We’ve reached the end of my second post-reiki-attunement week. The crown chakra – and all its attendant meanings – has curbed the embarrassment of my previous post (for whatever reason, invalidated experiences embarrass me, and that sure AF includes talking to spirits – but I’m working on it. I wrote about it, didn’t I?).
Still, the crown chakra hasn’t done much for my anxiety in general. The upper chakras seem to be the cause of all kinds of drama for me – but not because they’re closed. Quite the contrary, they seem to be far more open than any of the others! So I’m being assaulted with “knowing” with a fearful, fragile system in place for making use of that knowing. And voila! Mental illness! We discussed issues like this in my reiki training, as well, but I didn’t need to hear it. The moment the teacher mentioned such situations, I knew. If I have any strengths at all, they’re self-knowledge and . . . self-knowledge.
Reviewing what each chakra is about, though – perusing simple lists of attributes and such – I’ve come to feel that no one’s chakras are ever fully closed. Thinking of people I’ve known, my self, people I’ve read about in books, I’ve come to believe you can only narrow the point of release. Take my throat chakra, for example: I have issues with all of its qualities except for one – creativity. And when it comes to creativity, I’m a fire hose. If I don’t create, I literally get the shakes. But there’s an interesting balancing act at play here: the times in my life that I’ve been the most creative have been the times that I’ve had the worst social anxiety. Likewise, the more I communicate clearly and honestly with others, the less addictive my creative projects feel. I can just be chill about it if I have a trusted companions with which to speak my truth.
So it’s not that my throat chakra has ever been closed, though it’s easily one of my most damaged – it’s more like I’ve been pouring the whole tea kettle into one cup. All the energy is still there. I’ve just disallowed it from expressing itself in all the ways it wants to. Like a mom who let’s their kid listen to punk rock but won’t let them dye their hair, get piercings, connect with people they like, stay up late, read radical books, eat their favorite foods, or date who they want. That kid is going to listen to punk rock until they’re freaking deaf.
The Mom Rule™ can be applied to any chakra; anyone can go up the line, assessing if they are allowing themselves to fully express a certain energy, or if they’re constricting themselves, funneling it into one small arena. First chakra: do you have no relationship with the natural world, but are work-out obsessed? Second chakra: are you a sex addict who doesn’t allow yourself to ever relax and just have fun? Third chakra: do you lack confidence yet insist on being in control? Forth chakra: serial monogamy, anyone?
These are merely examples; the possible ways we limit ourselves are far more vast and complex. Look how screwy our culture is – we’re ALL pros at undermining our true nature, I know it can’t just be me. But these are peculiar, particular examples: they’re ways that we might trick ourselves into thinking we’re actually OK. Ya know: I don’t have solar plexus issues, I’m the BOSS. Nothing’s wrong with my heart chakra, I have PLENTY of relationships! I wrote a whole freaking novel, my throat chakra’s FINE.
I’ve got work to do on my whole system, and this coming week (the final round of attunement-related renovations) I intend to work more consciously and deliberately with each energy – not just write about it. Wheels of Life isn’t just rambling prose – it has a plethora of exercises, guided meditations, and suggestions for how to align yourself with, well, yourself.
My final excerpts:
Crown Chakra
Here we find the infinitely profound seat of cosmic consciousness known as the seventh or crown chakra. This chakra connects us to divine intelligence and the source of all manifestation. It is the means through which we reach understanding and find meaning. As the final goal of our liberating current, it is the place of ultimate liberation.
It is the pervading consciousness that thinks, reasons, and gives form and focus to our activities. It is the true essence of being as the awareness that dwells within. In the unconscious, it is the wisdom of the body. In the conscious mind, it is the intellect and our belief systems. In the superconscious, it is awareness of the divine.
When we reach this level, the seed of our soul has sprouted from its roots in the earth, and grown upward through the elements of water, fire, air, sound, and light, and now to the source of all – consciousness itself, experienced through the element of thought. Each level brings us a new degree of freedom and awareness. Now the crown chakra blossoms forth within infinite awareness, its thousand petals like antennae, reaching to higher dimensions.
From within, we access a dimension that has no locality in time and space. If we postulate that each chakra represents a dimension of smaller and faster vibration, we hypothetically reach a plane in the crown chakra where we have a wave of infinite speed and no wave-length, allowing it to be everywhere at once. In this way, ultimate states of consciousness are described as omnipresent – by reducing the world to a pattern system occupying no physical dimension, we have infinite storage capacity for its symbols. In other words, we carry the whole world inside our heads.
Pattern relates to the word for father, pater. The father gives the seed (the DNA), the information or pattern which stimulates the creation of form. Conception begins when a pattern is adequately received. It is then the maternal aspect that gives substance to the pattern (as well as half the DNA). Mother comes from mater, as does the English word: matter. To make something matter, it must materialize, manifest, be “mothered.”
We may think that consciousness is invisible, but we only need to look around us – at the structure of our cities, the furnishings in our houses, or the contents of our bookshelves – to see the incredible versatility of consciousness in its manifested form. If we want to know what consciousness looks like, our world – both natural and man-made – is its expression. Consciousness is the field of patterns from which manifestation emerges.
This phenomenon is nothing short of miraculous. Its enormous capacity for regulating the body, playing music, speaking multiple languages, drawing pictures, reciting poetry, remembering phone numbers, appreciating a sunset, solving a puzzle, experiencing pleasure, loving, yearning, acting, seeing – the faculty of consciousness is endless in its remarkable abilities. To really turn our gaze of attention upon this miracle is to enter the endless unfolding petals of the lotus, and the true source of the Self.
The Self maintains a storehouse of memory, a set of belief systems, and a capacity to take in new data, while somehow integrating all this information into a coherent sense of meaning. This search for meaning is the driving force of consciousness and the search for the underlying unity of experience. When our lives have meaning, they become part of a larger picture. When something lacks meaning, it doesn’t match up with anything. Meaning is the pattern that connects. It brings us closer to unity. Meaning links the individual to the universal.
From the mundane to the mystical, the search for meaning is behind most activities of the mind. If your boss is cross with you, you might ask why, what does this mean? Is she having a bad day? Is it something you did wrong? Is she expecting too much from you? Are you in the wrong job? When people have accidents, illnesses, or auspicious coincidences, the search for meaning to help integrate the experience.
Through our experiences, each one of us builds a personal matrix of information within our minds. From the first glimpse of our mother’s face to our doctoral dissertations and beyond, we spend our lives trying to piece together some sense of order from what we see around us. Each bit of information we receive gets incorporated into that matrix, making it ever more complex. As it grows more complex it tends to periodically “reorganize” itself, finding higher levels of order which simplify its system. The bottom falls out, restructuring occurs, and with it a more efficient use of energy. This is the familiar “aha” reflex – the little enlightenments that come when some piece falls into place, allowing a new wholeness to be perceived. Enlightenment is a progressive understanding of ever greater wholeness. In our holographic paradigm, each new piece of information allows the basic picture to gain clarity.
Matrix structures are created from the meaning we derive from experience. They then become our personal belief systems and the ordering principles of our lives. We are part of this order and we organize all that we encounter according to this matrix, preferring to keep our inner and outer experiences coherent. If my belief system says that women are inferior, I will manifest that in all my actions, including finding people to corroborate it. If I believe this is my lucky day, I am more likely to manifest positive things in my life today.
Our belief systems are comprised of the various bits of meaning we have derived from our experience. If we repeatedly fail, and we tell ourselves that it means we are stupid, we eventually generate a belief in our own stupidity. These belief systems form the matrix into which all other information is funneled. If I tell you a bit of feedback, you run that against your background of knowledge and add it to your belief systems. You might say, “Oh, I can never do anything right.” Another person, with another belief system, may derive an entirely different meaning.
The relationship between meaning and belief is so strong that if some piece of data does not fit our inner matrix, we might say, “I don’t believe you,” and discard the information entirely. This is one of the traps of the mind. How do we take in new information and expand our consciousness if we reject anything that does not fit the current inner paradigm? And if we disregard this inner matrix, how do we discern truth from fiction, or organize the vast amount of information that we receive at each moment?
Parapsychological research, past life regression, and other studies have shown that there are certain qualities of the mind that exist independently of the brain. In some cases of past life regression, people have been able to remember facts that are objectively provable. They accurately describe a house they have never seen, they speak a foreign language,or they describe events that are later documented by journals, letters or books. Obviously, since the human body/hardware has been completely made over, some information exists outside the brain.
All this data implies that there is some kind of information field existing independently of its perceiver, much as radio waves exist independently of radios, or the Internet exists whether or not you have a computer. The body, with its amazing nervous system and reactive capacity, is the receiver of this information.
When beliefs are held by large numbers of people, their field is stronger, lessening the chance for the survival of opposing beliefs. The field created by the belief in male supremacy is a primal example because it has been instilled so completely into our culture over the last several thousand years, offering greater advantages to men, who are then able to achieve more. As women find their power, another field is being generated that allows the cultural belief system to change form. This takes a long time, but its easier for each new generation to hold the new belief system.
As we have worked our way through the seven levels of awareness related to each chakra, we have progressively transcended limitation, shortsightedness, immediacy, pain, and suffering. This is the direction most emphasized in Eastern thought; pain and suffering, it is believed, occur through false identification with elements of the finite world, and obscure the ultimate reality of the infinite. It is attachment to limitation that forms obstacles to our spiritual growth, hence attachment is the primary demon of the crown chakra.
We take for granted that we need to take showers, clean our houses, and wash our clothes. Yet, the mind and its thoughts need cleansing, perhaps even more than our bodies. The mind works longer, encounters wider dimensions, and runs the operating system of our life as well! While few of us would consider eating dinner on yesterday’s dirty dishes, we think nothing of tackling a new problem with yesterday’s cluttered mind. No wonder we feel tired, confused, and ignorant!
Meditation is both an end and a means. We may achieve better clarity, mood elevation, or simply better physical coordination; but the mind, as an inseparable commander of all else, deserves the best treatment we can give it.
It is suggested that meditation de-stimulates the cerebral cortex and the limbic system, and through brain-wave resonance heals the split between the old and the new brain. This split has been suspected to be a cause of alienated emotional states and schizoid behavior, difficulties particular to human and essentially non-existent in other animals. Better coordination between the two hemispheres can also lead to increased cognitive and perceptual ability.
In a world whose vibrational level is largely oriented around the first three chakras, placing greater value on materiality, it is difficult to find the time, validation, and even desire to go off and enter a different wavelength – especially one whose rewards are so subjective. The idea that one “should” meditate, added to the thousands of other “shoulds” hammering on us each day, can almost make the practice repugnant.
Yet true meditation is a state of mind – not an effort. Once the state is achieved a few times, it begins to create its own self-perpetuating rhythms, and its own effect on the vibrations around us. At this point, meditation becomes a joy, not a discipline. But until then we can only describe the effects and hope they are enough to fire the will’s curiosity.
Enlightenment is not a thing, it is a process. A thing is something to acquire; a process is something to be. If enlightenment were a thing, it would be a contradiction in terms to have “found” it, for it is inseparable from the self who is looking. Upon realization, we find that it was never lost!
Just as love is a difficult concept to describe, yet intrinsically part of a natural, healthy state, enlightenment can also be thought of as a natural state, and equally difficult to describe. In this way enlightenment would be achieved by a process of undoing rather than doing. We keep ourselves from enlightenment by our own mental blocks, just as roof blocks the sun from shining down on us.
