Chapter 2: Human beings and the I-force

I-force - resistance to the life force 

Most systems of medicine from around the world use the life force in their diagnoses and interventions. Its flow and power are significant to the health of the patient. When a person has an unimpeded life force other people can feel it from a distance. Those people light up the room. When it is impeded and restricted you can feel its absence also. Those people are generally ill and can drain your energy and even the atmosphere in the room. If you learn to tune into this feeling of life force, you can know when and where your life force encounters restrictions and barriers. This is crucial to an understanding of health.

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There is a part in everyone that when they are told they can’t do something they say ‘Oh yes I can’. That is human nature. This contrary part exists in every age of a person. It exists in a child who is told they can’t have sweets in the supermarket and has a tantrum or steals them, or a slightly older child who is told to go to bed and refuses, or a teenager who skips a day of school, or a student who refuses to take an exam, or a worker who refuses to follow their manager’s instructions, or a worker who stands up for their rights, or a golfer who smashes their club in frustration or a pensioner who refuses to take their medicine. Animals do this as well but human beings seem to have made an art out of it. 

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I call this contrary energy the I-force. Pioneers of all kinds have this energy, they do something they are told can’t be done or they see something that they don’t like and want it changed. Life force is in there but also the stubborn energy that opposes it and using those two forces in tandem is what gives that person the power to do what they do. Together these two forces are the energy behind everything that has ever been created by a human being. From the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, from early cave art to present-day graffiti, all have been created by a combination of the life force and I-force.

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These two forces together have created buildings, books, music, films, art, science but also disputes, war, illness and depression. That’s a pretty powerful couple of forces. Within us, the life force and the I-force interact with each other and outwardly react with the world. They become our personalities. And when the I-force gets a little too strong and overcomes the life force, and stays fixed, we get told by our body in the form of symptoms. Our ego and personality are made up of a combination of I-forces.

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Life force and I-force together are also the energy behind us doing things that we know are harmful to us, like smoking, drinking, overeating and even having affairs. It’s not that those activities are inherently bad; it’s that they exist because of our I-force.

As the I-force gets stronger and more dominant, it creates more health issues for us. Our mind/body knows that a strong, fixed I-force is a problem and sends us messages in the form of symptoms to tell us. Our response, Western medicine’s response, is generally to remove the body’s ability to produce that symptom through medication. Stopping the message allows us to continue with the behaviour that created the symptom which in turn necessitates more medicine.

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This I-force’s power comes from its ability to resist the life force. In the same way that the power of a river may be small but when there is resistance to its flow created by a dam, the energy that builds up behind the dam can be massive. Without the life force, there would be no I-force.

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Each fixed part of the I-force will eventually create a symptom. The symptom is the mind/body’s attempt to show its owner where there is a problem The symptom is not the problem, it is the messenger. If the problem is resolved the symptoms go away.

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The life force is infinite, at least I have never reached the end of it, just like the river keeps flowing. The I-force, on the other hand, is finite - created in part by our experiences and is like the finite dam.

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So, the life force in conjunction with the I-force has created everything man-made on this planet, including illnesses and diseases.

 

 

Feeling the life force in another person

People instinctively know that touch is an intimate form of connection, one that can reach their essence. This is why you only allow certain people to touch you. When you touch someone who is re-experiencing a trauma you are saying ‘I am here’ and they can hear you - but touch is the way you are communicating, not language. When you see your child involved in a potentially traumatic incident the impulse is to hold them. What you are doing is connecting two life forces. When two life forces connect they join and the less experienced person can feel comforted from the more experienced. Parents know this, people know this, instinctively.

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The case of the moving shoulder

Trauma isn’t just a psychological phenomenon. I remember in 1995 when for the first time I put my hand on a person’s traumatised shoulder. The person concerned had been in a road traffic accident a few years before and he told me the pain had come from the seat belt during the collision. Of course, there was a bit more to it than that, in that the injuries incurred by other people involved in the accident were serious. Anyway, when I connected to his life force at his shoulder movements started occurring. In retrospect I realised the movements were exactly the movements his shoulder went through at the time of the accident. We were both sufficiently interested to see where it all went and the movements continued and became painful. I asked if he could cope with the pain and he said he could, so we continued.

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The movements continued. I felt like I could feel the whole accident slowly unfolding and resolving. It was more than just physical movements I could feel - there were locked-in emotional issues, from the trauma, that I could feel surfacing too. How do I know that I wasn’t making it up? Ultimately, there is no objective proof, but I know myself. I know that the feelings I was going through weren’t mine. I didn’t have experience of the accident and they were not emotional problems, they were distortions in the flow of life force that showed up in the patient as unresolved emotional activity. In my case, I was more aware of them as just distortions in the flow of life force. I knew the feelings I experienced did not belong to me but belonged to the patient. This made them easier to bear and I could follow them to a still point and not try to escape from them.

 

Practising the Boulderstone Technique

Whenever you get close to another human being there is a charge. If you get too close by ‘invading their space’ that charge increases. Most people can feel when someone gets too close to them. When I practise the Boulderstone Technique I hold someone’s head in my hands and am open to what they feel. Provided I have dropped feelings of power or fear, I can feel, or sense, their life force.  That’s what I feel. It goes beyond plain physical touch. At this level it isn’t sexual in any way, there is no power issue, it is a connection that is profound and real and relaxed. There is no judgement because if I do start judging I lose my ‘stillness’ and the connection. When I connect completely with another human being my awareness of the whole world drops away, time disappears and thinking slows. It is possible to have this connection with a ‘patient’, a pet, a child, a lover or anyone but it only happens if you don’t judge and your mind is ’still’.

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Once connected the world of the ‘patient’ opens up. This isn’t mind reading but something I can feel. If there is no problem the life force remains ‘clear’, capable of moving in any direction without restriction and there isn't anything to feel, no restricted flow of life force, no I-force. However, that isn’t how patients come to me. Patients come to me when they need help, so this isn’t what I generally feel. When people come to see me they tend to have compartmentalised their problems. People hide away their traumas and things that stress them so they can get on with their day but if they bring an issue to the fore, when I’m connected to them in the way just described, that difficulty, their problem, is felt as a tension. Although the connected feeling is physical there is also an emotional component to it that comes in the form of empathy. It’s difficult to describe because it’s something that is felt or sensed. What I say about what I feel is that I can feel the distortion in the flow of life force around their problems when I connect with them. In moments of difficulty, ie. when they are focussed on something unresolved, the life force flow changes from being ‘clear’ and relaxed to being ‘distorted’. (More in Chapter 3.)

 

Do it now

If you dealt with your problems as they arose you would have no restrictions in the flow of life force. But dealing with problems as they arise isn’t always possible. Sometimes problems appear too big and you need to deal with them slowly, at a later date, in a safer place or in smaller pieces. When this happens you can distort the flow of life force so that you can avoid dealing with the problem head-on. That might seem clever but if you don’t deal with the problem the distortion in the flow of life force remains and symptoms of some kind always result. The symptoms are there to tell you there is still a distortion that needs to be sorted. Generally, most people think that once their problem has been ‘put away’ that is the end of it. Problems that have been ‘put away’ but are not properly dealt with will always eventually lead to symptoms and pain. Not dealing with problems is a major cause of our diseases and illnesses.

 

The case of Laura

Laura couldn’t get to peace and the still point. Somehow she had confused the still point with dying and quite sensibly wanted to avoid it. The problem with this situation was that her problems were building up. Rather than clearing anything she put them in a mental bucket and hid them away. As time went by she had to become sharper and sharper, using her I-force to keep any reminders of her problems at bay. Her I-force had a big job to do and the size of the job was increasing every time she didn’t deal with a problem. She knew when something was going to remind her of an unresolved issue and smartly brought up her I-force. She was verbally and emotionally quick. She had a few issues like claustrophobia (her bucket was filling up) and headaches (it was all a mess). But when menopause turned up her world was thrown upside down and she lost the ability to recognise when an issue was about to surface. Her secure world fell apart, her anxiety increased, she became jittery and had difficulty sleeping. She was put on hormone replacement therapy by her doctor which initially helped (but didn’t solve the problem). With my help, I taught Laura to move to a still point and relax the use of the I-force. Once she got the idea, she could do it for herself. She learnt how she previously had used the I-force to avoid problems and now could get to a still point. She fully recovered and got control back in her life.

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Our body always knows

Every illness has a cause and that cause is a distortion in the flow of life force. I am not talking about bacteria and viruses. Bacteria or viruses might be present but there is always something that happens before the bugs come along. (More on this in Chapter 5.) 

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If you have a problem that produces symptoms, that you weren’t born with, then there was a time when the problem wasn’t there. That problem has a cause because there isn't anything in the world that happens for no reason, and that includes illnesses. Most illnesses are self-limiting and disappear on their own without medication if left alone and there are no underlying problems. Headaches, a cold, influenza, diarrhoea and others usually fall into this category. Some illnesses may become chronic (lasting more than six months) but even so, there is still a cause. The problem didn’t just arise out of nowhere. What I am saying might seem obvious but I have heard it reported many times by patients that their doctors told them that they are just ‘unlucky’ with their diagnosis, that ‘It could have happened to anyone’. That is not the case; you might not know how it occurred but every illness that has ever occurred has happened for a reason. and that reason always comes down to a distortion in the flow of life force.

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It is empowering to understand that all symptoms and diseases are there as a reaction to a distortion in the flow of life force. Knowing this means you can do something about it, even before there are symptoms. All serious illnesses, including cancer, start out as a small distortion and only grow if ignored or suppressed. These small distortions may be felt by the patient or a practitioner. 

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When I’m treating a patient, if they connect with any problem of theirs, I can feel the generated distortion in the flow of life force. This can be felt before the patient even voices the problem. It doesn’t matter if that problem is physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, it can be felt. If it is the cause of their illness we can go into it and resolve it. I can ask the patient questions around the problem and they don’t even need to answer. I can feel their response, often one that exists before thinking kicks in and we can work with that.

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When the life force runs ‘clear’ the person is at peace, in a still point. Whenever they connect with an inner contradiction they move from ‘clear’ to ‘restricted’, from still point to being in the dance, and that is palpable. 

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And so what I am feeling when I am connected to another person, and feel a distortion in the flow of life force, is the cause of their symptoms. Human beings have this special gift of putting off dealing with problems but the price is pain and restriction, either physical, mental/emotional or spiritual. It is the ego, powered by the I-force, that causes this pain and restriction. 

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If a problem hasn’t been fully processed, whenever the person gets close to that problem and it is triggered (through seeing a film, reading a book or perhaps hearing a story that somehow reflects their own problem) a backing away or restriction occurs. The person involved may cringe, go quiet, change the subject or run away. This is what I am calling distortion in the flow of life force. When doing something they know they shouldn’t, they create a distortion. They resist the thing that distorted the flow of life force and they may even try to deny it and say they are fine when they aren't. But their body knows and reacts truthfully, even if their ego doesn’t want to, and that feeling is palpable. And because it is palpable it can be treated.

 

Ego, persona and personality

Who are you? This is the age-old question that seekers from all over the world have sought to answer.

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We all have a personality that is made up of different personas. Our different personas are created, by our ego, to help us communicate with different people. We may be a father, or a worker, or a boss, or a brother or a bossy brother and all of these require different personas. The different personas are comprised of the life force and I-force and contain our values, things we are attracted to and repulsed by. The more consistent we are across our personas the happier we will be and the less effort we need to keep it all together. Sometimes these personas will be at odds with one another. For example, you may behave differently towards your children than you might towards your friends. In that difference, there can lie all sorts of conflicts which you have to be easy with and you have to be easy moving between them. If you aren’t easy moving between them one will bleed into another causing you to seem hypocritical. For example, if you ignore your brother hurting himself with drinking and smoking but you tell your husband to stop, eventually, friction will arise.

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We all have a physical body that feels physical sensations and a personality that has thoughts and emotions. Like everyone, I think some nice things, such as: ’She looks good wearing that’, and some nasty things, such as: ‘What a hideous dress’. I have nice feelings: love, and nasty feelings: jealousy, and I have physical feelings that are comforting, and physical feelings that are uncomfortable, but the one thing I know about all of these things is that they are unique and together they add up to me. All these thoughts, feelings and physical sensations are created by my human ability to resist the life force. So, in one sense, I can say I am made up of the life force and the resistance to the life force, ie the I-force. 

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The life force, working together and in opposition to the I-force, pulling and pushing around my thoughts, feelings and physical body, defines ‘me’, my personality. The personality is dynamic and continually changing. It is unique. There might be a bit more to me in the form of desires and aversions, loves and hates but still, these are fundamentally made up of the life force and I-force in conjunction with my body, feelings and thoughts.

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The ego is the part that sees a need for and creates the personas. The personas together make our personality.

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There is no problem with an ego while it remains flexible.

 

How we get ill

The ego creates personas by employing the I-force to temporarily restrict the life force. This can appear useful to the ego for many reasons. An ego likes to get what it wants. A large, fixed ego will get what it wants too often. We all know the larger-than-life characters who have large egos but there is a downside to having a large, fixed ego. When this ego starts to believe it is more important than everyone else and doesn’t know how to be humble, problems will arise. The ego can stay humble and be flexible by accessing a still point. When the ego first becomes fixed the restriction to the life force may appear strong but later, through lack of flexibility, it will become brittle and crumble. This happens to everything that has a life force and doesn’t access its still point, from the Roman Empire to any dictator you can mention. 

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In the individual, a strong ego will be helpful at the beginning but later, without flexibility, it will cause conflicts and produce symptoms. The symptoms are to show the ego where it needs to change. 

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These symptoms can be anything from cancer to anger, compulsions, superstitions or even depression, self-harm and phobias. And they are only there because they are trying to show you where the problem is. Cover over the symptoms and they get worse in order to show you the way. 

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The purpose of the ego is to get something done but at its core is a still point and emptiness. The ego doesn’t want to know this. The ego equates emptiness with nothingness and death but the ego doesn’t want this to be true. If it was true then that would mean its life is pointless. And so it tries to cover this emptiness by making noise and distracting its owner with a dance. What it doesn’t know is that emptiness and nothingness are different (see chapter 6).

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The ego fears death. If you say you don’t fear death you are either lying or understand that ultimately the ego is unimportant. Sometimes a person who believes the ego is everything becomes aware that there is only emptiness at its core and then wonders what the point in anything is and falls into depression, has a mid-life crisis or even commits suicide. You can sometimes see this happening to celebrities who need a big ego to do their ‘job’ but know they have no substance and self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs to distract them from this tricky dilemma. 

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Another solution, that some celebrities have found, is to remain humble and realise that the ego is essentially selfish and only looks out for itself. Countering the ego with humbleness, the opposite of what it wants, can work if they have friends and family they trust. You hear those celebrities say ‘my family and friends keep my feet on the ground’. Yet another solution is to ‘find God’. Counteracting the ego belief that it is a god with a ‘real’ God, outside of you, can be a solution for some.

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Having success in life often develops a big ego which can be difficult to maintain and not always worth the effort. Meditation, or dealing with the things that come up when it approaches emptiness, is another solution to an overdeveloped ego (see chapter 10 on staying healthy).

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Becoming a person with a fixed ego means that you will eventually get ill. You have to, that is a consequence of creating an ego by distorting the flow of life force. However, when you can find the still point within yourself, which means letting go of your fixed ego, you will be healthy again. Most of us need help.

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The story and the dance are constructions of the ego

Whenever people come to see me with a problem they usually want to talk about what has happened to them. But what they say has happened to them is never the whole truth even though they rarely lie. When we see the complete truth, from every angle, all problems go away. I have seen this time and time again. It doesn’t matter what has happened to a person, it is always possible to live in peace. But the dance (meaning the illusions of the ego) is still the dance and, for some, the dance seems more attractive than a still point. Something I would like to tell everyone is that the dance is temporary but the still point is forever. In other words, many people know they have to address something but put it off. Instead, they suffer, headaches perhaps. But they know if they addressed the cause of the headache, while it might appear to be more difficult than having the headache, they would only have to do it once. Not addressing the cause could give monthly headaches for years. Still, they choose regular headaches over a perceived more difficult resolution.

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The story that has brought anyone to the point of illness isn’t the problem. Getting justice changes little. Being heard changes little.  As has been said by many people, ‘There’s your truth, there’s my truth and there’s what happened’, meaning we all see things from our ego’s perspective and it isn’t complete. When we see something with no ego involvement there is no judgment and no blame. From a healing perspective the dance isn’t the whole story because it doesn't help solve the issues that arise. From a human point of view the dance or story about what has happened might be interesting to hear but relating it completely can take a long time, is often very difficult and, even when heard by another person, doesn’t solve much. This is partly due to the inadequacy of language to correctly describe the distortion. 

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The story is what counsellors often want you to relate and they believe this is the route to healing. But the real problem is the distortion in the flow of life force and the inability to reach the still point. Relating the story is really dancing around the problem because the story is a translation into words of this distortion. Unpacking the story to clear the problem can take years and is incredibly inefficient.

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The story and the dance, however, do give access to where the distortion is, and therefore it gives access to the real problem. For example, the story might be that somebody was involved in a road traffic accident that involved fatalities and where they had hit their head and weeks afterwards realised their memory wasn't functioning as it was before. The problem may well be physical (where they hit their head), but it is more likely that the people that died in the road traffic accident have had more of an impact on the person than they realised, and in trying to forget the whole incident their mind is obligingly allowing them to forget everything else as well. 

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When I work on the distortion in the flow of life force, not the story, the problems clear in the most efficient way possible, in exactly the right order, the order the patient has stored them in, and I don't need to hear the story because I follow the flow of life force. (More on how in Chapter 3.) Not having to relate their story in great depth can be liberating to a patient - I merely require them to think about the worst aspect of their story and that is enough to give me access to the whole distortion and also the solution and still point.

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© John Boulderstone 2024

www.healingwithlifeforce.com

www.boulderstonetechnique.com

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