The Hymns
Khan believed that he was merely an instrument for the "Divine Musician". He famously said, "I played the vina until my heart turned into this very instrument; then I offered this instrument to the divine Musician... Since then I have become His flute."
It is the state of vibration to which man is attuned that accounts for his soul's note. The different degrees of these notes form a variety of pitches, divided by the mystics into three distinct grades.
First, the grade that produces power and intelligence, which may be pictured as a calm sea.
Secondly, the grade of moderate activity, which keeps everything in motion and represents a balance between power and weakness, may be pictured as the sea in motion.
Thirdly, the grade of intense activity, which destroys everything and causes all weakness and blindness; it may be pictured as a stormy sea.
~Hazrat Inayat Khan
At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. We know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch, pattern, and overtones of its particular frequencies, its singing. Before we make music, music makes us.
~Joachim Ernst Berendt
Once you have done the work of becoming aware of all the blockages to your free expression of Spirit through your soul, you become an “empty” vessel through which the Matrix of all Creation and Universal Consciousness can flow freely in endless acts of creation.
Imagine seeing the Infinite Silence that embraces all Sound, finding expression in its most elemental forms that sound like music. Out of these elemental sounds of meaning, harmony, melody, and music, language arises. The purpose of language is to convey, in a more concrete, limited, and specific way, an approximation of meaning. In other words, the specific words cup, mug, and bowl might share a seed sound that conveys the meaning of “a vessel to contain a substance.” However, that could mean the body contains the spirit of Life, a bowl for mixing cake ingredients, or a cup of coffee. Without the specificity of language, the exact meaning in practical everyday life could not be expressed.
Language is shaped by the cultural and environmental conditions in which people worldwide have developed. Any language is merely one channel, broadcasting a single frequency through the human body's immensely limited structure. Underlying all language are the elemental sounds and music of meaning. Beneath that lies the silence that embraces it all, and that silence is the Source of all language.
The sacred hymns, chants, and utterances Charisse emanates from Spirit ripple out of the silence, forming an elemental language composed of “seed sounds” that convey meaning, harmony, and melody. This language can be reduced and ultimately filtered into the fragmentation and specificity of language. This is how language developed.
Likewise, if you study the numbers and sacred geometry of the chakra symbols, you will discover that each lotus petal represents a seed sound of deep meaning for that energy center. Each number carries a deeper inner meaning. Seed sounds, mathematics, numbers, and sacred geometry are the blueprints from the quantum realm that underlie the material world. This is the true meaning before specificity, which is open to distortion. If on this trip you seek to see the underlying principles of sacred geometry, just examine plants to see the Fibonacci principle inherent in each unique and specific plant or flower, in every seashell, and in your own body.
It is beyond the scope of this book to study all the seed sounds represented in sacred geometry, but study the beautiful illustrations to prompt understanding at all levels within y
The infinite silence of Truth and Love ripples out into basic expressions of meaning in universal seed sounds, or the music of the spheres. This music is further constricted and limited, expressed through a specific language, and loses its lyrical tone, vibration, and original meaning. The movement is a ripple out from Truth, to seed sounds containing profound meaning, principles, dynamics, and patterns, to facts and information, and to dualistic knowledge, the most limited and constricted expression of Truth.
Since the one thing we can say about fundamental matter is that it is vibrating. And since all vibrations are theoretically sound, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that the universe is music and should be perceived as such.
~Joachim-Ernst Berendt
From the metaphysical point of view, there is nothing that can touch the formless except the art of music, which, in itself, is formless.
~Hazrat Inayat Khan
By the time we are adults, we are firmly identified with the specificity of language for managing our everyday practical experiences, and we have lost the capacity to perceive the elemental meanings in our speech.
At first, in our inner quest for Truth and Love, we use language to express our experience, then seek its deeper meaning and the patterns, energies, and dynamics, until it dissolves and is absorbed into Truth and Silence.
How often have I said to each of you, "Listen to your words, listen to your language"? What do your words mean? What emotional content is hidden within them? What need are you expressing through your emotions? What deeper spiritual truth is embedded in your outer language? By the time we use language in our personal evolution, the meaning is often hidden from us and others. Consider whether your words fully resonate with the meaning, the feeling, and the tone, or whether they are removed from the authentic inner experience.
I might say, for instance, “Darling, could you please remember to close the door after you?” This sentence carries meaning, vibration, frequency, and tone that must be heard to truly understand that the meaning is actually, “I am angry that you are not meeting my need for consideration, and this goes all the way back to my experience as a child of being ignored and my needs not being met, and this means I am internally not programmed to care for my own need for consideration.” This entire meaning could then be expressed in an elemental sound, emanating from man’s earliest experience of not knowing how to meet emotional needs in a harsh external environment. What sound would you choose to express this naturally from the depths of your anguish?
We all have the remarkable capacity to hear the meaning behind words, yet we have traveled very far into the surface experience of life and no longer sink down, or even consider what the meaning is in what we say or what others say. Let alone sink even deeper to hear the spiritual meaning beneath the human experience. Language can then become a distortion, no longer reflecting the Source meaning that emanates from Spirit.
The mystics allude to this. Rumi says,
Drive away all skepticism from thy mind, And listen to the strains of heavenly music, And receive within thee the messages of God, For these come only by holy communion with the self. The Prophet declared that he heard the Voice of God, and it fell on his ears as clearly as any other sound, but God has sealed thy ears, and so ye listen not to His Voice.
~ Rumi
In Hinduism, the original sound emanating from Silence is AUM. This is the primordial, fundamental cosmic sound of creation, emanating from the Universal Absolute.
In the Beginning
was the
Sacred Sound
Aum,
The Aum
was
with God.
Through the
Sacred Sound
Aum
All things were made.
Without the sacred
Sound,
nothing
was made that has
been made.
~Paramhansa Yogananda
The same idea is expressed in Christianity – the Word is the matrix (mother) of the created order.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work - the first of his acts of long ago.
The word “word” itself derives from the Sanskrit root vrt, meaning to unroll, to become, to come into being. The voices that speak, the mantras and the hymns sung through Charisse, seem to be a melodious wave from the ocean of pure consciousness, linking the infinite with who we are as manifest beings with a purpose beyond our knowing. They are expressed in the first universal seed sounds that arise from AUM. They do not come from her brain; they come from Universal Mind, right out of the Silence of Spirit, deep within her own body. She uses her brain to interpret, understand, and manifest the meaning of the sound. But the seed sounds do not come from the brain. They are an expression of Consciousness itself. The brain, with all its ideas, skepticism, and fears, must be set aside for this to happen.
Albert Einstein attested to the same notion:
“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments, and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”
The mystics of all religions seem to be expressing the same kind of experience.
Kabir says, “He who has conquered the five inner regions is the true warrior. He gives up his ego and saves his soul. There are five corresponding melodies to the five regions; these pure Shabds (Shabda, or Śabda, is the Sanskrit word for "speech sound.” In the Sanskrit Grammar, the term refers to an utterance in the sense of linguistic performance and is produced by the Lord Himself. It is He who helps the seeker hear the sounds. Each region has its own respective light and sound, and these sounds cannot be reproduced or described." Kabir describes these sounds as those of a gong, a conch, a drum, thunder, and a stringed instrument. These are only within the body and cannot be contacted or heard from outside. It is a divine, spiritual power emanating from the Supreme.
He who has realized that sun and stars and souls
Do not ramble in a vacuum,
will keep his heart in readiness for the hour
when the world is entranced.
For things are not mute:
The stillness is full of demands,
awaiting a soul to breathe in the mystery
that all things exhale in their craving for communion.
Out of the world
comes the behest
to instill into the air
a rapturous song for God.
~Abraham Joshua Heschel
As we are discovering, what the mystics have told us for centuries is now being expressed in a different language, with factual verification and knowledge in quantum mechanics.
Science tells us the same thing. It seems that string theory points to the theory of this experience. Brian Green, the string theorist, says,
From the ancient Pythagorean 'music of the spheres' to the 'harmonies of nature’ that have guided inquiry through the ages, we have collectively sought the song of nature in the gentle wanderings of celestial bodies and the riotous fulminations of subatomic particles. With the discovery of superstring theory, musical metaphors take on a startling reality, for the theory suggests that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the cosmos. According to superstring theory, the winds of change gust through an Aeolian universe.
In other words, vibration creates, just like the breath on a flute can create a sound.
O’Murchu says, “The energy that animates and enlivens all life may well be supersonically melodious, and the life force itself may be something more akin to an orchestra than to any spiral of subatomic particles.” He adds that this cannot yet be perceived by human senses or envisaged by the human imagination, yet this is the experience Charisse is having. She is sinking to the subatomic level, hearing the very melodies of the universe, bringing them into conscious awareness, and then translating those melodies and principles into language. The universe is teaching itself.
All of life is created and sustained by the creative, pure energy of love, which manifests through vibration, sound, rhythm, melody, harmony, patterns, resonance, music, and finally language. All of creation is the manifestation of this primal, subatomic blueprint of strings. In the beginning was the Word, which is superstring theory.
No wonder music, dance, poetry, meaning, myth, and symbol are considered the languages of the soul. These are closer to the original sounds and vibrations of the universe and can then be translated into the literal, mundane, factual language of ordinary waking states.
This seems to align with the idea that humans are made of sound and that DNA itself may be a form of sound - a manifestation of the Word, as mystics have said.
Drawing on meticulously documented research, Harvard-trained Leonard Horowitz explains that DNA emits and receives phonons and photons, or electromagnetic waves of sound and light.
In the 1990s, according to Dr. Horowitz, "three Nobel laureates in medicine conducted advanced research revealing that the primary function of DNA lies not in protein synthesis ... but in the realm of bio-acoustic and bio-electric signaling.”
Narby, in his book “The Cosmic Serpent,” discusses the different levels of sound expression, from the subatomic to the physical realms, and from subtle to the physical levels of experience within the electromagnetic centers of the body, known in Hinduism and Buddhism as the Chakras. Again, mystical teachings and science merge into a single understanding.
“Each of the body’s auric or electromagnetic fields corresponds not only to a chakra but also to a third-dimensional sound octave. Energetically, our research indicates that humans are built from a vertical series of light-processing chakras that interface with concentric electromagnetic fields (which appear to be sonic) to form the three-dimensional holographic matrix that produces our physical body. According to quantum holography, it is becoming apparent that DNA directs cellular metabolism and replication not only biochemically but also electromagnetically, through mechanisms that translate sound into light waves and vice versa.”
Sound and light, or phonons and photons, establish a sophisticated communication network within the physical organism, extending into the bioenergy fields and back to the cellular and sub-cellular levels.
The whole world is reverberating with Sound. To listen to it thou must unseal thine inner ears, then shalt thou hear an Unending Music, and that shall lead thee beyond the confines of death.
~Shah Niaz
"Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time, the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them." -
~Karen Marie Moning
AUM
First Sound
Seed syllables of meaning
Fragmentation into the specificity of facts and information
Languages of the world
The Practice of Sacrifice/Surrender Meditation
Security
Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.
Sometimes there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven’t let that happen, but after
I’m gone; others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide, unbroken sea,
and without any hope, they will stare at the horizon.
So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
To be a discoverer, you hold close whatever
You find, and after a while, you decide
What it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
You turn to the open sea and let go.
–William Stafford
To a frog that's never left his pond, the ocean seems like a gamble. Look what he's giving up: security, mastery of his world, recognition! The ocean frog just shakes his head. "I can't explain where I live, but someday I'll take you there.
~Rumi
Are you willing to be with your fears lovingly and with understanding, rather than resorting to beliefs and behaviors that are destructive to you now, even if they once served a purpose?
Start to see the connection between your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Feelings require empathy; beliefs, rationalizations, justifications, minimizations, and defenses require understanding, which in turn requires sacrifice, limits, and correction, so you can live in peace, accepting your feelings and needs and taking responsibility for meeting them rather than defending against them or demanding that others do what your responsibility is.
Consider some of the defenses of the first chakra: hoarding, overeating, refusing to buy anything, or buying everything, even when you do not need it, and demanding that others give you emotional support or physical things as proof of their love for you. These defenses were necessary when you were a child. Now they keep you split off from yourself in ever-increasing circles of pain and shame. You think you are not suffering and that giving up the defense will cause suffering. It will. You will burn in the shame of your awareness of how you have lived your life. You will suffer the desperate demands to have your defense back, whatever it is. Overeating, drinking, avoiding, fighting – every defense provides temporary relief from the nihilistic, dark emptiness of your childhood feelings. However, every time you use a defense, you are one step further away from resolving the inner pain. Every time you use a defense, you are abandoning the true needs of long ago – for warmth, acceptance, understanding, and love. Every time you use a defense, you are perpetuating the inner pain, the inner hell of loneliness, fear, and shame, and the beliefs of wrongness, unlovability, and worthlessness. Your defenses continue to be the prison guards that keep you in the cell of immediate gratification, temporary relief, and fleeting pleasures. It leaves you with the choice of facing the pain, burning in the pain, finally seeing and understanding the pain, or not. Sacrifice demands a burning, a letting go, an annihilation, for you to be free of the tethers of defense that keep you split off, alone, abandoned, just like you were as a small child.
For each chakra, isolate one belief and one defensive way of living to be symbolically sacrificed to the vast ocean externally and to the vast ocean of love internally. Symbolize this release and the desire for freedom. For example, a small, hard rock on the beach may represent a thought or behavior that no longer serves your highest good. “I am bad and worthless, so I have to put all my effort into being good, right, and perfect. I see my pain and release the compulsion and hyper-vigilance to do everything good, right, and perfect to prove my worth. I believe I am of infinite value.”
Notice whether you resist throwing the stone into the ocean rather than keeping it. This reveals something about your patterns as well.
Practicing, not just imagining it, is very powerful. Remember, you cannot release what you have not found. You must first revisit and re-experience the original feelings, beliefs, needs, memories, and experiences that led to false beliefs about yourself and the world, and the defenses you have used (the hard stone), with complete love and acceptance for the child you were (i.e., being the ocean for yourself), and with the full resolve, devotion, and discipline to not use them again – to be the flow, not the stone.
When you have done this, sink to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that serves as a seed sound for your intention to know and meet your needs.
In the Hindu tradition, this is a highly developed and intricate system; however, it comes from early people who did what I am suggesting – just make the sound – and it lives in you. It is time to turn knowledge into knowing. Practice knowing, then seek knowledge to deepen your understanding. We have always done it the other way around. Turning inward requires you to do the opposite.
This is another big trap on the spiritual path – seeking external knowledge before finding it within, and then supplementing that inner knowing with careful discernment of the world’s external knowledge. We have been trained not to know, not to trust our intuition, our gnosis, or our feelings, and to seek knowledge from others. Now it is time to trust knowing and to be discerning about external knowledge.
Allow the sound to come – the surf's sound will drown out and blend with your voice. You and the surf are one. Continue making this sound until it naturally brings you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now, put a seed word to the sound and create a mantra of intention. Allow yourself to chant, sing, or say it. Notice how hard it is to relax into this instruction, and work with your resistance. There is power and freedom in noticing resistance and surrendering to the Spirit within that seeks expression.
Your love is like an infinite ocean that will relentlessly and gently wear away the rock-hard defenses and dense thoughts until you merge with the sea of Consciousness and know yourself as Love, not a hard stone of resistance.
~Lyndall Johnson
Robberg Peninsula
We always hope someone else has the answer. We think some other place will be better, and that someday it will all work out. But this is it. No one else has the answer, no other place will be better, and it has already worked out. Deep inside, you have the answer; you know who you are and what you want.
~Lao Tzu
I hope for nothing,
I believe in nothing,
I am totally free.
~Nikos Kazantzakis
The Greater Sea
My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe. And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place.
But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea.
“This is the pessimist,” said my soul, “Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here.”
We walked on until we reached an inlet. There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea.
“And this is the optimist,” said my soul, “And he too must not see our naked bodies.”
Further on, we walked. And on a beach, we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly returning them to the water.
“And we cannot bathe before him,” said my soul. “He is the humane philanthropist.”
And we passed on.
Then we came to where we saw a man tracing his shadow on the sand. Great waves came and erased it. But he went on tracing it again and again.
“He is the mystic,” said my soul, “Let us leave him.”
And we walked on, till in a quiet cover we saw a man scooping up the foam and putting it into an alabaster bowl.
“He is the idealist,” said my soul, “Surely he must not see our nudity.”
And on we walked. Suddenly, we heard a voice crying, “This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea.” And when we reached the voice, it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, “Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole, he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment.”
So we passed on. And in a weedy place among the rocks was a man with his head buried in the sand. And I said to my soul, “We can bathe here, for he cannot see us.”
“Nay,” said my soul, “For he is the most deadly of them all. He is the puritan.”
Then a great sadness came over the face of my soul, and into her voice.
“Let us go hence,” she said, “For there is no lonely, hidden place where we can bathe. I would not have this wind lift my golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light disclose my sacred nakedness.”
Then we left that sea to seek the Greater Sea.
~Kahlil Gibran
The wild side beach of Buffelsbai
A keen observation shows that the whole universe is a single mechanism working by the law of rhythm; the rise and fall of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, the sunrise and the sunset, the change of the seasons, the moving of the earth and of the planets, the whole cosmic system and the constitution of the entire universe are working under the law of rhythm. Cycles of rhythm, with major and minor cycles.
~Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word
The Practice of Tonglen or Compassion
You are not alone; you are no different from anyone else in your suffering.
What you suffer, all people suffer. Your suffering is the world's suffering.
You are the world.
You are a unique expression of the shared experience of suffering.
You are also unique in your knowing of unity with Consciousness and with all humans.
And you will never fulfill your uniqueness if you continue to conform to the sameness of belonging
out of fear of the shame of not conforming.
You must embark on the inner journey by letting go of the need to belong by conforming to the rules of the small mind.
Through deep self-examination, you will discover that your suffering is no different from others', and in this, you will find the joy of oneness in Love.
How can you ever be alone if you are one with the world's suffering and one with the One?
~Lyndall Johnson
Imagine the lines of the intersection of the cross marking the spot you are at right now extending farther and farther around the world, and see your interconnectedness with all. Know that your feelings, beliefs, needs, and ways of defending are universal, and that the way you are, in this moment and every moment, influences the lines emanating from you that connect you to each and every other person on the planet.
If you can find compassion and understanding for your deep, hidden shame and fear through daily chakra work, you will be able to extend that compassion to all beings who share your experience. This, too, will extend along those lines, connecting with each and every other small cross of human suffering on the planet. As you connect with your own suffering internally, with a full heart, for yourself, can you imagine the light of loving awareness turning on? If you can bring to mind one person you know who suffers from the same issue you do, allow the light to travel from the center of your cross to the center of their cross, along the lines of longitude and latitude extending from your cross.
Now, go from the specific example to all the other people you do not know who also experience the same inner suffering, and imagine the light extending from your heart to theirs, following the same lines as your cross.
Imagine the light of awareness in your heart radiating now in every direction, forming a radiant star-sun that lights the darkness like a meteor.
Find a physical expression – perhaps a yoga pose – that opens your body to a loving embrace of the suffering within. Open and relax your body, and connect with the sand, sky, and sea. Breathe deeply. Embrace your suffering with a wide-open, full heart that understands your past suffering and the actions that have caused it, for yourself and for others.
Allow yourself the freedom to know, by the grace within you, that you have been heard, understood, loved, and forgiven for all you have experienced and for what you have done or not done. In this freedom lies joy, peace, acceptance, calm, settling, warmth, and the deep intimacy of true connection.
Breathe out the compassion and relief you feel. Tonglen practice involves breathing in suffering and breathing out what is needed to relieve it. Practice it for yourself and for the whole world.
You are not getting rid of suffering; you are embracing it as your heart awakens and your consciousness expands, until you can hold not only your own suffering but also the world’s within your loving embrace, meeting the world’s desperate need for acceptance, understanding, and the presence of love and truth.
Trying to eliminate suffering perpetuates the very causes of it – splitting, division, disintegration, and dissociation. This is a major spiritual trap.
Happy is the moment when we sit together, with two forms, two faces, yet one soul, you and I.
~Rumi
There is a certain cloud, impregnated with a thousand lightnings. There is my body, in it.
An ocean formed of his glory, all the creation, all the universes, all the galaxies are lost in it.
~Rumi
He who perceives the Self everywhere never shrinks from anything, because through his higher consciousness, he feels united with all life. When a man sees God in all beings, all beings in God, and God dwelling in his own Soul, how can he hate any living thing? Grief and delusion rest on a belief in diversity, which leads to competition and all forms of selfishness. With the realization of oneness, the sense of diversity vanishes, and the cause of misery is removed.
~Swami Paramananda, The Upanishads: Isha, Katha, and Kena Upanishad
Purpose of Rituals
That, I think, is the power of ceremony. It marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine; the coffee to a prayer."
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
There are many suggestions for rituals during this trip. It is important to understand their purpose. They are holy, powerful, and creative when used to call in awareness, inner healing, wholeness, unity, love, and truth. Rituals are not a calling on the gods to grant us our wishes and wants for health, wealth, and happiness, or, in some cases, revenge on those we see as our enemies, but a submission to Love and Truth. Rituals are not literal; they are highly symbolic of inner meanings, dynamics, and intentions. For instance, the ocean is a sacred place of ancestral wisdom and rituals for the communities of Hamburg and Bodium in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. For more than four centuries, the Xhosa people have practiced rituals by the sea, which are seen as essential to their spiritual and physical well-being. Deeply revered customary practices are inherently linked to the ocean. Seawater is used by sangomas (traditional healers) to heal illnesses caused by contact with impure objects or events, neglect of the ancestors, or witchcraft. Bathing in the sea cleanses the body, washes away bad luck, and invites prosperity and success. Clearly, seawater does not wash away bad luck or bring about prosperity and success. However, as a symbol of the bounty of sustenance, prosperity for the fisherman, and an agent of washing, it is highly symbolic of the intention to be internally pure, just as water is used in baptism as a symbol of the purity of spirit.
Purity of intention and motivation is therefore important. Understanding of symbols, metaphors, and meaning is essential. With this understanding of its symbolic, intentional use for inner expansion, repetition creates new dynamics in our relationships with ourselves and others.
When ritual is used as a tactic to assuage our own fears and shame and to appease our own egos, it takes on the quality of black magic or, at least, is just magical thinking, and becomes destructive. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing and what the hoped-for result would be in terms of new ways of relating and behaving internally and externally. Ask yourself how this ritual will expand my consciousness?
Purity of intention and motivation is therefore important. Understanding of symbols, metaphors, and meaning is essential. With this understanding of its symbolic, intentional use for inner expansion, repetition creates new dynamics in our relationships with ourselves and others.
When ritual is used as a tactic to assuage our own fears and shame and to appease our own egos, it takes on the quality of black magic or, at least, is just magical thinking, and becomes destructive. Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing and what the hoped-for result would be in terms of new ways of relating and behaving internally and externally. Ask yourself how this ritual will expand my consciousness?
Relating: Shaping, expressing, and maintaining relationships. Sharing in the intimacy of the soul in sharing values, beliefs, meaning, history, and identity. Creates community.
Expanding: Making and marking transitions for ourselves and others. Structures life transitions and role changes. Facilitate change and transformation, death and birth, letting go of and living into...
Healing: Recovering from relationship betrayal, trauma, or loss. Through processing feelings and meaning-making
Grounding: Structure, predictability, and routine of ritual improve focus and an inner sense of safety
Empowering: Improves self-care and self-efficacy by doing, creating, and relating to self. Doing instead of being done to facilitate a return to the spiritual center. Sequential actions in stressful situations reduce anxiety and boost confidence.
Believing: Voicing beliefs and making meaning. Seeing interconnections
Celebrating: Affirming deep joy and honoring life with festivity, creating celebration, changing roles, and stability of shared tradition
Bringing Closure: Putting the past behind us, and anticipating the future
Rituals that promote healing and wholeness, nourish our souls, and renew our being.
~Nelson Mandela
This is what rituals are for. We, as human beings, perform spiritual ceremonies to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings, whether of joy or trauma, so we don't have to carry them forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you crave, you are absolutely permitted to create a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.
~Elizabeth Gilbert
Instruction
Each morning in Knysna, you will begin the day with one of the Hymns, each a teaching about a chakra. You can listen to these hymns by scanning the barcode on your cell phone. You will also receive the seed sounds, which illustrate the evolutionary transition from seed sounds to language. In this case, the seed sound is interpreted in Sanskrit and then translated into English. The Vedas are the oldest, foundational sacred texts, rituals, and hymns of Hinduism, considered divine and eternal knowledge revealed to ancient sages. Similarly, teachings directly from Spirit are now finding their way through Charisse. The Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse text from the Mahabharata epic that offers an essential, practical, and accessible philosophy in a conversational format, just as she is giving you a translation to use in your own internal dynamic. You are receiving additional help by being here with us and by applying the teachings, with guidance, to your everyday inner and outer interactions.
To receive what is given, you will need to do what Charisse has had to do – set aside your mind, with all its judgments, self-doubt, self-importance, demands, and fears, and allow yourself to open to the seed sounds and the meaning of what Spirit is transmitting. In this way, the vibration, tone, and sound will be transmitted directly to you. We encourage you to apply this directly to your own lives and experiences to discover how Spirit is speaking to you. Each hymn you receive could change the course of your life forever, leading you to even greater expansion and freedom.
The meditations you practice during the day will complement and support your work with the hymns, opening you to deeper truths and greater love within, so that you become the very instrument Spirit can use to awaken the world.
Each Chakra is an energy center aligned with musical notes, frequencies, and instruments to promote balance and healing through sound vibration. Each Chakra corresponds to a specific pitch in the Western (C-B) or Indian (Sa-Ni) scales. Often, the sounds Charisse sings or chants do not fit either scale, making musical translation difficult. She is going beyond any man-made scale and accessing seed notes, not merely sounds. However, each seed sound is perfectly vibrationally matched to its corresponding musical note. The system is highly nuanced and complex. She is literally integrating systems.
The seven chakras are commonly associated with the musical notes C through B, with the root at lower frequencies and the crown at higher ones. There are various systems. In this sound-healing practice, Solfeggio frequencies (396 Hz–963 Hz) or 432 Hz-based tuning is used to balance the energy centers. The simple one-syllable seed sounds associated with the body's energy centers roughly correspond to the following:
Root (Muladhara): Note C, grounding, drums. 396 Hz
Sacral (Svadhisthana): Note D, creativity, large wind instruments. 417Hz
Solar Plexus (Manipura): Note E, personal power, metallic sounds/bells. 528 Hz
Heart (Anahata): Note F, love/healing, flute/piano/strings. 639 Hz
Throat (Vishuddha): Note G, expression, flute. 852 Hz
Third Eye (Ajna): Note A, intuition, small bells.852 Hz
Crown (Sahasrara): Note B, spiritual connection, singing bowls/conch. 963 Hz
These are included in your Beach Meditation for you to experiment with, helping you get out of your own way and allowing whatever sound comes through you as you contemplate the blockages at a particular energy center. You can listen to many YouTube chants for support.
Just as anything observed is changed by the observation, so anything truly heard is changed by the hearing. ~Lyndall Johnson
The reach of vibrations is according to the fineness of the plane of their starting-point. To speak more plainly, the word uttered by the lips can only reach the ears of the hearer, but the thought proceeding from the mind reaches far, shooting from mind to mind. The vibrations of the mind are much stronger than those of words. The earnest feelings of one heart can pierce the heart of another; they speak in the silence, spreading out into the sphere, so that the very atmosphere of a person's presence proclaims his thoughts and emotions. The vibrations of the soul are the most powerful and far-reaching; they run like an electric current from soul to soul.”
~Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of the Music, Sound and Word.
The Practice of meditation deeply affects our character.
We are slaves to what we do not know.
Of what we know, we are masters.
Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves,
we discover and understand its causes and its workings,
We overcome it by the very knowing.
The unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious.
The dissolution of the unconscious releases energy.
The mind feels adequate and becomes quiet.
When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.
The sun may seem obscured by clouds and dust,
But only from the point of view of the perceiver.
Deal with the causes of obscuration, not with the sun.
Watch the influence of thoughts, feelings, and sensations on you.
Be aware of them in operation;
watch their expressions in your thoughts, words, and deeds,
And gradually their grip on you will lessen
and the clear light of (sattva) Absolute Love will emerge.
It is neither a difficult nor a protracted process;
Earnestness is the only condition of success.
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I am That.
The First Root Chakra - Muladhara - The Root of Existence
Study the beautiful sacred geometry of a red lotus with four petals, a circle, a downward triangle, and the seed-sound symbol – LAM – on the opposite page. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up right away. First, look deep within yourself for meaning, image, and connection.
The primal universal human needs for safety, belonging, connection to the physical world, stability, and predictability
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant in this energy center, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold the power of the river's flow?
Impeded flow of energy resulting in:
Physical symptoms: Adrenal gland malfunction, constipation, bones, feet and legs, lower back pain, sciatica, tired, lethargic
Emotional symptoms: Fear, generalized fear – anxiety, feeling ungrounded, stuck, and insecure, shame, and anger
Belief system: Beliefs about scarcity and deprivation
Behavior: Struggle with decision making or taking action, holding on to possessions, collecting, and hoarding, greed in eating, and possessions, etc. Distractability, lack of focus, and follow-through – goes from one thing to another
In natural flow:
Warm, intimate, loving, and accepting inner relationship with wounding, firm limits with destructive self-beliefs and judgments in this chakra, giving the self a sense of belonging, groundedness, stability, safety, both internally but also in the world, and a greater sense of connection
Location: The base of the spine – tailbone area, perineum, pelvic floor
Element and Color: Earth, representing being grounded and rooted, belonging, sense of being at home, connected to family. Red.
Function: Promotes grounding, safety, security, and survival instincts.
Mantra: LAM – see under Practices for Today
Mudra: (Muladhara) – see under Practices for Today
At the level of Muladhara, for instance, is the earth, our conscious world, but also where instinct and desire are largely unconscious – a state of Participation mystique. Reason can do little: storms of emotion or external forces, war or revolution, can sweep all away. The bizarre proliferation of weapons in the modern world is nothing more than an attempt to contain or destroy the threat posed by impulses from the lower centers. Worse, much of it is an expression of them.
~Jung and Kundalini
Questions for Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
"Consciousness is a vast ocean, and thinking is the waves and ripples on the surface of the ocean. Every wave and ripple has a very short-lived life.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
This section of “Questions for Journaling ...” is included for each chakra. These questions are intended for journaling, discussion with your therapist or spiritual guide, and group discussion. The more we share internally with ourselves and others, the more aware we will be and the less tethered we will be to the shackles of denial and defense. You may not know the answers. That is okay – just notice how you do not know, cannot remember – and allow the questions to live in you. You may revisit the questions many times – each time you have a conversation with someone, ask them one of the questions and see what they tell you. This often sparks insight into your own experience.
As you contemplate the first chakra, consider how your needs for physiological safety and comfort, as well as for trust, were either inadequately or overly met as a child, and how your needs for belonging and safe relationships were either inadequately or overly met. Consider how you learned to either trust or distrust yourself, your body, your needs, emotions, thoughts, actions, others, and the world. Consider any issues that have arisen in recent days related to these themes.
Were you taught to be in a loving relationship with your body, your feelings, and your needs? Did you feel a sense of mastery and competence, or uncertainty and shame?
How was being in a relationship with your body, feelings, and needs discouraged or overly attended to? When those needs were not met or were overly met, they led to fear and emotional and/or physical pain. How did you push the pain away and live above it in thought and action? Can you access your beliefs, feelings, and ways of coping in the world in any circumstance now, and experience the present when you feel unsafe and alone? How is this cellular memory that needs your loving attention?
Consider how your coping and protective strategies against these feelings have also created barriers within you and between you and others. These ways of fleeing the experience manifest as addictions, denial, repression, anger, acting out, distractions, obsessiveness, compulsions, and perfectionism, to name a few ways of either fighting or fleeing discomfort.
Consider your issues with money, food, and possessions. How do they ease the feelings that arise from your need to belong and feel safe? Do you struggle with addictions such as food, alcohol, drugs, spending, shopping, or gambling? Do you do too much or too little of certain behaviors? Face your inner suffering bravely. This requires a full heart. What does a full heart mean to you? Were you parented with a full heart?
What was the relationship between Mom, Dad, and my grandparents regarding money, food, and acquisitions? Why? What experiences of fear and shame informed their beliefs and actions?
What do I believe about myself and the world regarding safety and belonging, and about the behaviors I use? What do I make of money, food, and acquisitions in terms of what they reveal about me?
How do your beliefs shape your fear? What do you need?
How do you use money, food, and other things to feel safe and belong? Is it realistic, or is it rooted in the messaging from my early years?
Practices for Today
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. ~Isak Dinesen
As you read these practices, notice your resistance in the form of emotional aversions and belief systems, body tension, thoughts of anger or avoidance, and distractions from other activities. Or notice if you are excited and over-keen to focus on these practices. Which ones do you want to do? Ask yourself, “Why?” Your inner emotional reaction indicates issues in the 21st chakra. Another way to say it is, “Are you self-negating or self-indulgent in your choices?” Ask yourself, too, “Am I judgmental or naively following instructions?’ “Why?” is the doorway into your contemplation.
Hymn Meditation: Listen to the hymn many times today. Let it sink deeply into your cells. Meditate on and journal about the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all your other meditations today.
Chakra Nature Meditation: Follow the instructions on the next page, then end your meditation with the Tonglen and Sacrifice meditations.
Earth Meditation: Walk barefoot by the sea and find something red on the beach to keep as a reminder of the second chakra’s work – it can be a photo. Notice the difference in yourself as you walk on solid land, at the water’s edge, or in the water. Try to walk barefoot as much as possible today. Give yourself a mud pack.
Ritual: Intentionally create a grounding ritual that incorporates the elements of the first chakra. Give yourself a mud pack. Make a list of smells that feel grounding to you and help you remember that you belong to the earth. The fynbos in this area is filled with aromatic, earthy plants. Take the leaves, crush them, and deeply inhale their scent. Grounding aromas include patchouli, vetiver, cedarwood, frankincense, sandalwood, and myrrh. What is your intention in doing this? There is no point in doing it unless you know what you are symbolically intending. Fill a bottle with sea sand to take home and meditate on its meaning.
Movement: Practice one or more 1st chakra yoga poses, listen to music and dance, or do modified movement – adapt with kindness to the body.
Creativity: Create one thing today using red – a mantra, a poem, a sketch, or a painting – not just in your head but in actual expression focused on the 1st chakra. Take photos of everything red today.
Mantras and Affirmations: The Sanskrit seed sound for this chakra is “LAM.” In Sanskrit, this seed sound means “I am,” symbolizing presence, power, and stability before the ego develops. The musical note is A. Search for and listen to the LAM chant, then chant along. As a result of your reflections and meditations, write a list of affirmations or intentions for yourself that will change how you relate to and think about yourself. LAM is the Sanskrit seed sound for earth, set to the musical note C, chanted in a deep, low, resonant tone at 256 Hz (or 216 Hz on a 432 Hz tuning) to release blocked energy and ground it, fostering a sense of stability and belonging.
Mudra: Muladhara Mudra promotes grounding, stability, and a sense of security. It is performed by bringing the palms together, interlacing the ring and pinky fingers inside, and touching the tips of the index fingers and thumbs to form two interlocking rings.
Nutrition: Eat root vegetables mindfully today. Include potatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes, beets, ginger, garlic, and onions.
When you listen deeply to the ocean,
You hear the ancient rhythm of belonging.
~John O’Donohue
Chakra Nature Meditation
I am forever walking upon these shores, betwixt the sand and the foam. The high tide will erase my footprints, and the wind will blow away the foam, but the sea and the shore will remain forever.
~Khalil Gibran
Find an outdoor spot in nature, near water that resonates with your 1st chakra. Focus on the sand or earth beneath your feet. Notice whether you are afraid of the water and want to stay on land, or whether you are drawn to losing your footing in the water. Focus on your breathing, listening to the air as it moves through your lungs. Let your hands settle into whatever mudra feels right. Notice the sensation in your hands, then in your whole body. Listen to the sounds, smell the air, and feel your connection to the ground.
Wherever you are standing or sitting, imagine it as the point where two lines intersect – the only spot on the planet where this line of latitude and longitude meet, just as your incarnation on this earth is completely unique. Allow your attention to settle at the root chakra and feel this region of the body. Imagine the color red in this part of your body. You are rooted and belong to the earth right here. Breathe deeply. On each in breath, notice where you are holding tension in your first chakra region, and on each out breath, allow your body to relax. Bring this relaxation to the deepest part of each cell. Relax into the rhythm of the ocean’s movement or the pulsing of the air, the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the breeze, the solidity and movement of the sand, the scent of the salt, and the sounds of the sea or nature around you.
Focusing on your 1st chakra, consider the questions you have been journaling about and discussing, and notice any tension that arises. Relax the body with each out-breath, and sink deeper into stillness, peace, calm, and love, even beyond the atoms of your body. From this silence, find a sound that expresses the earliest sound you would have made in this world.
Allow the sound to come. Continue using this as a mantra, imagining the color red, until it naturally brings you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Work with your resistance. Now put words to the sound and create an affirmation of intention, all the while toning the sound.
E.G., I KNOW HOW TO KEEP MYSELF SAFE. I AM CONNECTED TO THE EARTH
I WILL GIVE UP MY NEED FOR OTHERS TO BE TRUSTWORTHY.
Include the Tonglen and Surrender Meditations at the end of this time to activate your heart for yourself and others and to recognize your connection to every other sentient being on the planet who struggles with trust and safety.
The Oyster Catcher’s symbolic essence is that of
a protector - a noisy, watchful guardian that cares
for the vulnerable and thrives at the edges of the wild.
Protect yourself from yourself, and you will have good protection. ~Meister Eckhart
Search the Darkness
Sit with your friends, don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.
Surge like an ocean, don’t scatter yourself like a storm.
Life’s waters flow from darkness.
Search the darkness; don’t run from it.
Night travelers are full of light, and you are too:
Don’t leave this companionship.
Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,
Don’t slip into the dirt like quicksilver.
The moon appears for night travelers.
Be watchful when the moon is full.
~Rumi
Knysna SeaHorse (Hippocampus capensis) is a fish species in the family Syngnathidae. It is endemic to South Africa's south coast, where it has been found in only three brackish-water habitats: the Keurbooms River estuary in Plettenberg Bay, the Knysna Lagoon, and the estuarine portion of the Swartvlei system in Sedgefield. This seahorse's limited range puts it at high risk of extinction.
This little creature is a symbol of fatherhood because male seahorses carry and give birth to their young. They are powerful symbols of nurturing, active fatherhood, and shared responsibility.
They also symbolize patience and serenity - their slow, deliberate movement teaches the value of taking time, trusting the process, and maintaining composure in a hectic world. They also symbolize patience, serenity, adaptability, and fluidity, navigating ocean currents while remaining anchored and true to themselves. They represent strength, resilience, and protection, and are the canaries of the ocean, responding immediately to pollution in their habitat.
Are these all qualities you can bring to the youngest parts of yourself, being a nurturing masculine and feminine spiritual presence for yourself?
The Second Sacral Chakra - Svadhisthana Chakra
Notice the sacred geometry of an orange lotus with six petals, a circle, a downward-pointing crescent moon, and the seed-sound symbol – VAM. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look within.
Universal human needs for belonging, emotional and physical intimacy, touch, appropriate dependence and independence, pleasure, creative expression, emotional expression, and sexual expression
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or not directed and contained, like the banks of a river hold the power of the water's flow?
Impeding of Natural Flow Correlated to Physical Symptoms: Urinary and reproductive organs issues, lower back pain, pelvic and hip problems
Emotional: Poor emotional self-regulation, or repression and numbness of emotion, unawareness of emotions of helplessness, fear, shame, anger
Belief system: one of negation of feelings, sexuality, self-expression, and creativity, or unboundaried and unregulated expression of sexuality and creativity,
Behavior: Co-dependent/dependent emotional relationships, addiction, low libido, problems in loving sexual intimacy
In natural flow:
Healthy inner relationship with emotions and needs resulting in joy, intimacy, and passion, and a creative life emotionally, intellectually, and artistically
Location: the lower abdomen, two inches below the navel, associated with the pelvis and
reproductive organs.
Element and color: Water, representing fluidity, emotions, and ease with change. Orange
Function: Governs emotions, creativity, pleasure, and desires
Mantra: VAM – see under Practices for Today
Mudra: The Shakti Mudra – see under Practices for Today
Fish symbolize flow, flexibility, and the ability
to move effortlessly through the "waters" of emotion, sensuality, and change.
One of the best-eating fish in the waters around Knysna is the White Steenbras, which is badly
overfished and so endangered. Ask for “fish of the day” at restaurants and enjoy new taste experiences.
Use eating fish as a meditation on the meaning of fish in you.
Practices for Today
Dance with the waves, move with the sea, let the rhythm of the water set your soul free.
~Christy Ann Martine
Hymn Meditation: Allow yourself to listen to the hymn as many times as you like today. Allow it to sink deeply into your cells. Meditate and Journal on the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all the other meditations today.
Chakra Nature Meditation: Follow the instructions on the next page, followed by the Sacrifice and Tonglen meditations
Water Meditation: Use the element of water for this chakra. Consider ways to conserve water in this town and reflect on what water means to the people here. Swim or walk in the sea, or take a bottle to the sea, fill it, and bring it home to remind yourself of the vastness of your own consciousness and the finiteness of the waves and ripples on the surface. Find something orange on the beach to keep as a reminder of the work of the second chakra – it can be a photo.
Ritual: Intentionally create a pleasure ritual that incorporates the elements of the second chakra. For example, a warm bath with orange, sandalwood, or ylang-ylang essential oil. Bathe with cleansing Epsom Salts. What is your intention in doing this?
Movement: Practice the Goddess Pose (Utkata Konasana) and the Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana). Alternatively, listen to music and dance or do modified movement – adapt with kindness to the body
Mantra: VAM – seed Sanskrit sound, meaning to emit, to release blockages, the note is D, and correctly guides the flow of 288 Hz (or 303 Hz). The tone is flowing and soft. It is chanted using a deep, slightly higher-pitched "OOO" sound (as in you).
Mudra: The Shakti Mudra - Bring your hands in front of your heart or lap, tuck your thumbs into your palms, and rest them under your index and middle fingers. Press the tips of your ring fingers together, and the tips of your little fingers together. Keep your middle and index fingers straight or slightly bent, and press their knuckles together. Hold the mudra gently, breathing slowly and deeply, focusing on the pelvic area and visualizing the color orange there.
Creativity: Create one thing today – a mantra, a poem, a sketch or painting, not just in your head but in actual expression
Nutrition: Eat orange foods mindfully today. Research their elements and benefits to your body. Oranges, carrots, sweet potatoes, mangoes, papayas, cantaloupe, or pumpkin.
The ripple is never apart from the ocean, just as you are never apart from your true being. Stillness reveals who you really are.
~Eckhart Tolle
Asteroidea (Starfish). Starfish are common in the rock pools of this region. They are immensely resilient, withstanding the battering of both
incoming and outgoing tides. They can regenerate a lost arm and symbolize tenacity, as all arms work together to maintain stability.
Consider the metaphor more deeply and see this sacred geometry in your own life. Look at your body and find the number 5 within yourself.
Chakra Nature Meditation
Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface of the sea there may be a multitude of waves but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence- that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then, when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. When we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky, and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation.
~Sri Chinmoy
Feel intuitively into where you wish to be on the beach or in nature today. Sink deep within yourself, down to your second chakra. Learn to listen to your body’s intuitive knowing. When you find the spot that feels right – in resonance with the 2nd chakra - stand or sit, and either use the suggested mudras for the 2nd chakra or find a hand connection that feels right for the 2nd chakra’s generative, creative power. Notice all the responses in your body, and listen to any resistance with interest and empathy.
Whether sitting or standing, allow yourself to observe the creative life force within a bird, a plant, a snail, or a crab. This force fulfills its purpose as a bird, plant, snail, or crab. What conditions prevent it from fulfilling its divine mandate to be fully itself? It is creativity personified. It does not have to do or achieve anything except to grow according to an inner blueprint of being. Can you see its beauty? It is you.
Focusing on your 2nd chakra and the color orange, consider the journaling questions and any uncomfortable feelings triggered by others right now. Relax the body on each out breath, and sink deeper into stillness, peace, calm, and love, even beyond the atoms of your body. Notice whether you wish to move your awareness and attention away from your body and emotions to the surface of your mind and thoughts, and then away toward the external world. Transformation lies in seeing without judgment and, instead, with understanding and a full heart. At the same time, relax into the rhythm of the ocean, the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the breeze, the solidity and movement of the sand, the scent of salt, and the sounds of the sea.
When you have done this, dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a seed sound for your intention to know free expression in creativity and the intimacy of being, drawn from your deepest knowing.
The seed sound in Sanskrit is “VAM.” It is usually pronounced, "Vuhm" (rhymes with drum). It is a resonant, guttural sound that should be felt as a gentle, low, humming vibration in the lower belly. It is often chanted as a long, continuous sound, allowing the "m" vibration to reverberate: "Vaaaaaammmmm." Did this sound emanate from you naturally?
Allow the sound to come using this as a mantra, imagining the color orange, until it naturally brings you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now put words to the sound and craft an affirmation of intention. Allow yourself to chant, sing, or say it. Notice how hard it is to relax into this instruction and work with your resistance. There is power and freedom in noticing resistance and surrendering to the Spirit within that seeks expression
E.G., I CHOOSE TO BE CREATIVE RATHER THAN DESTRUCTIVE IN MY THOUGHTS, DESIRES, WORDS, AND ACTIONS. I CHOOSE LIFE OVER DEATH. I WILLINGLY GIVE UP MY NEED TO HAVE POWER, KNOWING THAT I AM POWER
Complete your meditation with the Tonglen Meditation and the Surrender Meditation at the end of this time to activate your heart for yourself and others and to recognize your connection to every other sentient being on the planet who struggles with fears of belonging, intimacy, and creativity.
The full moon casts more than light—it tugs at tides and hearts alike. Its gravitational force shapes the ocean's rhythm, and subtly, our own. As beings of water and light, we feel these pulses in ways science is only beginning to understand. Just as the sea responds to lunar phases, so too do our dreams, sleep cycles, and emotional tides.
In The Electric Nature of Wild Animals, I explored how our biology is synchronized with the Earth’s electromagnetic field. The Schumann Resonance—Earth’s natural heartbeat at 7.83 Hz—aligns with the alpha brain wave state, promoting peace, intuition, and coherence. The full moon amplifies this resonance, creating a symphony between heaven and Earth.
When we align with these cycles—whether through moonlit walks, ocean reflection, or stillness under the stars—we tap into a wisdom older than words. As expressed in the Living Code Series, healing begins when resonance is restored. The moon and the sea, working in tandem, are instruments of this field-based harmony.”
“The ocean imposes a rhythm on the deep waters of your soul.”
~ Robbie George
The full moon casts more than light—it tugs at tides and hearts alike. Its gravitational force shapes the ocean's rhythm, and subtly, our own. As beings of water and light, we feel these pulses in ways science is only beginning to understand. Just as the sea responds to lunar phases, so too do our dreams, sleep cycles, and emotional tides.
In The Electric Nature of Wild Animals, I explored how our biology is synchronized with the Earth’s electromagnetic field. The Schumann Resonance—Earth’s natural heartbeat at 7.83 Hz—aligns with the alpha brain wave state, promoting peace, intuition, and coherence. The full moon amplifies this resonance, creating a symphony between heaven and Earth.
When we align with these cycles—whether through moonlit walks, ocean reflection, or stillness under the stars—we tap into a wisdom older than words. As expressed in the Living Code Series, healing begins when resonance is restored. The moon and the sea, working in tandem, are instruments of this field-based harmony.”
“The ocean imposes a rhythm on the deep waters of your soul.”
~ Robbie George
The Third Solar Plexus Chakra - Manipura Chakra
Notice the sacred geometry of the 10-petaled lotus, with the inverted triangle within a circle and the symbol for the seed sound RAM in the center. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look deep within.
Universal Human Needs for esteem and self-respect, respect for others and being respected, trust, value, achievement and mastery, efficacy, learning, stimulation, independence, competence, discovery, ease, understanding, to matter, to be seen, heard, and validated.
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold the power of the water's flow?
Impediments to Flow correlated to Physical Symptoms: Diseases of the pancreas, digestive system, and adrenals needed for metabolic processes – e.g., obesity, diabetes, pancreatitis, and liver disease
Emotional: Manifest as low self-esteem, shame, insecurity, indecision, or a lack of motivation.
Belief system: Judgmental, critical of self and others from a place of thinking oneself worthless, and so thinking others worthless and wrong, bad, and stupid if they do something you judge yourself for in the same way (projection)
Behavior: All the defenses of aggression, power, and control towards self and others – projection, blame, attack, judgment…
In natural flow:
It is the "fire in your belly" that fuels transformation, motivation, and self-confidence. When balanced and in right relationship with old emotions, needs, and thought patterns, it fosters discipline, strength, and a clear sense of purpose.
Location: Behind the navel in the spinal column
Element and Color: Fire and the color yellow
Movement: Boat Pose, Twisted Chair, Sun Salutations, Warrior poses, and twists, often accompanied by deep diaphragmatic breathing
Function: Controls personal power, confidence, self-esteem, and digestion
Mantra: RAM – see Practices for Today
Mudra (Rudra): see Practices for Today
We then come to think that what we had was but a little, and that perhaps more would satisfy us, and still more would suffice our need; but this is not so. Even if the whole universe were within our grasp, it would be impossible to fully satisfy our life's demands. This shows that our true life has quite different demands from those we are familiar with. It does not want the joy experienced by this individual self alone; it desires joy from all around. It does not wish for a momentary peace, but for one that is everlasting. It does not desire to love a beloved held in the arms of mortality. It needs a beloved to be always before it. It does not want to be loved only for today and perhaps not tomorrow. It wishes to float in the ocean of love.
~Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Way of Illumination
Questions for Contemplation, Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings… Leave and don’t look away from the sun as you go, in whose light you’re sometimes crescent and sometimes full.
~Rumi
This chakra holds all the shame and the ego defenses against feeling it. Consider where and how you feel the terror, fear, and angst of shame – see the questionnaire on the opposite page. Think of all the relational ways you feel shame or fear of feeling it. All of your current fears are doorways into seeing how you learned and experienced relationships as a child. Were you shamed for expressing feelings? Needs? Ideas? Were you shamed for not meeting other people’s needs and wants, for considering other people’s feelings, for what you did or did not do, or for how you engaged with the world? There are 10 million ways children are shamed and now live in constant fear that someone will trigger that feeling through their responses or lack of responses. In other words, their inner power to simply be, do, and relate in the world is severely constrained, blocked, or repressed.
How was your need for esteem, value, and respect met as a child?
How was it not met?
Feel the fear of shame if you do not live up to the demands and expectations.
How do you become the one demanding and expecting of yourself instead of being present with respect to all that arises within you?
How do you shame and criticize, drive and demand, expect and judge yourself?
How do you change inertia into action and movement?
How are you constantly tense and busy, driven to achieve and do?
How do you live reactively or inactively instead of proactively?
What beliefs, emotions, and past experiences undermine your sense of efficacy, confidence, and self-esteem?
Notice shame during the day, and document what triggered it. What young, incorrect belief about yourself was activated? What meaning did you make of the event? What need was not met? What did you learn to do to repress the feeling? Was it a fight-or-flight defense? Or do you use both – how does an inner fight reaction turn into an outer attack on others?
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78
SHAME QUESTIONNAIRE
Be honest with yourself - It’s not shameful to have shame!
I sometimes lie awake at night rehashing conversations I’ve had with people
I think my spouse’s and children’s behavior/dress /appearance are a reflection on me
I am embarrassed by my family if they do not behave “good, right, and perfect.”
I worry about what other people will think
I judge everything I think/say/do harshly as never “good enough” - I often disappoint myself
I sometimes hear myself calling myself dumb, lazy, irresponsible, selfish...
I feel uncomfortable when someone compliments me or gives me gifts
I have a hard time asking for help - I do not like to be dependent on others
I prefer to help others
I prefer to do things myself, then I know they will be done right / people often disappoint me
I ask for help and have other people do things for me because I don’t think I am able to do it
I want others’ approval, but then negate their feedback, as I do my own
I do not perceive myself as particularly lovable or worthwhile
I feel “bad” about spending money on myself, taking time for myself...
I feel “bad” when I have to say “no” to someone, or cannot help someone out
I really hate the way I look
If something goes wrong, my first thought is, “What did I do wrong?” I fear being “caught”
I tend to assess and scrutinize my behavior carefully and get upset when I make a mistake
I tend to say “I’m sorry” a great deal, or I cannot say I am sorry - it sticks in my throat to do so
I don’t like to make a fool of myself. I’m afraid of making a fool of myself
I feel terrible if someone disapproves of me, disagrees with me, judges me, or criticizes me
I tend to worry about what other people think, but say, “I don’t care what they think!”
I get a lot of praise and affirmation, but people don’t really know me / I feel like an imposter
I believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do things
If you are going to do something, you should do it the right way or not bother
I sometimes feel confused about who is to blame in a situation
I get sad when no one seems to notice or appreciate how much I do
All I ever wanted in life was to be loved
No matter how much I do, I never feel as if I have done enough - it is hard for me to relax
I find myself worrying about what needs to be done, or worrying about the silliest things
Any kind of personal failure is the worst thing I can think of - I wish I had done better in life
It is hard for me to follow through and finish tasks. I tend to postpone decisions
I sometimes find myself comparing myself to others and feeling inadequate
I feel safe only when I achieve highly, do things perfectly, know everything, and present immaculately
I worry a great deal about the future
I caretake others, give advice, and am helpful/ kind to others to feel safe and in control
I attack, blame, judge, and criticize others - I find fault in everything others do
Life is disappointing, and people are too
I find myself either feeling superior or inferior
I use substances or addictive behaviors to alleviate anxiety
I feel depressed and anxious a lot of the time
Write down everything you can think of that you do not like about yourself, and see how deeply your judgments and criticism are rooted in the inner child who feels shame.
Add your own symptoms of shame—we all express them in idiosyncratic ways
Practices for Today
Dance with the waves, move with the sea, let the rhythm of the water set your soul free.
~Christy Ann Martin
Hymn Meditation: Allow yourself to listen to the hymn as many times as you like today. Allow it to sink deeply into your cells. Meditate and Journal on the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all the other meditations today.
Meditation: Follow the instructions on the next page, followed by the Sacrifice and Tonglen Meditations
Fire Meditation: Find something yellow on the beach to keep as a reminder of the third chakra's work – it can be a photo.
Ritual: Light a candle and consider this small symbol of the sun as a representation of Infinite Consciousness. What would you like to transform into ashes? What phoenix do you wish to birth? Wear yellow and take pictures of everything yellow.
Movement: Boat Pose, Twisted Chair, Sun Salutations, Warrior poses, and twists, often paired with deep diaphragmatic breathing.
Sharing: Share one thing you feel ashamed of with another person, and pay close attention to the response in them and in you.
Mantras and Affirmations: The primary seed (bija) mantra for the 3rd chakra (Solar Plexus/Manipura) is RAM (pronounced rahm), which is chanted to activate confidence, personal power, and inner fire. RAM – musical note E or E flat, frequency 528 Hz, for transformation and healing DNA. Write your own affirmations after studying this chakra.
Mudra: Rudra Mudra (Chakra of Power): The tips of the index and ring fingers meet the thumb, while the middle and little fingers remain extended. This mudra energizes the solar plexus and is often used to combat fatigue and improve metabolism.
Nutrition: Eat yellow foods that sustain energy, boost metabolism, and nurture digestive health (Agni) with yellow foods, complex carbohydrates, and spices. Key foods include bananas, yellow peppers, lemons, ginger, turmeric, and whole grains like oats or quinoa, with dairy and ghee. Research the elements and benefits of these foods for your body.
Why run around sprinkling holy water? There's an ocean inside you, and when you're ready, you'll drink.
~Kabir
The solar plexus (or celiac plexus) is named for its appearance as a dense network of nerves radiating outward like sun rays. "Solar" refers to the sun, while "plexus" comes from Latin, meaning "braid" or "network." It describes this major nerve bundle behind the stomach. It is the seat of power and value. Imagine this part of your body radiating like the sun rather than being constricted by fear.
Yellow Pincushion Protea represents transformation, resilience, uniqueness, and courageous diversity. As a fynbos species that thrives in harsh conditions surviving fires, it embodies strength and the ability to bloom through change.
Chakra Nature Meditation
"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." ~Isak Dinesen
Sink deep within yourself, down to your third chakra, and feel where you want to be on the beach. Learn to listen to your body's intuitive knowing. When you find the spot that feels right – in resonance with the 3rd chakra – stand or sit, and place your hands together in the mudra for the 3rd chakra. Hold this at your solar plexus. What matters is what your body tells you to do. You can follow these instructions or find a connection in your hands that feels right, guided by the free will that comes from Love and Truth in your solar plexus. Feel the tactile connection between your hands. Feel your blood and your nerves. Feel the movement in your hands. What arises within you in terms of images, thoughts, feelings, and memories?
How can your will and personal power become as wide and deep as the ocean? This power is completely different from “willpower,” which stems from force born of shame and fear. This kind of power is the control of feelings and needs, rather than embracing and surrendering old habits of thought and the desire for power and control. Consider the willpower required to force yourself to study so you are not a failure in the eyes of others, as opposed to the free-flowing power that gives rise to creativity. Achievement that comes from shame and fear is completely different from creativity that comes from the vast creative power of your True Self. One is blocked, tense, fear-driven; the other is relaxed, free, and a natural emanation of the quintessence of your being.
Close your eyes and focus on the third chakra, visualizing the color yellow.
What images, feelings, thoughts, or memories arise as you contemplate this part of your body? To live into the fullness of your innate power, you must first discover how you weaken your willpower and resolve, or force your resolve to act.
When you have done this, dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that is a seed sound for your intention to know the free expression of being, from your deepest knowing, so that you can be expressive and creative rather than being determined by fear of shame.
Allow the sound to come – find the sound that resonates with freeing the planet herself from shame, in all the ways she has been controlled and abused. Continue to use this as a mantra, imagining the sun as yellow, until you feel it naturally bring you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now put words to the sound and create an affirmation of intention.
E.G.. I GIVE UP MY NEED FOR RESPECT AND VALUE. I WILL ENSURE THAT I AM TREATED
AS VALUE, BY MYSELF AND OTHERS
Allow yourself to chant it, sing it, or say it. Notice how hard it is to relax into this instruction and work with your resistance.
Complete your meditation with the Tonglen Meditation and the Surrender Meditation in solidarity with all those who, like you, struggle with fears around knowing their value.
“Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed, and rare.
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we feel shame, the camera zooms in tight, and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.
if you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!”
~ Brene Brown
Shame is a soul-eating emotion. ~C.G. Jung
Don’t hate your shame.
It is the alchemy of the sun,
And the dung,
And the toil of life,
Rolled altogether
That creates the
Shiny black miraculously
Sacred scarab.
~Lyndall Johnson
The Addo flightless dung beetle (Circellium bacchus) is a rare, large, wingless beetle endemic to South Africa's Eastern Cape, with a major stronghold in Addo Elephant National Park. It is crucial to the ecosystem, recycles dung, and is protected by strict "right-of-way" regulations on park roads due to its vulnerable status.
Once in a saintly passion
I cried with humble grief,
“Lord of all sinners,
I surely must be chief.”
Then my guardian angel stooped
And whispered from behind.
“Vanity, my little one,
You’re nothing of the kind.”
Sea anemones are cnidarians (the c is silent) and are related to corals, jellyfish, and hydras.
Like so many creatures that live at the transition point between ocean and land, where life is shifting and harsh, the sea anemone is tough, resilient, and well-defended. Like us, it can look pretty yet have deadly barbs, and the quintessence of the Sun gives it life and informs its being.
How do you shine like the sun and also, at the same time, have deadly barbs?
The Fourth Heart Chakra – Anahata Chakra
Notice the sacred geometry of the 12-petaled lotus, with two inverted triangles within a circle and the seed sound LAM at the center. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look deep within.
Universal Human Need for Love – to give and receive love, to connect, and to sustain interdependent relationships through love and intimacy
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold back the power of the river's flow when needs are not met?
Constrictions or no boundaries correlate to:
Physical: Chest, shoulder, and upper back diseases are often linked to cardiovascular or respiratory dysfunction. Common physical symptoms include high blood pressure, poor circulation, heart palpitations, asthma, chronic shallow breathing, and thymus gland malfunction.
Emotional: Feelings of disconnection from others, loneliness, and difficulty expressing empathy, compassion, and love. Feeling empty, insecure, jealous, and fearful in relationships. Anger, resentment, and bitterness about not feeling loved by others. Deep-seated grief, fear of and withdrawal from intimacy.
Belief system: Judgmental, critical of self and others from a place of thinking oneself worthless, and so thinking others are worthless and wrong, bad, and stupid if they do something you judge yourself for in the same way (projection)
Behavior: Demanding love, jealous and controlling behavior, withdrawal from relationships. All the tactics of co-dependency and dependency.
In natural flow:
An experience of deep empathy, compassion, love, and forgiveness for self and others, while setting limits on all that is not loving, resulting in inner peace. There is a balanced state of love and openness.
Location: In the center of the chest at the level of the heart, directly behind the sternum. It is the bridge of healing for wounds in the lower body, bringing the open heart to the suffering and opening the psyche to wisdom, compassion, and higher truths of consciousness.
Element and Color: Air, green or pale pink
Function: Governs love, compassion, forgiveness, and relationships
Mantra: YAM – See under Practices for Today
Padma Mudra (Lotus Gesture): - See under Practices for Today
“When we develop the heart chakra, we begin to influence the surroundings with our spiritual presence. When we develop the communication chakra, we begin to influence the country with our spiritual presence. When we develop the seventh chakra, we begin to influence the world with our spiritual presence, without doing anything.”
~Swami Dhyan Giten
Questions for Contemplation, Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
"Love is not a pond; it is an ocean. It requires equipment, courage, and the willingness to lose sight of the shore." ~Unknown
Giving and receiving love are developmental milestones in our earliest years. How were these needs met with joy, gentle guidance, and clarity? Or were you shamed, rejected, or abandoned, and were your needs met with irritation, dismissal, or disinterest, or was there an overarching anxiety and demand for love? Did you have to give “love” to “get” love? You will know what happened by the patterns you still repeat. For example, do you resist trying creative projects you long to pursue? What is being stirred up on this retreat about being loved, liked, and accepted by others? What old heartache is being activated by current events?
When did you first become consciously aware that you do not feel loved?
Were you harshly judged, attacked, or blamed for something?
Where have you said you are not loving to yourself, when you did not meet another person’s needs, or did not meet them the way they expected?
When did you first realize you did not know what love is?
When did you first ask yourself, “What is love?”
How has your heart been broken? What hurts your heart right now?
What did you feel in your grief? Shame, fear, hurt, or anger?
What did you make of the abandonment, loss, and rejection?
How did you numb, defend, and barricade your heart against further hurt?
How do you try to “love” people so they love you back?
Can you see how you have confused love with getting your needs met, getting what you want, and being good?
Do others meet your need to be loved when they give you what you want, meet your needs, or are good to you?
How do you feel when you think someone “loves” you?
How do you feel when you think someone does not “love” you?
How do you relate to people who do not love you in the way you want?
How do you relate to people who do everything you want, meet your needs, and treat you well?
How have you been fooled into believing you were loved?
How has this affected your life?
Are you ready to start loving and protecting yourself?
The depth of love creates an ocean around you... The ocean keeps throwing its waves on your shore.
~Osho
Chakra Nature Meditation
"It's only when the ripple is unaware that it is the ocean that a sense of separateness arises—which of course is an illusion.” ~Eckhart Tolle
"The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses over it. Love is the bridge," ~Stephen Levine.
As you prepare to meditate on the heart center, consider the sun's radiance, pouring forth its life-giving light and warmth without discrimination, on the good and the bad alike. Intuitively choose a spot on the beach. Then close your eyes and focus on your heart chakra, remembering all the times your heart has been broken by loss. Remember all the times you have not received compassion and empathy for your feelings, needs, and losses. Consider how people have not been truly present to you in your suffering. Think of all the times you bared your soul and opened your heart, only to close it tight when you did not receive empathy, compassion, or love in response. How did you learn to be in the world as a result? How are you not present to your own losses, pain, and suffering with compassion? What beliefs and defenses are you ready to release into the sea? At the center of your broken heart lies the Sun. Only by breaking the outer casing can you discover your true Radiant Self, which shines equally on the good and the bad, with acceptance, awareness, and understanding.
Close your eyes and focus on the fourth chakra, visualizing the color green. What images, feelings, thoughts, and memories arise as you contemplate this center of your body? To live fully from the fullness of your loving heart, you must allow your defenses to drop and see the wounds in your heart.
When you have done this, dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that is a seed sound for your intention to know yourself as love, from your deepest knowing, so that you can be accepting and loving toward every aspect of self that arises within you and others, with understanding of the pain and limitations of the thinking and defenses that block the free flow of love.
The seed sound in Sanskrit is “YAM.” Did this sound emanate from you naturally?
Allow the sound to come. Continue using this as a mantra, imagining the color green, until it naturally brings you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now put words to the sound and craft an affirmation of your intention.
E.G., I AM LOVED, AND I AM LOVE. I RELEASE MY NEED TO BE LOVED.
Allow yourself to chant it, sing it, or say it. Notice how hard it is to relax into this instruction and work with your resistance.
Complete your meditation with the Tonglen Meditation and the Surrender Meditation, knowing that everyone in the world seeks to know themselves as love and struggles to do so.
I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, and that the centripetal force is greater than the centrifugal.
“Love is channeled through all these streams and is constantly flowing. If an attempt is made to contain this love, “Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.” ~Rumi
“True love stems only from an unbroken wholeness, never from neediness, and is fulfilled not by what we receive but by what we give.”
“Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity. But this revelation remains impossible as long as we are prisoners of our own egoism. I cannot find myself in myself, but only in another. My true meaning and worth are shown to me not in my own estimate of myself, but in the eyes of the one who loves me; and that one must love me as I am, with my faults and limitations, revealing to me the truth that these faults and limitations cannot destroy my worth in the eyes of the one who loves me; and that I am therefore valuable as a person, in spite of my shortcomings, in spite of the imperfections of my exterior ‘package.’ The package is totally unimportant. What matters is this infinitely precious message, which I can discover only in my love for another person. And this message, this secret, is not fully revealed to me unless, at the same time, I am able to see and understand the mysterious and unique worth of the one I love.
“Do not seek love anywhere but within. Do not build walls that keep love out; instead, cultivate an aura around you that is permeable, allowing a constant flow of love to move through you. We are but vessels of love. This vessel is connected to all things. Love flows through all these streams, constantly. If an attempt is made to contain this love, it will break the dam, causing overwhelming grief and a sense of drowning. When love is allowed to flow naturally, without trying to possess it, it gives one everything one needs. It protects you. It serves you. It guides you. And most of all, it loves you. Love is meant to flow. Embrace the flow. It is always going through you. Do not ever doubt it. Love connects us all. All is love itself, so that includes you. You are never without love. In fact, you ARE love.”
~Jason Micheal Ratliff
Cape sea urchin (Parechinus angulosus)
If you are very lucky, you might find the shell of a Heart Urchin on the beaches of the Knysna Lagoon
Meditate on this little creature that has long since died, leaving only its shell (defenses). It is a beautiful metaphor for “dying” to shame, and joining the ocean of love, leaving your beautiful defenses behind on the sands of time.
The Fifth Throat Chakra - Vishuddha (especially pure) Chakra
Notice the sacred geometry of the 16-petaled lotus, with an inverted triangle within a circle, containing a circle with a white region like the full moon, and the symbol for the seed sound HAM in the middle. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look deep within.
Universal Human Need for – to hear and be heard, to speak at an authentic, honest level of feeling and need; for truth and for honest internal and external communication
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold the power of the river's flow?
Constrictions or lack of boundaries correlate to:
Physical: Body tension in this area correlated with sore throats, laryngitis, TMJ disorders, mouth ulcers, gum disorders, and stiff necks, chronic sore throat, persistent throat clearing, hoarseness, laryngitis, and pain. Dysfunctions such as hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism are frequently associated with this energy center, including teeth grinding (bruxism), frequent ear infections, earaches, tinnitus, and upper respiratory issues. Tightness in the shoulders and upper back, or a feeling of a "lump" in the throat.
Belief system: Judgmental, critical of self and others from a place of thinking oneself worthless, and so thinking others are worthless and wrong, bad, and stupid if they do something you judge yourself for in the same way (projection)
Feelings: Fear and shame about speaking, shame about being misunderstood and unheard. Anger
Behavior: Difficulty speaking your truth (lying, pretending, hiding), shyness, being soft-spoken, talking too much, gossiping, being unable to listen, or speaking harshly. Speaking with judgment and criticism, internally and externally
In natural flow:
Self-expression with clarity and confidence. Ability to know, contain, limit, and direct thoughts and emotions, resulting in effective communication, genuine and honest interactions, deeper connections, and meaningful relationships. Inspiration, vision, and ideas flow freely without self-doubt or fear of judgment. An open fifth chakra enables us to express ourselves with clarity and confidence, enhances our ability to manage thoughts and emotions, and fosters effective communication in both personal and professional settings.
Location: Base of the throat, at the center of the larynx, neck, jaw, and mouth.
Element and Color: Space / Ether. Sky blue or turquoise
Function: Governs communication, self-expression, and truth
Movement: Fish Pose (Matsyasana), Camel Pose (Ustrasana), and Shoulder Stand (Sarvangasana). Or simply experiment with neck-stretching exercises.
Mantra: HAM – see under Practices for Today
Mudras: (Vishuddha) – see under Practices for Today
Questions for Contemplation, Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools, dig a way out through the bottom of the ocean
~Rumi
Why Do You Speak? Or not speak?
Do you remember times when you were too afraid to speak up, ask for what you need, talk about how you feel, assert yourself, set a limit, or express anger or displeasure? What is the fear, and how has it limited you?
Perhaps it has taken a lot of inner work to find your voice?
What is the fear you have regarding your voice, and how has it limited your life?
Reflect on a time you didn't speak up, and what was the consequence of your silence
Reflect on a time you did speak up with negative consequences?
What memories do you have from childhood about speaking? You should be seen but not heard? Silence is golden? Are you driving someone crazy with your chatter?
What role are you fulfilling by speaking – it is one of mutuality or hierarchy?
What double messages did you get around this?
What did you have to do to be heard?
Did you entertain your parents with your talk? Did this meet your need for attention?
Do you speak incessantly? Why? Were there limits set on constant talking, or were you rewarded for being a “chatter-box”
Do you speak about irrelevant details and find it hard to get to the essence of what you want to say?
How were you silenced as a child? What was the motive of the one silencing you?
How was shame about using your voice transmitted to you?
How much fear of feeling shame do you feel when you are asked to use your voice, either in conversations, groups, or public speaking?
How often have you discounted your own opinions and thoughts as wrong before someone else says so?
Did you grow up with the rule, “Children should be seen, not heard?” Have you continued this rule in your life, for fear of being shamed?
Was singing or playing an instrument encouraged? Mocked? Criticized? Trained?Demanded?
How were you shamed for expressing a feeling? Were you told to stop whining, complaining, and being rude and disrespectful, instead of acknowledging the deeper feelings? Were you told, “I will give you something to cry/complain about?”
How were you shamed or intimidated for expressing a need? E.g., “Stop being a baby.”
How did you live by the unspoken rule of “keep the peace,” by keeping quiet and not saying certain things to “upset” someone?
How were you yelled at for “mumbling” if you did not speak loudly enough?
Were you ever encouraged to explore the meaning of what you were saying, helping you go deeper into yourself?
Were you encouraged to talk about meaning, ideals, visions, hopes, dreams, and imagination?
Were you ever seen as “strange, different, odd, weird” for what you said?
What are the beliefs and defenses you developed to protect yourself from the feeling of shame?
How have they determined the course of your life? Do they serve you now?
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~ George Orwell, CultureWatch.
The loudest animal found in the Cape (and worldwide) is the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), which
produces intense echolocation and communication clicks that can reach up to 230 decibels. These powerful
Rhythmic clicks, which can be heard over long distances and are used to stun prey, such as squid. Humpback
whales are often seen off the Cape coast during their migration. They produce long, complex songs that reach
sound levels up to 192 dB.
Pistol Shrimp, or Snapping Shrimp. These crustaceans are abundant and produce a constant, intense crackling
noise. By snapping their large claws at high speed, they create a bubble that collapses, producing sound levels of
up to 210dB, louder than a gunshot. This action forms a cavitation bubble that collapses violently, releasing
intense heat, light, and a shockwave are used to stun or kill prey, communicate, and defend their territory.
Are you making a lot of noise to defend, attack, or communicate and connect cooperatively? Are you a pistol shrimp or a highly evolved mammal, like a whale or a seal?
Cape Fur Seals: While often heard on land with loud barks, they are highly social and vocal in the water, making
a variety of grunts, barks, and calls. This picture is one of many of the seal colony on Robberg Peninsula in
Plettenberg Bay. It is also the seal you will have seen at Robben Island (Rob means seal in Afrikaans, robbe is the
plural)
Practices for Today
Silence is an ocean.
Speech is a river.
When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk into the language river.
Listen to the ocean, and bring your talky business to an end.
Traditional words are just babbling. In that presence, babbling is a substitute for sight.
~Rumi
Hymn Meditation: Listen to the hymn many times today. Let it sink deeply into your cells. Meditate and journal on the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all your other meditations today.
Meditation: Follow the instructions on the next page, near the ocean, followed by the Sacrifice and Tonglen Meditations. Space Meditation: Swim or walk in the sea and notice the vast expanse of space around you. Feel your breath – recognize that your entire life depends on something invisible, and what an incredible metaphor this is for your life on this planet. And find something blue on the beach to keep as a reminder of the fourth chakra's work – it can be a photo.
Ritual: Intentionally create a ritual of free expression in speech, incorporating the elements of the fifth chakra. For example, make tea from marshmallow root, licorice root, fennel, ginger, and lavender, with a little honey. This blend is often used to soothe a scratchy throat and encourage open, honest self-expression. Wear blue clothing, light a blue candle, and buy yourself a necklace with a blue stone like aquamarine, lapis lazuli, blue agate, or sodalite to wear whenever you have to speak and feel afraid. Use Peppermint for clarity, Lavender for soothing, Frankincense for honest expression, and Blue Chamomile or Blue Tansy to promote a serene energy flow. Then do a breathing exercise to open the throat chakra: breathe in and notice the tension, breathe out and release it, while visualizing blue light expanding from the chakra area..
Movement: Camel Pose (Ustrasana): Profoundly opens the entire throat and chest, or gentle neck stretches.
Speaking: Talk about one thing today that you have never voiced, even if it is only to yourself. Write something that feels stuck in your throat. Dare to tell someone how you are feeling and what you need in your relationship with them. Alternatively, notice why you are speaking and decide not to speak, but to keep silent.
What needs are you trying to meet by speaking or by not speaking?
Make it a habit to ask yourself this question before you speak and use your voice.
Are you creating with your voice or destroying? “In the beginning was the word.” The root of the word “word” is vrt, the same root as “rose,” the symbol of the mother of the universe. Sound is the creative force of the universe. Use it wisely.
Mantras and Affirmations: The seed sound in Sanskrit for this chakra is “HAM.” HAM – musical note G and frequency 741 Hz. In Sanskrit, this seed sound signifies purity, truth, and authentic communication. Create your own list of affirmations that transform blockages into a free flow of creative expression within.
Mudras: (Vishuddha) Interlace your fingers on the inside of your hands, then touch the tips of your thumbs together, bringing them up to form a circle. Hold this near your lap or at your throat while chanting “HAM" during meditation.
(Akash) brings the tip of the middle finger (representing space/ether) to the tip of the thumb, promoting better communication and helping manage a blocked throat chakra.
Nutrition: Blue-colored fruits (blueberries, blackberries), tree-grown fruits (apples, pears, plums), nutrient-dense sea plants (kelp, dulse), and soothing, warming teas - honey, lemon, and ginger.
Chakra Nature Meditation
As the river surrenders itself to the ocean, what is inside me moves inside you.~Kabir
As you prepare to meditate on the throat center, consider a bird's song and how it sings from the essence of its being naturally, without judgment or fear of what others think. Intuitively choose a spot on the beach. Then close your eyes and focus on your throat chakra, remembering times you have expressed yourself in ways that did not resonate with your truth, and times you have kept quiet about your truth out of fear. Reflect on how this evolved from the original shame you felt when you did express yourself. How did you learn to be in the world as a result? Consider how you bottle up what you want to say and then erupt in ways that are hurtful to you and others. How are you not present to what you wish to express? What beliefs and defenses are you ready to release to the sea? Consider the small prison of constriction in which you keep your voice in relationship to yourself, others, and also creatively. Now look at the vast space around you – it is within you too. Any prison cell you live in is of your own making.
What ways did you learn to surface into your head and move away from this discomfort? How did you distract yourself and split off from your inner and outer experience? Ask yourself how your needs for free self-expression were not encouraged, were stifled, or were not guided by gentle, loving boundaries, which resulted in the discomfort in this part of your body. Stay present, lovingly, with deep curiosity. Ask yourself when, whether, and how it is appropriate to share what you discover about your own inner discomfort.
See if you can recognize the interconnection among an experience of a need not being appropriately met, body sensations, feelings, beliefs, and misunderstandings; a generalized sense of shame and constriction and suffocation of your voice with yourself, others, and the world; and defensive ways of trying to escape the experience of discomfort in your body or of fighting against it. When you have done this, dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that is a seed sound for your intention to know yourself and express yourself from this deepest knowing, so that you can allow the free flow of your voice and expression, without heeding the fear and voices that try to stop you.
The seed sound in Sanskrit is “HAM.” Did this sound emanate from you naturally?
Continue using this as a mantra, imagining the color turquoise, until it naturally brings you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now put words to the sound and craft an affirmation of intention.
E.G. I WILL EXPRESS MY TRUTH IN SOME WAY, EVEN IN THE FACE OF FEAR AND JUDGMENT
Allow yourself to chant, sing, or say it. Notice how hard it is to relax into this instruction and work with your resistance. There is power and freedom in noticing resistance and surrendering to the within-Spirit that seeks expression..
Complete your meditation with Tonglen and Surrender meditations
The Sixth Chakra – Ajna (Third Eye Knowledge)
Notice the sacred geometry of the 2-petaled lotus, featuring an inverted triangle within a circle and the OM or AUM seed sound symbol at the center. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look deep within yourself.
Universal Human Need for – integration, seeing the big picture, intuiting, insight, clarity, imagination, trusting your gut, wisdom, gnosis
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold the power of the water's flow, when these needs are not met?
Energy Block or not bounded correlated to:
Physical Symptoms: Chronic headaches, migraines, or a sensation of pressure in the forehead or temples. Eye strain, blurry vision, or difficulty focusing. Sinus problems, earaches, or ringing in the ears. Inability to sleep, insomnia, or intense, vivid nightmares. Heightened sensitivity to light, sound, or bright environments. Unexplained, extreme exhaustion or weakness.
Belief system: Rigid and closed-minded, factual and “logical” only, limited, black-and-white thinking, inability to see the "big picture," poor memory or lack of focus, openness to psychic phenomena without grounding in reality, and experiencing hallucinations and nightmares. Mental fog and an inability to make decisions due to a lack of imagination or intuition. Rumination and an inability to calm the mind.
Behavior: Either gullible or distrustful. Susceptible to propaganda and fake news. Uses power and control tactics of all kinds, internally and externally. Always “knows,” never questions.
Movement: Child's Pose, Eagle Pose, and Dolphin Pose.
In natural flow:
Strong intuition and trust in “gut feelings,” coupled with a high level of self-awareness, mental clarity, and wisdom. Ability to visualize, focus, and understand oneself, others, and the dynamics, interconnections, and situations deeply. Emotionally stable and open-minded. Curious and questioning, exhibiting both/and thinking or unitive thought. Right relationship – empathy and limits - with intrusive thoughts and self-doubt.
Location: Between the eyebrows, pituitary gland
Element and Color: light and indigo
Function: Regulates intuition, wisdom, imagination, and psychic abilities
Mantra: OM or AUM – See under Practices for Today
Mudras: Hakini Mudra (Mudra of Mind): See under Practices for Today
Sometimes in the waves of change we find our true direction.
Questions for Contemplation, Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
As the ocean is filled with water flowing into it from all sides and remains immovable, so the man into whom all desires flow, but is not a bit affected, attains peace, and not the man who craves the desires.
~Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 70
Consider the following explanations and descriptions. Consider and notice when you still take things literally, focus externally, and use judgment instead of wisdom.
Intuitive Knowing / Wisdom
Synthesis and transcendence
of body, intellect, and emotion
Immediate comprehension of the truth
as it essentially exists without
reasoning or logic
A function of the soul ~
that which exists outside
of time and space
and is therefore infinite ~
that entices us to know what at a deep
level we already know
Compassionate observer ~
non-emotional
and non-judgmental
Mind not ruled by fear
An irresistible force that propels one
into true service
We use unitive thought (Intuitive Knowing) when we:
Make deep meaning
Imagine and dream
Know without data
Think systemically
Connect and reconcile
Intuit without evidence
Integrate and make whole
Use symbol, allegory, metaphor
Seek commonality, not difference
Understand principles underlying facts
Recognize that all material existence is a symbol - that your physical existence is a symbol.
That everything is a reflection of some aspect of yourSelf
Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time, the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.
~Karen Marie Moning
I remember paddling in Baja through some perfectly smooth, jade-green water. On the bottom were sea cucumbers, rock scallops, and some beautiful seaweeds. Everybody started to go very slowly. We had been paddling hard, but everybody slowed down and just started looking. After about fifteen minutes of quiet, we picked up our paddles and started paddling again. There was so much power in that silence that the next day we did the whole day without talking. In silence, there is a lot more access, I think, to the spirit, to spirituality, to the soul.
~Jennifer Hahn
Oliva capensis sea snail runs around in circles on the sand where the surf breaks, having been dislodged from its home
beneath the sand, until it suddenly and quite dramatically burrows down into the sand – it finally understands – nothing is
happening except going in circles and certain death, unless it burrows down so it does not dry out, cannot be picked off by
predators, and can find cool, nurturing, and sustenance below the sand. Perfect metaphor for why you must burrow down
and in. Your defensive shell and running in circles aren’t going to protect you from gulls or from the sun drying you up!
Practices for Today
Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean - the ocean of the soul. How could this bird, born of that sea, make his dwelling here?
~Rumi
Hymn Meditation: Allow yourself to listen to the hymn many times today. Let it sink deeply into your cells. Meditate on and journal about the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all your other meditations today.
Chakra Nature Meditation, followed by the Sacrifice and Tonglen meditations.
Light Meditation: Notice the play of light and dark today. Both are needed to create beauty. Take a picture of light creating shadows and illuminating darkness. Without the light of intuition and wisdom, the shadow remains in the dark and does not dance with the light. Spiritual bypass seeks only light. Not doing the work of becoming aware leaves one in the dark. Both must be fully integrated – both are embraced by the Sun.
Silence: Do not speak today unless it is wise and compassionate to do so.
Ritual: Intentionally create a ritual of light using candles and the sun.
Movement:
Child’s Pose (Balasana): Encourages introspection and directly stimulates the third eye by resting the forehead on the floor or a prop.
Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana): An inversion that brings blood flow to the head and increases mental focus.
Dolphin Pose (Ardha Pincha Mayurasana): Similar to Downward Dog but on the forearms, allowing for deeper concentration and stimulation of the third eye.
Mantras and Affirmations: Mantra: OM or AUM – the seed Sanskrit sound that expands consciousness into integral thought, encompassing both thinking and experience; it signifies purity, truth, and authentic communication. Note A and Frequency 852 Hz. The seed sound in Sanskrit for this chakra is “Om or AUM.” Create your own list of affirmations that transform blockages into a free flow of creative expression within.
Mudra: (Hakini - Mudra of Mind): Bring all your fingertips together, touching them gently, while keeping the palms apart. Hold this mudra in front of the chest, breathe deeply, and focus awareness on the space between the eyebrows. This gesture improves concentration and fosters cooperation between the brain's hemispheres.
Nutrition: dark berries, purple grapes, prunes, raisins, figs, and plums; purple kale, cabbage, carrots, and eggplant. Walnuts, cacao, and Omega-3-rich foods like salmon. Herbs like rosemary, sage, and mint; lavender; poppy seeds; and red wine.
In the silence of love, you will find the spark of life.
~Rumi
Life is comparable to an ocean... The sound of the storm diminishes as one goes deeper into the ocean.
~Unknown
Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time, the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.
~Karen Marie Moning
More Practices
Pay attention to dreams. Pay attention to visions.
Read poetry and ask what it means and points to. Write poetry.
Listen to music. Compose music. Sing. Chant.
Dance and play for no reason other than the joy of it.
Stay in the present moment as much as possible, noticing how the mind wants to grab hold of snippets of information and terrify you.
Start trusting hunches, inner messages, perceptions.
Stop dismissing the quiet little inner voice. Notice how often you have done this.
Ask yourself what things mean.
Read stories and scriptures in a new way - see each character as an aspect of some principle and dynamic alive and well in you.
Ask yourself what things mean .... are a symbol of. Study symbols, especially ones that grab your attention, and find out what all the various traditions have said they mean. What does it mean inside of you?
What archetypal energies are you living out in your life? The martyr, the ruler, the warrior....? Can you expand your repertoire and call on different energies and dynamics within you? e.g., Can you move from being the martyr to the warrior?
Notice how fluid you are and how rigid? Intuition is fluid. Intellect is rigid.
Relax and open – tension is fear and the intellect.
Examine the interconnectedness or inter-beingness of all things in the universe.
Seek to find commonality instead of difference in your experience with others.
Seek to connect, not control.
See judgment and criticism as the function of the intellect, and see that that which you judge is some disavowed aspect of self.
See everything external as representative of something internal.
Garden, walk in nature, do walking meditations
Imagine, dream, and allow yourself to see images, colors, and patterns.
Make mandalas.
Meditate. Do guided visualizations
Draw, paint, and express.
Learn to feel the vibration/energy/atmosphere and know what it tells you.
Use your imagination - stop dismissing it as ‘not real.’
Learn to see everything in the context of the whole, and it’s interconnectedness to everything
Bridge ‘either/or’ thinking with resolving paradoxes
Start seeing the blueprint behind creation, and you will awaken to a richer, deeper experience of life, closer to the Creator than the creation.
Black Witch-Hazels (Trichocladus crinitus)
This is one of the most prolific tree species endemic to the Knysna
forest and an amazing symbol of the flowering that occurs at the
point of integration of dualities.
Chakra Nature Meditation
All oceans lived within a wandering drop,
A time-made body housed the Illimitable,
To live this Mystery out, our souls came here.
~Sri Aurobindo
As you prepare to meditate on the Third Eye center, consider the sun's radiance, pouring forth its life-giving light and warmth without discrimination, on the good and the bad alike. Intuitively choose a spot on the beach. Then close your eyes and focus on your Third Eye, imagining an eye opening and closing, and envisioning the color indigo. What images, feelings, thoughts, and memories arise as you contemplate this part of your body? To live into the fullness of your wisdom, you must allow your defenses to drop and see the wounding caused by your judgmentalism, born of shame and resulting in dualistic thinking that divides and splits the psyche, dooming it to live in darkness. How did you learn to be in the world as a result? How much pain have you caused yourself by your lack of understanding and awareness of your feelings and needs? How have you overridden your soul's experience with quick answers, rationalizations, justifications, logical thinking, criticism, and judgment? How have you hurt others with your judgments and the projection of anger? What beliefs and defenses are you ready to release to the sea? At the center of your dualistic mind is the heart of intelligence, the Third Eye, which integrates all the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, by seeing the value of both and bringing both into the light of awareness with compassion.
Remind yourself that you are endowed with the capacity to perceive deeply into your own nature and into all things. Think of all the times as a child when your imagination and intuition were dismissed. Feel the pain of that, and of all the ways you shut down your knowing. Think of a period in your life when you lived superficially. Are you ready to open yourself to the vastness of Universal Mind rather than live in the prison cell of rigid, self-limiting beliefs?
Your body and feelings in the present, in everyday interactions and experiences, are a doorway to the repressed experiences of your life. Do you feel self-righteous, moralistic, shocked by others, angry, or judgmental? Some life issues you might have experienced in those young years include a religious, moralistic upbringing, harsh judgments and criticism, and rules and demands to be “good, right, and perfect,” according to the dictates of parents, teachers, and religion. You might have been constantly put in double binds about what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong...
You may not have a cognitive memory, but perhaps an image, feeling, sensation, or sound comes to you. All of this is memory, too. Do not dismiss anything that comes to you. Everything that wants a voice is welcome. Do you have any chronic medical issues related to this chakra, such as chronic headaches, migraines, or a sensation of pressure in the forehead or temples? Eye strain, blurry vision, or difficulty focusing. Sinus problems, earaches, or ringing in the ears. Inability to sleep, insomnia, or intense, vivid nightmares. Heightened sensitivity to light, sound, or bright environments. Unexplained, extreme exhaustion or weakness.
When you have done this, dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that is a seed sound for your intention to know yourself as love from your deepest knowing, so that you can be accepting and loving to every aspect of self that arises within yourself and others, with understanding for the pain and limit with the thinking and defenses that block the free flow of wisdom.
The seed sound in Sanskrit is “OM or AUM.” Did this sound emanate from you naturally?
Continue to make this a mantra, imagining the color indigo, until you feel it naturally bring you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now put words to the sound and create an affirmation of intention.
E.G. I AM WISDOM WITH COMPASSION, AND SO I WILLINGLY RELEASE MY NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING, BE RIGHT, AND GET COMPASSION FROM OTHERS
Allow yourself to chant it, sing it, say it.
Complete your meditation with the Sacrifice and Tonglen meditations.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~Albert Einstein
Beautiful blue and indigo-blue bottles (Physalia utriculus) are marine siphonophores found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They are not single jellyfish but colonies of four specialized, interdependent organisms (zooids) that function as a single unit. They have a venomous, blue, gas-filled float and a single, long tentacle that can deliver painful stings. Are you the bluebottle – pretty to look at but with a sting if anyone “tramps” on you? The bluebottle is also a symbol of great wisdom, living in an innately interconnected, communal, mutually beneficial state. Consider what it would look like for us to follow this innate imperative in a fully aware and intentional way.
The Seventh Chakra - Sahasrara or the Crown Chakra
Notice the sacred geometry of a thousand-petaled lotus, a central circle representing the full moon, often surrounding a downward-pointing triangle and a small bindu point. Journal about what this means to you – do not look it up; look deep within yourself.
Universal Human Needs – self-actualization, wholeness, unity with God, enlightenment, salvation, return to the Source from which we came, community, presence, integrity, joy, balance, harmony, peace, and beauty
Question: How is the flow of Life Force Energy (Kundalini) blocked, dammed up, constricted, and stagnant, or how is the Life Force Energy not directed and contained, like the banks of a river that hold the power of the flow of water, by these needs not being met?
Energy constricted or unbounded correlated to:
Physical Symptoms: Headaches, migraines, lightheadedness, and sensitivity to light or sound. It can also present as chronic fatigue, insomnia, or intense tingling/pressure sensations at the scalp. Dysfunctions of the endocrine system. All and any symptoms of the other chakras.
Belief system: No personal creed for life, narrow-mindedness.
Feelings: Confusion, shame, fear, anger, disconnected, alone, and isolated from one’s own soul, other people, and Spirit. Feeling stuck.
Behavior: All the defenses used by previous stages and states. Extreme materialism or ungrounded dissociated spirituality and spiritual bypass. Rigid moralistic behaviors.
In natural flow:
a sense of peace, deep wisdom, compassion, and oneness with Spirit, the universe, and all things. Trust, serenity, joy, and knowing the meaning of one’s life
Location: Top of the Head - fontanelle and the intersection of the coronal and sagittal sutures of the skull. Associated with the endocrine system, which includes the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and pineal gland in the brain.
Element and Color: Consciousness/cosmic energy - violet, white, or gold
Function: Connects the individual to the divine, universal energy, and pure awareness
Movement: Inversions like Headstand (Sirsasana), Rabbit Pose, or Corpse Pose (Savasana) help ground the energy and stimulate the crown.
Mantra: The silence before sound, even the seed sound of OM. See under Practices for Today
Mudras: See under Practices for Today
The National flower of South Africa, White King Protea - Protea cynaroides
These distinctive, cone-shaped blooms can grow up to 30 cm across and
are celebrated for their ability to thrive in the harsh, dry conditions of the
Cape fynbos region. Because of its hardiness, the King Protea is widely used
to symbolize strength, courage, and resilience.
Like the thousand-petalled white lotus, this flower represents the
union ofSpirit to Soul, the alchemical marriage of the
divine feminine and masculine in human form – integration, self-actualization, salvation, enlightenment. When we can
bring the energy of these inner parents into relationship with our human suffering, we are being fully human and also fully divine.
Questions for Contemplation, Journaling, Self-Reflection, and Group Discussion
What were you taught about relationships in terms of connection and disconnection?
Under what circumstances did your parents, teachers, and authority figures disconnect from you?
Connect with you?
How did you internalize this dynamic?
How did you try to bypass the descent part of the process?
How are you still tempted and fall into the trap of bypass?
What was the dogma of the religion you were brought up in? Was it to focus on external good works and achievement, hard work?
Were you rewarded for doing this for others, or punished if you did not?
Did you learn to do what came from an inner inspiration and love, or from fear?
Were you encouraged to own your feelings and see the connection between your feelings and your behaviors and take responsibility for both?
How did you distract and split off from the inner and outer experience? Ask yourself how your needs for integrationand acceptance of all parts of your human experience were violated, abused, used, and discarded, first by others but then by yourself. See how you can see the fragmentation of experience, splitting off from memory, emotion, need, thought, different experiences, ages and stages. Once you can see the fragmentation, the healing to wholeness and reconnection starts. Try to stay present lovingly with deep curiosity.
What were you taught about what was most important in life?
How are you still sometimes confused about being “good, right, and perfect,” and being loving?
How did you get confused between asceticism and addiction to pleasures? Can you see the either/or thinking?
Can you enjoy the pleasures of life from a different space within, instead of using them as an avoidance of the inner suffering within?
Are you afraid of death? Can you practice “dying” to a need, belief, or behavior every day?
Are you able to meet your own need for safety, connection and belonging, intimacy and presence, joy and beauty, creativity and balance, peace and contentment?
What sacrifice do you need to make to attain this internally?
Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret, and in exchange gain the Ocean. Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honor, and in the arms of the Sea be secure. Who indeed should be so fortunate? An Ocean wooing a drop! In god’s nam,e in God’s name, sell and buy at once! Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls.
~Rumi
Common Octopus
(Octopus vulgaris)
Known for its problem-solving abilities, the octopus represents deep wisdom, strategic thinking, and the expansion of consciousness. The way an octopus curls its tentacles relates to the spiral, representing the expansion of consciousness, the creation continuum, and the cycles of time.
Search for them in the tidal rock pools at Buffels Bay
Knysna – Oyster Capital of South Africa
Wild Oyster (Striostrea margaritacea)
Consider the relationship of the life force of the oyster to the suffering created in its oyster form by a grain of sand
or some irritant that damages its mantle tissue. It envelops the intruder with a secretion of nacre, a mix of calcium
carbonate and proteins—that coat it, eventually creating a smooth, iridescent, and hard pearl over several years.
It does not dissociate, deny, blame, argue, attack, feel shame, or need external validation. It just transforms
suffering into beauty with an embrace, resulting in transformation, integration, and service to the world.
Be sure to eat seafood at the restaurant “34 South” on the Waterfront. Knysna is literally on the 34 ° south line of latitude. This store also has lovely Knysna gifts to take home - like the locally made honey liqueur.
Practices for Today
Break your pitcher against a rock. We don’t need to haul pieces of the ocean around any longer.
~Rumi
Hymn Meditation: Allow yourself to listen to the hymn many times today. Let it sink deeply into your cells. Meditate and journal on the words as they apply to your life. Incorporate the music into all your other meditations today.
Chakra Nature Meditation: Follow it with the Sacrifice and Tonglen Meditations.
Nature Meditation: Seek to understand the interconnection between all things by asking how life forms here in Knysna support one another and give one another life. Think about how you divide the world with judgment instead of seeking connection and sameness in love. Find 10 ways you did that today, and come ready to discuss them in the group. Once you bring awareness to division, you will organically seek connection through the love of your heart and the wisdom of your mind.
Silence Ritual: Make gratitude your ritual for today. Find ways to express gratitude first to yourself, then to someone else. Do this in a concrete way. Unless you are expressing gratitude or wonder, keep silent.
Movement: Inversions like Headstand (Sirsasana), Rabbit Pose, or Corpse Pose (Savasana) help ground the energy and stimulate the crown.
Mantras and Affirmations: The seed sound in Sanskrit for this chakra is “Om” or “AUM.” In Sanskrit, this seed sound means purity, truth, and authentic communication. The silence before sound, even the seed sound of OM. Note is B and frequency 963 Hz. Create your own affirmations and intentions for this chakra.
Mudras: Sahasrara Mudra (Highest Gesture): Interlace the fingers of both hands, palms facing inward. Extend the ring fingers upward so they touch at the tips, with thumbs crossed and relaxed. It is often held above the head or in the lap.
Prana Mudra (Gesture of Life): Touch the tips of the thumb, ring finger, and pinky finger together on both hands while keeping the index and middle fingers extended. This helps to boost energy flow and spiritual connection.
Dhyana Mudra (Meditation Gesture): Place both hands in the lap, right hand on top of the left (for males) or left on top of the right (for females). Bring the tips of the thumbs together to form a triangle, symbolizing a balanced mind and mental stillness. Create your own list of affirmations that transform blockages into free flow and creative expression within
Nutrition: Foods that aid in purification and detoxification are ideal, such as light salads, fresh fruits, and fresh air/sunshine. Incorporate cauliflower, mushrooms, garlic, coconut, and onion. Purple kale, eggplant, blueberries, figs, and purple grapes. Peppermint tea, lavender tea, chamomile tea, and sage and herbal infusions.
Let the waves of the universe rise and fall as they will. You have nothing to gain or lose. You are the ocean.
-Ashtavakra Gita
Chakra Nature Meditation
I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop.
~Khalil Gibran
Once you can bring the light of consciousness to every dark nook and cranny of your life, you will know yourself as fully divine and fully human, the Infinite living in harmony, love, and truth with the finite. A joy-filled dance and a song of life, a flow of non-resistance, directed only by love and truth.
What images, feelings, thoughts, and memories arise as you contemplate this part of your body? It is a portal to eternal life, through which your soul departs the body at death.
You may not have a cognitive memory, but perhaps an image, feeling, sensation, or sound comes to you. All of this is memory, too. Do not dismiss anything that comes to you. Everything that wants a voice is welcome. Do you have any chronic medical issues related to this chakra, such as headaches, migraines, mental fog, increased sensitivity to light, sound, and the environment, trouble sleeping (insomnia or disrupted sleep patterns), vertigo, dizziness, poor physical coordination, difficulty concentrating, learning disabilities, or dissociative episodes? A feeling of being ungrounded, “stuck in the head," or disconnected from the physical self?
Once the work of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Chakras is done to some extent, you can bring your natural state of Love and Truth to every fragmented and split part of your life, making you whole and interconnected with everyone in the world. See that the last and most crucial part of the work is to bring Love and Truth into relationship with every other human experience within yourself – not to get rid of it or leave it behind. Meet everything with first understanding and empathy, and allow this to expand into compassion and wisdom, until you unite with the Divine in Love and Truth, bringing this reality to the illusions of your life and dispelling them.
Now dig to the deepest part of every cell in your body and find a sound that is a seed sound for your intention to know yourself as love, from your deepest knowing, so that you can be accepting and loving toward every aspect of self that arises within you and others, with understanding of the pain and limitations of the thinking and defenses that block the free flow of wisdom and compassion.
Imagine all your chakras in harmony and balance. Listen to the sound of the sea and the rhythm of the moon, as expressed in the waves and tides and in your body, too. Find the perfect harmony in which the sun and the moon work together to bring life to Earth. Find the sound of silence. Are you ready to release the sounds of the ego that keep you from hearing the primal sound, the music of the spheres, that gives rise to creation - to you? Can you be an expression of this wholeness in a nine-part harmony of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
The seed sound in Sanskrit is “OM” or “AUM.” Did this sound arise naturally within you? Allow the sound to come – the surf's sound will drown out your voice and blend with it. You and the surf are one.
Continue chanting this mantra, imagining the color indigo, until you feel it naturally guide you to a place of inner calm, alive with vibration. Now give the sound words and create an affirmation of intention. Imagine yourself rising from the sea, your arms outstretched toward the sun. Still your being and remain motionless within. Allow your inner radiance to meet the rising sun's radiance. As you become more and more one with the infinite light of consciousness within and without, the truth of who you are, why you are, and where you are will dawn on you.
E.G., I WILL FIND EVERY LOST PART OF MYSELF AND WELCOME IT HOME INTO THE EMBRACE OF MY LOVE. SPIRIT, GAIA, AND I ARE ONE, AND ALL IS AS IT MUST BE.
I AM COMPLETE AND NEED NOTHING TO FEEL SO.
Complete your meditation with the Sacrifice and Tonglen Meditation
Rachel at Coney Glen Beach, Knysna
Jesus was mythologically speaking, just one person who attained Christ Consciousness, i.e., is in relationship with himself in all the ways listed below, as well as with others. John Shelby Spong lists the attributes that shine forth with integration:
• a rare personal integrity
• courage to be himself in all circumstances
• head not turned by acclaim
• face not hidden by fear
• spirit not embittered by rage
• free of the need to be defined by others
• engaged self and others with the intensity of eternity
• challenged the hierarchy of values by which
people judged each other
•each person bore God’s image and had the potential to grow into the life of the Spirit.
~John Shelby Spong
Practice these ways of being, with yourself FIRST.
There is no reality but God,
says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.
~Rumi
A Thanksgiving Dance
I own nothing but these arms,
So I swing them.
I hold nothing but these hands,
So I clap them.
I have nothing but these legs,
So I lift them in dance.
I have nothing but my own hips,
So I sway them in trance.
Except I may not even own this body
—but I move.
Even still, I may not say where I go,
Yet I possess my soul.
“Dance. Dance. Dance,” said He.
“I am the Lord of the Dance,” said He.
For all these, I give thanks
To the One I owe,
(O my soul dance)
the fact that I exist,
that I breathe and that I know
The One from Whom all blessings flow.
~Stephen Lawrence Stoeltjie
