Wheels of Life

by Anodea Judith

  Media can also show us ways of being different. A movie can make a hypothetical reality seem so real that our imagination is filled with new possibilites. Media can express creativity, communicating from the depths of the collective unconscious. Media can show us the fronts of cultural transformation by bringing the hidden innovators to light and letting their voices be heard.

  It is important to demand integrity of those who control the media. If it is the cultural nervous system most influential to the ways we live our collective reality, then it is imperative that we keep our media from being polluted with mindless garbage, sensational gossip, propaganda, and lies. Otherwise we risk being collectively manipulated by those who, in actuality, have more power than most of our elected representatives. If the fifth chakra name Vissudha means purification, then our collective fifth chakras must be purified with the resonance of truth that can enlighten us all.

  CHAKRA FIVE EXERCISES

  Playing Charades

  Spend an hour with someone in total silence, yet engaged in active communication. Pick challenging things to communicate about. Notice what methods you use to communicate, such as gestures, hand symbols, physical manipulation, eye movements. Notice how much easier it gets toward the end of the hour. Notice what points are especially difficult. This exercise can actually help build communication between two or more parties.

  Vow of Silence

  Listening is an essential and too-often-overlooked component of communication. Yogis often take vows of silence for extended periods of time to purify their vibrations of audible sound and better tune into subtle sounds. By avoiding verbal communication, one can open up other avenues of communication, namely communication with higher consciousness. Begin with a few hours, then try a whole day or longer.

  Voice Recording

  Make a recording of your voice during ordinary conversation. See how much you talk and how much you listen, whether you interrupt, or falter in your speech. Notice your tone of voice. If you didn't know this person, what would you intuit about them from the voice?

  Neck Rolls

  The neck is the narrowest part of the torso. Much of the time it acts as a filter between the abundant flow of energy between the mind and the body. This causes it to be extremely subject to tension and stiffness. Loosening the neck is an essential beginning for any work on the fifth chakra.

  Lift your head up away from your shoulders, and then slowly roll your head in a circular motion, stretching your neck. Stop at any point that feels tense or uncomfortable, and massage with your fingers. Pause in the tight places until it relaxes some, Then move on. Go both clockwise and counterclockwise. (See Figure 6.6, page 268.)

  Head Lift

  This stimulates the thyroid gland and helps strengthen the neck.

  Lie flat on your back and relax. Slowly lift your head, leaving your shoulders on the floor, so that you are looking at your toes. (See Figure 6.7, page 268.) Hold this position until you feel the energy move into your neck.

  Shoulder Stand

  To make this pose easier on the neck, it is helpful to first fold a blanket or towel (about 2-3 inches thick) so that when you lie flat, your head touches the floor, but your upper thoracic vertebrae lie on the blanket.

  Lie flat on your back, arms at your sides, and relax. Bend your knees and lift your legs toward the chest, rounding the back.

  As your hips rise, allow your arms to bend at the elbows, so that the heel of your hand can support your waist.

  Slowly straighten the legs above you, using your arms for support. Hold for as long as is comfortable. (See Figure 6.8, page 269.)

  FIGURE 6.6

  Neck Rolls.

  FIGURE 6.7

  Head Lift.

  FIGURE 6.8

  Shoulder Stand.

  Figure 6.9

  Plough.

  Figure 6.10

  Fish Pose.

  The Plough

  If the shoulder stand was successful, you might want to try the plough.

  Return to the shoulder stand.

  Lower your legs behind your head, touching your feet to the ground, keeping your knees as straight as possible. (See Figure 6.9, page 270.)

  For less flexible bodies, you can have a chair behind your head and lay your thighs on it.

  Fish Pose

  This often follows the shoulder stand or plough as it gives the neck and back a complementary stretch. This also helps open the chest cavity and stimulates the thyroid.

  Lie flat on your back. With hands on hips, prop your upper body up on your elbows, lifting your chest toward the ceiling and arching your neck backward until your head touches the floor. (See Figure 6.10, page 270.)

  ENDNOTES

  1. Swami Sivananda Radha, Kundalini Yoga for the West, 231.

  2. Stutley, Margaret and James, Harper's Dictionary of Hinduism, 96.

  3. Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine, 302.

  4. Arthur Avalon, from his discussion on the bhutas, or elements, The Serpent Power, 71. Further on he quotes the Hatha-yoga-pradipika, "Whatever is heard in the the form of sound is Sakti ... So long as there is the notion of Ether, so long is sound heard." Ch. IV, vv 101, 102, quoted in The Serpent Power, 99.

  5. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, (NY: Bantam Books, 1975), 229.

  6. Itzhak Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 68.

  7. Dion Fortune, The Cosmic Doctrine, 57.

  8. For a visual feast of this phenomenon, see the video Cymatics: The Healing Nature of Sound, put out by MACROmedia, P.O. Box 279, Epping, NH, 03042.

  9. Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upanishads: Annotated Text and Translation, From the Mandukya Upanishad, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 475.

  10. I John, King James Bible.

  11. George Leonard, The Silent Pulse, 10.

  12. Ibid., xii.

  13. Arthur Aron, in a paper available through Center for Scientific Research, Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa.

  14. William S. Condon, "Multiple Response to Sound in Dysfunctional Children." Journal of Autism and Schizophrenia 5:1 (1975), 43.

  15. George Leonard, The Silent Pulse, 23.

  16. Ibid, 18.

  17. Tom Tompkin, Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA, 1986.

  18. Arthur Avalon, The Serpent Power, 97.

  19. Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message, Vol. 2, (London: Barrie and Rockcliff, 2nd ed. 1972.)

  20. Arthur Avalon, The Serpent Power, 100.

  21. As quoted by Satprem in Sri Aurobindo, or the Adventure of Consciousness, 71.

  22. Some people, such as Edgar Cayce and Carolyn Myss, place will in the fifth chakra. I believe that will occurs much sooner, or we don't even get to the fifth chakra. Furthermore, it leaves communication entirely out of the chakra system. We may express our will in this chakra, but inner power and will are initially a silent process.

  23. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 70-71.

  24. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 80.

  RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL READING FOR CHAKRA FIVE

  Gardner, Kay. Sounding the Inner Landscape: Music as Medicine. Stonington, ME: Caduceus Publications, 1990.

  Gardner-Gordon, Joy. The Healing Voice. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1993.

  Gerber, Richard, M.D. Vibrational Medicine. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1988.

  Hamel, Peter Michael. Through Music to the Self. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1979.

  Leonard, George. The Silent Pulse. NY: E.P. Dutton, 1978.

  CHAKRA SIX

  Light

  Color

  Seeing

  Intuition

  Visualization

  Imagination

  Clairvoyance

  Vision

  Chapter 7

  CHAKRA

  SIX:

  LIGHT

  OPENING MEDITATION

  Become this darkness-all-knowing, yet unknowing, empty and free. Let the dark wash over you, soothe you, as you empty your mind into the infinity
of the void, the womb of darkness-the birthplace of our dreams to come.

  Somewhere, in the darkness, we hear a sound-a distant note, a voice, a scuffle of movement. We feel the flutter of a breeze upon our face, feel a warmth upon our shoulders, feel the pull to rise and flow and follow but we know not where. Our bodies cannot see and dare not move. They are dark and still.

  They call to us for direction, wisdom, guidance. They call to intelligence, they call to memory, they call for clarification of the pattern. They call to light.

  And afraid to leave the darkness and safety of our ignorance, we hear this call.

  We hear this call and our own mind, hungry for answers, quests outward. We long to see, to know, to behold at once the wonders that surround us. To fill our minds with recognition, the certain steps of knowing, the safety and the peace that light, too, can bring.

  We open our mind. We open our eyes. We look about.

  Images pour forth in myriad kaleidoscopic forms, tumbling inward, pattern upon pattern, endlessly interweaving.

  Colors, shapes, and forms reflecting space around us, reflecting back into us, recording life in patterns that our minds can clearly see.

  The mind opens and receives.

  But there is too much and the light is blinding.

  We call to the dark to shade us, to temper, to bind the patterns into meaning.

  And the dark comes softly, hand in hand and shadow to the light, defining, shading, intertwining, ordering.

  The light comes more gently now, rainbow colors, healing, soothing, illuminating, coming at will. Active yellow, healing green, soothing blue, potent violet. All that is alive glows with light. Shape and essence in form revealed for us to see and know.

  What do we wish to see? What do we call forth to our inner vision? What does the light bring?

  Beauty of a thousand suns, beauty of a single Moon, patterns of the life we're leading, all the truth we are perceiving. Gently now on wings of light, our petals flutter through the night, Reaching out to worlds beyond, events forthcoming, days long gone. Holographic matrix net escapes the boundaries by time set. All the truth can be contained by patterns in the mind retained Red and yellow, green and blue, interlace in varied hue. Shape and form, insight revealed, nothing can remain concealed From inner vision reaching out, seeing truth, removing doubt. Inside we open, watch and wait, while wisdom's visions spin our fate. Illumination shows the way, our inner light turns night to day. And though the dark shall yet return, we fear it not for we have learned the way the dark and light combine, letting patterns be defined Dark to light and night to day Within our minds, we light the way.

  CHAKRA SIX SYMBOLS AND CORRESPONDENCES

  THE WINGED PERCEIVER

  Imagination is more important than knowledge.

  -Albert Einstein

  From the dawning of ages, darkness and light have intertwined to bring us one of the greatest gifts of consciousness-the ability to see. To witness the wonders of the universe, whether light years away in the twinkling dome of stars, or blossoming in the flowers of our backyard, the gift of sight allows us to behold the beauty of creation. Seeing gives us the ability to instantaneously take in enormous amounts of information about our surroundings. Shape and form distilled into light waves create an internal map of the world around us. From our dreams, images spring from the unconscious and connect us to the soul. With intuition, we see our way through situations, gleaning wisdom to guide us in difficult moments.

  It is this gift of seeing-both inner and outer-that is the essence and function of chakra six. Through seeing, we have both a means of internalizing the outer world, and a symbolic language for externalizing the inner world. Through our perception of spatial relationships, we have building blocks for both memory of the past and imagination of the future. Thus, this chakra transcends time.

  The "brow chakra," as it is often called, is located in the center of the head behind the forehead-either at eye level or slightly above, varying from person to person. It is associated with the third eye, an etheric organ of psychic perception floating between our two physical eyes. The third eye can be seen as the psychic organ of the sixth chakra, just as our physical eyes are tools of perception for the brain. The chakra itself includes the inner screen and vast storehouse of images that comprise our visual thinking process. The third eye sees beyond the physical world, bringing us added insight, just as reading between the lines of written material brings us deeper understanding.

  The Sanskrit name of this chakra is ajna, which originally meant "to perceive" and later "to command." This speaks to the twofold nature of this chakra-to take in images through perception, but also to form inner images from which we command our reality, commonly known as creative visualization. To hold an image in our mind increases the possibility that it will materialize. This image becomes like a stained glass window through which the light of consciousness shines on its way to manifestation. If there is no interference, the form on the manifested plane is just what we visualized, just like the projected image of the stained glass window if there is no furniture in the way. One reason our visualizations don't always manifest is because so often we do encounter interference along the descent to manifestation. That interference could be someone else's circumstances, fears from the unconscious, or simply lack of clarity in our visualization.

  While our petals have been steadily increasing in number as we climb up the Sushumna, we suddenly have only two petals at the ajna chakra.' (See Figure 7.1, page 283.) There are many possible interpretations of their meaning: the two worlds of reality-manifest and unmanifest; the intertwining nadis, Ida and Pingala, which meet at this point; and the two physical eyes that surround the third eye. The petals also resemble wings, and symbolize the ability of this chakra to transcend time and space, allowing the inner spirit to "fly" to distant times and places. It is interesting to note that if you compare the caduceus to the chakras and nadis, the two wings occur where the sixth chakra would be. One further interpretation is that the two petals, surrounding a circle, resemble the whites of the eye itself, as it surrounds the iris.

  The corresponding element to this chakra is light. Through the sensory interpretation of light we obtain information about the world around us. How much we are able to see depends upon how open or developed this chakra is, including, to some degree, the acuity of our normal eyesight. The gamut of visual and psychic ability can run from those who are extremely observant of the physical world to those who are gifted in psychic perception, who can see auras, chakras, details of the astral plane, precognition (the "seeing" of future events) and remote viewing (seeing things in other places).

  FIGURE 7.1

  Ajiia Chakra. (from Kundalini Yoga for the West)

  Unlike the five lower chakras, which are situated in the body, the brow chakra is located in the head. Therefore, its nature is more mental than any of the previous chakras. Our visual perceptions must become translated into other forms, such as language, actions, or emotions, before they can be tangibly shared. As we become more mental, we leave behind the limitations of time and space and enter a transpersonal dimension.

  As each chakra corresponds to a gland, chakra six is related to the pineal gland, a tiny (10 x 6 mm) cone-shaped gland located in the geometric center of the head at approximately eye level. (See Figure 7.2, page 285.) It is possible that this gland was, at one time, located nearer to the top of the head. In some species of reptiles it still is, forming a kind of light-sensitive perceptual organ, resembling another eye.2

  The pineal gland, sometimes called the "seat of the soul," acts as a light meter for the body, translating variations in light to hormonal messages relayed to the body through the autonomic nervous system. Over 100 body functions have daily rhythms which are influenced by exposure to light.' The pineal reaches the height of its development at age seven, and has been thought to influence the maturation of the sex glands.4 Embryologically, the pineal gland is derived from a third eye that begins to develop early i
n the embryo and later degenerates.5 The pineal has some tranquilizing effect on the nervous system and removal of the pineal can predispose an animal to seizures.

  Melatonin, a hormone relevant to pigment cells, has been isolated from the pineal. It is suggested that the production of melatonin is triggered by exposure of the eyes to light, even in small amounts.6 Melatonin, now widely researched as a sleeping aid, is believed to strengthen our immune system, reduce stress, and retard aging.' Melatonin production decreases as we age, and low melatonin levels are commonly found in depression, and consequently, higher than normal levels in manic states.'

  Because the pineal gland is located just above the pituitary, some people correlate the pineal to chakra seven and the pituitary to chakra six. I strongly feel that since the pituitary is the master gland that controls the other glands, this relates to the master chakra of the crown. Since the pineal is a light sensitive organ, it seems clear that the pineal is related to chakra six.

  FIGURE 7.2

  Chakra Six.

  Is the immaturity of our culture at this sixth chakra level relevant to the atrophy of the pineal gland? Does this gland have a mystic function that presently lies dormant, waiting for some sort of spiritual or cultural awakening? Studies have shown that light has a definite effect on the health and behavior of plants and mammals.9 Could it be that the pineal gland plays some secret role in the link between light and the chemistry of the body?