing your creativity, you’re also engaging in energetic self care? The process of bringing energy from the universal level (where inspiration lives) down into the physical level helps to prime our energetic pump, improving our flow and removing blockages. It’s also a deeply satisfying, healing and nurturing process, as it allows us to feed our physical, mental and emotional selves with the high vibrational energy we bring through from the universal level.
Many of us who are naturally creative may not even be aware of the energy transformations we are driving when we engage in creative pursuits. So I’d like to break the process down for you to help you better understand the flow of creative energy and how it contributes to your overall well being.
Overview of Human Energy Levels
As humans, we are made of four main energy levels: physical, mental, emotional, and universal/spiritual. The nature of energy is the same on all these levels: energy carries information and provides the ability to do work or enact changes. But the frequency of energy held at each level is different, increasing in speed as you move from physical energy on up through universal energy. This means that the speed at which work can be accomplished also increases. Notice how much faster it is to think about what you want to cook for dinner than it is to go to the store, buy the ingredients, and cook the meal. That’s because mental energy moves faster than physical energy.
Physical Energy
Many people may be most familiar with our physical energy level, because it is what we engage with in a most obvious way in our daily lives. We are also hardwired to be aware of our physical senses and physical surroundings, as this is part of our survival systems as living animals. This level includes our bodies, our environments, our actions, our physical interactions with others, and our creations.
Mental Energy
From physical, we move into the non-physical energies. These are higher frequency energies that are not tied to mass or matter. However, they are every bit as important to our existence as our physical energies, and are deeply interconnected with each other. The energy held on the mental level includes our thoughts, our mindsets, our worries, our personal narratives, our plans, and the ideas we share with others and with groups we are part of.
Emotional Energy
Moving up again in frequency, we get to the emotional energy level. The high frequency of emotional energy makes it incredibly powerful. Just think about how much work and change our emotions can fuel. Negative emotions of anger, fear, jealousy and hatred have fueled every one of the conflicts human civilizations have suffered throughout our history. However, on the flip side, love can move mountains, and along with its partner emotions of compassion and kindness, positive emotions have the power to change lives and drive society-level evolution. Our feelings, our emotional reactions, our emotional connections with others, and the emotions held by our groups are all part of our emotional energy.
Universal Energy
The highest frequencies reside at the universal level. This is the realm of unconditional love, profound peace, and deep interconnectivity. Our highest self, our deepest sense of interconnection, our ideals, our guidance, our inner peace and our connection to something greater are part of our universal energy. When we feel a spark of inspiration, a glimpse of a bigger picture, or a sense of the ideal, it’s coming from this level. This is the ultimate source of our creativity.
Creative Energy Flow
The energies from all four levels are constantly flowing from one to another and influencing each other. Our thoughts impact our bodies and physical existence, just as physical experiences shape our thoughts. Our emotions and thoughts drive each other, and both are influenced by our physical experience and our connectedness to universal energy. Constant flow of energy is our natural and healthy state. We run into trouble when blockages or stagnation form.
Illness, injury, negative experience or fear can cause blockages on our physical, mental and emotional levels. Blockages may look like illness, exhaustion, or body aches on the physical level, mental fog or racing thoughts on the mental level, or feelings of anxiety, depression, or disconnect on the emotional level. And when we have a blockage, not only can the energy not flow smoothly through that level, but its flow through the whole system is hindered, including the ability to tap into universal energy.
A wonderful way to help remove blockages or keep them from forming is through engaging our creativity.
The act of creating something means bringing energy through all the levels - we start with inspiration on the universal level, see what feelings it evokes on the emotional level, think about how to accomplish it on the mental level, and then manifest it into creation on the physical level. This process essentially flushes our energetic system, and brings the nourishing high vibrational universal inspiration down through our other levels. As human beings living in physical bodies, the act of creating things on the physical level is an important part of our experience here. So we also feel a deep sense of accomplishment when we create because it is truly part of our purpose.
Becoming Aware of Your Creative Energy Transformations
Sometimes, we are so in tune with the inspiration we’re bringing through, that we can enter a flow state where the energy flows freely and without conscious effort or consideration from universal down through the other levels and into physical form. This is incredible when it happens, and you can marvel afterwards at just how clear a channel you became.
Other times (and perhaps for some of us most times), the process is not just an open and effortless flow. But these times give us an excellent opportunity to be aware and intentional about each part of the energy transformation process.
When you are doing something creative, I encourage you to notice the energetic process you’re experiencing. Notice the ways in which inspiration comes to you:
What are you doing?
What is the setting?
How are you feeling?
These will give you clues as to the best ways for you to connect with universal energy. Then once you’ve got that creative spark, notice the feelings that it stirs in you. See how those feelings give rise to mental plans around how you’ll bring this feeling you’re feeling into physical creation. And finally, applaud yourself as you take those final, sometimes challenging steps to bring that inspiration through the full process and manifest it into the physical world.
Notice how you feel on your four energy levels when you complete a project.
Do you feel more aligned?
More grounded and centered?
connected with something bigger than yourself?
That’s the power of bringing universal energy into our physical world, and this effect is amplified when you then share your art with others. But even if what you create is just for you, the self care benefits of engaging your creativity are definitely worth the effort.
Kate North is a Reiki master, Healing Touch practitioner, and certified birth doula. She is passionate about teaching people how energy literacy can help them to intentionally engage with their intuition in charting their best personal path. Kate has also worked in marketing for over a decade and loves flexing her creative muscles through writing and dancing with her three children.
You can connect with her on instagram @mskatenorth or on her website at