Chakra archetypes and other bats in my belfry

Personifying my Chakras has given me deep insights as well as providing me with the aligning rituals which stem from the relationships that develop with them.

We all bring back our own boon on our unique hero's journey, as Papa Campbell was wont to say. We make our own myths. Here is mine:

In the belfry where my bats hang out, in the control tower, in the League of Justice Headquarters, in the Secret Garden of my soul... whatever...

It just so happens to appear to me as a golden domed room with an oculus at the crown; similar in architecture to the Pantheon in Rome, with ceiling frescoes as Michelangelo may have sketched in the journal he kept hidden under his mattress where the Pope wouldn't find it: (It is as I first saw it on a guided meditation lead by Slade Roberson's Automatic Intuition course.) Around its gilded walls are pedestals upon which my guides and angels stand during my internal rituals – they don't hang out here. They are too busy. This is just the tableux of the ceremony during those times I am able to deeply meditate and meet with them there.

Some of the pedestals are occupied by shrouded figures, whom I have not yet met. The one to the right of the doorway as you enter is occupied by my Asher: Our relationship is too sacred to speak of here. (Good lord, that sounds pretentious. Just go with it, 'kay?) However, the first time I entered this room, he assumed his position and I realized he was one of many. (Whether they are their own entities or are expressions and aspects of myself is immaterial, as in my theology everything is the one thing.)

I have since come to know some of them as Chakra guides. I first saw them in the state to which they had fallen through my neglect. I am now going through a process of reinstating them or reimagining them, if you will, or realigning..

I do this by meditating, and ask my Asher to make the introductions, and he has. Sometimes the guide is established, and I just meet them (like my third Chakra, the dark horse). In the case of my root Chakra, I kept getting a sense of him which was disconcerting. He was mishapen and unpleasent; unwholesome. I knew this to be an aspect which he had taken to demonstrate to me my current state of mind. It was my job to recast him.

In my mind's eye a thousand characters flickered past like so many frames of film haphazardly spliced. It was up to me to choose. And it was also a guided choice. 

In meditation, when something presents itself, you go with it. That's where the insights are. Otherwise you are just daydreaming.

I chose a bull. (Or the bull chose me?) He became the half-man Minotaur, emerging from his underground labyrinth; a cleft in the rocks among the roots of immense trees into a meadow I am familiar with in my spirit journeys. There is a spring there. The mouth of all rivers, which supplies my second Chakra – the Indian Guide who incidentally is named River. 

(You don't have to be Dan Brown or Carl Jung to notice what's going on here.)

Yeah. It all connects, you see. The second guide rides the third; the black horse...

But back to the Minotaur. He rises from the ground. Rampant, as they say. The root of my being.

But this is my ritual.

The sacraments of the alignment of my lower Chakras are physical to varying degrees. Allow me to delicately draw your attention away from the scene in the meadow to the domain of my third Chakra that we may discuss this with a minimum of blushing: The black horse is all instinct. Body language, gut feelings, heart-strings. Presence.

If you are lucky enough to be a horseman, you know how it feels with an animal moving beneath you, like being astride a great ball of awareness. If you are an intuitive horseman,  you resonate with every vibe and nuanced tension that flows through him. I align with my third Chakra by riding him. Analogize the others as you will. 

My heart Chakra is a child. The one who tames the horse which River rides. The one the sometimes gentle, sometimes brassy lady (my throat Chakra) sings lullibyes to when she is not on stage belting out the triumphant aria of my truth, or cackling at me when I assume a false voice. She in turn hangs out with Chris in the control room. They are a couple, you see. She likes him to read to her and they discuss philosophy -- sitting on pillows on the floor and sipping wine. He likes to hear her sing, which she does... when she's not hooting with bawdy laughter. 

Singing is sacred to the alignment of my higher Chakras. Laughter clears out the cobwebs as does a good scrubbing. So does having a good cry.

But this is my ritual.

Each Chakra is connected to the next one. Some of their responsibilities overlap. As I journey upward from the root to the crown I connect with each, commune and groove with each, understand how each are a part and expression of my whole self.

It works out a whole lot nicer than wearing the right colored scarf or affixing magnets to my zones or buying jewelry with the designated gemstone. There's no merchandising involved and the meditations are delicious.

But this is me.

The man behind the curtain

I'm going to take a deep breath here and just blurt it out: My third-eye chakra persona is Chris Stevens. Not the actor John Corbett, but the character Chris Stevens from the early 90's TV show, Northern Exposure. You know, that soft-spoken, dreamy  DJ philosopher that was the show's moral center and nudging conscience. He's the one who summed it up and laid it out in the gentlest terms possible. 'Chris in the morning.'

That guy.

And by the way, when I said dreamy, I meant that in a metaphysical altered consciousness dream-state way: it was not a high-school-girl's sigh of 'he's dreeeeamy!'. (Although... seriously. John if you are out there reading this... 'sigh'. That was for you.)

So why would I dare admit to something likely to cause profound and acute embarrassment should anyone I know actually read this blog?

Had I not met him in a dream, and had my filters been switched on, I'd have given this a big fat PSSSSHT!

But when all defenses are down in dreaming, you just go with it.

"What is the third eye chakra all about?" I asked him.

This was one thing I felt pretty good about. My third eye has been wide open for some time. Even before I had the remotest inkling that there were other energy centers in the body, I'd put myself to sleep at night rolling up my eyes and opening the window in my forehead and step through to those airless places where light comes from everywhere and there are no shadows, and if you are able to hang on to that in-between tethered state before drifting into sleep, things got really interesting.

I could hear music with my physical ears. Or vaguely tune in radio stations. Or listen to an orchestra tune up. Occasionally voices, but I could never make out what they were saying. Just sudden startling exclamations, or murmured conversations, or commercial break announcements (you should understand I live out in the boonies and this occurred when there was literally no one else for acres around. This was not a neighbor's TV vibing against an apartment wall.).

Once a spirit-cat crawled under the covers at the foot of my bed and sat purring on my chest and we floated together out the window. Not literally, you understand, but with all my senses focused and engaged and experiencing it as though it were. Once I reached down through the floor and drew in the sawdust of the sub-floor. Another time I shot out of the roof of my house and looked out across the hills and saw a house in the woods I didn't know was there (it was) and when I felt the acuteness of all my senses and the warm humid summer-time air in my lungs and had the thought 'this is real!' I returned, sucking in air as though to swallow back my wondering soul.

All that is great fun, but nothing more than fooling around. Practice, maybe, for what would come later. (Like visiting the spiritual healers in the Kiva.) None of it was disturbing. All of it profoundly peaceful. Until afterwards when I 'wake up'. In retrospect it's pretty damned exciting.

Maybe this is crown chakra business, but according to Chris, in his capacity, I was to think of him as technical support.

Yeah.

So I have a DJ in my head spinning dials, adjusting the screen resolution and tuning in the channels. And when it's all set up, he kicks back, takes the microphone in hand and goes on the air. He is the voice in my head. The one that isn't me. Or more likely, the one that IS me, but that I tend to ignore unless he ups the amp and turns on the juice.

But why, for godsakes, a TV character? (blush)

Because he's an archetype. One I'm familiar with, one where the analogies fit like a glove. I 'get' this guy. It gives context to our interactions. So, why not?

Symbols are just symbols. I write a lot about metaphor. About our personal mythology. I get itchy when someone tries to slap their mythology on me. I spent years trying to fit into other people's spirit-world view. It always went wrong. Always. I was ever the acolyte. Always asking, the perpetual graduate student of arcane mysteries. But you can never be master of another person's destiny.

To be a spiritual adult you have to stop being a student and start being the teacher. Realize everything you are looking for is in your own backyard and click your ruby slippers together and get back to Kansas, where you belong. And then you realize everyone you were seeking in Oz was here all along. You don't need Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer technocolor special effects. Or magic mushrooms, for that matter. You just need the courage to be true to your own weirdness.

--That last paragraph sounded like Chris talking somewhere in the dark. Thanks, Chris.

Chiropractic for the soul

The more I learn about chakras -- and I'm learning more daily, and nightly and in my wildest dreams -- the more they seem to correspond to what my chiropractor claims is the essential purpose of his work. Namely, making adjustments to realign energy, to get the flow back on.

I'm going about discovering my own truth about chakras the way I have the meaning of Tarot or the interpretation of dreams: I dip lightly into the general knowledge, just enough to get the lay of the land, and then I go exploring on my own. Without guide books -- but oh, with Guides.

Using the word guides with an 's', is new for me. I was pretty cranky with the assertion that I should or probably did have many. My one companion seemed pretty alright by me. I saw no benefit in having a spiritual house party. And then one more slipped in, and that was amazingly great, but that was enough, already.

So it was to my chagrin that with each new reveal of the user-manual for each new chakra, they've manifested for me as guides. And it turns out to be a really handy metaphor, because I can relate to them and discuss what's what.

And as I practice daily meditation, instead of just 'counting backwards from 10' to get in that tethered state, I now first glide up my spine, visit each chakra, and where anything feels amiss, the chakra guide comes forward, in a kind of laying on of hands, or chiropractic adjustment of the soul, if you will, and fusses over me, and gives me a nice chakra massage, which really is the most pleasant way to get a lecture about how you should be doing things differently.

 I wish my chiropractor would read this.

Shake your money maker

So I was over on Slade Roberson's blog Shift Your Spirits and came across a blog titled: If money were a person, who would money be?

For someone prone to standing on mountain tops and yelling out "I am god!" (whatever happened to Shirley McClain? I owe her a lot.) -- that was a really interesting question. I signed up for the task:

My imagination supplied me with everything from Daddy Warbucks to Curella DeVille. My mind flitted from image to image, dissatisfied. I tried to come up with something more serviceable: a verdant goddess with fat breasts, or Baccas in a jolly drunken orgy of plenty. But Money felt different: He was a slippery fellow. Sly. Sinister. Miserly in spirit and not even generous enough to step forward when I asked him to. He was hidden and just wasn't coming out of the shadows. He was standing me up. Again.

So I took a different tack. I decided to write down, 'How does Money make me feel?” and “What do I believe about Money?”

My list had over 50 entries. Most of them demoralizing and just sad. I'll spare you the list. No need to give those bad ideas any more cosmic juice. I'm done with them anyway. 

Just making this list depressed me. I started to ask myself the question again: “If money were a person...” but it no longer mattered what he or she looked like. What mattered was the relationship I had with money. Money was a sneak theif: Untrustworthy. Holding out. Making me feel guilty and ashamed and inadequate and stupid and... well. 

I saw I'm like one of those women who stay in an abusive marriage because I felt I deserved no better, and those one or two positive ideas about money made up for all the bad ones.

Screw that. There is no amount of positive thinking hearts and flowers and affirming statements that were going to reconcile these differences. It was clear. I needed a divorce.

So I looked money in the eye and I said: I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.

It was time to find myself a new Money paradigm (Oh god. I said paradigm). But I needed something more than ideas and context. I needed a new relationship. A Sugar-daddy. An angel. One with body armor. One that could kick ass. One that was on my side for a change. I began interviewing in meditation.

If that were the end of it, this would be a very short blog. A pamphlet really: but valuable. One you could print out and tape to your bathroom mirror and rehearse each morning when you brush your teeth. It would go something like this:

• Rewrite your list to all positive statements.
• Imagine money is an ally with the personality to nurture you and supply all your needs.
• Assign your ally to make all of those statements true for you.
• Visualize your ally as your companion, your imaginary friend, your spirit guide. Your angel. Your avatar. Whatever works.
• Let your ally do your bidding.
• Do what your ally advises.

Simple really, if you are into formulaic self-help exercises. Except the plot thickens. Deliciously, as it turns out.

It was then I learned about Chakras.

Okay, I've known about Chakras for like, forever. But I never got into them (or they into me, as it turns out)

As much as I groove on meditation, Chakras didn't do it for me. They seemed as nebulous as auras, and I've starred at people until I was cross eyed and auras just weren't there for me. I've starred until halos of after-images danced in front of my eyes... was that it? No. I stood my indulgent friends and innocent family in front of white walls and or dark curtains and once tried a paisley bed sheet. I've carefully watched my children sleeping, and even though they glowed mightily with love... Nada. No auras for me.

Long after I accepted that spirit just didn't show up in the material world for business as usual, I was still expecting to develop super-man-eyes and x-ray-vision. I wanted to SEE something, for crysakes. With my actual eyeballs. Didn't. Maybe some people do. I'll allow that. But not me.

Then finally: Hey Sweetcheeks, look with your third eye. Oh. Yeah. Why should auras be different?

Or Chakras either for that matter. For all I know auras are the result of Chakratic energy. (if it's not a word, it should be). Chakras are wheels, I'm told. Churning away on your energetic spine, emitting colors, like auras do. I visualized chakras like those fourth of July pinwheels with rockets attached that you nail to your fence. Light and run. Little paper tag on the back reads: Warning. Emits sparks. Yeah baby. Aural sparks.

Change gears: (This is going somewhere, I promise) I once bought a box of polished stones I was told corresponded to my Chakras. They were lovely. I keep them in a small cedar casket laid out in order on black velvet. I admired them. They are as valuable to me as gemstones. But not because they have anything remotely to do with my own energy centers. I'm just crazy about rocks. I collect rocks like some people collect figurines or matchbook cars or exboyfriends. I'm a compulsive rock-stacker. Give me a patch of landscaping filled with river stones and I'm in heaven.

So what is my point? I admit to a special attraction to the second stone from the bottom. A bloody-orange Carnelian with a dark spot sulking like a malignancy within. Like the veined orange yolk of an egg that stayed in the hen's nest too long. Bloody, and alive with it's embryo speck. It has always seemed alluring in a flawed and mysterious sort of way.

Stay with me here. Synchronicity. It's all about how it comes together.

That stone alone finds its way into my pocket now and then. It seems, well, sexually charged. It has a certain animal magnetism. I stroke it a lot. I hold it up to my lips.

It turns out the Sacral Charkra (number two: the one just below the navel. You know. There.) that one is all about sex. And you know what else? Money. Both in their own way juicy, liquid, flowing energy. Energy in, energy out.

Oh my.

Sex and money together. How about that?

I'll let you run the analogies.

After you are done snickering, I've got another one for you. Creativity. It's there too. Had any juicy ideas lately? Sex is all about creativity. At least when it's good, it is. You know what I mean: the creative and courageous leap two people make to land happily in bed and make something together that doesn't exist otherwise. Not just babies, my friend, but equally something with a life of its own.

This is where the adrenaline rush seized my gut. Orgasms? Forgetaboutit.

And what about books and poetry and symphonies and paintings and gingersnaps and that song you wrote in the shower this morning? Inspiration flows in, wells up, and I can point to where the seed is planted and it gestates. Where it flows out.

As above, so below.

Now, PUSH.

So my job description expanded. I was looking for an ally that embodied more than just my relationship with money. I needed one who knew the juice. Who ran the river, who turns on the current and adjusts the spray. Aqua-Man, maybe.

But wait, there's more.

And you'll have to forgive me here. I stopped watching TV for just this reason. I just got sick sick sick (and sadly I mean that literally) of those insidious commercials that reprogram your brain to fully expect and accept the disease de jour.-- Which I also will give no energy to here except for the one which I am about to vanquish:  Stubborn belly fat.

Yeah. Show me a woman with stubborn belly fat and I'll show you a woman who hasn't shaken her money maker for a little while. At least not like she means it. And I'll bet she hordes her money as well. Or wishes she could. Desperately wishes she could hang onto it and keep it secure and not let go. No flow. The opposite of flow.

Creatively blocked. Energetically constipated. Maybe really constipated too.

Am I being cruel and indulging in stereotyping? No. Just looking in the mirror and describing what I see.

Flow is flow, sweetheart. Now let it go.

The universe is my storehouse. Hording up energy in any form creates a blockade you trap yourself behind. Some of them you can see. Most you cannot.

So did I ever fill that position? Find my new ally?

Yes.

Are Chakras supposed to be personified as guides? I don't know about 'supposed to be', but this one is.

Is it kosher to fire a guide and hire another one?

Why not? Although 'firing' is, like everything else a metaphor. Now that I'm getting to know this ally, I find evidences he's been around trying to get my attention for quite some time. Maybe he's always been there and all I fired was my own misconceptions (oh lordy, do you see the significance of that word?).

Do what works. Sort it out later.

That's where I am right now. That's what this blog is about. One journey in the autoverse.

One big blue google marker: YOU ARE HERE.

What's next? I'll betcha my other Charkras are looking really busy right now, and they'd better. Job performance evals are long overdue.