Here’s the thing. Energy isn’t ‘a thing’. What is a thing? What is real? To learn how to understand beyond what we’ve known, we need to question what we know.
You know what a solid and a liquid are. Fire, and even gas have a common meaning to you. Yet what is Spirit? Ask this question to ten different people and we are liable to get vastly different answers. Indeed, we’ve practically enshrined the right to have different answers to this question as a detante, a way of not arguing between cultures.
The energy that flows around you, and within your body, is already shaping your reality ~ whether you believe in it or not. Learning to understand and recognize this lifeforce will immediately expand your influence over your ‘normal’ challenges. This begins with a metaphor.
Spirit is like fire and water and something… else. Fire burns and transforms a fuel. Water flows. Liquid water is easy to separate. We can divide it without ruining the rest of the liquid.
Spirit is neither fire nor liquid and has elements of both. It burns like fire and flows like water. It vibrates like sound and reacts like both a particle and a wave. It responds very subtly to our imaginations. Thus, the way we understand spiritual energy has a big impact on how it manifests.
This is the art of believing. ‘Mind over matter’ is about more than will and fierce intensity. This is the leverage and magical influence we get, when we know how to see spirit. How we see reality before we even begin to try to change things, enables fantastic influence over what is real.
Once upon a time the Greeks believed it was unholy to cut open and look into the body. They also considered medicine to be the child of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. We use his staff the Caduceus – which represents an energy field leading up the spine – as the symbol of medicine to this day.
Then the Romans reversed it. They dove into the material, cut open bodies and even began operating. This worked to great effect. They were able to support a wide range of physical ailments. In the process they left the energy of the spirit and participated in a new taboo, denying the spirit in favor of the material world.
Now, we have a new dynamic emerging. The holistic arts are alive with the gifts of many cultures. Many of them never left the study of spiritual vibrations. They bring deep insight into the vibrations in our bodies.
By blocking off our relationship to energy, we’ve created the mistaken perception that energy is ‘one thing’ that we may or may not add to our general understanding of human life. Actually, these different cultures have focused on entirely different layers of our energetics and we have a lot of work to unite our understandings.
First step. Energy changes when it comes into the body, from one form to another. It gets denser. External and internal energy has plenty of other distinctions. Let us begin with the broad division between inside and outside our physical form.
Inside energy is – closer – to a liquid. External energy is – closer – to a fire.
A radical gift immediately emerges for those who have been working with the energy flow up the spine – which the Yogis refer to as prana. By focusing on the connection at the surface of the body, between internal and external energy, we gain NON-linear influence over our energy field.
Put it this way. If you can feel energy and are even partly able to identify blockages and congestions, you may be aware of how difficult it can be to support the flow up your spine, past challenges in any of your chakras. As a result if you are working on a power issue in your navel, or a broken heart, or a fear of speaking your truth, you may have found that each of these challenges can undermine your overall lifeforce.
Shift your perception to how the energy is emerging and entering your body directly between each chakra and the air around you. Now you can access the potential to ‘lite up’ a Chakra that is above a linear blockage.
The chakra is transmuting internal and external energy, while a denser flow is moving within the body more like a river. When we identify a congestion to the internal flow, we can use harmony and resonance to enable us to move energy in a non- linear path. This will heal and empower the chakra before we refocus on the denser level to deal with the spinal flow.
Harmonic relationships offer a more direct connection between chakras. Thus, you can nurture strength in your Root and move it to the Chin or the Lungs, passing blockages in your Navel and Heart without allowing them to stop you.
Why does this matter so much?
Energetic dynamics have not been a part of our conception of ‘normal’ in mainstream western culture. As you learn to embrace something beyond what you’ve known, it is necessary to use metaphors based in what you do, already know. Mix the metaphors of fire and water and then add the magical understanding. Energy that works with the chakras is highly receptive to what you believe.
If you believe energy can only flow like water in a line straight up the spine, that is how it will function – you won’t have influence over the shimmering light that resonates out of each chakra more like a candle flame. Indeed, prana in the spinal path DOES manifest more like water – but this is only one layer of energy.
The energy that exchanges directly between each chakra and the world around us is more ephemeral, and susceptible to our belief. Activate one chakra with your imagination and mental focus. Feel its spiritual vibration. Then associate it with the most harmonic chakras in the Key Ring. You will be able to spread the energy in your body. Without perfectly clearing each chakra in order. THEN you will be able to refocus on the river up the spine and cleanse it from a position of greater strength and health.
Let’s make this practical.
Imagine you correctly identify that the environment in a community is bad for you. You’ve struggled for years to make less dramatic changes, and nothing improves enough to support you well. In a leap of faith, you decide to leave your job. You know intuitively that it is the ‘right’ choice for you, yet your heart breaks to leave your old life.
On a Chakra level this will cleanse your Root deeply and enliven your spirit as prana to rise up your spine. The power is surging, and it reaches your heart and fractures. You can’t seem to change it. You can’t seem to repair the love in your heart. As a result the changes you’ve made in your circumstance activate dense pranic energy, but it can’t spread throughout your whole system and your progress falters.
So stop trying. If you address the challenge as a linear one, chakra by chakra up the spine, the pain in your heart undermines progress and may lead to a failure of your new life path. You’ll drown in the doubt of ‘did I make the wrong choice?’.
So ignore linearity, shift your entire perceptual level to the more diffuse connections, and follow harmony.
Harmonically, within the level of energy on the body’s surface, energy moves with GREATER difficulty directly between chakras. It is easier to shift vibrational intensity from the Root to the Chin, than it is to move it sequentially up the spine. And thus, you can nurture intensity in the Root and then empower the Chin. You can dance past the pain in your heart as you work on manageable challenges before moving on.
When you work with the Chin, this means surrender to the trance. When your heart breaks as you make a choice to dramatically change course, it is time to surrender. Do not demand answers or promises. Focus on trust and enter the trance of a transformation. Aim for it. Imagine a hypnotic state of receptivity, actively releasing demands for control and understanding – for the time being. This is the strength of the Chin, to lead you into the darkness of the unknown. To challenge you to release control as you know it, and be lead step by step into a new life.
This is direct simple Chakra magic. It suggests that the relationships between the harmonic chakras – as taught in the Key Ring – are more important than the linear connections up the spine, in many circumstances. It works, because this is how harmony works.
Do this work. then the denser prana will be freed. The more fire-like energy on the surface of the body offers you the power of moving around between chakras that are most able to activate and improve. As they come to life – it will influence the other chakras indirectly.
The strength that lights up the root when you make a change in community, lights up the Chin, and then deepens in the physical body enough that you will be ready to hold your broken heart back together again. This will allow the linear flow to cleanse the entire spine, at which point your transformation will be set into place. It will last. You will be on a relatively unassailable new path.