Spiritual Skyfall
While in Thailand, I meditated for 12 days in silence. I felt deep knots in my soul that I didn’t even know existed unravel. I felt love and peace flow through me with such ease and grace. I felt connected to everything, a fluid essence of the Universe.
But then I came back to America to start a business. At first, I still had that pure and clean essence that had filled me in Thailand, but it was continuously challenged and eventually began to taint. Most people in America are on a completely different dimension than that of monks meditating in a temple. As I was starting a business, I was too.
When I was in the temple meditating, I didn’t have to worry about food, shelter, job security, social standing, romantic relationships, etc. I was able to spend 12 days
While living out of my van, I did pop-up shops in yoga studios and retail stores
worry free with nothing to do except sit around and wait for the Universe to reveal itself. An old Buddhist monk guided (and inspired) me through the process and I was around others (albeit we couldn’t talk to each other) who were hearing and practicing the same things as me. The energy was collective and supportive.
When I came back to America, I didn’t know what city I wanted to live in so I lived in my van and couch-surfed while I was figuring it out. I was trying to learn the ropes of starting an online business and getting comfortable with international trade. I was constantly meeting new people, trying to form both friendships and business relationships. I didn’t forge deep relationships with the few people I did meet who brought me back to the higher planes of consciousness because I felt I had to prioritize working so that I could afford to eat and sleep somewhere. In the midst of all of this chaos, I often became frustrated that I was so far from the peace and tranquility I had become so comfortable with at that retreat. I kept trying to meditate and do yoga, but they didn’t do what they had once done for me.
Spiritually Frustrated? The Answers May Lie in Your Baser Needs
Chakra Chart
Image Cred: Neverend – Wikia
The problem was that I wasn’t secure in my lower three chakras – the ones dealing with basic survival, enjoyment, and identity. Food and shelter often weren’t even secure and since I was trying to build a brand, essentially an ego, my highest priority was to focus on my third solar plexus (identity) chakra. I could sometimes get traces of my higher chakras – the ones dealing with love, authentic voice, intuition, and oneness – but they were fleeting as I always had to return back to the attention of my lower three chakras. (Get familiar with the chakras here.)
I didn’t fully understand this at the time and so I felt a distance from my “true self.” I wasn’t actually far from my true self though. I was far from the higher aspects of myself but quite close to the baser aspects of myself – how I deal with acquiring food and shelter, how I work with pleasure and enjoyment, how I create an identity. Those are all very real parts of myself, but I didn’t give them the respect they deserved. It frustrated me that I had to deal with them because I’d rather be evolving on higher planes. That was a mistake. A big mistake. A mistake I will re-verbalize to emphasize how big of a mistake it is, because it’s a big mistake and I am writing this whole article so that whoever reads it doesn’t make this big mistake. To clarify, the mistake is: getting frustrated, annoyed, angry, resentful, or contemptful (all anger-based emotions) about dealing with lower chakras because it gets in the way of dealing with the higher chakras.
Why is Being Negative about Dealing with the Lower Chakras a Mistake?
Because one will be drawn back to wherever they have problems until they learn how to be at peace with that place, whether those
Muladara (Root) Chakra of base needs
Image Cred: Hybrid Rasta Mama
places be locations, relationships, or planes of consciousness. Essentially, until you are at peace with dealing with each chakra, the Universe will highjack your life and send you right back to dealing with it again.
“until you are at peace with dealing with each chakra, the Universe will highjack your life and send you right back to dealing with it again”
Until you are comfortable struggling to afford to eat and have a safe shelter, you will have to struggle to afford these things. It may not be obvious. Maybe you will have a lot of money, but you will feel poor and you will forever be concerned about starving, even if that fear is in your subconscious. If that fear exists, it will inevitably play out in your life.
The same goes for pleasure, but guilt is what gets in the way of pleasure. If you can’t enjoy having sex, eating, etc, you will be stuck constantly running back and forth between fleeting pleasure and guilt. When you can forgive yourself for any overindulgences and release the guilt, you can move on and keep evolving.
Similarly, shame will get in the way of your sense of identity or personality. Until you release shame, you’ll be stuck dealing with identity crises.
Each chakra works in this way – there is a positive that can be enjoyed once the negative blockage is dealt with. Grief is the blockage of love in the heart chakra. Lies are the blockage of one’s authentic voice in the throat chakra. Illusion (and the fluoride corporations put in toothpaste and tap water) are the blockages to intuition and deep vision in the third eye chakra. Attachment is the blockage to the sense of oneness with all in the crown chakra.
Image Cred: jonathanparker.org
If you hold any negativity towards the process of working through these chakras, you will have to keep dealing with them. Rather, enjoy moving through each chakra. Imagine it like levels in a game. I was able to eat and sleep warmly today. Level 1 accomplished! Rather than feeling guilty, I enjoyed this, this, and this today. Level 2 accomplished! And so on. If we approach dealing with life’s challenges this way, we ascend much more quickly and gracefully into the higher planes of consciousness.
We all share a similar thread. We are all working out the kinks of living. Food may be insecure for the poor man, so he spends his days trying to gather the basics of survival. Social status (identity) may be insecure for the rich man, so he spends his days trying to gather power and glory. While they may look quite different from the outside, they could look quite similar on the inside. What is in both of their controls is their attitudes towards their journey. Do they satisfy easily or do they bemoan the struggle? When they’ve had enough, do they move on to the next step of their spiritual journey or do they over-indulge from fear or habit?
“We all share a similar thread. We are all working out the kinks of living.”
We can all ask ourselves about this based on where we are at. Which chakra are we truly working with? Are we reverting to lower chakras because they are more comfortable and familiar? This happens a lot with the sacral pleasure chakra. Or are we jumping ahead to chakras we aren’t ready for? This happens a lot with hippies who hang out in the spiritual realm at the cost of their physical wellbeing. We will all do this from time to time and it can actually be healthy in moderation. But we must be cognizant to keep moving along our spiritual path step by step at a secure pace.
Do we accept the challenges of the chakra we are working on? Or do hold a negative attitude towards it? Are we evolving or are we distracting ourselves?
Matching Your Chakra Challenge to Your Environment
People and places are also deeply connected to our spiritual evolution. It was easy for me to ascend to higher realms in Thailand
were survival basics are cheap and there are loads of spiritually evolved people. When I was broke in the States where there are very few people in their higher chakras, I had to worry more about the basics. I am still in the States, but planning to return to Asia in a few months. I have saved enough that I can live securely now, but I am not in any rush to move higher than my heart to throat chakra while I am here because I realize that the US is not a particularly encouraging or comfortable place for people in higher realms. Just being in the heart to throat chakras is fragile enough in a culture so strongly rooted in the lower chakras. However, when I go to Asia, I will have a stronger foundation in my lower realms and expect I will be able to gracefully ascend into my third eye and crown chakras.
My point in sharing this is that cultures have a dominant chakra that they are working through and one becomes quite vulnerable if they are too far off from the culture’s dominant chakra. So if you are traveling or you have plenty of friend groups you can dip into, save your evolution for the places that will foster it.
