Chakra Balancing, Poetry and the Power of Storytelling
When your energy is in free flow you feel fine. This is the movement of refined energy with the body. The energy is moving through the centres of the body called the chakras without these centres being blocked. You feel balanced, you feel creative, you feel the movement of the wild and precious life within. In my workshop entitled “Living the Wild and Precious Life” I use a combination of storytelling, poetry, song and spiritual practices to the bring energy of the individuals and the group into alignment. It is an invitation to the opening of the creative imagination and is intended to allow you to experience the feeling of expansion that comes from the awareness of the creative Self that flows from the practice of chakra balancing.
There are many folk tales and fairy tales that invite the technique of chakra balancing and for healing and making whole that which you feel is desperate within you (2nd chakra experience). I invite you to have fun with finding a story,or a poem, or a song that has meaning for you and start a practice whereby you begin a dialogue with this story, poem, song or other invitation that arises. Begin to make this a spiritual practice. In some traditions it is similar to the spiritual practice called Lecto Divinia. This is usually practiced with scripture. This is the beginning of the real Law of Attraction within you because, if you are being drawn to such lines without your having to force the matter, then there is already an alignment within your energy field..
This invitation is not a cerebral invitation meaning that it is not simply coming from your head. You are not being asked to become a poet, a storyteller, a singer songwriter or any form of artist. You are being invited into what you used to know and live from. This is your childlike imagination. I use the Way of the Chakra’s as a framework. I do this because this framework excites my imagination. It isn’t simply an Eastern framework but a human framework. It is a pathway, a map to the full realisation of your potential.
The starting pint for this path of individualisation is the root chakra. The root chakra is a symbol for your everyday living in this dimension of time and space and form. It is a given. If you are living in a body on this planet then you are living from the root chakra experience. In the process of individualisation I will be referring to what each chakra symbolises within the process of human development and beyond. This is a process that is in alignment with your development. The chakra framework does not only apply to the individual. It can and does apply to nations and even to historical times. Everyone in their personal development and beyond begins with the root chakra. It is your conscious day to day living and all that is unconscious in you is asleep. All the potential you are here to live has yet to be awakened within you.
To become individual, to live the uniqueness that you are, means leaving the security of the family, the connection to limited ideas of separateness evidenced by the nation state and culture. None of these are to be considered bad in a moral sense. They are simply too limited an experience for the longing of your soul. You can love your family, your nation and your culture but to move beyond the root chakra your experience of yourself has to expand beyond this limited time, space and form identity. You have to move from what is simply conscious within you to alignment with the unconscious within you. This is the first step in chakra balancing.
What usually happens in most peoples lives is that they stay asleep. It has happened in my own life as you will see later. They stay locked in the tower of cerebral thought (meaning that most of life is lived in the head) and the beauty that is within them sleeps for much, if not all, of their lives. This is the story of the Sleeping Beauty. This is living in the root chakra and is a kind of banal place. It is the place of work, work, work and the place of paying the bills and doing lots of things as a means to an end. It is a place of suffering and injustice. It is characterised in moves such as the Wizard of Oz as being a flatland where everything is grey. In the story of Cinderella and the story of Mother Holle it is the place where you do ashes work.
In poetry it is the place you refuse to leave and you then leave a legacy for the future generation who then have to do the work of individualisation that you refused to do. You refuse to live the one wild and precious life you are here to live and the one wild and precious life that you are here to give. You refuse to follow the promptings of the heart and you do what you often think you are duty bound to do. This is because in the root chakra you tend to be loyal to family and to ideas such as the nation state and the cultural ideas that are surrounded by cultural taboos. Thus as in my own case my heart wanted me to be a teacher of Yoga and I opted to become an accountant instead. This is because the role of the accountant is safer and one that is more readily acceptable. Becoming an accountant didn’t go against the cultural norm of the time, when I lived in Northern Ireland, and where I was assured by those who taught me Christian values that Yoga was the work of the devil.
What happens if you refuse to follow the movement of the energy that begins to awaken in the root chakra and that begins to align with the energy of polarity in the 2nd chakra. Metaphorically speaking you die among the dishes and the glasses, meaning that psychologically and spiritually speaking your life force stagnates amidst all the things you acquire in order to try to give meaning to a life without Love (4th chakra experience).
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly
Here is a great poem about someone who refused to move beyond the 1st chakra. Notice that the movement from the root chakra to the 2nd chakra can happen at any time. In the above poem it happens during supper. This I think is also a reference to the Last Supper. The movement in this poem is about the movement away from the ties of family and culture into the place that is unknown. It is somewhere in the East. It is the arising of the energy of the 3rd chakra – the Sun centre. The church referred to is the church made without hands. It does not refer to some building allied to some hierarchical religious organisation.
It is the place of sanctuary – the heart chakra. It is the place of sanctuary that you are able to enter when you balance the energy of the chakra’s. It is what the poet Rumi calls the heart house and it is the cabin that W. B. Yeats builds on his Lake Isle of Innisfree and where he feels the peace of the heart come dropping slow. What happens if you refuse to stand up and find the church in the East. Then the energy of creative potential gets stuck. It not only gets stuck in you but it also gets stuck in the family energetic and then those who are born into the family have to go and find a way of crating a heart house, a way of finding the church in the East that gives their life meaning, gives their life purpose, passion and prosperity.
The language of poetry is not just more information. The language of storytelling is not just entertainment. It’s primary purpose is the invitation to take the journey to the full realisation of what it is to be human. This begins with where you are now. This journey is the journey without end because it expands into infinity which has no beginning or end. Have a listen to some of the deep hearts core podcasts that I have recorded here. These, I hope, will show you the potential within the power of storytelling and poetry to inspire you to balance the chakra’s so that the personality can become available to the higher centres. To use a Christian description of this process
Thy will be done on Earth (1st chakra) as it is in Heaven (7th chakra).
I invite you to have fun exploring the lines of songs, images from movies, the poems, the stories that have given you times of joy and even sorrow. These are filled with images that attract you in some meaningful way. They are filled with symbols which are deep signs along the path to living your wild and precious life. Invest in a Journal
I recommend writing to begin with. It can become a deep connection between hand and heart. It unites the two hemispheres of the brain. Most of all have fun and don’t force. To come into alignment and to balance the chakra’s means learning to be comfortable with not knowing and learning to trust the unknown. This is the movement from the 1st to the 2nd chakra. Enjoy the adventure and feel free to contact me to share your experience. Maybe one day you can share how you got up at supper and left to find the healing heart house within and how you found the experience of chakra balancing within you.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
chakra healing
4 STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH – The stages of spiritual growth is sometimes not easily identified, and we’re all of us are undergoing a transformation down this path, even if some of us don’t know it.
THE NEXT STAGES IN HUMAN EVOLUTION – We are now entering the twenty-first century and the third millennium. A perceptible feeling hangs in the air that the world is rapidly approaching one of history’s decisive seismic shifts. Changes are looming ahead o
THE SOUL JOURNEY – Spiritual growth programs guide you on The Soul Journey. It and many spiritual ebooks will support your growth by developing more soul consciousness.
The Power of Intention and the 4th Chakra
One of my favourite books is entitled “Power of Intention by Dr Wayne Dyer
Intention is a kind of magical power. It is the beginning of Creation in form. All creative potential exists within the infinite field of possibility. This field of infinite creative potential has been given various names throughout the history of the human experience. It is a field that exists outside of time and space. When I use the word “field” I am not talking about some place where there is grass growing and sheep might be grazing. I have to use words in order to invite you into the experience of the wordless. This “field” is a quantum field. It is a paradox which can be experienced but cannot be defined in logic. Here is one of my favourite poems that describes this field.
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.Rumi
“The Great Wagon” Ch.4 : Spring Giddiness, p.36
This field of infinite creation is awaiting creation within form – meaning it created the world of time and space in order to know itself. Time and space is created as a way of not having everything happen at once. The power of intention is the ability that humans have to access this infinite field of creative possibility and to manifest the energy of this formless potential into things and experience. The primary reason for creation of things is not simply to be productive but to express the beauty and power of Love ever becoming. The unbridled consumption that is manifest in the West is evidence of non-alignment with the invitation of Creation – the result is suffering which invites re-alignment with the first cause of Creation – Love.
This power of intention arises before thought. For example. I write a blog. My intention is to invite you into the eternal knowing that you are this field having an individual experience called “me.” My intention in writing this blog is to invite you to become aware of the wonder tale that you are, and ever are and ever will be, as an individual and non-individual expression of Divine Love. If my intention were to write this blog in order to have you buy courses and buy products that I create then the intention would be different and my response to the results of this intention would be different too that as stated above. The first intention is what I call “right intention.” This isn’t “right” in any moral sense of the word. “Right,” as I wish it to be understood here, means to be in alignment with the primary cause – the First cause.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
power of intention
KARMA TUBE is a collection of inspiring videos. This website brings inspirational stories to light, using the power of video and the internet to multiply acts of kindness, beauty and compassion
EN*THEOS RADIO – en + theos. Two little Greek words. Put ‘em together and you’ve got enthusiasm—or “God within”—the secret sauce to authentic awesomeness. Helping you tap into Highest within is pretty much what our little business is all about.
SPIRITUAL THEMES IN YOUNG ADULT BOOKS – Many young adult books can provide the spiritual information young adults need to assuage the loneliness of their passage; some of the possibilities are presented here.
The 7 Chakras and the Power of Storytelling
As a storyteller I write and tell stories from the heart (4th chakra). Fairytales and mythological stories are not simply stories told to entertain children. They are maps that chart the fullness of human potential. They are maps of the journey of the soul. These stories contain deep psychological truths. They have their own special kind of language. It is the language of symbolism and the language that leads to meaning and a life of purpose, passion and prosperity. I like to refer to this language as
the full moon language
This is the language that will take you into foreign lands of adventure where you can learn to live the one wild and precious life you are here to give and to share. Some fairy tales chart the full journey of the seven developmental phases of human potential as represented by the seven chakras. Others represent only a part of the journey. However, the fairy tale, the mythological story, demonstrates that the development of consciousness is not simply a linear progression from lower to higher but more the movement of a spiral.
The journey of personal development and beyond begins in the root chakra. This is the place of our day to day living. It is here that the full potential of the human being awaits revelation. It isn’t something that you have to add to yourself; rather think of it as your allowing yourself to be an instrument of manifestation. Each chakra has a world view associated with it and from which one lives their life. At the lowest chakra (low is not to be equated with bad) the world view is the view of separateness. It is the view that says you live in a body in time and space between a timeline called birth and death. At the seventh chakra the world view is Oneness. The journey of the Way of the Chakras is the journey into an ever increasingly expansive view of the world as a sacred unity rather than a collection of separate things.
In fairy stories or mythological tales the root chakra world view is often represented in various ways. In the modern day tale of The Wizard of Oz (7th chakra experience) Dorothy leaves the grey world, the flat lands of Kansas. In other stories the everyday world is represented by a colourful kind of paradise. In the story of the Fisher King the everyday world is a wasteland. This mirrors the ups and downs of our everyday living. Sometimes our everyday life is a series of grey days and we dream of a time when there might be days filled with colours of the rainbow (the colours of the chakra’s)
Dorothy Gale, played by the young Judy Garland in the film The Wizard of Oz, sings
Somewhere over the rainbow up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow
and the dreams that you dare to dream
really do come true.
This somewhere over the rainbow isn’t a dream. It is the nowhere place that is everywhere. It is the vastness of the blue sky represented by the knowing and the living from the 7th chakra knowing. The blue birds that fly over the rainbow represent the element of the air which is the element of the heart chakra. This song is a lullaby. It is a song that is intended to comfort the child and lull them to sleep. It is not the sleep of the unconscious but the sleep that arrives cloaked in a sense of safety.
In fairy tales there is the common motif of disruption. The ideal world of the King and Queen (aspect of ourselves) who live in the Palace with their beautiful child Sleeping Beauty is disrupted when she finds the room that was hidden. The gray world of Kansas is disturbed when Dorothy is caught up in a tornado that carries her far from the grey world into the colourful world of Oz. This is where she walks the golden road of infinite possibility to meet with companions along the way who help her face her journey’s trials.
In the motif of the Hero’s Journey we see this as the step on the journey referred to as the call. It is the call to open the doors of the secret rooms that are the rooms of the unconscious. We see the rooms in different ways. Sometimes they are simply hidden in different part of the Palace – a metaphor for the psyche – the soul. Other times they are expressly forbidden as in the story of Bluebeard. Or they are simply a matter of curiosity as in the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Opening the door of the secret, or forbidden, room is the work of the second chakra. This is the phase of personal development that is called the Encounter with Opposites. It is the encounter with those aspects of yourself that you do not love and which send you asleep for over one hundred years.
Three Ways to Open the Doors
There are three ways of behaving in relation to those locked doors that invite you to cross a psychological threshold.
The first way is simply to ignore the door and continue living life as is. This is not the way to experience your wild and precious life. It leads to an absence of meaning. It avoids that special story filled with meaning and purpose that only you are here to tell. This is the potential you that is hidden within the secret or forbidden room. In avoiding the crossing of the place of threshold life remains grey and lifeless. You do not get to journey on the golden path to the magical kingdom of Oz where you meet with the wizard who shows what you already know but don’t have the confidence to act upon.
The second way of behaving in relation to the rooms is to open the door of the room and simply stand at the threshold and not cross over. The result is that you see what’s in the room but you do not engage with it. The door is shut and you can pretend that what is in the room really isn’t in the room at all. You can deny what you know is in that room. This leads to an inauthentic life and the death of any real intimate relationship. In the Hero’s Journey motif we see this stage as being the refusal of the call. This happens to the character Luke Skywalker in the opening of the map of the chakra way called Star Wars.
The third way, which is the way of the hero, is the movement from everyday consciousness into the world of the unconscious It arises from the decision to open the door, and cross the threshold into the secret of forbidden room. This is the way chosen in the fairy tale and the stories of myth. Thus begins a phase of expansion. We enter the room and we explore the contents and we begin the process of the work of the 2nd chakra.
Everyone one of us has rooms within us that we keep locked. Everyone of us has a voice within us that calls us to open the door of this room or rooms and come alive. This is the call of this soul – the call to unify all those opposing forces within us that divides your energy and keeps you locked up in the place of material comfort or in the poverty of cinders. Everyone of us has heard that voice call to us. Many of us, including this writer and storyteller, have refused to listen to this voice. We choose to stay in the world of the grey that is at least known. It may be just a little dull and routine and less scary than the wild and precious life that is potential within each one of us.
This may be what happens to you if you refuse the call. A life style, then your life, becomes devoid of meaning. It may lead to depression or the mindless pursuit of consumerism which become a form of addiction and the avoidance of the invitation to soul. The everyday grey world is absent of any sense of the joyous body and expansive feelings of compassion and love.
The power of fairytales lies in their connection to the sleeping beauty within you. This beauty will stay asleep within you until the time you hear the call to awaken and respond to the call. No one forces you to awaken but bear in mind that the process of awakening is inbuilt into the human psyche. The resistance to this awakening and the identification with separateness is the root cause of suffering. It is the experience of living in the root chakra and living from that world view. It is the refusal to accept the invitation to take the journey into the fullness of being – a spiralling upward journey into the power, the grace and the blessing of who you truly are.
I hope, in this short outline, that you begin to see the real power of fairytales and storytelling. These stories are maps to the meaning and purpose of life and not just some quaint little story of old. These stories invite the quintessential in you. This is a 5th chakra experience. It is the experience of the movement of matter into non matter. It is the matter that really matters.
I invite you to listen to stories told by one of the world’s great storytellers. She takes you deep into their meaning and empowers you with potential and the courage to imagine that you could be someone who, not only dreams of that somewhere over the rainbow but is prepared to journey. It is the storyteller who guides the way along the road less travelled. This is the golden road to the City of Oz. This is the journey to meet the wisdom mind in you that already knows that Love and you are never separate.
Why not begin to open the door and take the adventure along the golden road. I offer you suggestions below from the world renown storyteller and cantadora (keeper of the old tales), Clarissa Pinkola Estes
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
chakra healing
THE ENTHEOS ACADEMY – Online teaching that integrates everything you might have wanted to study: from old school philosophy and spirituality to modern day positive psychology, nutrition, creativity, conscious business and general self-development–all the
THE HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
NIGHTINGALE CONANT – Dowload inspirational personal and spiritual development podcasts for FREE
Turning Lead into Gold – 2nd Chakra Healing
Down in the darkness deep know there’s a light don’t sleep – David Gray
There are days when I meet with those who are called the Formorians. These are the Irish mythological forces of darkness. These are the dark life forces that vanquished the Shining Ones, the Tuatha de Danaan, the Beautiful People who are driven underground in the Irish story of the Battle of Moytura. These beautiful people are now known as the Irish fairies. There are days when I find this Formorian force within myself and I have to find inner resources to be able to counter their influence. Recently, I felt very despondent. This is largely due to the fact of being required to do a woman’s work in a man’s body when my partner Bee fell in the garden and broke her ankle in two places.
I think the closer you come to the light the closer you come to the dark within yourself and particularly within the culture you live in. When one truly begins to open ones beautiful eyes to the task of awakening to the light there will be times, even many times, when one feels despondent – even possibly despairing. You begin to see the true extent of what it means to live in ignorance of ones true radiance. This is why you need a practice or practices that ground you and keep you out of mental flights of fancy that can take you and make you, not one of the Shining Ones, but a prisoner of the Formorians – the Bag People – who are themselves filled with the baggage of the past. Those who, individually and collectively are intent on filling you full of baggage that becomes dispiriting.
My key grounding 1st chakra practice is to write. It is a kind of journal therapy and a yoga of journaling. I am sometimes invited from experience to write about feeling despondent, about feeling dispirited. I live in the world of duality (2nd chakra experience) and thus I am not always up nor am I always down. I, too often, lose the centre. I learn to hold this centre by sitting in the fire of dispiritedness. In this fire I learn the practice of turning the lead of despond into the gold of spirit – the experience of being inspired or “in spirited.” This is the work of 2nd chakra healing. You sit in the dark prepared to witness the process. This is true alchemy. It is consciousness witnessing consciousness. It is the practice of developing witness consciousness. A key practice in learning to live a wild and precious life. It is a key part of the practice of meditation
I sometimes lead groups in the invitation to what is called 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life. Those who don’t lead groups don’t often see the way in which those who lead such groups experience doubt, angst, and crises of faith. Despite this, one leads because there is a gift to be given. This gift often arises from the light that has been found in the dark. The more open you become, the more challenging the work becomes as you become a servant of Love in action. This is why this journey of inspired Love in action is called the Hero’s journey.
I am sixty one years of age. Most of my friends and family are younger than myself. So I tend to walk this experience of doubt, despondency and fear on my own. I do this with the technique I am sharing with you now. It has taken me years of daily practice to be able to learn to centre myself in the space of time that it takes to write four pages of A4. Yet the satisfaction, the healing through writing practice, the liberation, is wondrous. At the end of writing these four pages of A4 I will laugh at the idea that I will take my talent at writing and stuff it away because it is not seen to be valued.
I value it. I not only value it. I love it. To stop writing from the Love I feel inside would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face except that I have had a tendency to do this anyway. I hold a pity party where I am the only one who is invited. A face without a nose isn’t pretty but we wound ourselves because we feel hurt and turn our anger or our rage inward. It is a kind of taking back control. Many wonderful saints and teachers have mapped the road of the spirit. They have all said that the spiritual warrior will travel the road of trials. The road of trials includes those emotional experiences that invite imprisonment in the Formorian energy of despair, doubt, fear and other dispiriting adventures. This is when you are called to remember the forces of beauty that are within you.
There are always available the four magical gifts of the beautiful people: the Cauldron of Plenty that always gives to those who would stand before it with an open heart. There is the Sword of Lugh, the god of Light that cuts through the chains that are invisible. This is the sword that cuts through any sense of despond. There is the voice of destiny that calls you by your name as one whose sovereign centre can never be lost. The pen, we are told, is mightier than the sword. This pen has, in the time it has taken to write these pages, slain the Formorian forces of despondency. I am ready, not so much to do battle now, as to keep remembering that I live in a world of duality that is bounded by Oneness.
When I forget that I am not only a part of the Source, but never apart from the Source, then I am at the mercy of the forces prevalent in the world of duality – indifference, apathy, self-interest, guilt, despondency and so many other forces that pull one down but do not ground. So I have done the practical stuff of grounding through the written word.
Now I lay down my pen, my personal sword of light and go and get ready to share what it is useful to do when the Formorians arrive, as they will. Take up a daily practice. Make it something fun. It needn’t be writing, but any practice you take up needs commitment. Initially with any practice you will be pulled away from it. This is because the forces of the Formorian mindset do not want you to have access to the power of the light that invites the radiance within you.
You will find will be that the greatest battle will be with you own sense of indifference, your own sense of dis-empowerment, your own sense of despondency. Simply do not indulge these but take them and become an alchemist. This is when you turn the lead of despond into the gold of inspiration.
One of the key ways of healing the 2nd chakra is through the unification of opposites. Each of us has unloved aspects within ourselves. The 2nd chakra is the invitation to enter the room of opposition and reclaim those unloved aspects. One of the ways we can invite such a process is to study the fairytales and myths of old. These are not just stories from children and stories of olden times. They are maps to different levels of consciousness. We can choose to either ignore the invitation to cross the threshold and live a rather dull and meaningless life. We can choose to look into the room of our unconscious and decide that what is in there is best left to stay locked away. This is the death of the authentic self and the death of any real intimate relationship. The third way is the way of the hero who crosses the threshold and discovers the gold that is in the shadow.
This is 2nd chakra work. It not only benefits the individual. It benefits the collective. It is the first stage of the seven stage journey into wholeness. At each stage there will be resistance. This is the nature of growth. Do no be surprised if you feel afraid of opening the door of the unconsious. It is best to take it slowly and practice a great deal of loving kindness toward oneself.
One of the best books I have read on Chakra Healing is Archetypal Chakras
Another great book on Chakra Healing is Anatomy of Spirit – The Seven Stages of Power and Healing
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
chakra healing
THE ENTHEOS ACADEMY – Online teaching that integrates everything you might have wanted to study: from old school philosophy and spirituality to modern day positive psychology, nutrition, creativity, conscious business and general self-development–all the
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SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE – SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.