Authors: Shirley Maclaine
It is important to balance the third, or solar plexus, chakra, particularly if there is an emotional upset going on in your life. This is the chakra that governs our attitudes toward personal power and sensitivity and ego. The largest obstacle to our growth and balance of the third chakra is ego. Ego is connected to the fear of losing something, or some part of oneself, or someone. Out of that fear springs the need to manipulate, bully, or in other ways control the people in one’s life. When we become attuned to the third chakra, we like ourselves better, feel more self-confident and are therefore more capable of breaking the restrictive bonds of negative ego.
Relationships that cause emotional upset are always about personal power and ego in relation to our sensitivities. I find that when I visualize and meditate on the yellow of the solar plexus chakra and direct the color to permeate my midsection, I begin to relax and “allow” whatever will be to be. The calming effect takes on a sunny yellow quality, and the vibration of whatever emotional upset I might be feeling subsides. The fat that I’m holding in that area also begins to disappear because fat is anger withheld and blocked.
Nature provides each of us with healing tools if we can just trust that their holistic power works. Again, that power depends on the belief that we entrust to
it. Colors are tools with power and are applicable to the extent that we wish to use them.
To bathe the pancreas, which governs the actions of the liver, spleen, stomach, and gallbladder, in yellow light, is to contribute to the calming and relaxation of the nervous system. How we abuse, misuse, or don’t use our personal power is directly related to the balance of the third chakra. I find it fascinating that one of the deepest insults we can visit on someone is to call him or her “yellow,” meaning cowardly; what it really means is that they are lacking in the personal enactment of their own power out of insecurity. When the third chakra is recognized by the conscious mind as healthily spinning in balance, and is reinforced as to the role it plays not only in your physical life but in your emotional life as well, the effect is startling.
Yellow is a sunny color. The sun is the source of our warmth and power. It makes us feel good. It lightens our spirits. We cannot be without its warm yellow light for very long. It is possible to create the feeling of a warm internal sun with the power of visualization so that the sensitivities we feel can be reassured by the acceptance of our own personal power, which is the governing province of the solar plexus chakra. When that occurs, the stomach, liver, gallbladder, and spleen are relaxed and vibrating at a more even frequency and our problems of egotism are reduced.
By bringing in some orange, we merge the creative
and sexual energies of the second chakra into the sensitivities and personal power of the third chakra. If we mix red along with this balance we are grounding our understanding of the emotional balance achieved into our physical relationship with the Earth, which contributes to ridding ourselves of fear and other fight-or-flight conflicts of the first chakra.
So the panoply of emotional and physical issues that we express through the seven chakras can be modified, balanced, and aligned by consciously playing with the color vibrations of the rainbow, using our body as an instrument. Colors are at our disposal every moment of our lives and are in fact operating and spinning in harmony whether we consciously recognize them or not.
Once again, we are what we are consciously aware of. To be more aware of the value of our chakra system is to be more aware of our internal power. And to be aware of internal power is to understand the potential for external power. We can create whatever we want on the exterior by recognizing what power is hidden on the interior. The game of life then becomes
how
we create that power externally and what we do with it when it is ours: which brings us to an examination of the four chakras above the solar plexus.
Since the fourth chakra governs the heart, when we meditate and visualize the green of it, we are in effect stimulating it to be more effective in governing the love feelings that also harmonize the immune
and endocrine systems. The radiation produced by love flow can heal the entire body.
Meditating on the heart chakra will help the process of learning to love oneself so that the love of others is more possible. The self-confidence derived from it will carry a subtle vibration that will be felt by family, friends, and co-workers. We receive from others what we have already seen and created in ourselves. An inner security will create security in others. All of that centers in the heart.
Sometimes when I meditate, I begin with the heart chakra because everything in our lives essentially flows from the heart. I visualize the green as brilliant emerald and I remember that the Earth is called the green planet. The vibration of green is soothing and generates life. On Earth, there is more green than any other color because the planet is vibrating with life.
Sometimes when I am working with my chakra meditations I infuse the green of the heart chakra into the yellow of the solar plexus before I move the mixture down to the orange and red chakras. There are so many ways to play with this kind of color therapy that it becomes an adventure within the theater of my own consciousness. Soon I begin to feel the differences in color vibrational frequency, and I operate accordingly.
For example, the colors I choose to wear during the day have a decided effect on my consciousness. To wear bright green is a definitive statement because
of the frequency attached. People speak of being green with jealousy because they feel deprived of attention and love.
When we are red with anger or fear, we are feeling the symptoms of the fight-or-flight first-chakra syndrome. To wear red when feeling anger only reinforces the feeling unless mixed with another color. To counteract it with heart green helps quell the rage with the vibration of the heart.
The fifth chakra, known as the throat chakra, is one all of us would do well to recognize and meditate upon. Since it is the center through which we communicate and express ourselves, it is also the center through which we formulate judgments; of others. It also governs the organs that translate air into expression: lungs, vocal cords, and the bronchial tubes.
Since this is the chakra of judgment and expression, when meditating it helps to literally let go of any ill feelings we are harboring toward anyone. I usually begin by asking myself why I feel resentment. Is it crushed expectations? Bitterness born out of rejection? Do I feel cheated in some way? Whatever. In so many ways we feel alienated from people because of a buildup of anger in our own minds. Thus, we become bonded to those people through anger, which serves only to perpetuate the ill feeling.
To let go sounds simple, and actually it is simple—but it is not an easy thing to do. We cling to hate, or anger, as to an anchor. And indeed, feelings do
anchor us. Anger gives us a dramatic role, fires us up, creates energy, defines a relationship. It even anchors us with the unconscious fear of what will fill the gap if we get rid of it! But when we
are
able to let anger go, relief floods in, love flows in. When we see that love is the glue that holds everything together, we realize it is the channel of communication between souls, not just between people. The same judgments we made that were rejected by others will now be understood and welcomed because the new energy behind them is positive. In fact, we will know better when to speak, when not to, and how to do it with more influence because we are anchored in love.
Whenever I’m feeling that I’m not understood, I meditate with blue on the throat chakra in order to clear out the blockages which prevent me from being clear. If it’s a sexual misunderstanding, I mix orange with it. If it’s an emotional problem with my own personal power, I mix yellow with the blue. And if I want to be especially loving in the way I tell someone the harsh truth, I mix heart green with the blue.
Blockage in the throat chakra can also be caused by fear of speaking your own truth. To constantly attempt to please others while sacrificing your own true expression can develop into a deep frustration of communication.
Every time I am about to say something harsh about someone, I try to remember to visualize blue mixed with a beautiful heart green before I speak.
That way, I not only spare them my harshness, but I spare myself the karmic inevitability of my harshness returning to me. Of course, most of the time I am so caught up in my own judgment and the need to express it that I forget. Much of this can be alleviated by the discipline of meditating on each of the colors the chakras represent as a path to the feelings you want to explore. Soon your awareness expands to such an extent that in applying it to your life, you find your experience of living has improved. It has improved because you are consciously acknowledging alignment.
To me, the miracle of all of it is that the alignment is always there whether we are aware of it or not; but only through conscious acknowledgment, only through deliberate recognition of our natural harmony, do we derive its strength. We are what we’re conscious of.
The sixth chakra is the third eye or face chakra. It is located behind the center of the forehead, a very visible area. It is the chakra that governs the way we present ourselves to the world. If our faces are pinched with worry and anxiety, they can be relaxed by meditating on the color indigo, which allows us to resonate to our inner vision, our idealism, and our imagination. Since the third eye chakra externalizes as the pituitary gland, it governs much of our lower brain and nervous system. This chakra also controls all of our incoming and outgoing thoughts and visions. It is the center of the eye of awareness.
The energy from within can be used any way we
wish. Our
choice
of thoughts is what determines its external manifestation. Through our third eye we can harness and orchestrate our God-given energy within.
I use the third eye (sixth chakra) meditation whenever I want to manifest an outer vision for myself. The tapestry potential of painting our lives with color and feeling is unlimited, and the more I work with the spiritual metaphysical elements of vibrational energy, the more I accomplish and the more fun it is.
The seventh chakra has the highest vibrational frequency of all. The color violet oscillates faster than any other single color, which stands to reason because the crown chakra is the center for final Divine integration. The higher we go, the more clearly can we see where we come from. This is true physically and spiritually.
Seen from the crown chakra, anger gives way to understanding, hate gives way to love, possessiveness gives way to freedom.
From this vantage point it is easier to see how dark emotions of fear, depression, hatred, and so on sap our energy, which ultimately results in illness.
Problems that have loomed gigantic now seem silly, not because they are smaller but because we are bigger than they are.
Seeing our existence in this new light makes possibilities limitless.
And
it develops a sense of compassion for others who don’t see it yet. You see yourself in them and you remember how difficult it was.
People’s actions are always determined by the way they see themselves in the world.
It is said that when someone experiences the violet flame, he or she is resonating in total alignment with the God force within.
Whenever we feel the need to spiritualize any of the “lower” chakras and corresponding emotions, we need to integrate the color violet as we visualize and meditate while at the same time infusing the awareness of the Divine frequency that it represents. It is important to focus not only on the colors associated with the chakras but to integrate those colors with the connected emotions you are trying to resolve. Ultimately the language of color can heal. Thus, healing is basically a successful alignment of the conscious mind with the spiritual centers.
When my chakras are aligned and cleansed, I usually combine all the light frequencies of each color together, and above my head I visualize a bright and brilliant white light. White light is the combination of all light frequencies.
The white light that many people describe during out-of-body experiences could be said to represent the infusion of all emotional frequencies, which, when perfectly realized, become the essence of God.
Therefore, when you surround yourself with a bubble of white light, you are in essence surrounding yourself with the light of God, in the center of which you are always protected, loved, and in turn loving.
Once again you become that which you visualize God to be.
It might seem implausible or irrelevant to discuss visualization and meditative techniques in a world that appears so hopelessly lacking in spiritual recognition, but it is for just this reason that such techniques for spiritual discipline become more and more necessary. Without the acknowledgment and conscious awareness of our sadly unrecognized spiritual technology, we will, it seems to me, become more and more isolated from our purpose in being alive. To be separated from the knowledge of one’s destiny and purpose is truly a disaster.
More and more people are awakening to this. More and more people are scientifically, socially, politically, and economically seeing themselves not only as physical and intellectual beings but spiritual beings as well. Maybe even
fundamentally
spiritual beings.
We are in an age of enlightenment now, which means “to be in knowledge of.” We are becoming more “in knowledge” of ourselves. It doesn’t matter if a person is a Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Jew, or an atheist. There is a wealth of knowledge to be tapped. The individual has his own relationship to the God within, irrespective of the church he belongs to. The power within is an untapped power available to all of us who seek it for whatever use we want or need to make of it. None of our institutions are addressing themselves to that truth. Each individual has the
right and the duty to use the potential knowledge of harmony and alignment within. We are at a crossroads of integrating the physical and the spiritual, with the role of consciousness just beginning to be understood.