Through the second energy center, the seat-of-the-soul chakra, we experience freedom—the freedom to embody all God intends to give us.
The ancients saw the seat of the soul as a real power point. The martial arts recognize it as our point of equilibrium and the central focus of ch’i, the inner energy essential to the maintenance of life.
This chakra is also the point where we make contact with our soul and receive her impressions and guidance.
Your soul is wise and can give you much inner direction. We all have soul powers. When you have a gut feeling about someone, you are receiving an instantaneous soul impression.
Sometimes your soul will give you a warning, part of your internal guidance system: “It’s not safe to go here or to do this right now.”
More often than not, these impressions and intuitions are accurate. The more your soul is in touch with her true, spiritual nature, the more sensitive and accurate these readings will be.
The more you attach your soul to the human ego, the unreal self, the less clear these readings will be. The initiations of the seat-of-the-soul chakra deal with expressing your soul’s true voice and her creative impulses. At the level of the seat of the soul, you also deal with archetypes, patterns and personality.
The powers of procreation in man and woman are anchored through the soul chakra. The seed and the egg pass on physical and karmic patterns through the genes and chromosomes. They also pass on the spiritual matrix of your identity—your spiritual inheritance.
The soul retains an ancient memory, even if it’s dim, of her divine origin, her divine pattern and the part she is to play in God’s scheme. Although God designed your soul as a clear reflecting pool for that original pattern, sometimes the waters get muddied. On her journey through the ages, your soul has at times taken on patterns not in alignment with her divine pattern.
Too many of us have experienced trying to work out our life’s mission while someone else, well-meaning or not, has tried to impose on us their version of our life plan. You have the opportunity at the level of the soul chakra to recapture the original matrix of your soul identity—to be true to yourself.
LOCATION: midway between the navel and base of the spine
COLOR: violet
SANSKRIT NAME: Svadhishthana (“sweetness” or “abode of the self”)
PETALS: 6
POSITIVE EXPRESSION: freedom, mercy, forgiveness, justice, transcendence, alchemy, transmutation, diplomacy, intuition, prophecy, revelation
UNBALANCED EXPRESSION: lack of forgiveness, justice or mercy; intolerance, lack of tact, disregard for others, cruelty
PART OF BODY: organs and systems of elimination and reproduction
MUSICAL INSTRUMENT: woodwinds
GEMSTONE: amethyst, diamond, aquamarine
SPIRITUAL TRADITION: Taoism
ARCHANGEL: Zadkiel
Your challenge is to free your soul to recognize and then fully claim your spiritual inheritance and pattern.
Self-knowledge—knowledge of our real self and our real path in life—is the starting point of our personal power and our soul liberation.
The soul that is truly free is the soul that can express her native reality.
If we didn’t have role models or caregivers who encouraged us to tune into and cultivate our unique soul-identity, we may have never even glimpsed the real plan for our soul.
If we had parents or other strong authority figures who imposed their will on us, we may find that part of us is chasing after someone else’s dreams.
In order to balance our energies at the level of the seat of the soul, we need to determine if we are letting our energy flow into byways that someone else has carved for us.
We will never be totally happy, at peace or fulfilled if we don’t reclaim that energy and redirect it back into the mainstream of our life.
When we are on a spiritual path, we discover that the greatest challenges come not from without but from within.
The road to self-mastery is a continual process of self-examination.
We must have the courage to explore how much of our identity is invested in our true, divine nature and how much is invested in our lower nature, our human ego.
Kabbalists called this darker side of our nature “the evil urge.” Saint Paul referred to it as “the carnal mind.”
In esoteric tradition it is known as the dweller-on-the-threshold.
We all have a Mr. Hyde who comes unexpectedly popping out when we least expect it.
Mahatma Gandhi once quipped: “I have only three enemies. My favorite enemy, the one most easily influenced for the better, is the British Empire. My second enemy, the Indian people, is far more difficult. But my most formidable opponent is a man named Mohandas K. Gandhi. With him I seem to have very little influence.”
The long and short of it is that the human ego is the impostor of our real self.
At the level of the seat of the soul, we begin to recognize which aspects of our personality are part of our real nature and which are not.
This is not necessarily a comfortable place to be, but it is the only real place to be.
The initiation of the soul chakra gives us the opportunity to free ourselves from those aspects of our personality that are not part of our true identity—our “mask,” as Mark Prophet often called it.
Sometimes we develop this persona because we think it is what other people expect from us, even though it isn’t the real us.
If we want the full beauty of our real self to unfold, we need to peel away the layers of the mask surrounding it. “Man knows so many things; he does not know himself,” observed fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart. “Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox’s or a bear’s so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
What can we do if we have identified patterns in our world that we no longer want to claim as our own?
First, we have to know that through the pure energy of the seat-of-the-soul chakra, we are not prisoners of our past. We can create new energy patterns.
We also have to realize that our habit patterns, which we have created over many years or embodiments, can’t be uncreated in a day.
They won’t disappear until we get to the core of why our soul developed those thick skins in the first place.
There were plenty of good reasons. The soul is sensitive and impressionable, and although we don’t consciously remember all the experiences we’ve had in all of our embodiments, our soul does.
This includes unpleasant experiences where our soul was wounded.
When we go through physical or emotional trauma, we don’t just feel it in our body or in our emotions; we feel it in our soul as well.
To protect herself and alleviate her pain, the wounded soul develops certain behaviors, defense mechanisms, that can adversely affect subsequent relationships in her life, inhibit the development of her true self, and create a blockage in the body’s energy system.
We all have some energy tied up in patterns that are not healthy for us. When we heal the wounded part of our soul, we can liberate this energy to use in the here and now.
Many times, the healing process requires serious attention to the issues of our psychology (literally, the study of the psyche, or soul) and we can gain strides by working with a trained therapist who understands the spiritual path.
Patterns become entrenched, and creating new ones takes skilled coaching as well as profound inner work.
As Jungian analyst Edward Edinger wrote: “Psychological development in all its phases is a redemptive process.”
The goal is to redeem by conscious realization the hidden Self, hidden in unconscious identification with the ego.
We can accelerate this soul work by applying spiritual tools, such as prayers, mantras, meditations and visualizations.
Both the psychological and spiritual work are often necessary for deep soul healing.
Moment by moment we create. Whatever we answer to the question “What have I done with my energy today?” is our day’s creation. Our thoughts, words, actions and feelings are our creations.
When we are on a spiritual path we realize the importance of these creations and we take accountability for the impact our thoughts, words and deeds have on others.
Again, we have just so much energy allotted to us each day. Where do we invest it? What do we create with it? And do we feel blocked in our ability to create because of feelings of guilt, frustration or inadequacy?
Health practitioners have shown that ailments in the area of the seat of the soul—corresponding to the organs of reproduction and elimination—are sometimes related to an unresolved issue with creativity.
When we feel “stuck” and cannot express our innate creativity, then our emotions and body reflect this tension.
I know of several cases where women who felt boxed in were plagued with chronic health problems in the breast and uterus until they came to grips with this issue.
Janice and Ellen, for example, were always filled with new ideas, but their work environment would not allow them to give their gifts.
As a result, both were apt to revolve their situations and complain heavily, feeling powerless to break out of their boxes. Both began to develop health problems.
Eventually, Janice was forced to make a job change—a hidden blessing that opened the door for her to follow her heart and take on responsibilities that allowed her to blossom.
Ellen, in her fifties, took the bold step of going back to school to pursue her real passion. Both are thriving, and their emotions and health show it.
When Janice and Ellen finally stopped and listened to their soul intuition, a new world opened up for them.
That’s what can happen when we commune with our soul through our soul chakra.
When we aren’t able to tune into the voice of our soul, it’s sometimes because our overactive or domineering intellect has suppressed our soul senses.
Our intellect is a wonderful vessel for our Higher Self to work through, but the reasoning, educated mind alone will not create that important connection to our soul.
In fact, it can short-circuit it.
“There is a mode of knowing that is above intelligence,” said the fifth-century Neo-platonic philosopher Proclus. “Let the intelligent soul transcend intelligence… This, my friend, is the divine working of the soul.”
The intellect cannot take the place of our soul. That is why the education of the heart and soul is just as important as the education of our mind.
To create a safe harbor for the soul, we sometimes have to turn off the intellect and consciously enter into the heart and soul to get in touch with our inner creative self.
An essential part of the process of freeing ourselves from old patterns is encapsulated in a single word: forgiveness.
If we do not forgive the wrongs and injustices practiced against us, we allow ourselves to be tied, through the law of karma, to the one who has wronged us.
The old vendettas that individuals, families and even nations hold against one another go on for centuries for this very reason.
Their warring never ends because their hatred forms a strong rope between themselves and their enemies—a rope that grows thicker and thicker the more they hate.
When those involved reincarnate, they carry the same entrenched energy patterns with them, and the vendettas live on and on.
Resentment is a vicious circle. It drains us of our energy because part of us is always focused on that unresolved situation.
As Emerson put it, when this is the case “we are not free to use today, or to promise tomorrow, because we are already mortgaged to yesterday.” When we forgive, we free up 100 percent of our energy for constructive endeavor.
There may be times when we feel we cannot forgive someone. We believe the crime he or she has committed against us or a loved one has just been too great.
God has taught me that in a situation like this we can embrace the soul and then ask God and his angels to bind the unreal self, the dark side, of the person that caused him to commit the crime.
No matter how bad a person’s deeds are, if we forgive the soul—that part of his being that still has the potential for good—we can avoid a karmic entanglement.
When we hold on to these unpleasant experiences, our energy gets knotted up and we create an energy blockage.
It’s never really a personal issue, no matter how personal it seems.
The situation is often a testing ground—an opportunity to see if we’ve developed forgiveness and compassion.
Mother Teresa once said, “People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway… If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway… You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”
Often the hardest part of letting go is forgiving ourselves—realizing that no matter what mistakes we have made, at the time we made them we were doing the best we could.
We don’t have to deny the mistake, but we do have to get over it. We have to tell ourselves, “The mistake was no good, but I’m still a good person,” and then learn from the experience.
Making mistakes is the way we learn. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Sometimes we don’t even realize that not forgiving ourselves is what’s holding us back. Victoria came to this soul awareness on her road to healing.
In her early thirties, she found out that she had breast cancer.
“After the initial shock,” she says, “it took me a while to realize that this was a warning—not only from my body, but from my soul. I had to come to grips with the fact that I was wearing myself out (the message from my body) and I wasn’t having much fun in the process (the message from my soul).
“After my surgery, I changed my diet and adjusted my schedule. Physically, I was on the road to recovery. But emotionally, I was still in a crisis.
“I had hit a stone wall and I didn’t know how to get around it.
“One day I just broke down. And out of the midst of my tears, I could hear my anguished soul giving me the key: I had been beating up on myself ever since I had found out the news. All this time, I had believed that I was a ‘bad’ person because I had gotten sick. I had never forgiven myself for the cancer—because I didn’t think I was worthy of forgiveness. That was the wall.
“Before I could move forward, I had to get to the point where I valued myself enough to accept that I may not have done anything ‘wrong,’ and even if I had, I was worthy of forgiveness.
“It wasn’t easy wending my way through this labyrinth of misconceptions I had somehow taken in. But as I moved through the process, changes took place. I started to blossom. I started having more fun. And the real me came out of hiding.”
Gautama Buddha once said, “You can look the whole world over and never find anyone more deserving of love than yourself.”
If we want to make lasting changes in our lives, we have to love our soul—and we have to patiently nurture it through the healing process.
What is the unique mission I am called to fulfill in this life?
Am I allowing my energies to travel in byways that are not a part of my soul pattern and my life’s purpose?
Am I able to express my creativity, or do I feel stifled in any way? What steps can I take to get unstuck?
Do my home and my work environment encourage me to be creative?
If not, what changes can I make?
What helps me to set aside my intellect and logical mind for a moment and tap into my inner creative self through my soul senses? How can I incorporate more of that into my daily life?
Is there someone I need to forgive—for my own liberation and their liberation? Is there something I’ve never forgiven myself for that is holding me back? Is there a fundamental misconception about myself that is preventing me from extending mercy to my own soul?
As you give the “Forgiveness” mantra, send your love and forgiveness to all whom you have ever wronged and all who have ever wronged you, releasing the situations into God’s hands.
I AM forgiveness acting here,
Casting out all doubt and fear,
Setting men forever free
With wings of cosmic victory.
I AM calling in full power
For forgiveness every hour;
To all life in every place
I flood forth forgiving grace.