The Practice: Self Rooted – Who Am I? How Do I Use My Life to Express My Divine Light? “To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.” ~ David Whyte From his poem, What to Remember Upon Waking As we flow into the first chakra from the crown down we connect with our human body and the physicality of our sensory experience on the earth. We take our place in huma

The Practice: Self Esteem – How do I express my Soul in my relationships with others? “Relationships and our ability to successfully navigate them are a key element of a successful life." ~ Carl Jung In the third chakra, we let our Divine spark emerge from the heart center and into our mind, and then focused our energies on creating the right thoughts, beliefs and conditions to bring our Soul into expression. The third chakra work is solitary work. We get crystal clear about

The Practice: Self Worth – How do I walk the path of the Soul? “You don’t have to go to the mountaintop and study for ninety years. You don’t have to go to the ashram and chant your brains out. You must be a good, capable, responsible, thoroughgoing human being, and that’s how you walk the sacred path. It’s not about sweat baths; it’s not about drums. It’s about doing the hard work of living every day in a responsible, caring way.” ~ Paula Gunn Allen, Native American Poet, Pr

The Practice: Self Love and Acceptance—How do I hold and include all the parts together as I grow into awareness of the Mystery that is unfolding around me and through me? "And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” ~ Thomas Merton As we continue to move from the crown down, we emerge into the heart center from that fifth chakra funnel where a piece of the Divi

The Practice: Soul Expression—How do I express my deepest Self and my highest purpose? “Every human being comes to the earth with sealed orders.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard I love this quote from Kierkegaard because it reminds us of the enormous potential that each human life represents. When we flow from the crown down we remember that the limitless and eternal power of the Divine Source flows down to and through each one of us, and our sacred task as human beings is to activate an

The Practice: Soul Awareness—How do I see the deeper truth of things? “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time.” ~ Thomas Merton As we continue to move from the crown down, after we plug into that seventh chakra connection with the stream of Universal Love, Wisdom and Power, we drop into our sixth chakra and recognize that we are all Souls that are forever in relationship with this Divine stream. At the sixth c

The Practice: Soul Connection: How do I stay in the stream of Universal Love? In reclaiming the mystical, we take back our whole selves. ~ Marianne Williamson Now that we have completed our overview of our higher operating system, we will spend some time over the next several weeks working through the power centers “from the crown down” so we can practice the process of actively living our lives inside the power and possibilities of our higher energy system. The activation of

Opening the Upper Triangle “Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.” ~ William Butler Yeats We have completed our initial review of the seven power centers that comprise our spiritual energy system, and today we will begin an overview that starts the process of putting it all together to help you really understand what an exquisite being you are. The image above is rich with meaning and context and we will break it down over the next several weeks to help u

Opening the Upper Triangle “A person is not a thing or a process, but an opening through which the absolute can manifest.” The final power center of the upper triangle is the seventh chakra. The seventh chakra is often called the “crown chakra” and can be pictured as sitting right on the crown of your head. In Sanskrit it is called Sahasrara, or thousand petaled lotus. The color associated with the seventh chakra is violet or white, and it is often visualized as a thousand pe

Opening the Upper Triangle “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.” ~ Einstein The next power center of the upper triangle is the sixth chakra. The sixth chakra is often called the “third eye” or the “ajna center” and it can be visualized as a cave in the center of your brain in the area of your forehead, right between your eyebrows. The color associated wit

Opening the Upper Triangle “You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.” ~ Martha Graham The next power center we will explore is the fifth chakra. The fifth chakra is associated with the color light blue or sky blue, is generally located in the throat, and is connected to the thyroid gland, jaw, neck, mouth, teeth, larynx and voice. It is associated with the element of ether which is an invisible gas or the clear sky in the upper regions of air

Entering the Heart Center “Your body is your only home in the universe. It is your house of belonging in the world. It is a very sacred temple. To spend time in silence before the mystery of your body brings you toward wisdom and holiness.” ~ John O’Donohue I had the opportunity this week to bring this beautiful quote from one of my favorite Irish priest-philosopher-poets, John O'Donohue, deep into my heart and soul. Last Friday I was blessed with the chance to go skiing in B

Entering the Heart Center “I would say that it is precisely the divine part of you that is great enough, deep enough, and gracious enough to fully accept the human part of you. If you are merely human, you will tend to reject your embarrassingly limited humanity.” ~ Richard Rohr As you more consciously ground your energy in the Fourth Chakra Heart Center, you are liberated from the small self thinking of the lower triangle as you move into contact and then into relationship w

Entering the Heart Center “I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” ~ John O’Donohue As you anchor your energy in your heart center you create the opening that is needed to rise above the small self thinking of the lower triangle and to begin the process of transformation and healing that is required to move forward on your journey toward your true Self. Entering the heart center is like finding an escape hatch out of the lower t

Entering the Heart Center “One word frees us from all the weight and pain of life. That word is love.” ~ Sophocles We are going to hold our focus on the energy of the heart center as we continue to prepare our lower triangle for the entry of our Soul Self. The fourth chakra heart center plays a pivotal role in the transformation of our lives. The heart center is the meeting point between the lower triangle and the upper triangle, and the balancing point for our lower triangle

Entering the Heart Center “Our real journey in life is interior. It is a matter of growth, of deepening, of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts” ~ Thomas Merton When we begin to regularly connect with the fourth chakra energy of our heart center, we hit an important developmental stage in the evolution of our awareness and consciousness, and we open the capacity to make monumental leaps forward in realizing the higher possibilities

Balancing the Lower Triangle “What is Love? Love is the absence of judgment.” ~ Dalai Lama As we enter our next power center, the fourth chakra, we are making our first connection to that higher operating system of the Soul Self. The fourth chakra is located in our chest and is associated with the element of air and the color green. It is directly tied to our breath, and like our breath, the energy of this power center is expansive, integrating and healing. The fourth chakra

Balancing the Lower Triangle Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” ~ Marianne Williamson The last power center in our lower triangle is our third chakra. The third chakra is associated with the color yellow and is located in your solar plexus, just below your diaphragm. This is the mental processing center of our chakra system and is attached to our left-brain, conscious thinking process. The third chakra kee

Balancing the Lower Triangle “If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’ into the enemy.” ~ Parker Palmer The next power center in the lower triangle is the second chakra. The second chakra is associated with the color orange and is located in the sacral area of the bodyin the lower abdomen and pelvis area, just below your naval, and in the small of your back. While the first chakra is attached to the grounding

Balancing the Lower Triangle “Is the universe a friendly place or not?” ~ Einstein This week we will take a look at the first power center that is located in our lower triangle. Each chakra has its own vibrational frequency and color, and as you can see from today’s illustration, the first chakra is associated with the color red. The first chakra is the spark that sets our physical body into motion. It is located at the base of the spine in the area of the tailbone, and is li