The seat-of-the soul and third-eye chakras are closely linked.

Speaking about the energies of the soul raised to the third eye, the adept Djwal Kul says, “While the outer man takes life at its face value, the soul is evaluating the flow of energy, of karma, and of the cycles of life from the standpoint of inner reality. . . . The image and likeness of God . . . out of which male and female were created, is held in the third eye of each one as the potential that every living soul is destined to fulfill.”

Thus our challenge at the level of the third eye, he says, is to purify this energy center so that we can anchor the perfect pattern of our being in outer form and focus our concentration on the upper reaches of our highest self.

I honor the creative genius and insights that come to me and others

Honoring the creative insights that come to us is one way we master the energies of the third-eye chakra.

This requires setting aside our analytical thinking and judging to allow space for the flashes of genius that can come our way.

Detailed analysis and evaluation is an important and necessary skill. But if we overanalyze, we can dampen the creative fires.

That’s why creative writing courses encourage us not to filter our work before getting it on paper. Just sit down and write, they advise, because if you critique your words before you get them out, they may never escape from the prison-house of your mental judgment.

We have a responsibility to ourselves and to others to let both sides of the brain have their say—the creative side and the logical side.

We’ve probably all experienced a time when we’ve been so excited about a new idea that we couldn’t wait to share it with a friend or partner or parent.

But instead of simply listening and encouraging, they started analyzing the idea and telling us why it may or may not work: “Have you thought about this or considered that?”

These questions are a valid part of the next step, but they are not always helpful or appropriate when the creative juices are flowing. Remember how you went away feeling as if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water on your fire?

That’s a dangerous situation to be in. In the long run, if we take it too personally, these kinds of situations can keep us from feeling good about ourselves and from accepting the bursts of imagination and originality when we get them.

Another trap we have to watch out for is the ironclad judgments of our own human intellect.

Our lower mind will try to convince us that the unusual idea that just came into our head is not feasible—or that it’s even downright stupid. Don’t allow yourself or anyone else to dismiss your inspirations and insights as “just your imagination.”

In fact, as soon as these ideas pop into your head, write them down. Hang on to them.

“The fierce power of imagination is a gift from God,” said the twentieth-century Kabbalist Abraham Isaac Kook. “Joined with the grandeur of the mind, the potency of inference, ethical depth, and the natural sense of the divine, imagination becomes an instrument for the holy spirit.”

Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich stresses the importance of “creative imagination” to achieve our goals. He says that only a small number of people deliberately use their faculty of creative imagination. “Those who use this faculty voluntarily, and with understanding of its functions, are geniuses,” he says. “The faculty of creative imagination is the direct link between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence.

All so-called revelations, referred to in the realm of religion, and all discoveries of basic or new principles in the field of invention, take place through the faculty of creative imagination.”

Hill goes on to say that “one of America’s most successful and best-known financiers followed the habit of closing his eyes for two or three minutes before making a decision. When asked why he did this, he replied, ‘With my eyes closed, I am able to draw upon a source of superior intelligence.’”

Some of the most ingenious inventions have come from the creative imagination and inspiration of our third eye.

Velcro, for instance, was developed in the 1940s when the Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog and noticed afterwards that his pants and his dog’s coat were covered with cockleburs.

His curiosity (or was it a higher inspiration?) led him to study the burrs under a microscope. He discovered their natural hook-like shape. This became the basis for the creation of Velcro.

Imagine if George’s wife had told him to just go clean off his pants and stop babbling about that crazy new idea of his. He may never have had the confidence to pursue his hunch.

Self-Inquiry

• Do I honor new ideas, whether from myself or others, or do I sometimes short-circuit the creative process with my analytical mind?
• Have the opinions of others dampened my creative genius over the years? If so, what steps can I take to make time and space in my life to encourage those inspired visions?
• I recognize that what I put my attention on, I will become

When Jesus said, “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” he was talking about the single-eyed vision of the third eye chakra.

He was talking about the truth that where our attention rests, so will the light/energy of our being.

When the eye is “single”—when it is focused on God, on good, on the highest potential —we open a tremendous highway of light between our world and the divine world.

With all the details of our day, how often do we remember to place our attention upon God, upon good, upon that highest potential? Taking even a short time-out during our daily routine to focus with our third eye on the inner light, on God, on our highest goals, can make an incredible difference.

For whatever we place our attention on, we energize. More than that, whatever we place our attention on, we become. Gautama Buddha summarized it best when he said, “We are what we think, having become what we thought.”

Dr. Charles Garfield has shown that peak performers, including exceptional athletes, all use the power of visualization.

They actually visualize themselves meeting their targets. They are using the power of their third eye, their inner eye, to focus their attention.

And what they put their attention on, they become. We can do the same.

In order to be perfection, man must see perfection.

—DJWAL KUL

Dr. Wayne Dyer, for instance, says that what we really, really, really, really want, we will get. And what we really, really, really, really don’t want, we will get too—because whatever we put our energy into will come to pass.

Just think about what Job said: “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”

“Attention is the key,” says Saint Germain. “Where man’s attention goes, there goes his energy.”

And where our energy goes, creation will follow. The corollary to this is where our attention doesn’t go, where we withdraw our energy, disintegration will follow.

A scene from the television special Merlin captured this concept wonderfully. In that version of Merlin’s story, Queen Mab is the architect of evil. Her sole aim is to control King Arthur and Merlin.

She instigates the birth of Modred and rears him from the time he is a child to be the enemy of Arthur. But when both Modred and Arthur die at each other’s hands, her plans go awry.

In one of the final scenes, Queen Mab and Merlin face off. Merlin holds his own against Queen Mab’s magical powers, but it’s not easy.

As she continues to taunt him, Merlin finally announces to Mab that she has absolutely no power over him or over the knights of Camelot because they are simply going to “forget” her.

He and the knights turn their backs on Mab and walk in the other direction. She screams out and demands that Merlin look at her, but neither Merlin nor the knights heed her plea.

Alone and without a single adversary—no one to support her or to fear her—she slowly disintegrates into nothingness.

She cannot exist unless someone believes she is real.

These concepts have great significance for our lives and our chakra development. If we want to develop mastery in a certain skill or virtue, we must put our attention on it and we must withdraw our attention, our vision, from what does not contribute to our success.

Because our vision and our thoughts have the power to create, I’ve always encouraged women who are pregnant to meditate on classical music and beautiful works of art to convey patterns of beauty and perfection to the soul of their unborn child.

Mothers and fathers-to-be can make a meditation book with pictures of flowers, beautiful scenes from nature, angels and the Madonna and child.

Mothers-to-be can run their fingers over the lines of a statue of David by Michelangelo to transfer to the fetus that archetypal form of perfection.

It’s also a good idea to actively use the power of your inner vision in your spiritual practices.

Whenever you meditate or pray, you will get greater results if you visualize the outcome of what you are praying for. See it taking place before your eyes. See the details of those goals as if you were already at the finish line—a new job or home, a loving relationship, the healing of a loved one.

Self-Inquiry

• Can I remember a time when I have put my attention on something positive (or not so positive) and therefore magnetized it into my life?
• Is there something in my life right now that I need to focus on more fully? Is there something I need to withdraw my energy from because it is interfering with a creative endeavor?
• I strive to recognize and overcome mind-sets and to see as God sees

When we have single-eyed vision, when we place our attention upon God, we allow our eye to become God’s eye. We see what God sees. We see as God sees.

What often keeps us from seeing as God sees is our fixed mind-sets, our stereotypes. A mind-set is a “set mind.” A Zen adept once said: “Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. . . . There is no need to seek Truth: only stop having views.”

The views he’s talking about are our mind-sets. The more rigid they are, the less chance there is for God, or anyone, to bring us a new way of seeing something, a new insight.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to be creative and inspired when people with rigid minds are around?

Someone with a strong mental concept about something is like a barbed-wire fence. That’s why master alchemists, like Saint Germain, tell us it is not a good idea to share all our plans with even our closest friends.

People’s mind-sets or closed minds can spoil our creative endeavors and stop us from tapping into our higher mind.

The severe misuse of the energies of the third-eye chakra to harm or spoil another’s plans is what some refer to as the “evil eye.”

Mark Prophet talked about the danger of mind-sets and stereotypes in a lecture he gave called “Educating Your Vision.” Mark said, “What are stereotypes? Well, people will look at someone and say, ‘This person looks like my Aunt Mamie. And my Aunt Mamie thinks this way, and therefore this person must think this way.’

“One of the errors we’re prone to fall into is looking at people and making up our mind about them. When we make up our mind about another person, we have a tendency to literally put an iron kimono around them. And the first thing you know, our rigid ideas about them become their experiences and they wonder why they are acting that way.”

Mark goes on to tell the story of a certain Mr. Wright, who had been his employer. This distinguished gentleman had a way of projecting certain stereotypes (certain mind-sets) onto his employees:

“This one is efficient. That one is inefficient.” He had them pigeonholed. Whenever Mr. Wright would come near Mark, Mark would start to have terrible feelings of inferiority. He would begin to stutter, even though he never stuttered around anyone else.

As Mark said, people tend to put others in a box—and never let them out: “They want to say, at one time she was this. At one time he was that. The last I knew of him he was a drunkard or a dope addict or God only knows what.”

Instead, encouraged Mark, “let us allow people the freedom to express the higher aspects of themselves rather than confine them to some prison cell of our own creation.”

Self-Inquiry

• What mind-sets or stereotypes am I holding onto about myself? About others?
• Do I try to see others as God sees them?
• I practice holding in mind the highest image of others, even though they may not be manifesting it now

Through the inner vision of your third eye along with the intuition of your soul chakra, you can tap into the “immaculate concept” for your life, your projects, your plans.

The immaculate concept is the divine blueprint for what is meant to be. When we hold this concept in mind with constancy, when we focus our energy and inner vision there, we will create the image we are “seeing” and it will come into being.

We can hold this blueprint in mind not only for our own life but for others. Just as God continually holds the perfect image for us, so we can hold that image for others. As Goethe once said, “If you treat men the way they are, you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be, you do.”

At a practical day-to-day level, holding the immaculate concept for someone means that we don’t jump to conclusions before we know the facts. It means that we allow ourselves and others the opportunity to transcend what we might have been decades ago, weeks ago or even an hour ago.

Recognizing our misperceptions can be challenging.

We don’t always perceive things as they actually are, because what we take in goes through the filter of our own emotional and mental matrix.

The Burmese political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi has talked about this. If you saw the movie Beyond Rangoon, she was the woman who bravely walked toward a row of soldiers whose rifles were poised to shoot her.

The soldiers were in such awe of her courage that they didn’t touch her. She was under house arrest in Burma for six years and was released in 1995, then under house arrest again for much of 2000–2010. In 2012 Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to her nation’s parliament.

In a country where thousands of political prisoners are detained and tortured, Aung San Suu Kyi fearlessly speaks out for democracy and is a devout Buddhist.

In the book The Voice of Hope, compiled from conversations with Alan Clements, she spoke about cultivating “awareness,” which relates to the initiation of the third-eye chakra.

“Lo, I am with you always” means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, . . . nearer to you than your self.

—RUMI

She said that the search for truth “is in a sense the struggle to overcome subjectivity” as we learn to distance ourselves from our prejudices when assessing a situation.

“The search for truth,” she said, “has to be accompanied by awareness. . . . If you are aware of what you’re doing, you have an objective view of yourself. And if you are aware of what other people are doing, you become more objective about them too.

“For example, awareness means that when you are aware of the fact that somebody is shouting, you don’t think to yourself: ‘What a horrible man.’ That’s purely subjective. But if you are aware, you know that he’s shouting because he’s angry or frightened. That’s objectivity. Otherwise, without awareness, all kinds of prejudices start multiplying.”

In another conversation, Aung San Suu Kyi said that humor can help us develop objectivity. The interviewer had expressed how shocked he was that on the day she was placed under arrest, she and her assistants “all just laughed about the crisis and started cracking jokes.”

On another occasion, the persecuted leaders of the democracy movement in Burma laughed to the point of tears at the absurdity of the behavior of the Burmese military intelligence, who had just interrogated one of them for twenty-seven hours nonstop.

Aung San Suu Kyi replied: “Obviously, it’s not a happy situation we’re in, but the seriousness of the situation is something we can all joke about.

In fact, lots of Burmese people joke about it; there are jokes about forced labor, about prison. . . . I think a sense of humor requires a certain amount of objectivity in the situation, which is why it’s so healthy.

“If you see things as a whole, you can always see a humorous side of it. Which is why we laugh at situations which to some seem so serious.

I mean, when U Win Htein and others were laughing at his account of the interrogation, if you see it as a whole it’s quite ridiculous. But if you see it from just one angle, it could be infuriating, humiliating, or even frightening for some people.”

Self-Inquiry

• Do I jump to conclusions when dealing with certain people or situations?
• Do I hold the highest image for myself, my family, my partner, my co-workers?