The Seven Sacred Truths
~Live in the Present Moment~
The Seventh Chakra
Internal Power
Level Seven
Our Spiritual Connector
The seventh chakra is our connection to our spiritual nature and our capacity to allow our spirituality to become an integral part of our physical lives and guide us. While our energy system as a whole is animated by our spirit, the seventh chakra is directly aligned to seek an intimate relationship with the Divine. It is the chakra of prayer. It is also our ~grace bank account~, the warehouse for the energy we amass through kind thoughts and actions, and through acts of faith and prayer. It enables us to gain an intensity of internal awareness through meditation and prayer. The seventh chakra represents our connection to the transcendent dimension of life.
Sacred Truth of the Seventh Chakra
Seventh chakra energy motivates us to seek an intimate connection to the Divine in everything we do. This spiritual desire for connection is significantly different from the wish for connection to a religion. Religion, first of all, is a group experience whose main purpose is to ~protect the group~, primarily from physical threats, disease, poverty, death, social crises, and even war. Religion is rooted in first chakra energies. Spirituality, on the other hand, is an ~individual~ experience directed towards releasing fears of the physical world and pursuing a relationship to the Divine. The sacred truth of this chakra is ~Live in the Present Moment~.
Seeking a spiritual connection shakes us to our core. Our conscious or unconscious prayer to come to know the Divine directly does something like this: "I no longer want to be protected within the group, nor do I desire to have a mediator filter my guidance for me. I now want You to move into my life, directly and remove from my life any obstacle, be it a person, place, or occupation, that interferes with my ability to form an intimate union with You". As Meister Eckhart wrote in ~The Soul is One with God~, the ultimate aim of the mystic is identity : ~God is love, and he who is in love in in God and God in him~.
Location
Top of the Head - the Crown
Energy connection of the emotional/mental body
The seventh chakra contains the energy that generates devotion, inspiration and prophetic thoughts, transcendent ideas and mystical connections. It is the entry point for the human life force, which pours endlessly into the human energy system, from the Greater Universe, from God or the Tao.
Symbolic/perceptual connection
The seventh chakra contains the purest form of the energy of grace or prana. This chakra warehouses the energy generated by prayer and meditation and safeguards our capacity for symbolic sight. It is the energy centre for the spiritual insight, vision and intuition far beyond ordinary human consciousness. It is the mystical realm, a dimension of conscious rapport with the Divine.
Primary Strengths
Faith in the presence of the Divine, and in all that faith represents within one's life - such as inner guidance, insight into healing, and a quality of trust that eclipses ordinary human fears, devotion.
Primary Fears
Fears relating the spiritual issues such as the "dark night of the soul", fears of spiritual abandonment, loss of identity, and loss of connection with life and people around us.
Spiritual Awakening
Much has been written about the nature of the personal spiritual journey, but one of the first works remains one of the best known: ~The Dark Night of the Soul~ written in the sixteenth century by St John of the Cross. In this classic work the author articulated the stages of separation from the tribal or group mind that are necessary in order to form a fully conscious bond with the Divine.
Within the Catholic tradition the work of St John of the Cross to some extent gave permission to individuals to separate themselves from group religious experiences and seek personal spiritual development. Monastic life had become a way of transcending the ordinary religious parameters of understanding God to encounter the Divine directly. In the centuries that followed, as Europeans encountered other cultures, it became clear that intense prayer, self exploration and self discipline led to mystical experiences in all cultures.
In the 1960`s the Vatican Council II was a turning point in the Western religious world. This gathering of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy disbanded many centuries old traditions and initiated a new spiritual freedom for all, regardless of religious background. The word ~catholic~ alone connotes "universality" of thought - a particularly potent symbol, considering that the Roman Catholic religion was the original Christian church. Now through Vatican II, this original power structure was transmitting a message of universal spiritual liberalism.
People around the world began to challenge the limits of their own religious traditions and explore the spiritual teachings of others. women sought ordination, Christians flocked to Zen Buddhist monasteries and Hindu ashrams, Buddhist and Hindus sought Christian teachings, religious leaders from Eastern and Western traditions held official meetings. Barriers between the East and West were being broken, not only by rebellious lay people, but also by scholars, such as the late Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who in his classic work, ~The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton~, articulated the need to explore the mutual truths of Buddhism and Christianity.
For spiritually oriented individuals this new spiritual freedom marked a turning point in the ability to ~know God~, with revolutionary implications unparalled since Martin Luther`s rebellion. As the ~un-ordained~ learned the skills required to interpret the deeper meaning of the scriptures, the education of lay people weakened the role of the ordained or official religious leader. Symbolically, the walls of the monasteries - which had long contained the most intense form of ~Divine Light~ came tumbling down. An example is the Chinese invasion of Tibet, forcing the Dalai Llama to flee his monastic home. While this exiling of the country`s spiritual leader has been among the most painful chapters of Tibetan history, the teachings of the Dalai Lama and many other gifted teachers have entered and influenced the world`s spiritual communities. The Divine Light was released into the lives of countless "mystics without monasteries" - lay people who embrace extraordinary spiritual teachings within the privacy of their personal lives.
This shift from religion to spirituality is not simply a cultural trend. It is an archetypal reorganisation of our planetary community, which now has access to the universal truths available through symbolic sight. Symbolic sight includes a sixth sense of intuition which senses the connections among all living energy systems.
This intuitive sense of connection is moving us as a planet towards a holistic understanding of health and disease, of the environment and its biodiversity, and of social priorities for service and charity. This movement toward working as ~one world~ is an extension of the release of the Divine Light into the world. It seems as though humanity is ~under orders~ to mature spiritually to a level of holistic sight and service, and any number of paths of service to fulfill those orders have opened up to us.
Spiritual Crisis and the Need for Devotion
The ~symptomology~ of a spiritual crisis is almost identical to that of a psychological crisis. In fact, since a spiritual crisis naturally involves the psyche, a ~beginning mystic~ may be unaware that the crisis is spiritual in nature and may describe his or her dilemma as psychological. The symptoms of a spiritual crisis are distinct, however, and three fold.
The crisis begins with an awareness of an ~absence of meaning and purpose~ that cannot be remedied merely by shuffling the external components of ones life. One feels a much deeper longing, one that cannot be satisfied by the prospect of a raise or promotion, marriage or new relationship. ordinary solutions hold no attraction. Of course, some people have never found meaning and purpose in life, but these people are probably wrongly expecting life to deliver ~meaning~ to their doorstep. Chronic complainers and people who lack ambition are not suffering from a spiritual crisis. Those who are in a spiritual crisis, however, have a feeling that something is trying to wake up inside them They just don`t know how to see it.
~Strange new fears~ are the second symptom of a spiritual crisis. These fears are not ordinary, such as fears of abandonment and aging; they make a person feel as if he or she is losing touch with a sense of ~self~ or ~identity~. "I am no longer sure of who I am and of what I want out of life" is a standard report from a person saturated with the energy of the seventh chakra.
The third symptom is the need to experience ~devotion~ to something greater than oneself. The many psychological texts available today that describe human needs rarely mention our fundamental need for devotion, yet we all biologically and energetically need to be in contact with a source of power than transcends human limitations and turmoil. We need to be in touch with a source of miracles and hope. Devotion commits a part of our conscious minds to our unconscious eternal self, which in turn connects us directly to a Divine presence. Even brief and fleeting encounters with this presence and its infinite power help our conscious mind release its fears of life, and human power ceases to command our attention.
Our need to be devoted to a higher power has found numerous inappropriate surrogates; a devotion to a corporation, a political party, an athletic team, a personal exercise program, even a street gang. all these earthbound surrogates will eventually fail the devotee. You may remain healthy in the process, but you will still get older. And much of the anguish people suffer when they are let go from companies they have served loyally for years undoubtedly occurs because their loyalty contains and unconscious devotion. We expect our devotion to earthly things and people to return to us a quality of power that can take care of all our woes, but no human being or organisation commands such power. No guru, minister or priest can manage the energy of devotees for long without some form of scandal. We are not meant to be devoted to a human being, devotion is meant to be directed upward and to take us with it.
The absence of meaning, the loss of self-identity, and the need for devotion are the three strongest symptoms indicating a person has entered into the ~dark night~. Certainly these characteristics are similar to common psychological dilemmas that people experience. Yet when their root is spiritual, the person ~lacks the motivation to blame other people~ for causing the crisis. Rather, he or she realises that the cause of the crisis is within. The inadequacy of the external components of the person`s life is a ~consequence~ of the spiritual crisis, not the ~cause~.
A skilled spiritual director can help a person get through the ~dark night~, many of whose challenges involve facing intense psychological issues. Standard psychological counseling would seek the cause by looking into the negative patterns in his or her relationships, from childhood onward. While identifying these negative patterns is certainly helpful in spiritual counseling as well, a spiritual director investigates, as a priority, the content of a person`s inner dialogue related to matters of the spirit, such as:
What questions have you asked that seek insight into your life`s purpose?
What fears do you have related to your understanding of God?
Have you judged your life as meaningless when you evaluate it within a spiritual context?
What spiritual fantasies do you have? Do you, for example, believe that seeking a spiritual path makes you superior to other people, or that it makes God more aware of you than of others who are not as involved in a spiritual path as you are?
Have you asked, in the privacy of your prayers or thoughts, for insights into the reasons you find it difficult to have faith in God.
Do you feel that you have, in some way, failed in the choices that you have made for yourself?
Are you conscious of ever having violated your own spiritual rules.
Have you ever desired to be healed?
Have you ever desired to know God in a deeper way that you presently do?
These are not ordinary psychological questions. One can become more open to receiving the answers to them by reorganising one`s life in ways that remove mental and emotional blockages. That reorganisation will at first make one feel worse as one experiences the ~dark night of the soul~ through which one comes to know the content of his or her mind and heart, confronts fears and beliefs, consciously pursues the shadow side and challenges false gods who do not give up their hold upon the human psyche without a fight.
Enduring the ~Dark Night~
Enduring the ~dark night~ requires faith, prayer, and if at all possible, a spiritual director. If finding a spiritual director is impossible, you can turn to spiritual literature for support. Finding a person who understands the nature of the journey can feel like finding a life raft. Keep a journal, record your thoughts and your prayers, and above all, hold on to the truth that all dark nights end with a light illuminating a new path.
Become devoted to a daily form of prayer with which you feel comfortable. Devotion - not obsession but devotion - is an extremely healing and comforting force. pray at specific times each day. The quality of the prayer is not measured in time but in intention. Even five minutes each morning and evening is sufficient. If certain prayers bring you a sense of tranquility, then make those prayers a part of your daily devotion.
Prayer represents one`s conscious connection with God. Authentic prayer does not mean to turn to God in ordr to get something; it means to turn to God in order to be with someone. Prayer is not so much our words to God as our life with God.
Our goal while on this earth is to transcend our illusions and discover the innate power of our spirit. We are responsible for what we create, and we must therefore learn to act and think with love and wisdom and to live in service to others and all of life.
When we have integrated our soul and personality and thus the link with ~God~ or the Divine Source of life then we have truly evolved into complete human ~beings~ on our soul journey through this lifetime.
You may wish to now continue to the Meditation/Evaluation aspect of the 7 Chakras in order to assist your energy awareness and further growth on a daily practical basis
click the picture link for the Meditation
If you wish to stop your sojourn at this point, I hope you have enjoyed the thoughts left here and wish you safe journey as you continue on your Soul Path...
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}