When you've been all the way around the circle with appreciation, the person in the middle calls the name of the next person, and returns to the circle as the group chants that name, and the whole process is repeated until each member of the group has had a turn in the middle. Ground and close the circle with a chant, a sharing of food and drink, music, if possible, and of course, a group hug.
Empathy Exercise
This exercise is often a good one for couples who are having problems with each other over a specific issue. To do this, imagine you are the person you are having trouble with. Tell the story from his or her point of view, beginning, middle, and end. Put yourself in the other person's place as you do. Ask if you got it right, or if you left out anything important. Then switch roles and have the other person tell your story from your point of view.
Compassion Meditation
This meditation can be done alone (with imagination), with a group, or best of all, in a crowded place like a bus station, restaurant, or park bench.
Pick a spot to sit comfortably and relax. Close your eyes, center yourself, and begin breathing deeply, down into your belly, down into your feet, down into the Earth. Tune into your heartbeat and feel its rhythm pulsing all through your body. Breathe into it, feeling your heart, accepting yourself unconditionally, filling yourself with love, and exhale.
Open your eyes and look around you. Look at each person you can focus on clearly, one at a time, looking at their eyes, listening to their voice, watching their actions. (If alone, imagine someone you know or see often.) Using the breath to keep things circulating through your body, look at each person without judgment, criticism, aversion or desire. Just look at them and allow yourself to focus on their heart. Look at how the body has shaped itself around that heart-imagine its hopes and dreams, its buried sorrows and fears. Allow a sense of compassion to build up within your heart for that person. Breathe into it, let yourself feel it, but don't hang on to it. Breathe it out again with each exhalation.
Without words or movement, imagine a beam of energy running from your heart to theirs. Send them love, and then release it. Do not hang on to the connection or make yourself responsible in any way. Let the bond go, and then move on to someone else.
When you've had enough, close your eyes and return to your own center. Feel your own heart in the same way you looked at the others. Give yourself the same sense of compassion and love. Breathe into it, sending it deeper. Release.
ENDNOTES
1. Helpful to have drum beat as heart rhythm.
2. Katha Upanishad, The Upanishads, (NY: Dover Publications, 1962). 11.6.15 from Max Muller.
3. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Let Me Explain, 66.
4. Aldo Carotenuto, Eros and Pathos: Shades of Love and Suffering, (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1989), 54.
5. D.H. Lawrence, "The Stream of Desire," in Challenge of the Heart, John Welwood, 48.
6. Ken Dychtwald, Body-Mind, 149.
7. Sufi Inayat Khan, The Development of Spiritual Healing, 89.
8. Michael Grant White, "The Breathing Coach" is known to me personally as an expert extraordinaire on the breath. This quote was taken from his website at www.breathing.com
9. Swami Rama, Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., Alan Hymes, M.D., Science of Breath, a Practical Guide, 59.
10. I find that smoking gives one a false impression of energy in the heart chakra, and often comes out of a need to mask an emptiness that otherwise resides there. Of course, it does not solve the problem, but merely enables one to cope with maintaining the emptiness.
11. Isaac Asimov, The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions.
RECOMMENDED READING FOR CHAKRA FOUR
Farhi, Donna. The Breathing Book: Vitality and Good Health through Essential Breath Work. NY: Henry Holt, 1996.
Hendricks, Gay. Conscious Breathing: Breathwork for Health, Stress Release, and Personal Mastery. NY: Bantam, 1995.
Hendricks, Gay, Ph.D. and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D. Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-commitment. NY: Bantam, 1990.
Stone, Hal, Ph.D. and Sidra Winkelman, Ph.D. Embracing Each Other: Relationship as Teacher, Healer, and Guide. Mill Valley, CA: Nataraj Publishing, 1989.
Welwood, John. Challenge of the Heart. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1985.
CHAKRA FIVE
Ether
Sound
Vibration
Communication
Mantras
Telepathy
Creativity
Chapter 6
CHAKRA
FIVE:
SOUND
OPENING MEDITATION
In its emptiness the darkness fell upon itself And became aware that it was nothing. Alone and dark, unborn, unmanifest, silent. Can you imagine this silence, the silence of nothing? Can you quiet yourself enough to hear it? Can you listen to the silence within you?
Breathe deeply, but slowly so the breath is silent in your lungs. Feel your throat expand with the air coming in. Listen for the nothing, listen for the quiet, Listen deep within yourself for the place of stillness. Slowly breathe into this void, a deep and peaceful breath. In its infinite quiet, darkness fell upon itself And in its emptiness, knew itself to be alone And alone it desired another In this desire, a ripple moved across the void to fold and fold again upon itself Until it was no longer empty and the void was full with birth.
In the beginning the great, unmanifest became vibration in its own recognition of being. And that vibration was a sound from which all other sounds were born. It came from Brahma in his first emanation. It came from Sarasvati, in her eternal answers. In their union, the sound arose and spread through all the void and filled it. And the sound became one, and the sound became many, and the sound became the wheel that turned and turned the worlds unto the dance of life, forever singing, always moving.
If you listen, you can hear it now. It is in your breath, it is in your heart, it is in the wind, the waters, the trees and the sky. It is in your own mind, in the rhythm of each and every thought. From one sound does it all emerge and to one sound shall it return. And the sound is AUM ... Aaa-ooo-uuu-mmmmmmmm ... Aum ...
Chant it now inside you quietly. Let it build within your breath. Let the sacred sound escape you, moving on the wings of air. Rhythm building, deep vibration, rising up from deep within. Chant the sound of all creation, sound that makes the chakras spin. Louder now the voice arises, joins with other sounds and chants. Deeper now the rhythms weaving all into a sacred dance. Rhythms pounding, voices growing, echoing the dance of life. Sounds to words and words to music, riding on the wheels of life. Guiding us along our journey, moving spirit deep within. Chant the voice that is within you. This is where we must begin. Up from silence, breath and body, calling now into the void. Hear its answer in the darkness, fear and pain have been destroyed. Brahma is the first vibration, Sarasvati is the flow. Sound unites us in our vision, harmonizing all we know. Soon the silence comes again, with echoes of primordial sound, Purifying all vibration, echo of the truth profound.
C HAKRA FIVE SYMBOLS AND CORRESPONDENCES
GATEWAY TO CONSCIOUSNESS
Sound ... rhythm ... vibration ... words. Powerful rulers of our lives, we take these things for granted. Using them, responding to them, creating them anew each day, we are the subjects of rhythm upon rhythm, endlessly interweaving the fabric of experience. From the first cries of a newborn child to the harmonies of a symphony, we are immersed in an infinite web of communication.
Communication is the connecting principle that makes life possible. From the DNA encoded messages of living cells to the spoken or written word, from the nerve impulses connecting mind and body to the broadcast waves connecting continent to continent, communication is the coordinating principle of all life. It is the means whereby consciousness extends itself from one place to another.
Within the body, communication is crucial. Without electrical communication between brain waves and muscle tissue, we couldn't move. Without chemical communication of hormone
s to cells there would be no growth, no cues for cyclic changes, no defenses against disease. If it were not for the ability of DNA to communicate genetic information, life could not exist.
Our civilization is equally dependent on communication as the connecting fabric through which we coordinate the complex tasks of cooperative culture, much as the body's cells work together to form one organism. Our communication networks are a cultural nervous system, connecting us all.
Chakra five is the center related to communication through sound, vibration, self-expression, and creativity. It is the realm of consciousness that controls, creates, transmits, and receives communication, both within ourselves and between each other. It is the center of dynamic creativity, of synthesizing old ideas into something new. Its attributes include listening, speaking, writing, chanting, telepathy, and any of the arts-especially those related to sound and language.
Communication is the process of transmitting and receiving information through symbols. As written or spoken words, as musical patterns, omens, or electrical impulses to the brain, the fifth chakra is the center that translates these symbols into information. Communication, due to its symbolic nature, is an essential key to accessing the inner planes. With symbols, we have the means to represent the world in a more efficient way-one that gives us infinite storage capacity in the brain. We can discuss things before we do them; we can absorb and store information in a concise form; we can synthesize thoughts into concrete images and store the images again as thoughts-all through the symbolic representation of perceived patterns.
As we climb to this fifth level, we are taking yet another step away from the physical. Communication is our first level of physical transcendence in that it enables us to transcend the ordinary limitations of the body. By telephoning New York, we can avoid going there physically. The call takes only minutes, costs little, yet the limitations of time and space have been transcended as nonchalantly as if we were crossing the street. We can record voices on tape, read diaries of the deceased, and decipher ancient patterns in the DNA of fossils, all through an interpretation of symbols.
As stated earlier, the lower chakras are highly individual. Our bodies, for example, are clearly separate, with our edges defined by our skin. As we climb up the chakra column, our boundaries become less defined. When we reach pure consciousness, the ideal of the seventh chakra, it becomes impossible to draw a border around this consciousness and say, "This is mine, and that is yours." Information and ideas are like the breath we breathe-an invisible field surrounding us, from which we take what we need. There are no separations in this field. Each step upward decreases boundaries and separation and takes us closer to unity. We arrive at this unity through the ability of consciousness to make connections.
Communication is an act of connection. It is one of the uniting principles of the upper chakras. If I give a talk to a group of people on the subject of healing, I am uniting their consciousness, if only momentarily, around certain ideas. Due to the communication that has occurred, there is now a subset of information shared by all the people in the audience as they leave the hall. If I give the lecture several times, this subset of shared consciousness grows even larger. Previously diverging minds have information in common after communication has occurred.
Communication is a way of extending ourselves beyond our ordinary limitations. Through communication, information contained in your brain that is not in my brain becomes accessible to me. You may have never been to China, for example, but through the communication of books, movies, pictures, and conversations, you're still able to have some knowledge of China's customs and landscapes. As communication unites, it also expands, allowing our world to become larger. This expansion mirrors the pattern of the ascending current of consciousness.
In the descending direction of the chakras we are moving toward limitation and manifestation. We are taking patterns of thought and making them specific through the process of naming. Naming focuses consciousness by drawing limits around something, saying it is this and not that. To name a thing is to clarify it, to set its boundaries, to specify. Naming gives structure and meaning to our thoughts.
Communication shapes our reality and creates the future. If I say to you, "Bring me a glass of water," I am creating a future for myself which contains a glass of water in my hand. If I say, "Please leave me alone;" I am creating a future without you. From presidential speeches and corporate board meetings to marital fights or children's bedtime stories, communication is creating the world at each and every moment.
It is clear that communication can direct consciousness in both directions of the chakra spectrum. Communicaton can be seen as a symbolic system that mediates between the abstract and manifested idea. It formulates our thoughts into controlled physical vibrations, which in turn can create manifestations on the physical plane. With words, consciousness has a tool through which it can order or organize the universe around it, including itself? Therefore, this chakra occupies a crucial place in the gateway between mind and body. It is not a central place of balance like the heart; rather it mirrors the transformative properties of fire-a medium in the transition from one dimension to another.
In this chapter we will explore communication from the theoretical to the practical. We will examine the principles of vibration, sound, mantras, language, telepathy, creativity, and media as petals in the lotus of the fifth chakra.
VISUDDHA-THE PURIFIER
O Devi! 0 Sarasvati! Reside Thou ever in my speech. Reside Thou ever on my tongue tip. 0 Divine Mother, giver of faultless poetry.
-Swami Sivananda Radha'
The chakra of communication, commonly called the throat chakra, is located in the region of the neck and shoulders. Its color is blue-a bright, cerulean blue, as opposed to the indigo blue of chakra six. It is a lotus with sixteen petals, which contains all the vowels of the Sanskrit language. In Sanskrit, vowels are typically thought to represent spirit, while consonants represent the harder stuff of matter.
This lotus is called Visuddha, which means "purification." This implies two things about this center: 1) To successfully reach and open the fifth chakra, the body must attain a certain level of purification. The subtler aspects of the upper chakras require greater sensitivity, and purification of the body opens us to these subtleties. 2) Sound, as a vibration and a force inherent in all things, has a purifying nature. Sound can and does affect the cellular structure of matter. It also has the ability to harmonize otherwise dissonant frequencies both within and around us. We'll examine these principles more closely a little further on.
Within the chakra we again see Airavata, the many tusked white elephant. He is within a circle inside a triangle pointing downward, symbolizing the manifestation of speech. The deities are the God Sadasiva (a version of Shiva, also known as Pancanana, the five-fold one) and the Goddess Gauri (an epithet meaning fair one, yellow, or brilliant one). Gauri is also the name of a class of Goddesses which includes Uma, Parvati, Rambha, Totala, and Tripura.' Each of the deities in this chakra is shown with five faces. (See Figure 6.1, page 240.)
The associated element of the fifth chakra is ether, otherwise known as Akasha or spirit. It is in the fifth chakra that we refine our awareness enough to perceive the subtle field of vibrations known as the etheric plane. This plane is the vibrating field of subtle matter that functions as both a cause and a result of our thoughts, emotions, and physical states.
FIGURE 6.1
Visuddha Chakra. (from Kundalini Yoga for the West)
FIGURE 6.2
Chakra Five.
Few people, especially in light of modern parapsychological research, can deny that there exists some sort of plane through which phenomena, impossible to explain by the laws of ordinary reality, can and do occur quite regularly. Examples of remote viewing, telepathic communication, and distance healing are only a few of the types of phenomena that occur by supernormal means. Kirlian photography is a technology that can visually record the otherwise invisible fiel
d surrounding living things, showing how this field reveals states of health or disease. Richard Gerber, M.D., in his groundbreaking book, Vibrational Medicine, describes how "in reality, it is the organizing principle of the etheric body which maintains and sustains the growth of the physical body."3 Diseases tend to show up first in the etheric body, before they manifest in the tissues. Likewise, healing can be brought about by techniques that primarily treat the subtle body, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, and psychic healing.
The element ether represents a world of vibrations-the emanations of living things that we experience as the aura, as sound, and as the subtle plane of whispered impressions on the mind into which our more solid realities are enfolded.
While most metaphysical systems postulate four elements (earth, water, fire, and air), ether, or spirit, is the generally universal element added when a system encompasses five elements. In some cases, it is called "space," being the non-physical element beyond earth, air, fire, and water. In these systems, the four elements describe the physical world and the spirit is left for the unexplainable non-physical realm.
The fifth chakra is the last of the seven chakras to have any element associated with it according to classical associations, so the spirit realm is shared by the top three chakras. In my interpretation of the system, I have correlated sound to be the element associated with this chakra, as sound is the gross representation of an invisible field of vibrations, and operates in a similar way to subtle vibrations. As Arthur Avalon states in Serpent Power: "Sound ... is that by which the existence of the ether is known."' I have then assigned light and thought to the sixth and seventh chakras respectively as progressively subtler vibrational phenomenon.
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