“MOMMY, did you know that there was a prehistoric frog that was so big, it is thought to have eaten small dinosaurs?”
I pondered over that fact for a few seconds.
“That is one scary frog,” I replied.
My eight-year-old son is fascinated with the natural world. Before he could read, some of his favorite cartoons dealt with animals and the environment.
“Mommy, how fast can a leopard run?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
He has a crazy memory for facts, and he announces them with eyes wide as saucers, his voice filled with awe. Sometimes I am in the middle of doing my work or my chores, and I respond with an absent-minded, “Hmmm, that’s really interesting honey.”
As a child, I could rattle off dinosaur names, though I was more interested in learning about ancient civilizations. So his sustained interest in the natural world has made an impression on me.
One day, he said, “You know what, Mom? When you kill cockroaches, it makes me sad. Why do you have to kill them?”
“Because they’re gross. I don’t want a cockroach crawling on me while I’m sleeping. Do you?”
“No. But I don’t want to kill them.”
As you can see, he has the capacity to love all of God’s creatures.
Recently, I’ve been reading the work of medical intuitive Caroline Myss on energy healing. Her extensive experience in doing energy scans on people to see where they needed healing led her to the study of the chakra system. Chakra is Sanskrit for wheel or disk. These are energy centers located on the subtle body or energy body.
The seven energy centers in the body correspond to a physical location in the body.
Myss sees chakras as a kind of computer disk, for they collect and store information; each one resonates to a very specific vibration needed by your physical and spiritual body.
Every single day, the universal life force (also called prana or chi) flows in through the top of the head and down the chakras, nurturing our bodies with seven distinct kinds of energy.
And as we grow from infancy to adulthood, we activate the chakras’ energies and spiritual lessons in sequence from bottom to top. We gain access to each one during different phases of our psycho-spiritual evolution.
Each energy center corresponds to various issues and challenges. Our spirit grows in maturity and increasing self-understanding through these seven spiritual stages of development. As we progress through each stage, we gain different kinds of personal power.
The chakras mark an inner path of spiritual evolution, the steps on our personal path toward awakening higher consciousness. “As above, so below.” What is true in the spirit has a bearing on the flesh. By learning the lessons of the chakras, one can begin to see deep spiritual and physical connections and use this knowledge to prevent or heal illness.
What I find fascinating about Caroline Myss’ work is the connection or relationship she sees between the chakra system and the seven sacraments of Christianity and Catholicism. Combining the lessons of each chakra with an understanding of the corresponding sacrament, it becomes possible for one to come into balance and understand the sacred truth attached to each level of spiritual and physical evolution.
The Root Chakra is the Tribal chakra. The primary concern of a tribe or community is survival and success. Initially, it is the tribe that chooses where to invest the energy of the child: which religion, culture, ethnicity, social grouping, family traditions, etc. The spiritual challenge here is in the management of our physical world. The sacred truth of the first chakra is: All Is One.
The energy of the root chakra is meant to ground you, to help you feel that you are part of All That Is, yet it is also meant to connect you to physical life. This is energy nurtured my connection to the energy and rhythm of the earth itself. If we fail to make or feel that connection, then we become unbalanced, have difficulty manifesting or creating, and are unable to find a place that feels like home.
Many people experience their wounding in this chakra, the corresponding developmental age being zero to seven years old. Before the age of seven, the child has no analytical mind, no filter. Whatever is perceived by the five senses is imprinted immediately on the subconscious and imperfectly apprehended by the underdeveloped understanding of a child. This is why it is nearly impossible to reason with the fears and traumas experienced in the lower chakras. If in the first six or seven years, a child has had experiences that taught it that “I am not safe” or “I am not supported by life”, it can be quite difficult to teach the adult the child has become otherwise.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” Albert Einstein once said. In this case, we cannot use the logical mind at all. What an understanding of the chakra system can give us is a symbolic understanding of ourselves that can hopefully lead us onto the path of healing. And the path to healing requires that we let go of what no longer serves us or resonates with us.
In every chakra, the challenge for us is to identify where we are “leaking” our personal power. We usually leak power to our attachments – our past, our wounds, our insecurities, and our fears. How do we release the power trapped in our attachments, how do we “call back our spirit”? Myss says the solution is as illogical as heaven itself—through acts of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not about condoning abuse or allowing injustice to prevail. But it can be seen as letting go of the need to know why things happened as they did, or letting go of the insistence that things should have or could have happened differently. By unplugging from the issues and past events that drain us and redirecting that energy towards people, passions, situations or things that enrich and energize us, we can reclaim our personal power. We can begin to experience our true soul power.
The sacrament that corresponds to the root chakra is the sacrament of Baptism. The symbolic meaning of baptism is the welcoming of a child into a community. How do we bring healing to an issue where the tribal energy has been harmful rather than life-affirming?
Baptism can be seen as a celebration of accepting with gratitude every aspect of your life and all those who are part of your life. By visualizing and affirming what you are literally and figuratively rooted in, and re-baptizing those people, situations, and things into your life, you can be reborn into your own life once more, contributing your vital life force to all of your life.
As I listen to my son narrating facts about the creatures of the earth, in a voice filled with awe, I feel like he is re-baptizing these wondrous beings back into my life. And I listen more closely, and I silently bless them. I bless myself and every single thing in my life. We are all beloved creatures, not only of this earth but in this whole grand Universe. We are stardust and flower, everything and nothing. We are all, in essence, one.
(I am currently giving a course called Healing Our Stories, a seven-week journey of transformation and empowerment through the seven energy centers. Do follow my Facebook page Lissa Romero de Guia Soul Creates for announcements on the next run of the course, or for other courses I’ll be giving on energy healing and creativity.)
