Often I am asked this question: “How can I get rid of this awful sensitivity?” The asker wants me to tell them how to do EFT to make their sensitivity go away so that she or he can just “be normal.”

A sensitive person has probably had a lifetime of being told or thinking about themselves that they are just too sensitive, cry too easily, take things in too deeply. “What is wrong with you?” they hear from others, or ask themselves. They are fed up with themselves, tired of feeling so victimized by the world all the time, tired of trying so hard to be perfect, tired of trying to save the world to make it a safe place for themselves to be.

Hearing this question always brings up two responses in me.

The first response is about how we use EFT. I believe that we way too often try to make EFT “beat up” what we don’t like about ourselves in the hope that what ever it is will go away. To me this is the wrong use of a very special tool. The best use of EFT is to open ourselves to the goodness that is already inside us, and allow it to bloom. That is the intention of the set-up phrase: I deeply and completely love and accept my self. No one ever decided to love and accept themselves more after a beating.

My other thought-direction flows into wondering what this sensitivity in us really is. It has long been my intuitive feeling that exceptional sensitivity is pointing towards a deeper capacity for being human than we have been aware of. What if our sensitivity can open access for us into deeper senses that go beyond seeing, hearing and touch into a more subtle realm? What if we have been given a gift that we haven’t been receiving?

I can tell you a personal story to illustrate this.

The other day at about midday I noticed a huge bumblebee in our kitchen window above the sink. Huge! Maybe it was a queen bee. Nearly two inches long. I have never seen such a large bee. I turned away to get a jar to catch and release her, but when I turned back, she had disappeared. Not to be seen or heard anywhere. I was baffled.

My looking away had taken only a few seconds. Where could she have gone? I looked and looked. I wanted to release her, and I really didn’t want to step on her, or discover that one of our dogs had engaged with her.

No luck. So I carried on with my day, deciding that she must have somehow flown back out the open door in those few seconds.

The next day, I had just finished my lunch and was settling in to work at the computer again, when I heard a loud buzzing near the sink. I thought of the bee. Again, I looked and looked, but no bee on the windows, walls, flying around. I even picked up the small lidded compost bin to carry outside, because it sounded like there might be a bee trapped inside.

But no—there she was—crawling out of the drain in the sink, from the cavity down where the incinerator is!! Wet, bedraggled, bemused, and very irritated, but miraculously alive! How did she survive virtually two days’ sink use??

Quickly I put a dishcloth near her and she climbed right up on it, so I took her out to the deck and deposited her, still on her cloth, in the big tomato pot.

Then I set about doing an energy work process that utilized my sensitive awareness in a new way.

I connected with my own sacred human-ness, sovereignty and Self Light. I sent appreciation to the “holding spaces” of the dishcloth and the tomato plant and the deck, even the depths of the sink. I invited a connection in myself with the earth, and with the spirit of bees.

I felt into what I wanted for this bee…I wanted the feeling of radiant vital energy moving in her body, if that was right for her, and the feeling of flying. I called on the sun.

The image of a butterfly came into my imagination to represent flying (part of my mind argued with the butterfly image, but I let it bee there…).  The Forest Pansy Tree growing next to the deck suggested itself as an ally too.

I focused on the bee, imagining myself bee-ing her, drawing the healing and vitalizing energy of the sun into her body, feeding her internally, drying her on the outside. I just held her in this blessing field, wishing her well. I tapped.

The bee began to groom herself, her front legs moving rhythmically back to front, from her midsection and up and over her face. She rested at intervals, sometimes leaving one leg up in the air above her head for a few minutes as she sat motionless. She turned herself to the sun in different directions.  It was fascinating to watch.

Suddenly, she was gone.

I spent some time looking into what a co-creative visitation from Bee might mean at this time in my life. I know that she brought her own gifts and blessing to me. And she gave me the opportunity to reconnect her with her own Bee-ing and life Presence.

But I also thought a lot about how I had utilized my sensitivity in a positive, generative way that made a difference for a tiny piece of the world.

I realized that my sensitivity was somehow giving me access to an inner awareness in myself that was definitely spiritual, sacred, and powerful in a lightly-held way.

I considered more deeply what I had done almost instinctively. I was wondering, what did it actually feel Iike to use the deeper subtle senses that my sensitivity gave me access to?  I sat with each image that had come to me, trying to open my awareness to the information being offered by these subtle senses.

The sun felt like the sun would—warm vital, energetic, expansive, powerful, inviting of growth, and willing.

The spirit of bees felt somehow like it was made out of the brightness of sun, fierce and mighty, a generative force. The feeling of what the sun would sound like if you could hear a piece of it. (Just a little synaesthesia to spice things up a bit!)

The soul of the earth felt like a large loving holding space, an embrace of Presence. It looked like a female being with a vast flowing garment that held all the living beings on the earth in its folds. The bee was there.

The butterfly was not actually a butterfly, but as an image it represented for me of a kind of light, lifting, dancing shape of flying, not the way an actual bee flies, but a sense that I felt the bee needed in order to imagine herself taking flight again.

The Forest Pansy tree was an interesting surprise. When we were landscaping our yard last summer, and picking out trees to plant, the landscape designer asked me to go to the tree farm to look at a Forest Pansy that she had selected. When I went, I saw that it was lovely, but to my astonishment this other tree just sort of reached out and enfolded me. So that was the one we planted in our garden near the deck….

This tree is beautiful and has a very wise, graceful air about it. It seemed to be offering a kind of radiance, maybe a kind of life force. But very subtle. I don’t quite have words to describe what its presence felt like. Cool, expansive, like hearing and feeling a “light breeze of light” through leaves. Also a kindly Presence of partnership.

Probably like you, as a sensitive person I am always going about thanking and blessing and loving and appreciating the world, talking to and “saving” bits of it as I can.

I realized that each of my images was a collection of impressions that was carrying information and meaning before my brain knew exactly how to translate it into words and understanding.  In a way, these subtle perceptions were registered in my whole body, not just in my mind.

Could I have been utilizing subtle sensory organs, beyond my physical sensory organs, that have their own unique way of delivering information?  This could be spiritual information that is every bit as valid as visions and voices.  I have never experienced visions and voices, but it seems second nature to me to have knowing through these subtle senses.  I connect them somehow to my sensitivity as well.

I am discovering how this subtle perception works for me. In order to translate it into words, I have to hold the multi-layered image in my mind, also in my body and heart, until words begin to come to me that carry the sense that the image does. The words come slowly, but I know when they “feel” right. And after I write them or speak them, I can feel the goodness of them in my body, a wonderful feeling.

The actual sensation contains everything as a wholeness, and I know its meaning right away without words, even though there is a much deeper richness there that continually opens to my exploration. Finding words helps to make what I know conscious to me.

Working with subtle perception is also clearly a way of being in the world that can create change. One of the characteristics of being “so sensitive” is feeling overwhelmed by the pain and drama that is always unfolding around us, and wanting to hide away from it to protect our sensitive spirit.

Learning how to stay present in an overwhelming situation, sensing what is needed, calling upon allies that can help, and then tapping for and radiating a calming, healing presence—this gives us a way to use our sensitivity to make a difference, without having to tough it out and soldier on like we usually do.

This was just one bee that I worked with.  But in a way she represented the world! I would guess that you have done many similar acts.

The next time you have an opportunity to make a difference, whether it is with a single bee or a difficult situation, try this: ground yourself, use your subtle senses to feel into what is needed, invite inner help. Feel their presence inside you, whether you can see them with your physical eyes or not (knowing that you have the right to refuse or deny any energy that doesn’t feel right). You become a portal through which helpful energy can flow.

Consider celebrating your sensitivity! EFT or other energy modality work will help you to ground yourself, and your sensitivity will help you to tune into your subtle senses.

Especially because I LOVE THAT I AM SO SENSITIVE … I am deepening and expanding my sensitivity in even more powerful wonderful ways.

Especially because I LOVE THAT I AM SO SENSITIVE… I hunger for deep connection with the world, I make creating and maintaining a sacred relationship with myself my first priority.

Especially because I LOVE THAT I AM SO SENSITIVE… I have a mission of bringing peace into the world, I intend to be a portal through which loving, helpful energy can flow.

Especially because I LOVE THAT I AM SO SENSITIVE…I am standing up for myself, paying attention to what I notice and honoring my sensitivity….I am expressing who I am with love and a light heart.

Especially because I LOVE THAT I AM SO SENSITIVE…I deeply and completely love and accept myself, and I appreciate and honor this world-changing soul quality that I have been so blessed with.

The world needs what I have to offer.  I am ready to be more of who I am!

As sensitive people we are learning how to navigate the world in greater wholeness: I deeply and completely love and accept my self.  Using our subtle perception helps us to contribute in positive ways to conditions and areas of the world that need help or healing.  This includes increasing our ability to affect and shape the future.  The deepest reason, though, is that working with the subtle aspect of the world enhances the wholeness of all incarnations, including that of the earth itself.

Let me know what you think of all this, and what your experience of subtle perception has been. I would really like to hear from you! We are doing spiritual research together.

With my love and blessings to you —

Rue