Joy Gardner-Gordon - Pocket Guide to Chakras

Copyright 1998 by Vibrational Healing Enterprises

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crossing Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Crossing Press and the Crossing Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
on file with publisher

eISBN: 978-0-8041-5040-8

Interior illustration by Peggy McCarty

v3.1

Special thanks to: My publisher and editor, Elaine Gill, for conceptualizing the book. My husband, Raphael Gardner-Gordon, for being my fearless editor. My daughter-in-law, Petra Prensky, for critiquing the manuscript. My friend Angela Rosa for research assistance on the aromatic oils. My masseuse, Karen Withrow, for alleviating my aches and pains.

A person with the gift of clairvoyance can see all your seven energy vortexes radiating like multi-colored suns along the axis of your spine. These whorls of spinning energy are known as chakras, the Sanskrit word for wheel. Until recently, in the Western world, this term was confined to esoteric groups of people, outside of which a person who claimed to see or feel the energy of the chakras might be kindly tolerated at best.

Today this ancient awareness is becoming recognized as a legitimate model for health and illness, providing us with a rich, complex method for organizing the holistic gestalt of the human body/emotions/mind/spirit.

This book is an introduction to the chakras. It is a valuable tool for the holistic practitioner and for the person who seeks a deeper level of self-knowledge. The reader will find answers to these questions:

What are the chakras?

Where are they?

How do they function?

What causes them to open or close?

How can you change their energy?

This Overview includes a brief history of the chakras, where they are and what they do. It shows how the chakra system enables you to analyze the health of your body/emotions/mind/spirit and how this system can enhance your understanding of human relationships.

The section on Development of the Chakras explains how events influence the opening and closing of the chakras. The chapters on each of the chakras describe the use of colors, tones, crystals, and aromas that correspond to each of these seven energy centers.

Evaluation and Treatment describes the seven levels of openness that can occur at any given chakra, and the healing methods that make use of this system.

Knowledge of the chakras has survived far longer than recorded history and can be found in texts and artwork throughout India, Egypt, China, Tibet, Hawaii, in various parts of Europe and Africa, and among American Indian tribes. We find the chakras described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, the ancient teachings of Hinduism. It was practiced in the ancient Greek mystery schools of Eleusis and Delphi, and by early Christian mystics and Hermetics.

In The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus The Christ, Levi gives a convincing argument for the education of Jesus in India, Tibet, and other parts of the Far East. In the New Testament, Luke 11:34, Jesus says, The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Surely he was speaking about the third eye, which is the sixth chakra, also known as the Christ Consciousness center.

The Hopi Indians, who are believed to be the oldest tribe in North America, compare the axis of the earth to the human spine: Along this axis were several vibratory centers which echoed the primordial sound of life throughout the universe (The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters).

During the late 1800s, Alice Bailey and the early British Theosophists traveled to India and returned to write about the chakras, bringing a greater understanding of this ancient knowledge to the West.

If you go to a New Age Expo or Psychic Fair or look at the classified ads in one of the Personal Transformation newspapers, you are likely to find a wide array of healing modalities including chakra cleansing, chakra balancing, and vibrational healing.

You may well wonder, What are they talking about? Since there is no American or International Association of Chakra Healers, there is no standardization of these terms, and those who use them may just be following their own whims. But after you have read this book, you will at least be in a better position to speculate about what they might mean. The best policy is to ask practitioners to describe their work to you.

There is a remarkable correlation among those who see and/or feel the chakras. Throughout various cultures, there is an agreement about the nature and function of the chakras, but there is variation in their precise number, color, and other details.

The word chakra (pronounced shock-ra or chock-ra) means wheel or disk in Sanskrit. A chakra is an invisible (to the normal human eye) center of spinning energy. Through the chakras, we are able to receive and transmit social, sexual, and spiritual energy. The chakras have been described as spinning vortexes, or as the multi-petalled lotus flower. These flowers, which are considered sacred in India, symbolize the path of development from a primitive being to the full evolution of unfolded awareness. They float upon the water, yet they have their roots in the mud, just as the flower of your crown chakra connects to the heavens and your base chakra has its roots in the earth.

Some psychics describe the chakras from the tailbone to the crown of the head as having progressively more and more segments or petals. However, the sixth chakra at the center of the brow is depicted as having only two petals, which may have something to do with your ability to understand the dual nature of the Universe. When you recognize both the male and female within yourself, you become whole. Out of this knowledge comes the merging with All That Is, symbolized so appropriately by the Thousand-Petalled Lotus of the crown chakra.

Some systems describe five, others six, some seven, twelve, or even thirty chakras. Some see them only along the spine, and others find them at the joints, at the hands and feet, and beyond the physical body at progressively higher points above the head. Some people experience the energy of the chakras at the front of the spine and others at the rear and some at both front and rear.

Some old pictures depict the chakras as wheels of light located on or close to the spine. In some pictures, each chakra is shown extending out a few inches from the front or the back of the body on a stem that opens into a round flower.

Whether you think of the chakras as wheels, spirals, or flowers, it is important to remember that they are energy systems which do not have physical form. Attempting to describe such a system is like trying to describe a sound; each person who hears it will explain it in different terms and use different analogies. There may be a variety of opinions about where the sound comes from, and disagreement about whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. Yet everyone is in agreement that it