Chakras: A Framework for Personal Evolution

Chakras: A Framework for Personal Evolution

So much of my understanding of the chakras came from the work of Caroline Myss. I would highly recommend reading The Anatomy of the Spirit if you have an interest in this topic. To dive even further, I would also recommend her audiobook, Energy Anatomy. Both are excellent resources, and much of this information is sourced from those materials.

Working with the chakras can be a valuable tool for your personal evolution. Chakras are an integral part of our energy body anatomy. These vortexes of light support our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. They are also associated with psychosocial characteristics. Allowing us to explore the way we perceive the world. When we understand which chakras are out of alignment, we gain insight into the stories and relationships that keep us stuck.

What are Chakras?

Chakras are spinning wheels of light. They receive universal life force energy from our environment, move it along our Nadis and energize the endocrine organs, nervous system, and blood. These energy centers both generate and inform the overall energy matrix that makes up our energy body. We measure the health or state of the chakras by the size, shape, and direction of its spin and the openness of the center. The spin of the chakras working together creates an electromagnetic field that produces the aura around the body.

Chakras & Our Evolution

Chakras are like blueprints of consciousness that record and document all of our life events. The first three chakras represent our relationship with the outer world. The upper three chakras represent our relationship to our inner world.  The lower chakras match our developmental stages, but as we move into the upper chakras, they are more tied to our experiences.

By understanding which chakras are out of harmony and looking at the associated psychosocial characteristics, we gain insight into our challenges—learning about the patterns and constructs that do not serve our highest potential.

The Root Chakra – Tribal Power
Sacred Truth – All is One

The root chakra is all about our sense of belonging. It includes our sense of safety, security, and survival instincts. The root is also the foundation for our physical health and well-being. This chakra is associated with our early childhood. Much of our sense of identity, worldview, and values were formed from our familial relationships and early group identities.  It takes many years for a child to understand that they are separate from their families. That is why the sacred truth of this chakra is All is One.

This chakra corresponds with the etheric field. This field extends just slightly beyond the body and with a relaxed focus can sometimes be seen as gray or blue.

(Try Expansion – All is One Guided Meditation)

The Sacral Chakra – Power of Relationship
Sacred Truth – Honor One Another

The sacral chakra is all about our relationships with other people outside of our family. This area is our center of emotion, sex, pleasure, sensuality, and intimacy. Our relationship to money and creativity is also connected here. It is in this chakra that we start to introduce duality. We learn about ourselves through relationships. If we associate this with human growth and development, this would be when a child begins school and starts to understand themselves relative to someone else.

This chakra corresponds with the emotional field. It shows up as different colors depending on what a person is feeling.

The Solar Plexus Chakra – Personal Power
Sacred Truth – Honor One’s Self

This chakra is about our sense of self-worth and self-esteem. It is about getting to know who we are outside of group dynamics and relationships. Because of this, we deal with fear, anxiety, and our sense of self confidence. It is also associated with the further development of the self, ego, and identity. This time would be represented by puberty when adolescents try to find their way in the world and push back against constraints, norms and expectations.

This chakra corresponds with the mental field. It is also where our gut instinct originates. As we learn to value and trust who we are, this intuition source becomes very powerful.

The Heart Chakra – Emotional Power
Sacred Truth – Love is Divine Power

This chakra is the connector of the lower and upper chakras, the physical and spiritual realms. The bottom three chakras relate to our external world. What we see looking outward. As we shift into the heart and move into the upper three chakras, it is what we experience looking inwards – our inner sight. The heart is our seat of love, acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness. This chakra is about our internal feelings and our emotional response to our thoughts.

Also, the amount of attention we give to our emotional needs determines our emotional maturity. Many of the challenges that arrive in this center are a result of sacral chakra interactions. If we were not shown love as children or in our early relationships, our emotional development and maturity might be stunted as adults.

This chakra corresponds with the astral body. Usually rainbow-colored, this part of the field acts as a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Throat Chakra – Power of Will
Sacred Truth – Surrender Personal Will to Divine Will

This chakra is the seat of self-expression, communication, and will. Because it is located between the heart and the mind, it connects our mental/emotional bodies around our power of choice. While often thought of as the seat of self-expression, it is about more than just being able to communicate. It is about the movement of personal will into divine will. So, not just speaking up on behalf of oneself, but speaking from a place that is informed by the heart and the mind. A place that is a blend of the Spirit and the self. It is also the movement from linear time into energetic time. As we begin to see the world through an energetic lens, aka multidimensionally, all things become possible.

This chakra corresponds with the etheric template. A bluish gridwork that supports the physical body. It is the divine blueprint of the physical body.

The Brow Chakra – Power of the Mind
Sacred Truth – Seek Only the Truth

This chakra is about the development of the mind, understanding truth from illusion. Our seat of inner guidance, wisdom, and imagination. It helps us to differentiate between thoughts motivated by fear and those that come from our inner knowing. We also learn to detach from outcomes and expectations i.e.developing our impersonal mind. Meditation and mindfulness practice can be beneficial for working with this chakra. It links our mental and emotional bodies because it contains our thoughts, memories, personal experiences, and our feelings about them.

This chakra corresponds with the celestial body. This can sometimes be seen as shards of rainbow light radiating from the center core of a person.

The Crown Chakra – Divine Power
Sacred Truth – Live in the Present Moment

This chakra is the center of bliss and transcendental consciousness. Here we move into higher consciousness through beingness. It is where inspired thought and mystical experiences originate. Our spiritual self seeks to integrate spirituality into all aspects of our lives. It is in this chakra that we develop and maintain our relationship with the Divine.

This chakra corresponds with the etheric body, a golden shell around the auric field’s outer edges. It is the boundary between the universal energy field and the individual field.

There are many models and frameworks to explore our lives. Many that help us to understand who we are and why we make the choices we make. Working with the chakras is one of the best ways to bring balance and harmony to our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects, but they also give us insight into the places we are stuck. By understanding the chakras and applying their unique qualities and lessons to our lives, we receive essential and actionable wisdom. They also ask us to see from a higher perspective, blending the Spirit and the self.

Which chakra has insight for you today? Take our Chakra quiz.

Want to know more? Consider working one on one with an Energy Practitioner.

Want to bring balance and harmony to your chakras? Try our Chakra Balancing Guided Meditation. 

 

 

Forgiveness: Seeing a Higher Perspective

Forgiveness: Seeing a Higher Perspective

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?” 

 ~ Marcus Aurelius

What is Forgiveness?

One of the best descriptions that I read is that forgiveness is when you can pull your energy out of the situation. What does that mean exactly? It means that you are willing to drop the story you’ve created that allows you to remain justified in your pain. 

We often talk about forgiveness like it is an act done for the other person, but forgiveness is really about our desire to move forward. And it isn’t until we choose to let go of the story that legitimizes our pain that we are able to move on. That is why Caroline Myss describes forgiveness as a self-initiated act of transformation. Because it requires a deliberate and conscious choice to calm our ego’s incessant talk that continually informs us on why we are entitled to our hurt and anger.

How Do We Forgive?

According to Positive Psychology, forgiveness is a process that asks us to cultivate acceptance, see things from multiple perspectives, and re-write the story from those higher perspectives. The first step is accepting what is. Eckart Tolle wrote, “It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept — before they will forgive. As soon as they do, one of the greatest miracles happens….the transmutation of suffering into inner peace.”

(Here’s another animal guide meditation you might enjoy)

This is not about spiritual by-passing and suppressing our pain or hurt. It may take some time until we are ready to move forward. However, once we decide that we no longer want to identify with that story, we begin the path toward peace. 

A Soul-Level Perspective

Taking a bird’s eye view of the situation is one way to shift into acceptance. Can you witness the divinity in yourself and the other person? Do you trust in divine timing? As Myss writes, “From a cosmic perspective, your life is far more complex than you can measure by the influence of one or two relationships. There is a higher law that rules the spirit, a mystical law…”

Humans are messy and complicated. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you condone another’s behavior or will forget that they have wronged you in some way. It just means that you aren’t willing to let it bind your energy any further. Are you ready to invite peace into your life? To be fully present in the here and now?

(more…)

Shadow Work with Crow Guided Meditation

Shadow Work with Crow Guided Meditation

 
 
 
This guided meditation is part of a weekly Living Light Meditation gathering in the Chaos & Light Community. This meditation asks you to work with the spirit of Crow and look deep into your shadow. The Chaos & Light Community is an online space for spiritual seekers to collaborate, share, inspire and learn with a community of like-minded people that nurture and foster evolving states of consciousness, and promote personal evolution and well-being.
 
Music credit by StockProMusic ​
Photo credit Canva.com

Cycles of Life Guided Meditation

Cycles of Life Guided Meditation

 
This guided meditation is part of a weekly Living Light Meditation gathering in the Chaos & Light Community. This meditation takes you through the seasons of life and the cycle of creative energy. We explore each cycle through the lens of nature and the elements of air, fire, water and earth. The Chaos & Light Community is an online space for spiritual seekers to collaborate, share, inspire and learn with a community of like-minded people that nurture and foster evolving states of consciousness, and promote personal evolution and well-being.
 
Music credit by StockProMusic ​
Photo credit Canva.com
 
 

SHOW LESS

 
 

We Are Stardust Guided Meditation

We Are Stardust Guided Meditation

 

This guided meditation is part of a weekly Living Light Meditation gathering in the Chaos & Light Community. This meditation takes you through a brief grounding technique called earth breathing. Then invites you to travel back to the original spark of creation as you connect with the light and intelligence at the beginning of the universe. You are then guided to embrace the expansiveness of the cosmos.

Music credit by meditative

Photo credit Canva.com

Meditation Script

(copyright 2021 Angela Levesque)

So in a seated position, I want you to begin breathing deeply into your belly. Letting the belly expand and become soft on the in-breath. And letting it gently fall back toward the spine on the out-breath.

Continue this for a few moments until you bring your presence fully into your body.

EARTH BREATHING TECHNIQUE

(do not read this title aloud, can be used separately)

Now I want you to begin just focusing on the out-breath alone. Breathe in naturally at your own rhythm and pace and only focus on the exhalation. On the exhalation, I want you to see if you can move your breath down through the body and out the soles of the feet.

Breathe in and on the out-breath, move the breath down the body and into the earth. Do this for a few moments.

Pause

Continue to focus on the out-breath but now I want you to think of that breath as energy and as you move the breath through the body, on the exhalation, let that breath and energy sweep anything that is ready to be released, let it move down the body and out the soles of the feet.

Letting the earth receive anything that is no longer needed or serving your mind, body or soul. Knowing that earth holds the frequencies to neutralize anything you release to her.

Pause

Okay, now we are going to continue to have awareness of the out-breath, but we are also going to pay attention to our in-breath as well.

As we inhale now we are going to draw the earth’s energy up into the body, bringing with it any light, frequencies and intelligence that the body requires for harmony and balance.

And on the out-breath letting the breath move back out and into the earth.

Drawing the earth’s energy up and into the body on the in-breath and moving the breath and energy back into the earth on the out-breath.

Continue this to a point of equilibrium. That is until the energy you are moving feels in balance between what is coming in and what is going out.

And when this feels complete, having a deep connection with the earth beneath you, I want you to contemplate the idea that you are intimately related to not only the earth but the entire cosmos.

Imagine that you are lying comfortably on a blanket in a field on a warm summer night. You are far away from the lights of the city. It is a beautiful clear sky. As you gaze toward the stars, it is lit up by a million soft twinkling lights.

You can feel a slight breeze on your face, the relaxing sounds of crickets in the background. You feel safe and loved. The night holds a quiet magic. You are filled with a sense of awe and expansion as you breathe it all in.

As you gaze at the stars, you are reminded that in order for you to witness their brilliance they were awakened millions of years ago. And yet they twinkle tonight and share this moment with you.

Breathe in light….breathe in darkness. As the night sky reaches out to you.

We are going to take a trip back in time to the deep history of our universe. As you stay still, time travels all around you. You are taken back to a time, to the moment of the Universe’s birth.

You see a brilliant flash of light that fills your entire being. It is powerful, yet gentle. Immense and yet familiar. You understand that it is the spark of creation that you are witnessing. The very birth of all things in this universe.

Breathe in this beautiful light as it connects you to the very nature of your being. To every cell….. to every molecule….. to every atom in your being. Let this spark of creation rejuvenate, activate, and speak to every part of all that you are.

As you hold that spark of creation in your heart, mind and body, witness the expansion of the cosmos from this moment of light.

See its whirl of magnetizing forces as it brings form out of the formless. Witness the beautiful array of colors – deep and penetrating. As it draws together everything that is needed for life in this universe. Calling forth the color, energy and frequencies required for the magic of creation.

Holding that spark of creation in your heart with a deep knowing that everything that birthed those stars, are the very things that birthed you.

Pause

Return now to the blanket…looking over the whole sky breathing in the beauty of both the darkness and the light. Feel a sense of intimacy that exists between you and the stars.

As you bask in the magic of this moment, let go of the boundaries of your identity, the boundaries of your body, the limitations of your mind. Allow yourself to expand and reach out in the wonder of this moment. 

As you sit here on the surface of the Earth, you realized that outward and inward are the same. Space is in every direction, out there, and inside of us.

Sit for a few minutes in the expanded state. Breathing with the universe – her intelligence, her darkness, her lightness – as she holds both the form and formless within her.

Long pause

Take a moment to call yourself back into your heart center. Drawing your expanded self back into the body. Taking a few deep breaths.

Pause

Feeling your body supported by the chair, floor or bed beneath you. Breathing deeply. Following the moment of breath as it moves in and out of the body. Bringing your full attention and awareness into the room around you. Shrugging the shoulders softly, wiggling the fingers and toes. And when you are ready, opening your eyes – aware and alert.

Take a few moments to just sit there until you feel ready to move on with your day.

Healing Your Inner Child Guided Meditation

Healing Your Inner Child Guided Meditation

This inner child guided meditation is part of a weekly Living Light Meditation gathering in the Chaos & Light Community. This meditation takes you through a brief guided relaxation to remove any resistance. It then invites you to connect with your inner child to ask them what they need for their healing. You may find their message for you is inviting you to bring more lightness and play to your life. Or they may be asking you for some deeper recognition of unhealed trauma and emotions. Honor your child’s message and return to this practice as many times as is needed. If you uncover something that seems too big for you to handle, don’t hesitate to seek out the assistance of our counselor or therapist. 

Inner Child Meditation Script

(Copyright Angela Levesque)

We are going to begin by taking three deep cleansing breaths.
Taking a little bit longer on the out-breath, letting the body completely release and relax on the exhalation.

Now I want you to follow the flow of the breath as it moves through your body. Not trying to alter the flow, just letting it move easily and freely through the body.

Take a moment to call yourself back from where ever you have been during the day. Draw your energies back home to your center. Bringing mind, body, and energy into the here and now.

Allow your mind to empty what it no longer needs to hold on to, let it go, flow out and away. And allow your body to release what it no longer needs to hold on to, letting it flow out and away.

We will do a short guided relaxation to remove any resistance and move the body into a place of deep calm.

I want you to bring your attention to the top of your head. I want you to imagine a wave of relaxation beginning at the scalp and moving slowly downwards.

Feel the wave of peace and relaxation move down the face. Allowing the muscles around the eyes to release and relaxand the muscles of the jaw release and relax as the wave of relaxation continues to move slowly downward.

The wave of relaxation moving down now through the neck and the shoulders. Feel the shoulders drop as they release the tension you’ve been carrying. Using the exhalation as a way to move deeper into the release.

Now the wave of relaxation moves down through the muscles of the chest and abdomen. Bringing release and relaxation to the whole front of your torso.

Feeling the wave of relaxation moving through the back – moving down from the upper back, mid-back, lower back. Feeling the muscles release and relax all the way down the spine.

Feel the deep sense of peace and relaxation in your whole upper body

Now imagine this wave of relaxation moving through the hips. Breathe into that area as you bring your awareness in your root. Letting the breath open the hips and remove any tension.

Now the wave of relaxation moving down into the thighs – the upper thigh, mid thigh, lower thigh. Moving down to the knee. Bringing with it awareness and deep release.

Now the wave of relaxation moves over the knee and into the lower leg. Feeling the flow of the breath and relaxation move down the calves.

And finally, the wave moving all the way down into the soles of the feet, allowing any last bits of tension to flow right out the soles of your feet and into the earth.

And now that you are in a calm, relaxed and safe space…I want you to imagine yourself in a beautiful setting…this could be a meadow, your backyard, a mountain top. Just someplace that you feel safe, comfortable, and at peace.

For the next few moments, take in this setting with all of your senses. The sounds, the smells, the sights. Breathing it all in………..Letting all of the colors, sounds and smells bring a vibrancy to your being as you breathe them in.

(pause)

You begin to notice a faint outline of a child coming toward you. As this child moves closer, you notice that this is you as a little child. Take a moment to notice their hair, body, eyes.

The age that you are. Notice your child’s attitude, expressions. Are they looking at the ground, are they curious, are they sad?

Invite your child to sit next to you at whatever distance is comfortable for them. As they sit next to you, you notice that you can see and feel….. as they see and feel.

What does the world look like from their eyes? How does the world feel from their perspective?

Turning to your child, ask them – What do you need most from me? Allow the child to answer in whatever way is most comfortable for them..a drawing, a gift, through words. However, they express it is exactly how it needs to be done.

(pause)

If you are able to give your child what they need from you at this moment, please go ahead and do so. If they ask for something that you cannot give right at this moment, tell your child what you can give and if it is something that is possible in the future, tell your child when this will be possible and give your child a symbolic promise for the future.

(pause)

Now ask your child is there anything they wish for you to hear?

(pause)

Take a moment now, if you are not already, to sit facing them. And if it is alright, hold their hands in yours. Look at your child in the eyes and then tell you love them………you honor them………. you hear them………… and they have always been enough.

(pause)

If that feels complete. Ask your child if they are ready to come home with you today. If your child is not ready to come home with you today, tell them you will return…….thank them for their time……… and let them know that you will continue to honor them and work toward being together one day.

And if your child has chosen to come with you today. Give them a moment to say goodbye to their surrounding….allow them to collect anything they need for their journey….. and invite them home.

This can look however you want, holding hands, a heart to heart connection, a full integration of self. Whatever is most comfortable for both of you at this moment.

Allow this integration to occur, bringing you both into wholeness, balance, and harmony.

(pause)

And when this integration process feels complete. Spend a moment in your heart center in gratitude.

In deep appreciation for your inner child, for the experiences that made you who you are today. 

Let this appreciation move through your entire body. Letting gratitude fill every part of your being.

(pause)

And when you are ready, take a few deep breaths connecting you to your body. Feeling your body make contact with the chair, floor or bed beneath you.

Bringing your full awareness to the room around you.

Wiggling your fingers and your toes…….gently shrugging your shoulders. Bringing your full attention and awareness back into your body……back into your room…… and when you are ready, allowing this sense of calm, peace, and centeredness to remain in the body as you open your eyes – aware and alert.

 

Music credit by meditative https://audiojungle.net/item/meditati…
Photo credit Canva.com