Chakras are Multidimensional Gates to Clarity and Discernment — Part 1
What comes to mind first when you hear the word chakra? Does it conjure images of kundalini activation, third-eye visions, and sitting in deep meditation? That end of the spectrum draws our attention quite understandably — but as one delves deeper into how the chakra system works as a whole, it’s truly the intricate interplay between each chakra that reveals itself. You may have a strong connection to psychic gifts and clair-abilities, but if the root chakra is weak and you doubt your essential right to exist, it will be challenging to manifest efficiently, because your materialization current is limited. Perhaps you do feel a sense of belonging, do feel creative, but you have a weaker solar plexus chakra due to past repression by authority figures, and you have trouble feeling inner strength. Each chakra has a role to play. The downward current from Source brings intention to form, the upward liberating current brings the physical energy. By combining these currents together, one can powerfully manifest from the full strength of consciousness. When one accumulates blocks and limiting beliefs, each block will cloud your conscious experience and allow you to be programmed from the outside. The clarity or disrepair of your chakra system can either be your path to clarity and discernment or a mental cage that limits your experience. Each chakra is an ‘eye’ to a certain aspect of truth, clarity, and embodiment. Work to keep your ‘eyes’ clear and healthy, your crystal of consciousness bright and unobstructed, and reap the rich harvest of truth and discernment.
When the root chakra is weak, no matter what we have in life, we will experience that haunting feeling, I am not enough. Chakras are multidimensional, meaning a block can be felt either physically, emotionally, or both. When the root chakra is not in balance it can result in anxiety, depression, overthinking, and disconnection from body. There will be little motivation to do the nitty-gritty that life requires, like walking the dog, washing the dishes, doing taxes. We’ve all seen examples in the world of people that will hoard wealth beyond all reason. They seek to find comfort in the material because they have this essential disconnection from the Earth; they don’t feel they can survive here for real. They seek that feeling in material in vain. When we do not feel safe and complete, our path will be guided by that feeling of lack. Self-preservation is the theme at play, and because this chakra is the first, and formed at the earliest stage (womb to 12 months of age), it forms the foundation of our self-actualization. If you did not feel wanted as a baby, if you were harshly treated, you must work to heal the wound of belonging, safety, rooted-ness on this plane of existence. No matter what one achieves in life, if the root chakra is in poor condition, there will be no escape from the deep seated inadequacy imprinted by the limiting belief that you are not enough, that you do not belong.
When the second or sacral chakra is not in healthy balance, one questions their right to feel pleasure. In a society with an often unhealthy relationship to desire, the repression is both sexual but also creative in a broader sense. Lack of desire, passion, and joy are the symptoms of sacral chakra weakness, while excess brings poor boundaries, pleasure addiction, and mood swings (being overly ruled by emotion). This chakra guides our passion for the sense pleasures, sex, food, life. When this lens of conscious experience is clouded, we cannot be healthily guided by our desires. Healing the second chakra refines and clarifies our right to feel. When we allow this chakra to weaken, it grants society permission to subvert our natural, Source-given guidance system of pleasure and creativity. When one does not experience the compass of pleasure radiating strongly internally, you become subject to societal illusions, mirages, and deeply flawed programming.
The third (solar plexus) chakra guides our willpower in the world, our right to act as an individual, and gives one the drive to meet life’s challenges in one’s personal power. The solar plexus is our center of autonomy, and one of the characteristic signs of weak solar plexus chakra is blaming outward circumstances for our inner state. The solar plexus either allows us to stand comfortably in our own power, or search outside ourselves for validation, blame, or credit. This is the center of our internal fire, our willpower, our self-esteem. This is our ability to act (first chakra ‘to exist’, second chakra ‘to feel’). Imbalance can be seen on both ends of the spectrum as either dominating and authoritarian (overactive), or may manifest as a ‘follower’ energy, weak-will, fear-based ego identity (underactive).
The three gates of the lower chakras have three gatekeepers called Fear, Guilt, and Shame. Each chakra has it’s own ‘gate’ of initiation, which can halt progress to the next level on the spot, but in my mind, the lower ones demand special attention, because if we do not trust our right to exist, to experience pleasure, and stand in our own power, we are truly stagnant, and cannot much at all access the heart or other higher chakras in any meaningful way. If you do not address the shadows of your lower chakras, you truly aren’t even living your life on your own terms. Anodea Judith notes in her seminal work Eastern Body, Western Mind:
I believe it begins with the third chakra birth of psychic autonomy. Many people do not awaken this chakra at all, and spend their whole lives following the past of least resistance, giving their power to others, and defining themselves in terms of what is expected. They remain in the less differentiated aspects of the lower chakras. Damage to the lower chakras or lack of developmental completion keeps us from maturing to this point, and keeps us from true psychic freedom.
One of the biggest unspoken tragedies on the planet right now is people never knowing what they could be if they trusted the power inside them. The truth is, most people give their power away willingly to fear and guilt. Most people are born followers, afraid to blaze their own path. And most people spend their lives imprisoned by lower chakra issues. If you cannot clarify your chakras and fully embody your right to exist, right to feel, and right to act in the world, you will not be able to experience the true joy of your life’s triumphs, you will not fearlessly speak your mind, you will not easily receive your own intuition, it will be difficult to connect to higher realms. In part 2 of this piece, we will continue through the heart and upper chakras, and discuss the value and nature of energy work on the chakra system.
