Not Feeling the Chakra?
Discovery Versus Creation of Spiritual Patterns
My first chakra training happened at a Zen center. A woman guided us to “live inside” our sacral chakras for a while. My attention went easily to the “birth canal” area of my body. I sensed a pretty straightforward physical presence there but no font of creative energy. No subdivided levels, no emotions, no balancing of personal relationships. Nothing more interesting than what I would have found in my left foot.
I seriously started wondering if I was supposed to be noticing some sort of arousal. The temple setting argued against that. It seemed obvious that even an orgasm-level of arousal would not be felt at the exact location the teacher was identifying.
When you can’t find an important part of yourself, it is fair to ask, “Have I not discovered it yet, or is it really not there? Did somebody invent the idea out of thin air?”
Does Life Mean Whatever You Want It To Mean?
I balk when people say, “It’s up to you to create your own meaning in life.” Meditation feels like discovery. Love is there to be found in the heart. Triangles are there to be found in the mind. Chakras, on the other hand, felt made-up, projected rather than found.
My objections were biased. I had spent so many years categorizing my own discoveries, it was hard to understand that the scaffolding on which I placed them was not itself a discovery. It was one of many possible ways to organize what I observed.
I eventually realized that the pleasant after-effects of orgasm could be felt at the location my teacher identified. I also learned that the physical associations of the sacral or svadhisthana chakra did include genitals along with kidneys and bladders. My first teacher on the subject had no duty to cover it all in great detail. As a beginning student in an introductory session, I had jumped swiftly to a foolish judgement.
My wisdom-blocking judgement delayed another more important understanding. I came to realize that the physical or somatic space served as analog to the “subtle body.” This language conjured my long-held ideas of creative linkages between emotional and somatic fields.
Is it Better to Lump or Split?
I divide all my observations into seven fields: visual, audio, somatic, olfactory, taste, emotional and cognitive. Those seven fields could easily turn into fifty. You could call the sense of balance a vestibular field instead of including it in the somatic field. Some people might combine the somatic and emotional fields. Why not? They are both about “feeling.”
When making sense of what you find while meditating, you cannot escape the problem of lumping and splitting. The same problem afflicts all areas of categorization. I remember big arguments over the newly discovered species, Homo habilis. Some anthropologists insisted it should be called Australopithecus instead of Homo. How can you ever reach a firm conclusion that a species should be grouped more closely with its immediate descendants than its immediate ancestors? Or vice versa?
What Will Chicken Little Say If We Let Go of Dogma?
It is okay that different people perceive different spiritual architectures. The more I listen to chakra talk, the more I realize it is dealing with the same spiritual substance I encounter in my life, just arranged in an alternate form.
Christianity is not immune to that sort of variety. I have a hard time distinguishing the Holy Ghost from God the Father and Son. I feel intimately connected to the Ultimate Presence and the Ground of Being, but not so confident in my relationship with Trinity Part Three. Many Christians can tell you exactly what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I can’t.
Discovery and Creation Work Together.
I claim to observe God in my emotional field as surely as I observe the moon in my visual field. I found Him there, I didn’t put Him there. Others will tell you that matters of the spirit are separate from matters of the heart. They will describe God in a way alien to my ears. We disagree, just as witnesses to a crime offer conflicting testimony. We create different stories about the same discoveries.
We discover pieces of the truth and put them together in different ways. It is like spiritual Lego. Some of us buy a kit with instructions. Others come up with novel designs. The designs that work best for the most people will spread. I plan to keep an open mind and an open heart.
