The Seven Sacred Truths

~Surrender Personal Will to Divine Will~

The Fifth Chakra

Internal Power

Level Five

The Power of Will

 The fifth chakra embodies the challenges of surrendering our own willpower and spirit to the Will of ~God~.  From a spiritual perspective, our highest goal is the full release of our personal will into the "hands of the Divine".  Jesus and Buddha, as well as other great teachers, represent the mastery of this state of consciousness, complete union with Divine will.

Sacred Truth of the Fifth Chakra

The fifth chakra is the centre of choice and consequence, of spiritual karma. Every choice we make, every thought and feeling we have, is an act of power that has biological, environmental, social, personal, and global consequences.  We are everywhere our thoughts are and thus our personal responsibility includes our energy contributions.

What choices would we make if we could actually see their energy consequences? We can approach this kind of foresight only by abiding by the sacred truth ~Surrender Personal Will to Divine Will~.  The spiritual lessons of the fifth chakra show us that actions motivated by a personal will that has trusted in Divine authority create the best effects.

Location

The Throat

Energy Connection to the Emotional/mental Body

The fifth chakra resonates to the numerous emotional and mental struggles involved in learning the nature of the power of choice.  All illness has a connection to the fifth chakra, because choice is involved in every detail of our lives and therefore in every illness.

Symbolic/perceptual Connection

The symbolic challenge of the Willpower chakra is to progress through the maturation of will; from the tribal perception that everyone and everything around you has authority over you; through the perception that you alone have authority over you; to the final perception, that true authority comes from aligning yourself to ~God`s~ will.

Primary Strengths

Faith, self knowledge, and personal authority; the capacity to make decisions knowing that no matter what decision we make, we can keep our word to ourselves or to another person.

Primary Fears

Fears related to our willpower exist within each chakra appropriate to that chakra.  We fear having no authority or power of choice within our own lives, first within our tribes, then within our personal and professional relationships.  And then we fear having no authority with ourselves, being out of control when it comes to our responses to substances, to money, to power, to another person`s emotional control over our well being.  And finally, we fear the will of ~God~. The notion of releasing our power of choice to a Divine force remains the greatest struggle for the individual seeking to become conscious.

One`s thoughts and attitudes also benefit from accepting higher guidance.  We are always shown that guidance is trying to penetrate our conscious mind.  Understanding the energy consequences of our thoughts and beliefs, as well as our actions, may force us to become honest to a new degree.  Lying, either to others or to ourselves, should be out of the question.  Genuine, complete healing requires honesty with oneself.  An inability to be honest obstructs healing as seriously as the inability to forgive.  Honesty and forgiveness retrieve our energy - our spirits - from the energy dimensions of "the past".  Our fifth chakra and its spiritual lessons show us that personal power lies in our thoughts and attitudes.

The Consequences of Fear

The most costly energy consciousness comes from acting out of fear.  Even when choices made from fear lead us to what we desire, they generally also produce unwanted side effects.  These surprises teach us that choosing from fear transgresses our trust in Divine guidance.  We all do live, at least periodically, within the illusion that we are in charge of our lives. We seek money and social status in order to have greater power of choice and so that we do not have to follow the choices others make for us.  The idea that consciousness requires surrendering personal will to Divine will stands in direct conflict with all that we have come to consider the measure of an empowered person.

Thus, we may repeat the cycle or fear-surprise-fear-surprise, until we reach a point of prayer in which we say "You choose, and I,ll follow".  Once we release this prayer, guidance may enter our lives, along with endless acts of syncronicity and coincidence - Divine "interference" at it`s best.

Faith

The essence of the fifth chakra is faith.   Having faith in someone commits a part of our energy to that person; having faith in an idea commits a part of our energy to that idea; having faith in a fear commits a part of our energy to that fear.  As a result of our energy commitments,  - our minds, hearts, and lives - become woven into their consequences.  Our faith and our power of choice are, in fact, the power of creation itself.  We are the vessels through which energy becomes matter in this life.

Therefore the spiritual test inherent in all our lives is the challenge to discover what motivates us to make the choices we do, and whether we have faith in our fears or the Divine.  We all need to address these questions as a matter of spiritual thought or as a result of physical illness.  We all reach a moment when we ask Who is in charge of my life? Why aren`t things working out the way I want? No matter how successful we are, at some point we will become conscious that we feel incomplete.  some unplanned event of relationship or illness will show us that our personal power is insufficient to get us through a crisis.  We are meant to become aware that our personal power is limited.  We are meant to wonder if some other ~force~ is acting in our lives, and to ask, Why is this happening? what do you want of me? What am I meant to do? What is my purpose?

Gaining an awareness of our own limitations opens us to considering choices we would not otherwise have made.  During the moments when our lives seem most out of control, we may become receptive to a guidance that we would not have welcomed before.  Then our lives may move in directions we had never anticipated.  Most of us end up saying, "I never thought I would be doing this or living here, but I am, and all is well".

It may help to arrive at the point of surrendering if you can use symbolic sight to view your life as ~only~ a spiritual journey.  We have all known people who have recovered from dire circumstances - and credited the fact that they let the Divine take over.  And every one of those people shared the experience of saying to the Divine, "Not my will but Yours".  if that one prayer is all that is required, why are we so afraid of it?

We remain terrified that by acknowledging Divine Will - by surrendering our will to a greater will - we will become separated from all that brings us physical comfort.  So we struggle with our will against Divine guidance; we invite it in, yet strive to block it completely.  Many are in this dilemma of seeking intuitive guidance yet fearing what that voice will say to them.

Remember that your physical life and your spiritual path are one and the same.  Taking pleasure in your physical life is as much a spiritual goal as achieving a healthy physical body.  Both are the consequences of following Divine guidance in making choices of how to live and of acting out of faith and trust.  Surrender to Divine authority means liberation from physical illusions, not from the delights and comfort of physical life.

The spiritual energies of the fifth chakra guide us toward that point of surrender, transferring the Divine energy of greatness through love, which directs us to be as loving as possible in all circumstances.  Sometimes the greatest act of love is to withhold judgement of another or of oneself.  Again and again we are reminded that being judgmental is a spiritual error.  Developing the discipline of will allows us to refrain from releasing negative thoughts toward others or ourselves.  By being non-judgmental, we attain wisdom and defeat our fears.  This chakra teaches us to release the need to know why things happen as they do and to trust that whatever the reason is, it is part of a grander spiritual design.

The act of confession/affirmation reclaims our spirits from the consequences of our choices.  As we learn more about our energy natures, we realise how much our spirits remain attached to negative events and thoughts, past and present.  In energy terms it is the acknowledgement that we have become conscious of, and therefore empowered over, a fear that had previously commanded our spirits. Symbolically it liberates our spirits from past fears and negative thought patterns as remaining attached to negative events and beliefs is toxic to our minds, spirits and lives.

Karma is the energy and physical consequences of the choices we make.  Negative choices generate situations that recur in order to teach us how to make positive choices.  Once we learn the lesson and make a positive choice, the situation does not recur because our spirit is no longer attached to the negative choice that gave rise to the lesson.  In Western cultures this kind of karmic lesson is recognised in social adages such as "What goes around comes around", or "You don`t get away with anything".  Acts of affirmation signify that we recognise our responsibility for that which we have created and that we realise the error in our choices.  In energy terms this ritual liberates our spirits from painful learning cycles and redirects us into the creative, positive energies of life.

The sweet healing energy of healing pours into our energy systems every time we break a fear`s authority over our lives and replace it with a more empowered sense of self.

Knowing them, that the fifth chakra teaches us how to use our will, and records the directives we give to our spirits, how do we manage the lessons of this chakra?

Between the Head and the Heart

Since the centre of the will is located between the energies of the heart and the mind, we need to learn how to balance our responses to their urgings.  Usually as children, we are directed toward one of these two ruling energies; boys are usually pushed to use their mental energy, and girls their hearts.

Mental energy powers the external world, while heart energy powers our personal domains. For centuries our culture has thought that emotional energy weakens our ability to make quick and necessary decisions, and that mental energy is virtually useless in the emotional domain, as noted in the old saying that reason can win no war against heartfelt choice. For centuries, this separation was acceptable. Then the decade of the 60’s when the head met the heart redefined a balanced individual to mean one who operates with heart and mind in unison.

If mind and heart are not communicating clearly with each other, one will dominate the other. When our minds are in the lead, we suffer emotionally because we turn emotional data into an enemy. We seek to control all situations and relationships and maintain authority over our emotions. When our hearts are in the lead, we tend to maintain the illusion that all is well. Whether the mind is in the lead or the heart, will is motivated by fear and the futile goal of control, not by a sense of internal security.

This imbalance of head and heart turns people into addicts. In energy terms, any behaviour motivated by the fear of internal growth qualifies as an addiction. Even behaviour that is usually healthy, exercise or meditation, for instance, can be an addiction if it is used to avoid pain or personal insight. Any discipline can become a willful block between our conscious and unconscious minds, saying, "I want guidance but don’t give me any bad news". We even try to direct the very guidance we are seeking. We end up living in a seemingly endless cycle of mentally wanting change but emotionally fearing change at every turn.

The only way to break through this pattern is to make choices that engage the united power of the mind and heart. It is easy to keep oneself in a holding pattern, claiming that one does not know what to do next. But that is rarely true. When we are in a holding pattern, it is because we know exactly what we should do next, but we are terrified to act on it. Breaking through the repetition of cycles in our lives only requires one strong choice that is aimed at tomorrow and not yesterday. Decisions that say, "No more - I will not take this type of treatment any longer", or, "I cannot stay here one more day - I must leave", contain the quality of power that unites the energy of both of the mind and the heart, and our lives begin to change almost instantly as a result of the authority present within that intense degree of choice. Admittedly it is frightening to leave the familiar contents of one’s life, even though one’s life is often desperately sad. But change is frightening, and waiting for that feeling of safety to come along before one makes a move only results in more internal torment because the only way of acquiring that feeling of security is to enter the whirlwind of change and come out the other end feeling alive again.

Again and again, the challenges we face cause us to ask, What is God’s Will for me? We often think of God’s will for us as a task, a job a means of accumulating power for ourselves. But in truth, Divine Will will lead us primarily to learn about the nature of spirit and of God.

The greatest act of will in which we can invest our spirits is to choose to live according to these rules.

Make no judgments.

Have no expectations.

Give up the need to know why things happen as they do.

Trust that the unscheduled events of our lives are a form of spiritual direction.

Have the courage to make the choices we need to make, accept what we cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

and so we then move to

~the Power of the Mind~

through

The writings on the chakra pages have been taken from ~Anatomy of the Spirit – The Seven Stages of Power and Healing~ by Caroline Myss, PH.D. ( published by Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80014-0 ) and are reproduced with kind permission. There are far more details in that book and I would urge readers (if you find these pages helpful) to purchase the book by visiting Caroline’s web site ( click the link on her name) where there is also much more information to be gained {smile}