The Seven Sacred Truths

~Honour One-Self~

The Third Chakra

External Power

Level Three

Personal Power

 The third chakra completes the physical trilogy of the human energy system. Like chakras one and two, it primarily relates to a physical form of power. Where the first chakra resonates to group tribal power, and where the second chakra resonates to the flow of power between the self and others, the third chakra relates to our personal power in relation to the external world.

Sacred Truth of the Third Chakra

The Sacred Truth of the third chakra is ~Honor One-self~. The energies that come together in this chakra have but one spiritual goal; to help us mature in our self understanding - the relationship we have with others, and where we stand on our own and take care of ourselves. The spiritual quality is self-respect. We have all faced or will face an experience that reveals to us our own internal strengths and weaknesses as separate from the influence of our elders. The spiritual quality inherent in the third chakra compels us to create an identity apart from our tribal self.

Location

The solar plexus

Energy connection to the emotional mental body:

The third chakra, often called the solar plexus, is our personal power centre, the magnetic core of the personality and ego.

Symbolic/perceptual connection.

The third chakra mediates between the primary external (which is characteristic of the first and second chakras) and the internalisation of consciousness. The first chakra has an external centre of gravity and is always located within a group mind. The second chakra too, has an external gravitational centre but focuses on relationships and their effects on us. In the third chakra however, the gravitational centre is partly internalised as our focus shifts from how we relate to people around us to how we relate to and understand ourselves.

Primary strengths

Self-esteem, self respect, and self discipline, ambition, the ability to generate action, and the ability to handle a crisis; the courage to take risks, generosity, ethics and strength of character.

Primary Fears

Fears of rejection, criticism, looking foolish and failing to meet ones responsibilities, all fears relating to physical appearance, such as fear of obesity, baldness or ageing, fears that others will discover our secrets.

Developing Self esteem

All three spiritual currents merge to form the intuitive voice of our solar plexus. As we develop a sense of self, our intuitive voice becomes our natural and constant source of guidance.

How we feel about ourselves, whether we respect ourselves, determines the quality of our life, our capacity to succeed in business, relationships, healing and intuitive skills. Self understanding and acceptance, the bond we form with ourselves, is in many ways the most critical spiritual challenge we face. In truth, if we do not like ourselves, we will be incapable of making healthy decisions. Instead, we will direct all of our personal power for decision-making into the hands of someone else; someone whom we want to impress, or someone before whom we think we must weaken ourselves to gain physical security. People who have a low sense of self esteem attract relationships and occupational situations that reflect and reinforce this weakness. Nobody is born with healthy self esteem. We must earn this quality in the process of living as we face our challenges one at a time.

The third chakra in particular resonates to the boundaries of the physical body. Are we physically strong or weak? Able or handicapped? Beautiful or scarred? To tall or too short? From a spiritual perspective, any and all physical assets and limitations are illusory, mere ~life props~. Yet a persons acceptance of, or resistance to, them is critical to entering spiritual adulthood. From a spiritual perspective, in fact, the entire physical world is nothing more than our classroom, but the challenge to each of us in this classroom is: Given your particular body, environment and beliefs, will you make choices that enhance your spirit or those that drain your power into the physical illusion around you? Again and again, the challenges of the third chakra will cause you to evaluate your sense of power and self in relation to the external world.

Enhancing Inner Power

We ~re-order~ our lives when we choose spirit over the illusions of physical circumstances. With each choice we make, we either become more involved in the illusory physical world, or we invest energy into the power of spirit. Each of these seven chakras represents a different version, or manifestation of this one essential lesson. Each time we choose to enhance our internal power, we limit the authority of the physical world over our lives, bodies, health, minds and spirits. From an energy point of view, every choice that enhances our spirits strengthens our energy field; and the stronger our energy field, the fewer our connections to negative people and experiences.

The stronger our spirits become, the less authority linear time can exercise in our lives. To some extend linear time is an illusion of the physical world, tied in to the physical energy of the first three chakras. For physical tasks, we need this physical energy, for example when we need to take an inspiration from thought to form, we run it through linear steps. But in terms of our belief in our ability to heal, our concept of time should be re-examined.

The illusion that healing takes a ~long time~ holds considerable authority in our culture. Believing makes it true. By choosing to believe something, we breathe our breath into that belief, giving that belief authority.

Our culture believes that healing painful childhood memories requires years of psychotherapy, but that need not be the case. If one believes it, healing painful memories and releasing the authority they have within ones life can happen rapidly.

The length of healing processes becomes calibrated to the time that the tribal mind attributes to them. For instance, the group mind currently believes that certain cancers take six months to kill us, that grieving a mate’s death requires at least one year, and that grieving a child’s death may never end. If we believe these assessments, we give the tribal mind power over our lives instead of exercising our personal power. If your spirit is strong enough to withdraw from the authority of a group belief, it is potentially strong enough to change your life.

Self Esteem and Intuition

Most people are in touch with their intuition, yet can completely misunderstand the nature of their intuition. They can confuse intuition with prophetic ability ie "intuition is the ability to foretell the future." Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships. It is the ability to use energy data to make decisions in the immediate moment. Energy data are the emotional, psychological and spiritual components of a given situation. There are the ~here and now~ ingredients of life, not non-physical information from some ~future~ place.

For the most part information that is accessible to intuition makes its presence known by making us feel uncomfortable, depressed and anxious - or at the other extreme drifty and detached, as if we were suddenly cut off from our own feelings. In dreams of an intuitive nature, we receive symbols of change or chaos. Such dreams often occur more intensely during emotional crises. Energy of intuitive sensations signal that we have reached a cross-roads in our lives and that we have an opportunity to influence the next stage of our lives, at least to some degree, through the choice we make now.

The intuition and the independence of the third chakra together gives us the capacity to take risks, to follow through on gut hunches. One should not think that intuition means clear direction rather than guidance. ie in hoping that one good intuitive ~hit~ will give the power to reorder lives in complete harmony and happiness. Intuitive guidance does not mean following a voice to the Promised Land. It means having the self esteem to recognise that the discomfort or confusion that a person feels is actually directing him to take charge of his life and make choices that will break him out of stagnation and misery.

If a person suffers from low self esteem, she cannot act on her intuitive impulses because her fear of failure is too intense. Intuition, like all meditative disciplines, can be enormously effective, if, and only if, one has the courage and personal power to follow through on the guidance it provides. Guidance requires action, but it does not guarantee safety. While we measure our own success in terms of our personal comfort and security, the universe measures our success by how much we have learned. So long as we use comfort and security as our critieria of success, we will fear our own intuitive guidance because by its very nature it directs us into new cycles of learning that are sometimes uncomfortable.

Believing in oneself is required for healing. Faith, together with self esteem and personal power are all important factors, because low self esteem reflects ones lack of faith in oneself as well as in the power of the unseen world. Unquestionably, faith is vital for managing the challenges of our every day existence.

Self esteem and conscious personal power sometimes develop at a memorable point in life that signifies initiation into spiritual adulthood. Developing the confidence to pursue goals is one way that personal power becomes an agent of personal change. At the same time an equally impressive level of change can occur within a person’s spiritual or symbolic life. Becoming internally powered shifts a persons centre of gravity from external to internal, a mark of spiritual passage.

An empowered sense of self can also develop in stages, over the course of our lives, in a serious of mini initiations. Every time we advance in self-esteem, even in a small measure, we have to change something about our external dynamics. For the most part we abhor change, but an intuition represents the necessity to change. We may end a relationship because we have become sufficiently empowered that we need a stronger partner. We may quit a job because we need to break out of our safe and familiar patterns and test fly our own creativity. Too much change that happens too rapidly can be overwhelming, so we try to manage our own empowerment by taking on only one challenge at a time. As we do, one by one, the changes we undergo form a pattern in our journey toward personal power.

The Four Stages of Personal Power

Self esteem became a popular word in the 1960s, a decade of revolution and redefined our view of the empowered individual. Only then did self esteem become accepted as essential to women’s and men’s health which was redefined to include psychological and spiritual health as well as physical health.

More than three decades later we are now directing all these energy patterns towards personal evolution - forming a self that is powerful enough to be~in the world but not of the world~, a self that can enjoy the magnificence of the physical world without allowing the world`s many illusions to deplete its soul.

Revolution, involution, narcissism and evolution are the four stages through which we progress to attain self esteem and spiritual maturity. A spiritual adult inconspicuously involves her or her inner spiritual qualities in every day decisions. One’s spiritual thoughts and activities are inseparable from other aspects of life; all becomes one.

A person may spend years in each phase or only months, but regardless of how long each phase lasts, she will inevitably grapple with its particular challenges to her character, ethics, morality and self respect.

We have to work to discover ourselves, to understand why we keep secrets, or have addictions, or blame other for our own errors. We must work to understand why we find it difficult to receive or give a compliment, or whether we carry shame within us. We need to become comfortable with taking pride in our character and accomplishments. We need to learn the parameters of our character, how much of ourselves we will compromise, and where we draw the line - or even if we draw the lines. Creating an identity for ourselves is based upon self discovery and not upon biological and ethnic inheritance. This first stage of self discovery is revolution.

Stage One - Revolution

Developing self-esteem requires an act of revolution, or several mini revolutions, in which we begin to separate from group thought and establish our own sense of authority. We may suddenly realise we hold an opinion different from our family or our peers, but in either case we will have difficulty freeing ourselves from the group’s energy, whose strength depends upon numbers and opposition to most expression of individuality.

The act of finding our own voice, even in mini revolutions is spiritually significant. Spiritual maturity is measured not by the sophistication of a person’s opinions, but by their genuineness and the courage necessary to express and maintain them. By courage, it is not the intractable stubbornness of two people locking horns, that dynamic is a second chakra power play. Spiritual maturity, in contrast, is the capacity to stand one’s ground as a reflection of a genuine inner belief.

When we develop this kind of inner strength, even in small measures, we are more capable of introspection and self examination. In learning to honour ones personal values and have the courage to make the choices in this way, we gradually replace the influences of our tribe`s group mind with our own inner or intuitive guidance. Once this process has begun, the next natural step is ~involution~, the exploration of our interior self.

Stage Two - Involution

Every new encounter or pursuit we have asks our inner self "What else do I believe? What else do I think? I want to know myself better. This is a request for information" In every new situation information pours in. We get feelings about new people and new circumstances. In this phase, involution, we assess our external world and how well it is serving our needs. Often, this self examination leads us to want to focus on our relationship with ~God~ and our life’s purpose, but we first need to develop a level of internal stamina that gives us the strength to handle the consequences of self examining thought. A common initial response can be in facing this stage though is that some do not wish to go within as self knowledge promotes choice and action, and many people feel unready for either. Once that step has been taken and the ensuing thought processes taken place, involution is followed by a narcissistic birthing of a new image of oneself.

Stage Three - Narcissism

Although the connotation of the word ~narcissism~ can be negative, it is sometimes an extremely necessary energy for us as we work to develop a strong sense of self. Giving ourselves a new image, (hairstyle, clothes, diet} indicates that changes are also occurring within us. While we are in this vulnerable stage, we may get major critical reactions from our tribal or group associates, but narcissistic energy gives us the backbone to re-create ourselves and our boundaries in the face of opposition. The changes in this stage prepare us for the more significant internal changes to follow.

Being who we want captures the significance of the fourth stage: evolution.

Stage four - Evolution

This last stage in developing self esteem is an internal one. People who can maintain their principles, their dignity, and their faith without compromising any energy from their spirit are internally evolved: people such as Ghandi, or Mother Teresa are examples of this. The world is filled with people of much lesser reputations who have accomplished this level of self-esteem of course, yet these two people took charge of their physical environments - and the environments changed to accommodate the power of their spirits.

They were also thought to be narcissistic during some stage of their development. Mother Teresa, for example was almost forced to leave two religious communities in her early days because her vision of service to the poor was much more intense that her sisters could abide. During that time she was thought to be self absorbed and narcissistic. She had to go through a period of deep spiritual reflection, and when the time was right she acted on her intuitive guidance. Like Ghandi she entered into a stage of evolution in which personality became persona - an archetypal force from which millions of people could draw inspiration. As your own spirit takes command, the world will also yield to its force.

Challenges of the Journey

There is nothing simple about developing self-understanding, independence, and self respect. The third chakra is filled with the energy of our personal ambitions, our sense of responsibility, and our respect for our strengths and weaknesses, as well as our fears and secrets that we are not yet ready to face. Because we are often riven with personal conflicts, we meet the spiritual challenge to "become empty in order to be made full" to die to old habits and self images in order to be reborn, with great trepidation. Yet the path to developing independence and maturity is far more than a psychological act of health. Becoming adept at the internal process of self enquiry and symbolic insight is a vital spiritual task that leads to the growth of faith in oneself.

We are all on a spiritual journey one which eventually brings us independence from our past and fears of tomorrow and brings a deep faith in oneself. It is necessary to shed the fears that block us from recognising the beauty in our lives, and come to a place of healing and self acceptance. We can take this spiritual journey daily in the privacy or our own prayers and meditation.

Developing personal power feels like heaven once we have arrived, but the journey getting there can be long and arduous. Life relentlessly brings us to realise the importance of the words of Polonius ~To thine own self be true~. For without personal power, life is a frightening, painful experience.

Working with intuition does not allow us to bypass the challenge of facing our fears. There is no shortcut to becoming a whole person, and certainly intuitive abilities are not the answer - they are simply the natural consequence of having self esteem.

We are biologically aligned to learning this lesson; our bodies thrive when our spirits thrive. The third chakra embodies the Sacred Truth ~Honour Oneself~. As we gain the strength and stamina that come from living with self esteem, our intuitive abilities emerge naturally.

We then move from the three chakras of ~External~ power to the next rung of the ladder.

These are the chakras of ~Internal~ power,

beginning with the 4^th chakra,

the power house of the human energy system and 

~Emotional Power~.