A few weeks ago, we invested in one of those alarm-clock CD-players, so that we could have the luxury of being woken up every morning by Doreen Virtue's Chakra Clearing CD. One of the things we find most helpful about Doreen's method of chakra clearing is her opening suggestion: ‘Breathe in and out very deeply, as you begin to open up the healing energy of your Divine light. You and I share the same Divine power as our Creator. You are perfect, whole, and complete, and you needn't add anything to yourself to experience your true power.’ Hypnotised as most of us are, by that false sense of limitation and inadequacy inculcated in us since birth, there is nothing so powerful as starting each day by remembering this all important fact, and anchoring it in our bodies by means of our breath.
Doreen then invites you to focus ‘your awareness on the Divine spark of crystal-white light, sparkling within the centre of your stomach area. See or feel this white spark of light, shining like a pilot light within you. This is the spark of your true essence, your shining flame from God. Through your decision and intention, you can increase the size of this Divine light now. See or feel the Divine light expand in you instantly, filling your entire body and aura with the illumined flame of Divinity. Feel the warmth within you, filling you completely with love and peaceful energy.’
Every time we’ve heard Doreen saying these words, we’ve been surprised by how vividly we experienced that Divine ‘pilot light’ blazing up and filling the space within and around us with its light and warmth. This set us thinking.....
In the next part, Doreen asks us to visualize each of our chakras in turn, bathing them in our inner Divine light so that all fear and disharmony can be dissolved, and the chakras restored to their original state of purity. One morning, we had reached the bit about the solar plexus chakra when suddenly, it was as if all the lights came on! Our impression was of an intense, golden light and power that in fact was not limited in any way, but extending outward into infinity, in all the seven directions – north, south, east, west, above, below and within – shedding and receiving blessings everywhere. What was that about?
In a flash, we realised several things:
1. The source of our inner, Divine power is not in our heart, as we had always understood, but in our belly! The heart and its deepest desire may well be the ignition key to the unfoldment of Divine life, but the fuel for this process is focused in the navel region. Until that moment, we had thought that the blockages we often experienced to the flow of Divine power within us were due to our own blindness. Well, in a way, they were. We were looking in the wrong place! That was all.
2. This inner, Divine Self is Divinity Itself. Nothing more is needed. Nothing more exists. Just as Doreen Virtue says, it truly does not need anything else to make it complete or whole. Until that moment, we had held the belief that somehow, the Divine Self within us had to merge with a Divinity external to our bodies, in order to release its full power. Well of course, that's true, if we're looking through the lens of time and space; to draw a parallel, think of the way light from the sun affects our bodies. But when we move beyond time and space, into the Now, there's only one Centre, isn't there. And that Centre is the same in ‘me’ as it is in ‘you’ and all creation. Hence the saying, ‘God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere’.
3. Our inner Divine Self is unlimited, and its energy field is capable of extending into infinity. It possesses a level and intensity of goodness, love and light so far above anything the human brain could possibly conceive as to be beyond the imagination. Thus its power is infinite, and capable of absorbing, dissolving, transforming and healing everything less than whole. In other words, it is capable of swallowing up in a nanosecond, as if it never existed, that whole mess of action and reaction, illusion, unhappiness and fear we fondly describe as our ‘ego'. As long as we are in the world of time and space, it may take ‘time’ for this power to heal us completely, but in terms of the eternal Now, our healing is an accomplished fact.
4. The simple action of breathing deeply, with conscious intent, is sufficient to activate the power of our Divine centre. Why should something so wonderful be so simple? Because it's natural. We were never intended to be separate in any way from the omnipresent Divine power. The words ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ are literally, biologically true.
5. One reason why we'd only felt our inner Divinity in ‘fits and starts’ until that moment was that we had – through ignorance or fear – placed imaginary limitations upon it. As Marianne Williamson so famously said, our deepest fear was indeed ‘that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ At some long forgotten point in our lives, we must have decided that it was dangerous to let our light shine, dangerous to let the world see Who we truly are. So we went into ‘hiding’, and developed all kinds of strategies for doing so. Also we could sense that we held a lot of pain in our solar plexus region, associated with feelings of rejection by others of the light and wisdom which, in reality, we all share equally. Clearly, this fear and pain needed to be released.
6. The second thing preventing us from experiencing the healing energy flow of our inner Divinity more consistently was that we were not aware of where its true centre of gravity lies. In consequence, we overworked our minds and hearts looking high and low for it, in every place but the right place. The result of all this straining in the wrong direction was to create a kind of false centre of gravity, somewhere else than in our true centre. This, we now realised, was guaranteed to produce imbalance, vulnerability and ill health of all kinds, at every level.
Well, that was quite a lot to download in just a few seconds, and afterwards we wondered: Apart from the painstaking effort of making our own observations, where could we go for confirmation of this new realisation? Omraam Mikhail Aivanhov was the first source that came to mind. One of the 20th century's greatest spiritual teachers, he can always be relied upon to come up with a few pointers on esoteric subjects you don't hear much about elsewhere in the Western tradition. And sure enough, in his book, Man's Subtle Bodies and Centres, we found the confirmation we were looking for in the chapters devoted to the solar plexus and the Hara centre. You'll find part of what we read by reading our feature entitled Mysteries of the Solar Plexus.
We'd like to quote another paragraph here, because it refers to the reason why we Westerners tend to be so off-balance and disconnected from the Divine power in our own bodies:
‘Of course, for Westerners, there is the problem that for a long time the force-centres situated lower down in the physical body were considered unworthy of any part in the spiritual life. Even I, for years, when I spoke of the ‘centre, almost always meant the Supreme Centre, God Himself, the first Cause. I never told you that, in his physical body, man's true centre was there, just below the navel. It has taken years to prepare you to accept this, but now you are ready to penetrate and explore this centre, to learn to develop it and, thereby, discover the source of your being. For it is there that you will find your source!’
In the coming weeks, maybe you would like to join us in putting to one side any preconceptions, and using our own ‘spiritual intelligence’ to explore further how to live and work from the Divine centre in the navel region. You could even write and let us know what you observe, and we could publish some of your letters on our Chat Page.
With much love from all of us at Cygnus Books.
Geoff, Ann, Martyn, Sarah, Jackie, Jacqueline, Eileen, Catherine, Alison, Cherry, Rachel, Jayne, Penny, Brian, Phil, David, Naomi, Chris, Saijai, Vanessa, Belinda, Derek, Eddie, Shane, Matthew, Jon, Sam & Pat
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 16-Apr-2004
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