Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self

The Presence of the demon keeps the chakra from doing its job, but that challenge also forces us to bring more awareness to that job, so eventually we can do it better.

The mighty oak was once a little nut that stood its ground.

Devotion is a spiritual act of egoless surrender. When the Self blinds the spirit too tightly, then devotion expands the blinding by lifting us beyond ourselves. We get the powerful lesson that the Self survives even without constant attention.

We either get success or lessons. If we learn our lessons successfully, we get both.

Our culture, so proud of its mind-over-matter philosophy, cuts us off from our bodily experience and from the earth itself. In this severance, our sexuality is negated, our senses assaulted, our environment abused, and our power manipulated. Our ground is our form, and without it we lose our individuality.

If it is true that you are what you eat, it may just as accurately be said that you are what you listen to. STEVEN HALPERN

How would you behave if you knew you were a God or Goddess? How would you treat yourself, how would you treat others? What kind of consciousness would you hold about your smallest actions if you knew their effects influenced the rest of creation? If your awakenings could bring joy to the multitudes? What kind of mindfulness would that inspire?

All life is rhythmic. From the rise and fall of the sun to the rise and fall of our breath, from the beating of our heart to the infinite vibrations of atomic particles within our cells, we are a mass of vibrations that miraculously resonate together as a single system. In fact, our ability to function as a unified whole depends upon the coherent resonance of the many subtle vibrations within us. The task of the fifth chakra is to enhance this resonance.

Many spiritual disciplines, especially those oriented toward ascendance, advise us to give up the self, to surrender all to a master, guru, or a particular concept of God. While it is important to give up attachments to the lower egos, what is really called for is to become one with the divine. There is no we without an I. To become one with the divine is not to abandon the Self (as archetype of wholeness) but to realize that divine consciousness of who that Self really is.

how can we know all the possibilities in an infinite universe?

Shame-bound people honor their thoughts more than their instincts, especially the internal voices that constantly tell them how worthless and inferior they are. Spontaneity is limited by internal scrutiny, which binds and disempowers the will.

Lose your mind and come to your senses. FRITZ PERLS

Soul is the individual expression of spirit, and spirit is the universal expression of soul.

As we interact with others, our etheric fields become engaged. The most rewarding connections occur when there is resonance between vibrational fields. Just as people who speak the same language resonate with spoken symbols, the subtle resonance between our etheric field and those of others deepens our feeling of connection. The greater our internal resonance, the more deeply we can resonate with those around us.

At the level of the fifth chakra, our attention moves from the physical plane into the subtler etheric fields. Commonly known as the aura, this etheric field is generated by the totality of internal processes—from the energetic exchange of subatomic particles to the digestion of food in our cells, from the firing of neurons to our current emotional state, and on to the larger rhythms of our outer activities. Our very life force can be seen as a stream of pulsating energy. When the stream is not fragmented by blocks in the body armor, then pulsation moves freely through the body and out into the world. This streaming creates a resonant, etheric field around the body—an aura of wholeness. A resonant field makes coherent connections with the outside world. A fragmented field makes fragmented connections.

Love her,” he told the man. “I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore,” the man replied. “Love her,” Covey replied. “You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there,” repeated the man. “Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.” “But how do you love when you do not love?” asked the man. Covey replied: “My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?” Love is a feeling, yes, but a feeling that is created out of action. The fourth chakra sits neatly above the third chakra will. Love is a daily, even hourly, conscious commitment to behave in a loving and caring fashion toward ourselves and others. When the feeling fades, it is our responsibility to find ways to create a new love. Like a garden that is carefully tended, the rewards are well worth the effort.

The more we allow one kind of energy, the more the other can come through. Once a commitment is made, it is easier to allow a partner their solitude or freedom. Once we know our freedom is respected, we can more easily make a commitment. Conversely, the more a partner insists on one aspect, the more his lover will yearn for its opposite. Dynamic balance is a dance between attachment and freedom.

Though we have talked about the chakras individually, remember that we are a complete, indivisible system. What affects one part affects the whole. As we change ourselves, so do we change the world.

The traumas and abuses we suffer as children, the lack of consciousness with which we operate, the blind spots of our culture -all these serve to shut us down and twist our path off its basic course.

Sound awareness is especially important, for although we easily close our mouth and eyes to what we don’t want to take in, we can’t really close our ears. Nature did not give us earlids. Our ears remain open and working even when we sleep. STEVEN HALPERN

All abusive relationships teach a form of love. JOHN BRADSHAW

The shadow side of this exposure is that, at least in the West, any cultural meme that gets seized by the collective consciousness runs the risk of trivialization, thus diluting its power.

And the day came when the need to remain closed became more painful than the risk to open. ANONYMOUS

Based on their location in the body, the chakras have become associated with various states of consciousness, archetypal elements, and philosophical constructs. The lower chakras, for example, which are physically closer to the earth, are related to the more practical matters of our lives—survival, movement, action. They are ruled by physical and social law. The upper chakras represent mental realms and work on a symbolic level through words, images, and concepts. Each of the seven chakras has also come to represent a major area of human psychological health, which can be briefly summarized as follows: (1) survival, (2) sexuality, (3) power, (4) love, (5) communication, (6) intuition, and (7) consciousness itself (see Figure 0.2). Metaphorically, the chakras relate to the following archetypal elements: (1) earth, (2) water, (3) fire, (4) air, (5) sound, (6) light, and (7) thought. (This is my own interpretation; classic texts only list the five elements earth, water, fire, air, and ether.) These elements, in turn, represent the universal principles of gravitation, polarity, combustion, equilibrium, vibration, luminescence, and consciousness itself, respectively (see Figure 0.2). Understanding these formative principles and the essence of the associated elements gives us a key to understanding the unique nature of each chakra. Earth is solid and dense; water is formless and fluid; fire is radiating and transforming; air is soft and spacious; sound is rhythmic pulsation; light is illuminating; while thought is the medium of consciousness. Meditating on the elements gives us a profound sense of the distinct flavor of each chakra.

In the Western world, there are somatic therapies that connect mind and body, yet ignore the spiritual aspects of our being. There are spiritually oriented psychologies that connect psyche and spirit, yet ignore the body. And there are disciplines, such as yoga, that connect spirit and body, yet fail to address the wounds of the psyche. Through the lens of the chakra system, this book presents an integration of psychology, spirituality, and physicality within one comprehensive system.

Religion without a practice is but a set of ideas and concepts. Religion with a practice (of even a practice without a religion) is an active experience that can further the evolution of the soul and the world in which it lives.

Knowledge of the world around us and the world within us are both paths to the mastery of self-knowledge , the goal of the seventh chakra.

What is not brought into the relationship with the core essence of the heart remains outside of the whole, an unacknowledged part. In chakra two, for example, we talked about these parts as rejected selves or the shadow.