I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who had undergone training in Reiki, which is a method of attuning to energy fields and adjusting energy for physical and emotional healing. Depending on your personal experience and inclination, this method could sound strange or it could make total sense. But through first-hand experience it seems clear to me, without any need for reference to secondary knowledge, that we’re made up of quite a lot of “energy,” or maybe “sensation.”

If you become aware of your body right now, you might notice how much tingling sensation there is, tuning in to the feeling of your hand, or your foot, or your forehead. To me, we’re like balls of pulsing, buzzing, swirling, energy. And, with this experience of energy in mind, I think it’s interesting to consider the notion of “vibes,” of “good vibes” and “bad vibes.” What are these? I wonder if this notion of vibes could relate to actual vibrations of energy that are physically emanating from us.

Consider me, Charles, as a circle. And then imagine the circle sending out rays of a particular energy, or many types of energy, of emitting into my surrounding space the energy that I feel when I become aware of my hand, foot, or the core of my entire being. Even if we can’t see it or maybe haven’t developed the technology to see it yet, I imagine us all like little circles that are sending out these vibratory energy signals (see the illustration below).

And you might imagine two people entering each others’ space and experiencing an intermingling of their energies. I wonder if this is what is happening when we feel viscerally pulled toward or repelled away from someone else, if “digging someone’s vibe” is literally feeling a connection and an easiness of interaction between your basic energy and theirs. And then the opposite experience, of feeling tense or resistant to someone else’s presence, might be a manifestation of clashing with their vibration. We may be constantly pulled toward or repelled away by this vibratory gravitational force.

I also wonder if each of us has our own unique more surface level vibratory signal and then, on a deeper level, if there is a basic vibration of the universe that we can tap into. This is evocative of the notion of Aum or Om within Hinduism, theoretically the sound that created the universe and that is buzzing along at the heart of all creation. It may also be interesting to consider the relation on an etymological level between Aum and Amen, as they may both be representative of this basic universal vibration (“the Word of God”).

So what are your vibes like? How do you feel them? How do you send them out? How do you sense others’ vibes and the way they mesh (or don’t mesh) with yours? It might be a fun experiment to consider this in a nonverbal way in your interactions with others, and to consider the deeper fundamental Vibration that may be buzzing at your core, and that you could potentially feel directly if you just become quiet enough. To finish, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Ram Dass: ”The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”