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Chakra Series (7) – Crown Chakra
I don’t know if you can tell; I’ve been reading a lot lately. 🙂 If interested in chakras, Eastern Body Western Mind, by Anodea Judith, is the comprehensive book on chakras. This is where I have found most of my information. She also has book on Chakra Yoga and The Wheels of Life. To dive deeper into mythology, religion and cosmology, Joseph Campbell never disappoints. He goes into the Yogic philosophy, writing frequently on the chakra system. His books (that I have read) are The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion.
The seventh chakra is called Sahasrara in Sanskrit, meaning “thousand fold”. It is located at the top of the head, the crown and cerebral cortex. This chakra deals with awareness and self-knowledge. A healthy, developed and open crown chakra produces wisdom, knowledge, consciousness, and spiritual connection. The right of the Crown Chakra is “To Know.” This chakra is developing throughout ones life. A child can have a more developed crown chakra than their parents. In comparison to the sixth chakra, which is about one’s self-identity in relation to society (archetypes), the crown chakra is about universal identity.
In his essay, On the Foundations of Morality, Arthur Schopenhauer wonders at the force that can make an individual risk their own life for a stranger. He asks, “How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that it moves me to action?”
His answer to this question was that the individual moved to action has somehow “identified myself with the other and therewith removed for the moment the barrier between the ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’. Only then can the other’s situation, his want, his need, become mine.”
Recognizing in another person the qualities of yourself, understanding that that person is, to an extent, also you, that we are all the same beneath––and I don’t speak of just made of the same parts, but of the same essence and that we come from the same source and will return to that source––is our universal identity. The way we perceive others as different than us is just that; our perception, our mental representation. We are all just mirrors of each other and for each other.
Ekhart Tolle said, “We are emanations of God’s imagination,” God being the creative force behind the universe, or “That Which Cannot Be Named”. In all religions, according to Joseph Campbell, this creative force has a local face, a lore that helps relate local folk to the story, in geography or in the cosmos (folklore, cosmology) but is of essence the same.
Imagine a world in which we all saw ourselves in the person next to us. We would all have compassion, empathy and feel what they were feeling. We would be conscious of their needs and desires as if they were our own and would not create separation, fear and war. Wouldn’t that be a heaven on Earth?
Since the crown chakra is developing throughout one’s life, we may experience various peaks and valleys in our quest to understand our universal identity. We may become sages and masters of our spiritual path. Or, alternatively, we may experience what is known as <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Existential Crisis. Why am I here? What is my purpose? This can lead to depression, even suicide. What is my faith? How can there be so many faiths or beliefs? Which one is right? Is only one right or are they all right? Some religions use dogma to indoctrinate individuals into their faith, creating fear if that person should leave the orthodox (which means right, but right in the view of the person proselytizing the faith) as well as fear of any one whose faith appears <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>different. While there is much spiritual truth and growth behind all faiths, the faith putting their supplicants into the category of <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Me and <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Them use dogma that only encourages a narrow world view. My <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>religion is right. My <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>people are best.
In truth, we are all right. We are all the same. We come from the same ancestors, live on the same earth, go through the same trials, have the same joys and fears and, though our paths are varied and many, we ultimately arrive at the same place at the end of our lives.
Deficient crown chakras can cause learning difficulties, spiritual skepticism, limited beliefs, materialism and apathy. Excessive crown chakras might create an overly intellectual person, a spiritual addiction, confusion and dissociation.
Anodea Judith, In Eastern Body Western Mind, provides these ways one can heal the crown chakra: reestablishing physical and emotional connections (healing the lower chakras: root, sacral, solar plexus), reestablishing spirit connections (finding faith in spirituality, however that looks to you). Examine belief systems, develop an inner eye witness, and work with a higher power.
Become informed. If you grew up in a certain faith, don’t be afraid to examine that faith. Faith doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It does not spontaneously appear. In the end, you can decide for yourself if this faith is right for you, without declaring the faith a lie or obsolete.
In my twenties, I lost my faith because I thought everything I was told was a lie. It set me on a downward spiral into chaos. I do believe I had to lose it in order to approach it from a different, not indoctrinated angle. From an angle of knowledge, with love, compassion, respect and understanding of the universal truths therein. Even though I lost my faith, it took longer to lose the fear of being wrong. Not only in being wrong for my choice, but as in I am wrong. My thoughts make me wrong. Somehow I could still be punished for these thoughts. Now, informed and connected to myself and to Spirit, I know different and can make informed choices. Leaving my religion was not the end all be all. The next step was choosing a new path for spiritual growth, whether that was my returning to my traditional faith as an educated participant or pursuing alternative spiritual paths. Or even coming up with my own way of connecting to Spirit and the Cosmic Conscious. That being one half of it, the other half understanding that we are each on our on path.
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