The Energy of a Place

I grew up in Southern New Jersey, United States, then I moved to New York City for nine years. Then I moved to Los Angeles for four years before becoming completely location independent and living in different places around the world six years ago. I traveled prior to being location independent, but during the last six years, it has been quite a lot of travel. I’ve noticed that each place I go, there’s a distinct feeling, or energy field, about it that’s unique to that place. Of course, nowhere feels the same – if it did, what would be the point of traveling to different places? But, I am referring to an energetic field that has a life to it, a vortex or collective bubble of energy with its specific frequencies, patterns, and influence on those who come in contact with it, and a living field that has been created by its history and the beings that live within it’s scope.

I think I first became aware of this when I was traveling to Amsterdam, Netherlands. I was on the plane and as we started to descend, I felt an affinity for it there, a place I’d never seen and even had misgivings about traveling to, since I was aware that it is a travel destination for people wanting to partake in the red light district and “coffee shops,” which didn’t feel good to me. Sitting by the window, I looked out and couldn’t even really see anything but I just loved how the place felt to me. It was separate from the excitement of going somewhere new or traveling in general, it was a distinct feeling of enjoying the energy emanating from the actual place, and it confused me because I hadn’t even landed there yet!

I have since become more and more aware that I am feeling into the place’s energy field since then. I’ll arrive somewhere and it feels like when you step into the line of a fan’s blown air, it’s so much energetic information coming at me and I feel like I can’t explain it to anyone because they will think I’m crazy.

When I was in a taxi driving from the Vancouver airport over the bridge into downtown, the whole city looked like it was sparkling to me and I felt it was my “Emerald City.” Sometimes it’s an aspect of the place connecting with a certain part of me, like telling me I’m supposed to be there at that time and there is a resonance, but then it can also change and tell me other things about it. It’s a completely living entity.

So many people said that I should go to Bali, for years, and I never felt called to go there until about a year ago, I started to feel like, “it was time.” Honestly, that’s what was said to me, “it’s time.” I didn’t even really want to go, I sensed that the common chatter and hype about Bali would not be what I experience there, and I was resistant. But, again, I kept feeling like, “it’s time.” And so, I slowly made my way here.

When I arrived, it didn’t feel so great. I felt so conflicted, with such an incredibly deep, sacred, absolute love for the island land itself, but an absolute sorrow for what’s happening here. When the lovely driver pulled out of the airport onto the main road heading to Ubud, I felt the road crying and felt suffocated and sad. I honestly didn’t know how to process that I felt like the road was literally crying.

I feel like if I say what I’m actually experiencing when I encounter places (and people), I will sound crazy.

I’ve spent four months here now and my initial experience of the energy of this place has become more clear. I understand now why I feel this way here.

Places are alive and when we enter the field of them, we interact with them, impacting them and being impacted by them. We also can have this interaction from afar.

A couple years ago, for the second time, I bought the book The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes and was working my way through it when I came upon a section that talked about this very thing, the energy field of places (and also objects, people, nature, etc.) I started highlighting it like crazy, as it was the first time someone described it how I experience it.

Now I know that this is happening and it’s been a learning experience for me, a fascinating one.