Excuse me, your chakra needs aligning

Tuesday 4 March 2008

I think I am still absorbing my art therapy session. It was fun! (It was also nerve-racking. I had the biggest comfort eating session I have had for YEARS - or at least the biggest non-munchies-related one. On the way up the mountain - which is really a hill rather than a mountain - I had a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate thickshake even though I was hardly hungry at all, and then on the way down the mountain I had a Maxibon ice cream and a packet of cheese Twisties. Disgusting. It sat in my stomach like a stone and felt shite. I don't plan on doing that again anytime soon ... but gee, it was kinda fun at the time! It filled the empty nervous hole quite nicely, thank you very much.

I took along my collages and also some dreams I'd written down since I first spoke with Maggie last week. She is the most lovely, non-judgmental, accepting person, a real sweetheart. I felt immediately comfortable with her. She sealed the deal when, after hearing about my tree fetish, at the end of our session took me out into her backyard where she has a 200-year-old something-or-other-I-can't-remember which was sitting there reaching all his amazing spindles to the sky. I wanted to marry this tree. Is there something wrong with that? :) We are going to sit out there in one of our sessions, under this tree, with such a beautiful, commanding presence in her lovely garden.

Maggie saw linkages between my collages and my dreams, which I couldn't particularly see at all. My dreams seemed like so much gobbledegook, but after a few symbolic elements pointed out in one in particular, suddenly I realised how congruent this dream was, what a story it was telling me about myself, a story about self-nurture. I get the feeling I have quite a bit to tell myself if I'm willing to listen (I am; I love the sound of my own voice, even internally ;) This dream ended up including, surprise surprise, elements of creativity and, yes, sexuality :) Those damn phallic symbols - they're just everywhere.

Anyway, it seems that creativity and sexuality share the same chakra, and mine is out of whack :)

Now, see, this is where I would have balked 10 years ago and called this woman names in my head about how deceived she is and all that stuff and considered not returning. But you know what? I don't think, from observing where I am sitting at this juncture in my journey, having learned what I have learned over the past 10 years, that Western Christianity seems to have all that great a monopoly on the truth of reality. I am not talking here about the ultimate Truth of Jesus, who is a deliciously hidden treasure in the field of time, but about the propensity of Christendom to try to fit absolutely everything in the outer world into a paradigm taken from the Bible, to the extent of ignoring the facts in front of our noses if they don't fit into our sometimes narrow interpretations of a book that does, you have to admit, from our very limited perspective, contradict itself.

This is not to say that I don't hold the Bible in the highest regard. Indeed, I still give it a big capital buh. There is something magical about that collection of books. They are, however, not a science document. And when I look at the human body, it seems obvious to me that it is a body of energy. (It is also a body of water, and a body of clay, and all sorts of other wonderful things as well, all at the same time). It makes sense to me that if the body has some sort of energy thing going on in it, that it could have "centres" of energy in the body and those centres could get blockages in them. And if it's possible to get blockages in them then I imagine it's somehow possible to unblock them.

I don't know what it takes to realign an out of alignment chakra, but if I get that radar buzzing, that easy to ignore but nevertheless real constriction somewhere in my soul that tells me that Papa doesn't want me to go there - then I won't. But if I sense this is something that will be helpful to me physically/spiritually/emotionally then I will go with it. There have been so many things that I have discovered along my Christian journey that would be labelled as bad that have turned out to be either neutral or even good ... I'm not interested in hearing people who operate out of a system of fear to tell me what is right or wrong anymore.

See, this is the thing that annoys me about Christians too. We get into this paradigm of good and evil - even though Someone somewhere has told us that we don't have the ability to know what is good for us and what is bad for us - and we willy nilly throw things we have no understanding of into the "good" or the "bad" basket, creating barricades for ourselves. Not only that, but we often refuse to believe that anyone who is not a Christan could possibly have any kind of contact with the truth. Chakras? What a ridiculous concept, evil hocus pocus from Satan. We don't stop to think that perhaps a certain group of people in a different time or place to our own have been free to see certain realities because they have or haven't had a certain set of presumptions to blinker their view.

Even the way we read the Bible can endorse that kind of black and white thinking (but really, the Bible can endorse any kind of thinking we want, containing as it does some kind of strange spiritual mirror that reflects us back to ourselves). Then you can get all godhatesfags.com about everything, going around with the divine right bestowed by an angry God to root out the evil from amongst us to throw out of the camp so that Jehovah will deign to shine his face upon us and bless us, even though elsewhere it says he sends his rain on the just and unjust alike, and even though Jesus didn't see fit to rile with anger against anyone except those convinced of their own rightness and the blackness of others' hearts because they weren't walking the same way.

So anyway, may your chakras all be aligned. I watched Robin Hood (the British TV serialised version) the other day (I might watch it again; all those blokes getting around in jerkins with vast amounts of facial hair was edifying). There was a woman on there being drowned for being a witch, and I couldn't help feeling a certain kind of camaraderie :)

15 comments

  1. Sue, along with the fear issue I've also been wrestling to break free of the whole good vs. evil thinking. You make some beautiful points in this post. Those good/bad labels create enormous barricades for us.

    "I'm not interested in hearing people who operate out of a system of fear to tell me what is right or wrong anymore." Ditto that!

    Have a wonderful realignment journey!

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  2. Hmm. Lots of things to think about.

    I still hold the Bible to be God's revealation, a book uniquely co-authored by God (as opposed to all those other books which, in so far as they are true, reflect a fullness of how God sees the world and fill us with a sense of wonder and beauty.) But I think one defining moment was when I realized Christ, not Scriptures, was the Living Word of God.

    Another defining moment was when I realized that it is very possible for my desire to be right in doctrine to lead me into sin (mostly the sins of pride and his seductive daughter, despair.) I'd rather be a Christian Universalist (a position I view as heterodox but not...quite...heretical) than a bitter Calvinist who holds God's tensions in his mind and is too confused to live them in his life.

    I think maybe you're coming to a similar conclusion.

    We're all broken people--that's kinda the nature of postadamism. And even Jesus, the perfect God-man, had to take time away from people to re-center himself and commune with God. I think the only danger of "pagan" practices is if we let what should be a crutch (required by this pagan world) cover our ever-present need for a Savior.

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  3. I will say a prayer for you that you find proper alignment for your chakra.

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  4. Tina - heya! :) Yeah, the good vs evil thing is so entrenched in us that it seems ridiculous that this could be something we could step down from ... I still find a lot of it confusing, still unpacking (I don't think I'm gonna be moved in for quite a while, but it's fun rearranging the furniture :)

    CR - Hey there. I love that defining moment - reality and truth are tied up in a Man, not in a book. That is so much more liberating - it just doesn't feel like it at the time, I suppose, because you can't close up the Man and put him back on a shelf, or bash Him over people's heads hehe :)

    Postadamism - haven't heard that one before. Love it.

    Kent- thank you for that measured diplomatic reply. Have you thought of going into politics? (Hehe)

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  5. That's funny Sue. But with all honesty, I wasn't even thinking about being diplomatic...not knowing what to say about your thoughts here.

    It really was a nod of support. I choose to trust the Spirit in you.

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  6. Thanks, Kentster :) I didn't really think you were just being diplomatic :)

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  7. sounds like you're off to a grand start in your adventures with art therapy

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  8. Like Kent said, trust the Spirit in you...

    This is a good post, Sue. It hurts me when I think of all the people who live in fear and anger because they don't trust that our Lord is greater than all possible nasties put together, and he won't, if we'll only trust him, let us slip out of his everlasting hand. (I could give chapter & verse for those assertions, but I suspect you could too...)

    Be blessed - and may your chakras, all 7 of 'em, align just right!

    Mike

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  9. Postadamism is a good term for that dichotomy -- HT to Chestertonian! The tale of Adam and Eve was how our ancestors dealt with the very human tendency to condemn others in order to position ourselves as divine legends in our own minds. As soon as they bit into that apple in a vain attempt to become gods, they became ashamed of who they were. They distanced themselves from a God who loved them, chakras and all! Interesting post!

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  10. You would LOVE Rosemary Gladstar.
    She's my favorite herbalist and my midwife, who delivered two of my babies at home, trained under her.

    She is WAY New Age, but such a wealth of wisdom about healing and herbs and the inter-connectedness of all living things.
    I like to read what she writes but recognize we have very different spiritual views. I think she might describe herself as pantheistic, if she had to choses a term, where I see God's Spirit influencing all, but not in all.

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  11. I love you guys (she gushed)

    Kel - thanks for getting me onto Maggie. I am really excited about this :)

    Mike - yes, it hurts me too. So much fear. Maybe it's from misaligned chakras :)

    Barbara - thanks. It's funny, the posts I always hesitate to write are the ones people find interesting :)

    Jennifer - Rosemary Gladstar sounds like just the kind of person I'd want to have around if I was having a baby. Yeah, I see God's spirit influencing all but not in all ... well, I think it can be *in* things without *being* those things

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  12. I think it can be *in* things without *being* those things.

    Ooh, something to ponder. That makes sense.

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  13. Hi there,
    I think there is a term for what you were describing. The man who does the Real Physics blog introduced me to "panantheism". I googled it and it sounds like what you are saying...God in all but more than all.

    Just thought I'd pass it on to you in case it was new to you too...which it probably isn't, but just in case. :)

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  14. Heya Jennifer. Yeah, I've read a few things about panantheism before - generally written by people denouncing it as a giant heresy or whatever, generally people who hold to a Descartian split of reality, or some kinda Gnostic "God can't be THAT close surely?" kinda view of things. I don't know what I think, but out of those 3 I'd pick the heretical panantheism box :)

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