Root Chakra Healing and the Atonement with the Father
Root chakra healing includes our relationship to security. One key issue around security for many people is the issue of money. The root chakra is, however, related to abundance. Abundance, as I have written before in this blog, is the way in which the individual is in alignment with and allows the life force to flow and freely express through them as it is intended. Abundance is not simply an issue about money and wealth. One might be extremely wealthy but from an energetic point of view they could be the living dead.
I have issues around money. Some of my more materiality focused friends have asked me if I have ever taken a vow of poverty. In a very real sense part of me did and finds it hard to let go. My Reiki master tells me that in relation to this issue I should cut the ties but not the love. I have always resisted that advice and now at the age of sixty one years I am getting ready to do what I have resisted. This willingness to let go has been prompted by a dream I had last night. In this dream I am running with another man. We are running in a wide open field. He is supporting me. He lets me go and says that I must now run on my own. This dream man is a kind of mentor.
I have root chakra issues I need healing around the issue of my father and money. The longer I live the more loving of him I become and my focus on what we had together is now more on gratitude rather than on loss. I realise that in many ways I am very like him. I used not to want to be anything like him. Now I appreciate who and what he was and the best of who he was. In some way that begins to mirror how I feel about myself.
I have an image that I keep in my mind that connects me to my father and my relationship to money. This is an image that I do not want to let go off. It is one image that when I recollect it connects me to my love for him. Even as I remember this recollection now a tear comes to my eye. My father was a working class man from the tough side of Liverpool in England. He fought for the rights of the working man. In his heart, however, he was an artist but he was forced to work at a job that was essentially soul destroying. He made money wherever he could and worked all the hours that he could in order to make ends meet. I never remember us, as a family ever going without except that I always remember going without the love I longed for him to express to me but never did. He was not a demonstrative kind of man. In that sense he and I are not alike.
My remembered image of my father takes place late one night. I had come down from my bedroom to use the bathroom. There was a light on in the living room and I look in. My father sat at a desk counting money. He was counting union dues from the men whose rights he upheld as their union representative at the place he worked at for most of his life. I remember most of all that he looked tired and sad. I remember too that I wanted most of all to take away that tiredness and sadness because of my intense love for him. He wasn’t aware of my watching him. I didn’t disturb him but left to go back upstairs to bed.
That memory connects me to him still, and in healing the root chakra and the sense of abundance, I have begun to let it go. I have, as my Reiki master advises cut the ties but not the love. This image is one connected to working in the dark late at night. It is an image of counting little sums of money that becomes a symbol of the men who, in a very real sense, are fighting for their souls. My father becomes a kind of guardian of that energy. I don’t want to let that go of this image of him but in a sense it keeps me tied into a relationship to money that does not serve what I am here to serve.
Like my father I am a union man. I am a writer who invites the ultimate union. I do not fight for this union. I invite surrender rather than fight. I pay my union dues through the spiritual practices that are part of my real work in the world. I work in the dark out of choice. I choose to work in the shadow lands of the human mind. I choose to do and practice dreamwork. I work to align the invitations from my dream life into the life that I express in this everyday world of form
Root chakra healing is about healing your sense of security. Money and security are deeply related. As a child my images around money are ones about struggle, doing work you hate, not earning your livelihood by giving up what you would love to do. It includes images of counting pittances that allow a struggle for the rights of the working man to go on. All of these images are a representation of my father doing his best with the situation that he was presented with. There are many such fathers in the world who are doing their best.
The question for me is how do I run on as the image of the dream invites me to do. It invites me to run into the wide open field. In this regard I am reminded of a poem that invites union within a field. It is by my beloved Rumi.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.—Rumi
The answer is that I let go the connection to the images of struggling in the dark with too little light. In order for root chakra healing to take place I let go the images of struggle but not the love that is and was inherent within that struggle. I change the image to one of honouring what was given by my father even if it wasn’t given in the way I most wanted. My father was a provider. He wasn’t a lover. He was too wounded by the blight of his own fathers alcoholism and the times through which he lived. Although in a way I see how he, in his own ay, late into the night, worried and sorrowful, risked for Love in ways I am privileged not to have to do.
Atonement with the father is root chakra work. It is the work of healing the roots of your family dynamic that will in all likelihood impact you throughout all of your life. I am beginning to open up to a real sense of abundance. I have learned new skills that I intend to take into the marketplace. I have learned new skills that I will take into my community. My community is everyone who reads this blog and all the various healers who are connected to each other through an invisible thread of intention.
I am intending to bring a union of the masculine and the feminine into the world of healing in the way I seem most graced to be able to do. This involves the work of teaching technological skills to healers so that they can promote their work to the world and in the process learn to integrate the power of the masculine as represented by the Goddess Techne with the power and grace of the Divine Feminine. This is my work. It is soul work. It is work that I am able to do and in doing it I am able to honour the sacrifice that my father made on my behalf and others so that we might be more empowered to follow the life we love. My father eventually got to do the soul work his heart longed for. He founded an art club that is still in existence long after his death.
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 HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
MIND PERK – More personal and spiritual development articels from leaders in the field of spiritual development and spiritual growth
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE – SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
Stages of Spiritual Growth – A Series of Reflections
There are many maps of spiritual growth and many steps along the spiritual journey. Any one map will take you into the experience of the wonder you are intended to become. Unlike the assertion from many in various religious traditions there isn’t simple one way up the mountain of personal and spiritual development.
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old,
Seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
Some of the maps that I find inviting and encouraging within my own spiritual growth experience include:-
- The Way of the Chakra’s.
- The Way of Love.
- The Way of the Spiral.
- The Way of the Lodge.
- The Way of the Road.
- The Way of the Hero (including the way of the Heroine).
- The Way of the Seer.
- The Way of the Force.
Each of these maps allows you to become aware of the vastness of the potential that lies dormant within you. The benefits of having a map of the spiritual growth process is that
- You know at any time where you are.
- You are given a sense of direction.
- You have a starting point from which to begin.
- You have the confidence that the road has been travelled before.
I will be compiling a Newsletter that will focus on all of the maps above and more. Each of these maps will become a complete reference source for any one who wishes to find a sense of spiritual direction. These maps will allow you to give up following old worn out paradigms that are destructive to oneself and to the collective called humanity. Let me begin by giving you an over view of the main stages of spiritual growth that are understood by the map makers of the spiritual journey.
The stages of spiritual growth are divided into the stage called the personal and the impersonal. You can call these two stages the development of the human and the revelation of the Divine. Each of these stages are represented by a triangle and the work of spiritual growth is to integrate these two triangles into a star. This is the star you are here to be and to shire. The base triangle of the personality involves the integration of the body, emotions and the will. The upper triangle which points downward has to do with the allowing of the purpose, intuition and revelation of the Divine will. What connects the two triangles is the heart. This is the work of bringing Heaven to earth. It is the work of bringing sacred unity into direct awareness within a body living in time and space.
One aspect I return to again and again is that the journey of spiritual growth is, in the words of the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle, through the body and not away from the body. The experience of spiritual growth is the play of energy within the body and the play of sexual energy within the body. For far to long sex has been seen as a sin of the flesh and not the blessing it is intended to be. Much unnecessary suffering is caused by sexual shaming, body shaming and other forms of shaming. Shaming is a killer and kills the spirit within the body. This in the words of the modern mystic Andrew Harvey speaking in the Sounds True recording Radiant Heart, “Has got to stop.”
The stages of spiritual growth I invite you into are stages of body awareness. This is body awareness that takes you into the experience of feeling sexy and feeling alive in a delightful way and into radical self acceptance. This is acceptance of the myriad of feelings that are your way of being able to express your needs and more importantly give you the ability to express your gifts. Whatever map of spiritual growth you choose to follow your life’s direction by it is best to start the journey with your feet on the ground. The way to do this is to begin each day with a very simply body awareness exercise. This allows you to follow the deep spiritual wisdom contained within the words of the poem by Mary Oliver. I personally use this within my own spiritual growth process. This is the spiritual direction that tells you
You only have to allow the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
The problem is that the soft animal of your bod has all too often been taught that it’s free flow is wrong, it is shameful, it is not quite nice or has been demonised by religious teachings’ and hidden under a form of cultural repression. This creates what is called body armour. The body loves attention. It loves conscious attention that is given without judgement. This conscious body awareness exercise teachers you to become a master of subtle energy within the body. Over time you become more sensitive to the subtle energy messages that come from the body. The body becomes the guide to your direction home. You begin to feel more grounded. You have your feet on the ground and you have a sense of your own direction. You become an expert in living your one wild and precious life. Again the poet Mary Oliver helps tremendously here when she writes in the Journey.
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.Mary Oliver
Listen to the inner body. Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. To assist you in this matter I have found a guided meditation that you can use to learn this art of body love and appreciation. This is a free guided meditation that you can download. Gift yourself a step in the right direction. Listen to the voice on the guided meditation that invites you to listen to the only voice that can truly unfold the wonder of who you are. This begins within the softness of the body that has shed the body armour we all use to protect ourselves. Let this softness develop within you and in time you will access the still small voice within. Here is a body awareness meditation that gives you some idea of the process.
Learn to use modern technology in service of spiritual growth. This will allow you to learn this technique in the comfort of your own home and deepen into the comfort of your own soft animal body that knows how to love what it loves. Bookmark this page (Control D) as it is my intention (when I finally resolve the recording issues) to record a mediatation to take you on the first step to higher ground.
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.
spiritual guidance
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.
PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – Spiritual evolution is about growth of being, an ever brightening of the godspark that is your consciousness. Knowledge is the crucial cornerstone of this process, but a cornerstone alone provides no shelter. Unaccompa
SEVEN STAGES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – n his spiritual evolution, man passes through different stages, each of them having some specific characteristics. Recognizing these characteristics can open the path toward superior levels which leads us to perfecti
A Spiritual Awakening Beyond Belief
In developing this personal development and beyond blog, that takes the reader through various maps and stages of spiritual awakening, I experience some highs and some lows. Yesterday was what I call a high day. I worked long hours and had such immense fun. At the end of the day my partner Bee said to me, “Your inner graphic artist has had lots of fun.” The answer was a resolute Yes. I could honestly say
Thank you God for this most amazing day – e.e. Cummings.
I was so thankful for the ability to create images that brightened up my day and I will be using these images, I hope, to brighten up your day. Those who are familiar with the postings on this website/blog will know that I love paintings with neo-classical themes. These are paintings that inspire me and invite within me a transmission of the energy of the symbols contained in such paintings. When I write a course on spiritual awakening I tend to introduce people to the power that is inherent in such art. This is because such art invites, and is intended to invite, your opening up to higher centres of beauty, grace and refined energy.
Yesterday I put together a cover for a book that I intend to write. This book is provisionally entitled, “Beyond the Purpose Driven Life.” The cover of this book will show the beautiful painting opposite that signifies a spiritual awakening. The invitation from this Beyond the Purpose Driven Life book is the living of a life beyond belief. This is both a literal and a transformational experience. Spiritual awakening is not simply a one time event. it is a process and it is a process that has been mapped in order that it can be followed but not simply in a literal way. The great teachers of humanity have mapped this process of spiritual awakening. However, their lower consciousness followers have, for the most part, cemented the map of spiritual awakening in dogma and blocked off the threshold places and portals to transcendence.
A recent statistic tells me that 95% of Americans believe in God. If that question were asked elsewhere I suspect one might not get such a high percentage. The interesting thing for this writer on personal development and beyond is why the question isn’t how many American’s (or others) are knowers of God. Addressing this question purely from a Christian point of view it might be asked in this way
How many seekers will become finders.
In a recent presidential election in Ireland this question “Do you believe in God?” was asked off all seven presidential candidates. Everyone of them affirmed that in fact they did believe in God although it had never been a key aspect of their presidential campaign. Not anyone of the candidates claimed that they were a “Knower of God.” I don’t have an issue about someone who claims that they do not know God. I do take issue with someone who claims that they believe in God as if it where some kind of sound bite in order to win over voters.
In the journey that takes you through stages of spiritual development you can remain a believer for all your life but the beyond aspect of personal development is not something you can believe in. There comes a point when your belief must go in order to know and experience the mystery that is beyond belief. In order to experience the fullness of spiritual awakening one has to cross various thresholds. What was the gift of one stage becomes the resistance to the next stage. At a certain stage your belief actually becomes the resistance to the mystery that is beyond belief.
The history of religion, and especially the dark history of religion, is not the history invited by the masters who have given their names to such religious teachings. Their followers, who are lower consciousness followers, turn the living stream of inspiration into the dead letter of the law. They make the goal of a purpose driven life into the that of missionary work and service to a church. This then becomes the highest aspiration of the spiritual life which from a mystical point of view is also a kind of spiritual death.
The anonymous writer of the classic text The Cloud of Unknowing addressed this issue of belief. The writer choose to remain anonymous because to be a writer of such a transcendent invitation would at the time have meant the person likely be charged with heresy. The question of disbelief is also related. Believers and disbelievers are simply on opposite sides of the same camp. The opposite of belief is not disbelief but knowing. To travel the path of spiritual awakening means that you have to travel your own way. The history of the church is the history of repression and murder of those who entered the Cloud of Unknowing and moved beyond belief into the knowing of the Oneness of Love as direct personal experience.
The modern teacher Jeddu Krishnamurti, who happened to be my teacher, when asked by a journalist who came to interview him, “Do you believe in God?” gave the answer, “Sir, what need is there to believe in God when one knows.” The psychiatrist Carl Jung replied in a similar manner when he was asked if he believed in God. The pastor and founder of Saddleback Church Rick Warren wrote A Purpose Driven Life. The culmination of this book, which has sold in excess of 30 million copies, is that the purpose of life is to give your life in service to the Lord. The highest experience of this service is to become a missionary and promote the teachings of the church.
My reason for beginning to write Beyond the Purpose Driven Life is to invite those who come to this so called high point of religious experience and find it turns to nothing, as it must. My intention is that the full mystery of revelation be lived, not as a system of belief in words, but as direct experience of knowing what it is to live within the Word. The Word as experience has nothing to do with words. Words are only pointers to that experience that is beyond words and certainly beyond belief.
This intended book Beyond the Purpose Driven Life might not sell thirty million or more copies. There will the those, however, who come to a point in their lives that is called a crisis of faith, or to place the experience in more secular terms, to a point that is called an existential crisis. Within such an experience people often feel they have nowhere to turn. I hope to invite them into knowing that such a crisis of faith, or existential crisis, while challenging in all kinds of ways, is an opportunity for spiritual awakening into an experience beyond belief.
I am allowing my inner graphic artist to create a book cover for this proposed work. It has on the front cover a painting representing the call to spiritual awakening. It has within the picture on the front cover a number of angels. This is an artistic representation of the direct knowing of energies beyond material form. These are energies, subtle energies that are creative and loving. If you have a fixed belief system then you might see this experiencing of subtle energy as some form of threat to that belief system. Spiritual awakening is a process of expansion. It is a process of many deaths and rebirths into life. Each time something dies there is the re-birthing into the new. The death of belief allows for the arising of that which is beyond belief.
Let me say here that I am not in the business of taking away someone else’s belief system. That would be a form of arrogance and a subtle form of violence. I will say this, however, I am in the business of inviting revelation beyond belief. The purpose driven life does not end in the service of the missionary church. Metaphorically speaking, this isn’t even half way through the spiritual awakening process. The purpose driven life doesn’t end except when you become at one with the Alpha and Omega and know that God has no beginning or end. Love has always been and ever will be. The process of spiritual awakening beyond belief is a process of forever becoming that cannot be reduced to words and certainly cannot to be followed in a literal sense.
There are lines from The Purpose Driven Life that I love. I started reading it with enthusiasm. Further into the reading it simply became disappointing. The invitation to a purpose driven life needs to be available from the higher centres beyond the personal sense of self. This is not some experience codified in a religious text. It has to be lived directly. In living it directly it is then known but this knowing is beyond the intellect. I wanted The Purpose Driven Life to be the invitation from mainstream Christianity that my heart often longs for but is rarely nourished by. Even though it has been read by over 30 million people and rising it will disappoint anyone who feels the call within them of the mystic heart.
There is a fuller invitation to spiritual awakening within the book by Jim Marion called Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality
I have many more ideas for books, eBooks, guided meditations and courses that I intend to share with you in various ways. I am presently focused on writing 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life eBook which I will turn into a Kindle format and eventfully publish on Amazon. This eBook 7 Ways to Wonderful Life is an extension of the writings featured on this website and in the weekly newsletter Personal Development and Beyond which is available for free. You can sign up to receive this free newsletter that takes you through various maps of spiritual awakening at the top of this post. Or simply use the form I have provided here.
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.
spiritual guidance
CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
THE HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
SELF HEALING EXPRESSIONS – Browse various articels related to topics such as Spiritual Soul Mates, Life Purpose and Dream Interpretation
Personal Development and the Way of Sacred Activism
Personal development happens in many ways. One way that I may well be drawn into is the Way of Sacred Activism. I attended a meeting yesterday close to where I live. It was held in my home country of Northern Ireland in the town of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. This was a forum focused on community activism against the threat of Fracking in Ireland. This is a industry that is a threat to much that I hold dear in our locality and beyond. This threat to the environment may well call me into an area that I have never before been engaged with. This is political activism.
The great mythologist Joseph Campbell writing in his book entitled The Hero with a Thousand Faces recommends that each one of us follow our bliss. Joseph Campbell writes
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you aught to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
On the other hand the modern mystic Andrew Harvey writing in his book entitled The Hope – A Guide to Sacred Activism writes
I don’t say follow your
bliss; look where that
has gotten us. I say
follow your heartbreak.
Each of these wisdom teachings can, in a very real sense, become foundational to our living what the poet Mary Oliver refers to as, Your one wild and precious life. I will say at the outset that the advice from Joseph Campbell is the advice that I would prefer to follow. However, it is the advice of the mystic Andrew Harvey that is in many ways the more physical, the more emotional, mental and spiritually demanding path of sacred activism and community activism.
Having said that, however, we do live in a world of duality. We live in a world of opposites. We live in a world where one tribe thinks it is doing right and the other tribe, which is in opposition, is also sure that what they are doing is also right. This is the very nature of the polar energetics within this realm of time and space. This is the very nature of life on this planet. This tension, and this opposition, when resisted is called suffering. It has many forms. The Buddha, however, demonstrated the way out of suffering and the way out of opposition. This is what he called The Middle Way.
Let me suggest therefore that you embrace both of these invitations. This is both the invitation to follow your bliss and the invitation to follow your heartache. Many of us instinctively choose to follow our bliss. We pursue pleasure and avoid pain. However, pleasure is not the same psychological and spiritual state that is called bliss. Bliss is a high state of consciousness. We might at times glimpse this state but it takes one to travel the Hero’s Journey to be able to turn such a glimpse into what the Sufi’s refer to as a station. A station is where you have the ability to abide within a given level of consciousness should you choose to do so.
The paradox for those who follow the path of bliss is that they will come to the experience of heartbreak. In fact the way of bliss can only really be sustained once the true heart’s desire is known. Knowing the true heart’s desire takes you through hell, or what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung referred to, as the City of Jewels (3rd chakra experience). To follow your bliss means that you are willing to follow the way that the life force within you designed you to express that life force through you. This means that you must learn to listen to the truth that your heart is able to speak through you. This requires a certain level of integrity. This integrity is the ability to rise above the opposition within yourself.
When you are able to reconcile that opposition within you through an act of conscious will then the power of the unconscious becomes aligned with the will of the personality. This is the beginning of real personal integrity but it is only the first step in the beginning of the journey into bliss via the heartache of opening the heart centre (4th chakra experience). Remember that this journey of personal development and beyond is not simply a linear logical journey. Although I might write about lower and higher states of consciousness this is still speaking in language of opposites. This is the very thing we are required to transcend. You may well get glimpses of bliss that arise from the opening the higher energy centres (chakra’s). You may well be blessed with a breakthrough experience that then becomes your North Star.
When the personality has been integrated to a fairly high degree then there is the call to the next stage of the journey. This call can, however, come at any moment. This is the call of the heart and it is in very many ways the experience of that has been called an existential crisis. It is a crises of meaning and purpose and this crisis leads to serious heartache and mental distress. This crisis of meaning and purpose then becomes a threshold place that begins the journey into beyond and the journey into bliss.
To follow your bliss and the journey through the heartbreak of a life lived without meaning and purpose is the journey that Joseph Campbell refers to as The Hero’s Journey. It is also of course the journey of the Heroine and in a very real way is more the Journey of the Heroine. Do not equate the words Hero and Heroine here with the words man and woman. The Journey of the Hero (or Heroine) is the journey of a sacred marriage within. This journey has been mapped in many ways. It is the journey from the narcissistic sense of self interest in all its myriad forms into the realisation of the One Self in service to all forms living on this dimension of space-time and form.
It helps to know that this is part and parcel of the personal development and beyond process. There are many, and in my opinion, too many spiritual seekers seeking bliss from a sense of self interest. I have been one of those seekers. The difference now is that I am much older. I have taken the journey the City of Jewels on various occasions. I have faced enough opposition within me to know that the seeking of bliss for oneself tends to heighten the sense of separateness that we are trying to transcend. Following one’s bliss is a process of alignment with the creative life force. This creative life force has many names but the name is never the thing. It isn’t the name God. It isn’t the name Tao. All those names point to an experience that is the Oneness of Life. This process of the realisation of oneness begins within this dimension of time and space within the body.
The physical body is the temple of the inner body. The state of bliss is known from within and expressed within the form of the body. You are, in a very real sense, the unique embodiment of God in form. Choose your own word for God. Choose a word that connects to your heart. Choose a word that works for you. If the word Oneness works for you choose Oneness. If happiness works for you choose happiness. However, happiness is most elusive when it is sought for the purpose of the individual self. It is found in service when that service is given from the heartbreak of separateness from Love. Bliss is not pleasure. Neither is bliss happiness. Bliss is a state of consciousness that one seeks to abide in. There is a paradox here. The more you are not, and the more that you are not seeking, the more available you are to this bliss experience. Bliss is simply the state of being that you are.
Let me invite you to take the Hero’s journey and the journey into bliss. It is a journey that has been mapped in many ways and distorted in as many ways by those who would have power other than Love. If you would like to know how to follow your bliss and follow your heartache into living a life of meaning and purpose then I invite you to sign up to receive my weekly newsletter entitled Personal Development and Beyond. This is a FREE newsletter which will take you week by week into the journey of a lifetime and beyond. It is the journey of expansion into the endless journey of Love within form and beyond this form of the body. It invites you into an understanding of health and well being in body, emotions, mind and spirit. This journey of personal development and beyond is a challenging road but it is a road that I believe we will all journey in our unique and wondrous way. My intention is to show you the pointers along the way and especially the pitfalls that you will encounter along the way.
The modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in his book The Power of Now starts this book as follows:
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
That really is how important you are. Do not underestimate the power that you have seeded within you. You are a unique flowering. You will never happen again in this form, although paradoxically speaking, you never cease to be this flowering because the real you is the birth less deathless experience of Love beyond the limitation of time and space. My intention here is, metaphorically speaking, to give you some gardening advice that will flower this unique potential within you for the greatest good of all. This, I firmly believe, will take you into the knowing of your true heart’s desire and into the bliss of knowing who you truly are.
I invite you to subscribe now to this weekly newsletter Personal Development and Beyond and discover some real spiritual education. You are able to unsubscribe at anytime. Included in this newsletter will be access to all the resources that I have discovered on my personal Hero’s journey. Join me now and let us each follow our bliss through finding our true heart’s desire. Simply complete the boxes below with your name and email address to accept the invitation to living your one Wild and Precious Life.
Other Resources for Personal Development and Beyond
For more information on Sacred Activism and also The Hero’s Journey see the following links
Sacred Activism - Following your Heartbreak
http://www.andrewharvey.net/pdf/sacred_activism_article.pdf
The Hero’s Journey – Following your Bliss
http://lifecoachesblog.com/wp-content/files/theherosjourney.pdf
Fracking Free Ireland
http://www.frackingfreeireland.org
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.
levels of consciousness
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
The Way of the Chakras and Personal Development
Persona – The Mask
Personal Development – the development of the persona, the mask, the separate sense of self – involves the balancing of the first three chakras
- The Root Chakra
- The Sacral Chakra
- The Solar Plexis Chakra
This is the first triad of chakras that are concerned with personal development and the integrity of the individual. The second triad of chakras is concerned not so much with development but the allowing of revelation.
One allows the revelation of the impersonal or the universal.
- The Crown Chakra
- The Brow Chakra
- The Throat Chakra
These two triads one moving upward, which denotes the masculine and the other moving downwards denoting the movement of feminine energy are connected by the middle chakra -
When this process of personal development and beyond is complete then we have the integration of two triangles, which makes the sacred symbol of the star. This is a symbol of sacred unity – the unity of the personal with the universal within you. This is the Way of the Chakras. It is a complete physical, mental, emotional and spiritual integration. It leads to a sense of connection beyond the limitation of the separate sense of self, which is the cause of suffering in this time/space dimension.
It is the fullest expression of what is potential within you. It provides an outline that promotes a total sense of well being in all areas of your life and the life beyond the limitation of the person you think yourself to be. The Way of the Chakras develops the personality in the following way.
- Physical Well Being – I Am
- Emotional Well Being – I Feel
- Mental Well Being – I Think
This is a process of integrity. It begins in the body. This is not simply a linear process, meaning that you move 1, 2, 3 in a straight line. Well being in the body will lead to a greater emotional and mental well being. In this process you are using your will, the power of intention – to integrate your physical, emotion and mental energies. This is needed in order to be able to surrender the will you have developed to that which is universal.
It is only those who have strength of will that can allow themselves to allow the process to take them higher. This process moves through the heart. The individual will is developed to the point where they begin to feel the pull of the universal within them. Then the individual will is being invited to merge with the will of the Divine. This is the true desire of the heart and the purpose of life on this planet.
The Infant Samuel
This seven stage outline is the true spiritual education. It is the education that one should at least be made aware of even if you choose not to follow this particular way. It is a map that you can follow that leads to the revelation of why you are born. While this revelation needs to be direct it is more likely to be revealed to the individual whose mind is open to the invitation.
The experience of life lived from the opening of the heart chakra is in many ways the opening to the life of the miraculous. Most people on this planet are not living from this dynamic. By that I mean that they are not able to simply abide within the heart by an act of will. At best they are able to glimpse the state of heart consciousness but get pulled out of it by habitual attachment to lower levels of consciousness where they, for the most part, live.
Without at least a glimpse of this heart state, the desires of the heart will not be known as a direct experience and your life will be driven by ego desires, which are for the most part determined by the desires of the collective and, especially today, by media and commercial interests. This complete map of the human journey is really an experienced journey. It requires that you at the very least know the general direction and outline of the territory. This is a glorious journey because that in a very real sense is the dynamic you end up being the revelation.
My personal recommendation is that you at least learn the outline of the journey. I also add one proviso. Always remember that the journey begins in the body, the root chakra, and that you are to remember that to keep your feet always on the ground. Paradoxically speaking, this is the only way to fly. Whatever map you choose to follow in relation to what I call the Way of the Chakra’s, be it a book, a course, with a teacher, do not simple make this spiritual education process simple more information. This Way of the Chakra’s is 99% practice and 1% information. Don’t cling to the words but make yourself available to the knowing beyond words. This is the most practical of ways to live life for all your life.
Eternity Awaits You
There is a bonus in living this way. You expand in many ways. It is a journey into seeing beyond. You cannot yet know what that feels like. The breakthrough experience happens and you are revealed to be more than you ever thought you would imagine. The Way of the Chakras will, should you choose to venture on the Way reveal to you something beyond any worth. It is a paradox because it is not a thing that you get. It is the revelation of who you already are but not awake to. The poet R. S. Thomas says this wonderfully well in his poem The Bright Field.
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.~ R. S. Thomas ~
(Another from the wonderful anthology,
Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds,
ed. by Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce)
Don’t let your life simply be a hurry into a receding future without real purpose and meaning. This purpose and meaning is only recreated from the heart centre – the bright field. It is, as the modern mystic Guy Finley has so eloquently said
Your purpose is to allow Love to use you for its purpose
This can only happen if you are able to surrender your will to the Universal Will. This is, in essence, the one love choice. It is, in a very real sense, the choice between life and death. The Way of the Chakras ultimately leads you to the direct knowing, to the eternal birthless/deathless revelation that you are. My invitation through this blog is to say to you -
At least educate yourself to this glorious invitation.
You can take the first step. You can even, if you doubt the possibility, take the first step. This is a first step into the knowing of your full potential. As one proverb invites
The journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step.
Personal Development and Chakra Balancing Home Training Program
Until that point when I produce my own Way of the Chakra’s program (which I am presently developing) I invite you to take the first step into real personal and spiritual development that will, in a very real way, lead to stardom. This is the star that you are here to be and to lighten up and brighten up the world. Let me introduce you to an extensive map of chakra balancing and healing that includes . This is a program developed by Carol Tuttle Master Energy Therapist. This program includes the following training:-
- Thai Yoga Therapy.
- Meditation.
- Visualization.
- Rapid Eye Technology.
- Crystal Healing.
- Emotional Freedom Technique.
- Reframing.
- Breathing.
- Affirmations.
- Chanting.
Take the first step.
Click this link to access this program
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
SELF HEALING EXPRESSIONS – Browse various articels related to topics such as Spiritual Soul Mates, Life Purpose and Dream Interpretation
NEW DIMENSIONS – Over the years, a wealth of practical knowledge and perennial wisdom has accumulated in the audio archives of New Dimensions, a virtual treasure trove of timeless wisdom.
SOUNDS TRUE – Tools and teachings to spark your inner evolution. Download FREE spiritual development podcasts from inspirational teachers
Chakra Balancing and Danger of Meditation
In a recent comment on this blog I was asked if there is a difference between chakra balancing and meditation? Let me say at the outset that I am neither an expert in meditation nor am I an expert in chakra balancing. However, I am a kind of expert with regard to both meditation and chakra balancing based upon my own spiritual journey. What I share in this article is from my own personal experience.
There are many forms of meditation. The benefits of meditation are vast and have been scientifically proven. I cannot recommend some form of meditation highly enough. There is, however, a danger in meditation. I base my caution upon my own practise when I was made aware of such a danger by a Buddhist teacher who came to teach meditation in the West. The danger is with the understanding of ‘detachment.’ I began early on in my life with the practice of meditation Vipassana. This is a very powerful meditation technique and has lead to more experiences of enlightenment than any other. The man who taught me this technique was not much older than myself. He seemed a strange young man. He was distant and aloof and also terribly thin. He had a kind of floaty presence which I put down to his being a practiced meditator.
The practice of Vipassana meditation lead me into feeling depressed. The more I did this meditation practice the more depressed I became. When I asked my teacher about this he simply said, “Keep practising.” He said nothing more. The depression didn’t move until I stopped this mediatition practice. I did not take up a meditation practice until many years later when I met another teacher. This was a man called Sangarachita who is the founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. He was an older man and had given his life to the journey of the spirit. He had travelled in India after the Second World War and stayed on, eventually becoming a Buddhist monk. Many years later he returned to the West. He recorded many talks on meditation and one I listened to, which warned of the dangers of meditation, fascinated me.
In this recording of a lecture on meditation he recalled a phenomena that he discovered when he first returned home to England from India and taught meditation to Westerners. This was the fact that many of those who engaged with the practice of mediation experienced depression. He himself could not explain it so he watched those he taught and over time he came to this understanding. Many people in the West, including myself, come to the practice of meditation to find a sense of greater peace and happiness.
I was unhappy because I was out of touch with my feelings. What theVipassina technique taught Westerners to do was to detach from feelings from which they were already extremely detached. In the words of the Irish writer James Joyce, “they lived some way from their body” and this lead to depression. I have attended various schools of meditation that produce individuals who are disembodied and floaty because they practice detachment from detachment. None of these people would agree with any of what I write here. The alternative to the practice of witnessing phenomena that arises in the mind is the warm meditation practice of the Meta Behavana.
This is the practice of Loving Kindness. One is a ‘cool’ practice and the other is a ‘warm’ practice. So what is the difference between meditation and chakra balancing? The answer is one that is given from my own personal experience. I use this chakra balancing technique because it is a full body technique. It is a practice of full embodiment and not simply a practice of silent witnessing. One can meditate on the light of a candle but be unaware of the body except that it is restless or aches in some way. This does not mean that you are able in the words of the poet Mary Oliver to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
The practice of chakra balancing is aligned with stages of personal and spiritual growth. It is a practice that invites the integrity of the personality through alignment of the conscious mind with the unconscious mind. This brings personal power (3rd chakra) and leads to the alignment of the will with Divine will and which in turn leads to what is called enlightenment. The way of enlightenment, as the modern mystic Ekhart Tolle has eloquently stated, is “through body and not beyond body.” In this blog site I emphasis embodiment and the love of the body This is not love of a body image but love of the body as an experience of aliveness and love of the form through which life is able to express through you in a very unique way.
Meditation will give you great benefits but it may not invite a love of the body. This, paradoxically, leads you to that which is within and also beyond the body. I have met with many meditators with body hatred and they use meditation as a form of distancing themselves from the body. Chakra balancing on the other hand is body focused. It is never NOT body focussed. It begins its focus with the fact that you are a body and that the body is the beginning point and the foundation into higher states of consciousness. It invites the love of the body which, I add, is not a love of a body image but the free flow of energy within the body that is the dance of life. You see this free flow in the play of little children.
When you are grounded in the body you are able to move higher. You move into the 2nd chakra, which is the movement into the unconscious. This is the area of relationship, the area of feelings and in particular those feelings that one tends to repress. It is the area of relationship and the area of sexuality and the area of opposition. In this process one does not deny their feelings but learns to integrate such feelings into the fullness of an integral personality. This is one of the first steps that one takes in learning to balance the chakras.
There are seven chakras. The first three involve personal integration of body, emotions and will. The fourth is the bridge between the personal and the impersonal of the Divine. The last three are the surrendering of the personal will to Divine will. All of these stages are best entered in full embodiment until you live the paradox that you are and you are not.
I leave you with what I think is an important quote on this topic from the modern master Ekhart Tolle from his book The Power of the Now.
The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through and out-of-the-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and can give you a glimpse of the state of libreation from the material form, in th end you will always return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place. Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever adocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have.
Here is a video showing Eckhart Tolle. It is slow to begin with. Like myself, those of you who impatient might find they want it to move along more quickly. Simply notice this impatience. It is in fact an interesting exercise in awareness. The beginning of this video is interesting from the point of view of this post in that Echkhart Tolle immediately introduces you to the importance of being aware of the body and breathing. If you take nothing more away from watching this video then take this body awareness technique as a foundational techique for chakra balancing and especially a technique for 1st chakra balancing.
Eckhart Tolle – Finding Your Life’s Purpose
I invite you to learn more about this transformation through the body which I consider integral to chakra balancing and healing by enrolling in the following FREE course.
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.
root chakra
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.
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
NEW DIMENSIONS – Over the years, a wealth of practical knowledge and perennial wisdom has accumulated in the audio archives of New Dimensions, a virtual treasure trove of timeless wisdom.