What are the pathways to seeing energy?

I think the best way to approach this is in a practical way.  Learning to see 'energy' is a function of both personal energy and learning to enlarge your worldview.

But there are methods that can be used to begin the process of creating an awareness of energies you are not normally cognizant of in the everyday world.

These methods can be divided into several different categories according to the larger over all areas of human energy they align with.  For purely mental reasons, we can divide human energy into body energy, mental or reasoning energy, dream energy and emotional energy.  We refer to each of these as energy bodies.  This is accurate for purposes of a starting point in order to reference your own experience learning to 'see', but remember, it is an artificial construct.  We can learn to see energy through any or all of these 'bodies' at any given time.  Each records, or reacts differently to what is being viewed, creating a three-dimensional construct to our vision.  We are worming our way into a place where our explanations to ourselves can be tolerated by our minds.  After we have lost them, we change the definitions.

Looking through the emotional body, or rather, connecting with other energies that way, provides a particular viewpoint from which to gauge what we're seeing.  Where we go wrong, if you want to call it that, is by not having the clarity of perception to allow us to clearly understand which one we are reacting with at any given moment.  You look at a situation, a person, or a thing, and you believe you are seeing it through purely the reasoning body, but in reality you are usually seeing it through a mixture of both which is very much like standing on a shifting sand dune.  You are never really sure or clear about what exactly is there.  Things line up this way: if you are detached, the emotional body becomes a clear tool for seeing; if you are well ordered in logic, you see clearly through reason; if you are capable of setting dreaming intent you can see clearly through the dreaming body, etc.  We are each prone to use one more than the others, but we are all, normally anyway, a mixture of all of them.  The goal of course is to combine all of them together into a total vision.  I've just broken it down this way to make it easier to grasp.  The best way is to work with one at a time.  The two most difficult bodies in this example are the reasoning and emotional bodies.  Both are difficult to deal with in terms of clarity, both are difficult to control.  Your brain is trying to kill you, and your emotional body is trying to make you happy about it.  By learning detachment, we can stand apart from the emotional body and see clearly.

So how do we train each of these 'bodies' in turn? Obviously, we don't want to work purely within ourselves, because reason will step in and tell us how wonderful we are. If you work totally within yourself in terms of 'seeing' energy you won't have any point of reference. The mental body must be trained in what it is really good at: logic, deduction, but with clarity and with freedom from the other bodies which would seek to influence it. So methods vary and are really an aspect of experience as you go. But there are some starting points that are useful. I think it's important to have a framework in the beginning instead of just saying go do it. As we learn to separate each of the energy bodies and recognize them, we begin to be able to direct them more readily. This is why I say to never accept the first explanation that pops into your head, keep moving and digging. We are layer upon layer of both experience and reaction; it takes time to dig through it.

But let's move on to learning to use the emotional body.  All of us have some ability to empathize with other people.  By learning detachment in emotional seeing, we can move to the depths of another person's emotions and 'see' what is working there that affects both their world view and their health.  You learn to do this by looking at other people.  No judgment, no reasoning, just plain old 'feeling' what they feel.  You have to be able to take on their pain and feel it completely as if it were your own, but you must also be detached from your own emotional connections in that moment or it will be more than you can take.  Start by being non-judgmental.  Go sit in a shopping mall, a restaurant, a park and 'watch' people.  Look at someone walking by; let your mind go blank, think about baseball or something.  Then from the center of your body, about the navel, project outward like you were throwing a lasso at them.  Let the images start to flow through your head; the emotions will follow, like little threads spun by flying spiders.  Allow yourself to relax into those and feel.  Intentionally pull back.  Then smoke if you got 'em...