Unfortunately I don't have time to correct grammar. I recommend you to read calmly and carefully in order to correctly understand what the author (William Mistele) means. If you are not familiar with Franz Bardon's teachings, terms such as "magician, magic, magic balance" may seem abstract to you. Read detached and find wisdom beyond words.
"Problems that can get in the way of spiritual development
If you study carefully and wisely so that you build a solid foundation for your practice, we are told that you can avoid serious imbalances. Let's imagine, for a moment, that this is possible. With great care, you develop your physical, astral and mental bodies equally. You master a physical posture, the breathing of the body and working with the vital force. You develop your astral balance by bringing into balance the four elements in your astral body both as pure energy and psychological understanding. And you develop your five senses and mental focus as well.
Sounds good. But even so, one day you start practicing an exercise and discover that it's second nature. It's as if you've practiced it all your life or mastered it in several different lifetimes. Like breathing, so easy. And then you start another exercise and you do nothing, thirty, forty years of practice and you make absolutely no progress. Or if you get some results at one point in your life, at another point you find yourself going backwards. Everything you have achieved through hard work disappears and you have to start all over again and again. And the reasons for this remain incomprehensible.
There are people who can sit down and clear their mind of all thoughts for ten minutes and do it almost on the first try. There are individuals who can gather energy in their body through pranic breathing to such an extent that their body begins to warm up from the first attempt. And then there are others for whom these basic exercises are almost impossible. Nothing they do seems to work.
Be that as it may, my point is that if you practice seriously, you will eventually find areas in which you are far more advanced, sometimes even ahead of all the teachers you meet. What happens then is that this unusual level of skill in one area - physical, astral, mental, or spiritual - by its very existence puts a great deal of pressure and stress on other areas. Can you focus like a master? Then you can also burn up your life force in a matter of moments generating serious physical illness with this power of concentration.
Do you discover that you have psychic abilities of a phenomenal nature? Your personality may then become profoundly confused because of the ability to sense, feel, and perceive in other dimensions or in ways that have nothing to do with your everyday experience or the world you live in.
Do you find ways to greatly increase your vital strength and health? Gosh, then you end up like the great yogi Swami Rama, who, in his institute, played tennis all day, exhausting many of his partners, because he had all his physical energy to consume. Or, is the energy rampaging through your chakras causing all sorts of wild emotional and psychological disturbances because of an out-of-control kundalini? And these are simple, straightforward problems that arise in your own body, mind and emotions, never mind the more complicated matter of interacting with spirits.
What happens is that serious magical practice accelerates your karma. Perhaps in your life cycle, over a period of thirty or forty years, you will have to deal with conflicts involving well-being versus insecurity, vulnerability versus self-confidence, love versus hate, trust versus suspicion, compassion versus selfishness, clarity of mind (even enlightenment) versus disorientation and domination, wisdom versus obsession and madness, inspiration versus depression, commitment and dedication versus stagnation and lethargy, etc.
What makes the magic is that you face these problems not in the next thirty or forty years, but in the next two or three years. It can be quite a journey. Do you turn to drugs or alcohol? Do you become depressed, anxious, distracted or hyperactive? There are all kinds of programs to work with various addictions and/or obsessions. You may have moved a little too fast in your preparation, but now you decide to slow down and do your homework - to round out your personality, get more balance and strengthen the weak areas in your emotional life.
But some of these karmic problems that you have evoked in your life through magical study have no solutions in this age of the world. That means that no psychologist you can turn to, no priest or minister, no magus or sage, no psychic healer or shaman will have the slightest idea how to help you. Oh, they will suggest all sorts of things and offer remedies that will give you temporary relief. But the study of serious magic (the kind that puts you in touch with creative and divine power) is not as Alice Bailey imagines it in one of her books - you discover on your way that there are many other fellow-students beside you and with you as you cross a spiritual lake when the morning mists lift. No, the magic is not picturesque, warm and soothing.
Magic is an original encounter with Akasha. It's you - your will, your inspiration and your resources of training and experience - against something completely unknown. When you're working with the fifth element of akasha, you're not just enhancing your intuition and perception. You are in touch with the whole universe and everything the human race has done and experienced and everything the human race has not yet imagined, as well as things it will never experience while it is in its present stage of evolution.
They don't tell you this - the universe is a very big place, and we, as a human race, have only just begun to read the preface to the book of wisdom. No matter how ritualized, systematized, institutionalized or laid out in a step-by-step guide, magic is always exploratory. You cross a boundary, leave the familiar world behind and enter the unknown.
Chakrele
Chakras are the psychophysical energy centers in the human body. They exist primarily at the etheric and astral levels. They do not have a mental component per se, although they are very easy to shape and activate depending on the background and experience of an individual or culture. In other words, if you think of the chakras in a certain way, they will actually transform and reconfigure according to your preconceptions. Like any form of energy flow, like water in a glass or fire in a stove, they respond and act according to the constraints imposed upon them.
They involve deep instincts, primal emotions and a lot of perception and psychic power. In magical training, in one way or another, the chakras are involved, no matter how hard an individual tries to focus on a purely mental or spiritual level.
Different systems usually conclude that there are seven major chakras in the body. The first chakra is often associated with a point just above the perineum and refers to the earth element. The second chakra refers to the sexual center in the body. The third is in the region of the solar plexus. The fourth is the heart chakra. The fifth is the throat chakra. The sixth is the third eye. And the seventh is the crown chakra.
One view is that chakras are actually located in the spine and function in a similar way to the stem or roots of a flower. The blossoming or unfolding of the chakra then occurs more towards the center of the body as the chakra becomes more active. In other words, the energy moving through the spine interacts with and transforms the rest of the body, moving from the spine toward the center of the body and then outward.
Different spiritual systems often view chakras according to their own perspective and goals. Although Tibetan Buddhism uses a great deal of sexual/tantric imagery in its art and practices, this imagery is so idealized that the second chakra is completely ignored for all practical purposes. One in six Tibetans has been a monk or nun. They were celibate and, like Catholic priests, received literally no training or practical information on the role of sex with all its related aspects of affection, contentment, happiness, rest, emotional bonding and physical intimacy.
By contrast, in the Western world, the first chakra is almost completely ignored in some ways. One aspect of the first chakra concerns the awareness and circulation of vitality and life force through the body. I know Taoists who spend hours each day consciously focusing on consciously following the chi or life force as it moves through the meridians of their body. As a result, certain Eastern systems have developed precise sets of exercise movements over millennia that strengthen some of the pathways of inner chi circulation according to their cultural and spiritual interests.
Imagine if Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus or Sartre had grown up with internal practices like these. They would not have spent so much time complaining about the difficulties of finding meaning in life. The life force itself is charged with harmony, meaning and inner union with the universe. The West has suffered greatly from a lack of inner awareness and ignorance of the spiritual dimension hidden in the physical body.
Some side effects that occur with different students
There are a variety of ways, some accidental, in which to over-stimulate each of the chakras. The astral exercise in Bardon's third chapter with the earth element could do it or simply practicing any of the mental or physical exercises. Different things trigger different effects in different people.
First Chakra
At the astral level, when the first chakra begins to unfold or activate, it feels like a giant snake begins to unfold at the base of the spine and move upward in the body. It is a gigantic, massive and very dense energy. For some, however, the energy starts to manifest but they only feel it indirectly, through disturbed feelings, dreams, obsessions or inability to concentrate.
Over-stimulate your first chakra at the base of your perineum and you might feel like your body has become twice as heavy, or you might want to sit down and not move for hours. Leave behind the pace of everyday life and become aware of geologic time - you feel a part of nature and somehow removed from humanity. Or, perhaps you feel the urge to sail around the world, run a marathon, climb a mountain, etc... Anything is enough to get rid of that feeling of anxiety that arises when the physical body starts buzzing with that deep kundalini vibration that goes up through the nerves and muscles.
Or perhaps you withdraw from contact with others to practice yoga or some form of meditation, or want to join a monastery because you no longer feel the need to interact with others. What could cause this? I actually notice four "petals" or dynamic states of energy and awareness within the first chakra. There may be a feeling of heaviness or weight, as developed by the great masters of Aikido or Tai Chi Chuan, who are so grounded that even weightlifters can't lift them off the ground.
There may also be an intense awareness of the inner body, as developed by chi kung or yoga masters. In other words, this aspect of the first chakra generates a very introverted mood and temperament and completely comfortable with immersing the mind in the body's internal energy flows. Another aspect produces an intense awareness of one's physical environment, such as martial artists or special forces trained in covert operations possess. There is superb alertness and keen mental perception of the immediate external environment.
And there can also be an acute concentration in which nothing disturbs what you're concentrating on - like the thoughtless owl waiting in the dark for a rodent, the wolf stalking a scent, or the Manhattan Project physicist concentrating his entire being to produce a bomb designed to destroy entire cities. These are all things related to the first chakra.
In fact, the first chakra produces a blind desire to be part of nature. This can be that feeling of survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle, which says you do what you have to do to get what you want. There is no capacity for reflection and no moral conscience, only the sheer desire for domination - the will to power that is aware of anything and everything necessary to ensure its survival.
Don't get me wrong. Survival is a spiritual imperative. Those who ignore this imperative often lose their spiritual license to practice. As a character in the movie Queen Elizabeth: "The dead have no rank".
The flipside of this, of course, is that if the first chakra is stimulated, you might want to let yourself be dominated, throw in the towel and let someone else take control of your life. For those who have this primal energy welling up within them, there is a great relief that comes when they join a church or esoteric order, where they let someone else tell them what to believe, think and how to organize their life. The dominating force of the outside group calms and soothes the anxiety inside them.
Second chakra
Stimulate your second chakra and you can develop sensual cravings and obsessions of gratification that arise from the depths of the animal kingdom. You can become hypersensitive so that your nervous system reacts suddenly to weak electrical impulses, the mood of next door neighbors, the onset of a thunderstorm, the low impulses of an earthquake a thousand miles away, or the fact that someone has long since died in a room you enter. Get used to it. Begin to refine your nervous system so that it can perceive dim and obscure energies, and that's what you begin to do.
The second chakra, when stimulated, produces a blind desire for sensual gratification. It's like a whirlpool - intense sensations and emotions pass through you, but you learn nothing from it and undergo no change. The sensory experience is a veiled distraction from the inner emptiness that absorbs your life. The human race is very weak in this chakra and collectively suffers from a profound lack of inner peace.
As a magician, it's up to you to produce within yourself a calm serenity and inner beauty that continually renews and transforms you from within. Never forget that, without happiness and contentment in personal life, you will navigate without compass through a dark night. Never let thoughts, ideals or beliefs get in the way for a moment of what makes you feel happy and what brings you satisfaction.
A number of spiritual training systems try to get practitioners to erase their personal memories and cleanse the sets of desires developed from past experiences. This is an absolute mistake as far as the second chakra is concerned. Your personal past is your personalized key that opens the door to archetypes and mysteries. Discard it and whatever great things you accomplish in your spiritual practices, they will not belong to your path in life, but rather to someone else's.
Those who have a strong and balanced second chakra can tell just by their feelings if something or someone is right for them. They don't have to think. They already know - the second chakra possesses a brilliant and unrivaled awareness of the inner flow and natural rhythms of life and how to renew from within.
The Archangel Gabriel presides over this second chakra, with its close ties to the moon and lunar cycles. Gabriel possesses a divine vision and certainty beyond all doubt and an authority that overrides all accidents, errors and mistakes in life. Being literally in the Presence of God, Gabriel affirms that, in due time, all desires will be fulfilled, all dreams realized and all ideals realized.
Part of the idea is to realize that on some level, inside you, all your needs are already being met. You can sense and feel it, because Gabriel consciousness encompasses all ages of the world and all that will unfold over time. Just don't try to make your inner vision or dreams materialize tomorrow or according to a preconceived schedule. Do that and you will end up like the fanatics who materialize their ideals and dreams believing that they can force Divine Providence to make them its agents. And so they go around blowing up buildings and people, so great is their despair, their lack of spiritual will and the absence of inner peace.
Third chakra
Stimulate your third chakra and you may feel that others should submit to your will, and sometimes they do, even if you don't say or do anything. Or you may find yourself erupting in anger because they don't respond to your will. Have you ever encountered a salesman with extraordinary powers of persuasion? That individual could be influencing you through the power of the third chakra that interacts directly with the astral bodies of others. What could trigger this? Try Bardon's practice with the fire element.
The third chakra stimulated produces a blind desire to engage and interact with others on a personal level, whether it be love, friendship, communication or simply doing something together. Have you ever noticed how upset or angry someone can get when you fail to say hello? People like to be validated. There is a blind, i.e. unconscious, desire to connect with others. Fail to connect and you put your psyche at risk.
Often, the purpose of human contact and communication is not so much the content of what is said as simply acknowledging the presence of the other. Wild animals have greeting rituals for any member returning to the pack after being away, even for short periods of time. So do human beings. It can be a greeting, a chat about the weather or simply a nod as you pass by.
The purpose of the third chakra, whether it is the intimacy of personal love or the dynamics of problem-solving, is to act in a clear and direct way so that you can fully express yourself and deal effectively with the situation you are in at the moment. If this primal energy becomes too strong, you offend others without being aware of it. And then you wonder why others are ganging up against you or taking revenge on you for no reason you can see. You have weak primal energy in this chakra and you feel vulnerable and left out, like life is passing you by. It is passing you by. Learn to communicate and express yourself. There are no shortcuts here. Learn this through experience.
Chakra a patra
The fourth chakra, the heart chakra, when stimulated, produces a blind desire to experience life through others. You can feel the pains of the world weighing you down - all that suffering and you feel it as your own. You are so sensitive to the needs and desires of others that you can barely restrain yourself from trying to do what you can to make them happy. You are sad, you cry, you feel others' pain.
Or, on the other hand, you can become fanatical and unique in your obsession to convert others to your cause - you become a Christian, become a vegetarian, buy Amway, see the light, join your group that is unlike any other group, etc. You want to tell others, "You should do what is so obviously right." And: "Why can't others see as I see?". Hindus call the blockage in the heart chakra the Vishnu knot. Instead of gaining real empathy for others, the individual feels a void within himself and tries to control, manipulate, convert, and save others in order to fill that void within himself.
People with over-stimulated hearts are also vulnerable. They can often feel what others feel and think how others think. But they are not usually able to assert themselves with persuasion and clarity so as to bring fair and balanced results. But beware of the negative individual who can sense your feelings and thoughts. They have no restraint in manipulating you to achieve their goals.
They talk to you like you're their lifelong friend. They treat you like you're the most important thing in their lives. And then they wait patiently until they hook you and then they give you everything you're worth. Some con artists are so effective because they actually believe the lies they tell are true. This is the dark side of the heart chakra and many, many gurus and spiritual teachers fall into this category. They believe in their tradition and are very willing to rob others by taking what they can from their students and followers.
The fifth or throat chakra
Stimulate your throat chakra and you may gain a blind desire to make things happen. You might even suddenly find yourself creative, full of new ideas and possess charisma and spontaneity. You bring the world to life around you. But again, you can't seem to slow down. Everyone has to move at your pace. You're moving, but there's no stop switch or low gears, and shifting gears isn't part of your emotional transmission.
There is no restraint, no gentleness and no nurturing embrace. It is electric, kinetic and soulless. Do this long enough and you'll burn yourself out and find yourself hiding somewhere wondering what happened to your life. What happens is that you never take the time to find what brings happiness and beauty into your personal life, so that after you've exhausted everyone around you, you find that your fuel tank is empty.
Sixth chakra or third eye
Stimulate your third eye and (well, that's the whole thing in Bardon) you gain the power to control, create, shape and distribute energy. You begin to play with fate itself. You can feel that there is nothing you cannot influence to some degree. Do this long enough or too long or too fast and akasha will give you a card that says, "Go back and start over". You have violated the basic rules of the physical, astral or mental bodies and if you can even regain the life, health and well-being you had before you entered the path of hermetic development, you are extremely fortunate. Serious mistakes in magic can set you back for a lifetime or more.
The third eye produces a blind desire to master the hidden forces of life. A student once asked a martial artist living in Honolulu if there was anyone who could defeat him. His answer was "only if that person is not a human being, because I am capable of neutralizing anything human". Some individuals simply have a flair for the occult, esotericism and magic. It is second nature. It's who they are. Some things are too real, too obvious and too practical to explain to others. Some individuals live in the realm and power of the third eye and never talk about it unless you happen to ask them in the right way and at the right time.
The problem with the third eye is that if you're not practical, down to earth and very sane, you can end up like Don Quixote - wrapped up in a world of your own imagination. "How are you?" You ask a magician. He replies, "I've been trying to help a group of suffering beings in one of the lower astral realms. They have made me their savior."
Or ask someone else: "How are you?" He replies, "I've discovered that there are twelve types of UFOs flying over my house at night. Some are very positive and some are malicious." No doubt. But this kind of thing never ends. It's hard enough to interact creatively with the world the rest of us share, much less get caught up in interdimensional spiritual quests and missions.
I once told someone that if you're going to study in a magical order, ask those in that order what they have recently accomplished on behalf of mankind. If you're going to spend thirty or forty years of your life pursuing magic, you should be able to do things that transform the world. Otherwise, think about joining the Lion's Club, maybe golf or how about running a marathon? You get more bang for your buck without having to travel through the wasteland of self-delusion and narcissism that so many spiritual organizations inhabit.
To be enlightened (which is an aspect of the third eye) is to see the world as it is. Imagine then the utter absurdity of the Dalai Lama's personal monks training to be enlightened without taking courses in international economics or military history? No wonder they lost Tibet. There was a window of opportunity for a hundred and fifty years when Tibetans could have developed international recognition and acceptance of their culture and cause. But they completely, totally and utterly missed this opportunity and karma caught up with them. Losing your country is not a good idea for anyone.
Crown Chakra
Stimulate the crown chakra at the top of your head and you can achieve a blind desire to unite with something greater than yourself. We hear the words of the crown chakra all the time. They talk about union with God, the embodiment of the divine virtues or the four qualities of the spirit - love, will, wisdom, and consciousness. It talks about giving up your will, being reconciled to the Lord or even Joseph Campbell's "follow your bliss".
Stimulate your crown chakra and you can become very dreamy. This is not the same as becoming trapped in your own imagination. These are authentic visions, beatific ecstasies, prophetic and psychic dreams - the whole otherworldly Neptunian vision of life that is taking hold. Then, again, it is possible to sense all that can be and is meant to be, but to feel woefully unable to do anything to bring these things into manifestation.
Or your conscience becomes overdeveloped. It's so easy to feel guilty or to feel tasked to accomplish certain missions or actions, while possessing none of the real preparation needed for these things. You want to do much more than is in any way appropriate for your level of development. You know what is right, but you are incapable of doing it.
The crown chakra has the task of overseeing and inspiring us to develop and seek experience and transformation in the six lower chakras. However, if the crown is too strong, it takes us away from the world. You may want what you want so much that you can't even tell when you are being negative. Only what you dream is real.
But if an individual does not have enough primal energy in this chakra (and you have seen this many times), you will find people who never transform. They are stuck in one level of consciousness, and no matter how many experiences they have in life, they never change. They are condemned to repeat the same experiences over and over again.
These are just some of the problems that arise from energy work, which is part of Bardon's training system. I have certainly experienced all of the above imbalances as well as many others. In particular, my mental focus initially developed long before my physical training. This leads to serious problems with headaches and tension in my head. There simply isn't enough vital force in my body to sustain the level of mental activity that I am so easily able to engage in.
In addition, imagine being able to sense the thoughts or feelings of anyone, anywhere, or any spirit - and that more quickly and easily than it takes some people to turn the pages of a newspaper. This may be related to clairvoyance or telepathy. But it also means that your astral body is vibrating with the feelings of any person or entity you connect with. The other person's energy gets inside you and it's actually not always very easy to get it out. This can result in you becoming very passive or overly influenced by spirits, not to mention the disorienting impact of dreams and visions on your daily life.
Because Bardon is not immediately accessible, i.e. not physically present, you may find it difficult to talk to a 'master' about a problem. From time to time you may receive some useful suggestions from various 'masters'. But most "masters" have no idea how to deal with some of the difficulties that arise in magical training. They simply lack the depth and breadth of exposure to the complexities of mind, body and feelings that arise in working with the four elements on the four planes.
(See also my essays, Shadow in psychology and magic, Introduction to fairy tales and Earth Zone as a spiritual university).
The relationship and balancing between chakras
First and sixth chakras
Among other things, there are sets of chakras that balance each other, if only because they are opposites. The first chakra deals with health, developing a great abundance of vitality and life force and being very grounded, practical and down to earth. It makes you solid, stable and resilient.
But it doesn't help you see what the future holds. It lacks foresight and oversight. You may have a wonderful way of life, a noble and rich tradition, but guess what? Everything changes. You can stand still and one day you will be destroyed or you can learn to move with the movement of life.
This insight, wisdom and enlightenment comes from the third eye. Here, in the third eye, you have dreams that warn you in advance about the preparations you need to make to avoid disasters. Among all those Orthodox Jews, all those witnesses and holy men of Kabbalah, why were there no prophets to warn of the disaster that was to come during World War II? Or perhaps the holocaust was indeed the Jewish gift to mankind, warning us - a dramatized, staged prophecy, if you will - of what would soon be happening around the world with the advent of the nuclear age?
With the third eye, you not only know when to keep it and when to let go. You know why changes occur and how to work with and prepare for them. The first chakra then needs the contemplation, introspection, spiritual training and vision quests that the third eye centers on.
On the other hand, those with an overdeveloped third eye are often worn out. They expend their energy indulging in inner visions and psychic perceptions. They use their siddhis and spiritual powers not for sacred activities, but often for personal and selfish purposes. Like the city managers who embezzle city funds or like the Gentile prophet Balaam, with a personal connection to God, they seize what is meant for public benefit and squander it trying to make up for what is lacking in themselves.
Or, because they so easily consume their personal reserve of vital energy, the use of psychic and spiritual abilities is very limited. Although they possess immense spiritual potential, they never use it, or use it with little creativity, because they intuitively feel that if they did more they would mess up their lives.
Those who like to camp in the high and distant spiritual mountains of the third eye might consider how much more they would get out of life if they were to descend from time to time on vacation in the valleys of the first chakra. In the first chakra is this huge emphasis on health and well-being. You learn to let go of all the inner dreams, all the mythical and spiritual quests, all the divine quests - you let them all go.
And then you learn about exercise - aerobic exercise, whether it's just long walks or hiking. Weight training, where you learn to develop all the muscles in your body. Stretching where you learn to become aware of how to relax and loosen up those tight muscles. Diet where you give your body a chance to eat some nutritious food. And then there are the different types of exercise such as Tai Chi or Chi Kung, etc.
These are things where you consciously cultivate the life force in your body, not magically, but organically and naturally. And you learn to do all this in such a way that it is your first priority and your main goal. Then, when you return to the activities of the third eye, your dreams and visions are much more universal, deeper and more complete, because now you see with more power and strength.
Over the years, I've met so many clairvoyants who are scatter-brained, mentally disturbed and sick, that it's starting to become quite obvious that if you want balance in your life, you have to learn to study and make your opposite a part of you. The third eye is like this incredibly wise man who sees the beginnings and endings of everything. And the first chakra is this incredibly beautiful woman, full of life and natural beauty. She gives herself to him because she knows that their children will have the power and wisdom to transform the world.
Well, I will tell you that it doesn't happen that way in life. But if you want an inner balance in you, if you want practical power and spirit combined with divine vision and intuition to transform the world, then unite these two opposites in yourself. It is essential for magical balance. And a magician's will is always an equal (let me say that again - equal) combination of masculine and feminine perfectly united. There is no gender conflict and no sexual politics here. This is about your soul. Make it the temple of God.
Second and fifth chakras
Similarly, the second chakra or sexual center is the opposite of the fifth or throat chakra. Those with a very positive and strong second chakra know how to let go, flow and possess an inner peace with the universe. They accept, support and nurture. Around them you feel renewed and happiness comes spontaneously.
But I will tell you what the second chakra does not do. It doesn't say, "I'm going to post a note on the church door with some suggestions on how the church could be improved." She doesn't say, "I'll talk to the king and queen and see if I can get some funding to see if there might be a better route to India." He doesn't say, "I'm going to play with some metals and see if I can't invent the electric light bulb."
It doesn't say, "I'm going to attach some fenders to this bike and see if I can't lift this contraption off the ground." It doesn't say, "I'm going to attach this motor to this frame and see if I can't make this wagon move without a horse". He doesn't say, "I'm going to drop out of Harvard and see if I can't trick IBM into thinking I own an operating system so that I can become the richest man in the history of the world."
These are things that the throat chakra does. It takes some kind of intuition, vision, dream, impulse or desire and makes something happen with it. It's the realization of the dream, the manifestation of the ideal, and the application of the all-too-real technology that no one else has bothered to set in motion. It's the person who says, "I'm not going to live my life this way anymore. I'm going to change things for the better starting now".
The throat chakra has courage. It has faith and conviction. It has charisma, even if it is only quiet and subtle. It is the link between the invisible and the visible, the past and the future. It is that empty space exactly where the spark arches between two opposites, between what is and what can be.
When I read the Old Testament, I tell you, I see one thing: that God likes friends and seeks them all over the earth. And these friends become, if nothing else, like the Holy of Holies, an empty space in which, by a pure incomprehensible faith, the world as it is meets the world that can be. Let the peacemakers of earth be so naked that they can see the thoughts in the minds, the feelings in the hearts, and the secret and dark desires in the souls of those they find in the midst of conflict. Let them then speak with a voice of thunder and also with peace that is as deep as the depths of the starry night.
Want justice on earth? Put conspiracy theories aside and pull your head out of the sand and instead unite every opposite within you. Then those in conflict will willingly walk alongside you as you guide them into a new world. And they will do so precisely because you can face the fear in yourself that they cannot face in themselves.
However, what did these prophetic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, above all, lack? They lacked understanding and union with the second chakra. Possessing faith and vision, they have turned against nature and the natural rhythms and cycles of life. Blind and fanatical, devoid of inner peace with the universe, devoid above all of real and genuine belief that their visions will truly come true. The Jews no longer have the slightest idea of how to train genuine prophets. Christians have no idea how to interact and enter the spiritual world as active participants.
The Islamic religion has held the highest science, mathematics and medicine on earth for a thousand years. And yet it has now turned its back on science and education, so that a single country in Europe, such as Greece, translates more books into its mother tongue each year than all twenty-two Arab nations put together. The arrogance and cultural vulnerability of the Arabs is astonishing. Yet all three of these prophetic religions lack the pure and authentic faith that lies at the center of their existence. And so they cling to rigid beliefs and narrow interpretations.
And, again, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism did not have a historical experience where, for a thousand years, each generation had prophets who could challenge the king or emperor on the basis not of tradition but of divine law, as Judaism did. These Eastern religions are much the same as they were thousands of years ago. Apart from a few exceptional practitioners, they feel no compelling desire to transform the world when their past already contains such rich inner treasures of mind and spirit.
But when it comes to the chakras, balance and harmony, these four Eastern religions lack the power of faith and conviction of the throat chakra. And so China, India and Japan did not produce the inventions of the airplane, electricity, the automobile, the telephone, spaceships, nuclear fusion, antibiotics, or space ships.
The second chakra is like an incredibly sensual woman who gives pleasure, happiness, ecstasy and delight to her lover. And the throat chakra is like a master whose work transforms the world. She gives herself to him without restraint, for in her devotion she feels an inner bond and connection in which they are one. Her gift to him touches all whom he touches through his work, for his inspiration and conviction would become brittle and crack without her soul pouring into him. The brilliance and beauty of their union is all too evident.
Now, unlike the wise man and the natural beauty of the sixth and first chakras, I see the combinations of the second and fifth chakras popping up all the time. It's Michael Douglas marrying Catherine Zeta-Jones. It is the oriental grandmaster marrying the young and devoted student. It's Tom Hanks marrying a woman who doesn't mind sacrificing her career for their marriage because, unlike many modern women, she's not the jealous type. Her inner peace and confidence are too great. And that was before Tom Hanks started winning all those Oscars. But the same goes for men. How many men are so insecure that they can't bear to be with a woman who is more creative than they are?
Again, in magic, as in life, opposites combine to create real creativity. We use electricity produced from electro-magnetism to run our modern appliances. The electrical component is like the fifth chakra. Magnetism is like the second chakra. If you fuddy-duddy one of them, if you say, "No, I like electricity so much that I'm not willing to embrace magnetism," well, then you lose your voltage and your power. The relationship becomes a business contract. And the kids grow up unloved. Then again, thank all the women who divorced their husbands seeking freedom and independence. They unwittingly, like in the movie Kramer versus Kramer, forced men to then become friends with their children for the first time. Love is equally important to everyone, whether they know it or not.
Unlike Michael Douglas and Zeta-Jones, you may not be able to get a real balance between electricity and magnetism, between yin and yang, in your relationship with someone else, but you can always get it within yourself. If you fail to do this, you lose your way in life. A true and authentic path of life is always easy (it is the quiet and relaxed serenity of the second chakra that unfolds naturally and effortlessly) and yet we must always strive to attain it (for it is also the dynamic power and conviction of the throat chakra that willingly steps into an unknown future crossing a bridge built of pure faith).
Third and fourth chakras
The dynamics of the third and fourth chakras are very simple. In the third chakra, you assert and express yourself. You take care of yourself. In the fourth chakra, you take care of others. You take care of them as yourself.
In the third chakra you solve your problems and fulfill your personal needs. In the heart chakra, you harmonize not only all your conflicting needs, for needs invariably conflict with each other, but also the needs of the world around you.
With a weak heart and a strong third chakra, you can be a bully. Or you can be direct, honest and straightforward, but you never get to understand those around you, even if you've known them for years. You just don't have that kind of empathy or curiosity, for that matter.
With a strong heart chakra and a weak third chakra, you have great empathy and understanding of what others need and want, but nothing comes of it. You are mom and supportive, but where is the tough love and why have you been so hypersensitive and vulnerable? And why do you feel that your efforts on behalf of others go unrecognized and unappreciated?
Those with a combination of strong third and fourth chakras have the most experience in and with life. They know what is going on with others, and in fact have done a wide variety of things with others, so over the years they gain a great deal of experience. A friend asked me a few days ago: Why do people get divorced? Well, gosh, I volunteered as a divorce mediator. I happened to have a lot of personal and original perspectives on this question.
He said, "You know, people know so little about their family history. There are only a few sentences I could say about my great-grandfather's life. What can you tell me about your great-grandfather? I asked in reply, 'Do you have half an hour? Boy, I happened to do several hours of continuous interviews with my parents about everything they could remember about their lives and our family history.
Want to develop empathy and communicate effectively? Start with yourself and the people around you. Ask countless questions and don't stop asking them. Several oriental masters have taught me things that they had not taught anyone else for twenty years or never. Why? Because I was the only one who asked them to.
The heart chakra type of magician tends to be more mystical, sort of like the healing and inspirational Archangel Raphael. The third chakra magician is more the archangel Michael's "let's solve the problem and remove the obstacle" practice.
Put them together and you get a man or woman with a big heart, who also has great strength and is cordial and friendly. You can't trick them or set them up, because they know you too well and won't let you get away with it. And their presence is a persuasion in itself. They have gone places in your soul that you yourself didn't want to go. Experience is the best answer when it comes to an argument.
Crown Chakra
As for the crown chakra, as mentioned, it oversees and inspires the development of the six lower chakras. If it is too strong, you become dreamy and otherworldly. Spend more time balancing the checkbook, make money and pay your bills, work in the yard and exercise.
If it is too weak, it means you are in a big impasse and you need to get out of it. And get rid of the "the world owes me" attitude. That's put almost everybody in jail. Those on a negative path have one attitude in common - they fail to be grateful and appreciative of all that life has given them. They have lost their sense of awe and wonder at the mysterious beauty that is all around them. This, and not wickedness, is their defining characteristic.
One of the characters in one of my stories about a mythical kingdom once summarized his experience with the crown chakra this way. The speaking voice comes from that Neptunian perspective of the crown chakra, which perceives all that exists as inextricably linked and united in a single web of life:
One day, in despair, I cried out to the Lord of the Universe. I called to the great Father who dwells beyond the starry vault. And yes, He answered me.
Appearing to me in a waking vision, His fingers touched my chest. Looking down inside my body, I saw for three hours, in my heart, all the stars and countless galaxies spinning and whirling throughout the universe.
There is no planet, living being, spiritual being, comet, meteor, nebula or particle of dust that is not present in my consciousness. This was His way of revealing to me what He had hidden in the human heart. Then He spoke and said, "I will reveal to you a secret that no god, goddess or religion on your planet yet understands...
"The most hidden purposes in life and the highest revelation of the Light are revealed when you are attracted to the very thing that is least like you and which you consider the most inferior. Seek the secrets of the future and of self-renewal in the darkest place in your soul."
And then he added nonchalantly, "I'll give you a second piece of advice that follows from the first. It is a basic principle of cosmology: the universe will not end until every heart is found and every soul becomes pure light."
And another character talked about the crown chakra in these terms:
There is a beauty and harmony that is released by touching
a balance between time and eternity, knowing that they are one.
circle, one world. You see from a place of pure transcendence so that
understand how to order an individual's life in the world
that beauty and light may be found.
Remember that what is dark and obscure is but a hiding place
the path of wisdom that can be opened if the heart understands
and knows that the purpose is Love - the Love that sang the universe into
existence.
The whole universe is at the center of each person.
heart, even if the circle interweaves the four elements at the
center, uniting them in harmony, transforming them into light so that
too all our paths lead back to the center of the circle, all our roads
paths lead back to each other's hearts, now and all the while.
eternity.
The universe was created in wonder and love. Stars
share this secret - to be reborn in every moment, to merge with
inward, light shining outward to the rest of the universe.
If you have been given an ideal that contains Love and
The Power, Wisdom and Manifestations of Destinies within,
cherish this ideal - find a place big enough in your heart to hold
and support her, feed her and weave her like a goddess.
weaving a soul into existence so that, in due time, it too will find
your own path to rebirth.
Let the fires of Life burning in your heart, let them
burn with the purity of the stars - know as the stars know
the vastness of space and do not be afraid of this vastness nor of this
emptiness nor that loneliness. As the stars sing to each other in
one Song of Joy, so that your heart may be united with all others
from the same interstellar depths of space and time.
However, don't trade one moment of life for another!
Every moment is equally precious.
What I mean when I mention these balancing relationships between opposing chakras is that sometimes we need to let go of the things that we are best at in life. Take a break - a few minutes a day, a day every month or so, a month every few years, a few years every decade or even a decade or two. Not only is that fine. It is an excellent idea.
Spend some time doing what is the opposite of all your talent, focus and hard work. Develop the areas where you're weakest. And then combine these opposites and your creativity will develop. Elemental balance doesn't come cheap. It comes at a great price. It requires you to give your undivided attention, without reservation, to the things you are weakest at. Or, as the king in the epic Mahabarata"My opposite is myself" - William Mistele