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What are Chakras?
«Chakra» is a Sanskrit word which literally translates to «Wheel» or «Vortex».
The chakras, themselves, are wheels of energy running through the aura and into the physical body. Whilst we cannot see these, they are easy to detect with a pendulum and we’ll address that later in the article.
The aura is made up of seven layers or bodies, which can be easily seen as colors (with practice).
The first layer, our physical body, can of course be easily seen by all. The outer ones emanate from it as the etheric bodies ― two emotional layers, two mental and two spiritual ― the main seven.
It acts as a protective layer for the body and functions as a barometer for the emotions.
Permeating through the aura, into the physical body, the chakras run the length of the spine, from bottom to top, then out through the head too.
Seemingly they transmit information from the spirit, through the mental and emotional bodies, into the physical corpus, then return communication from the organs back to the spirit via the layers of the aura.
The soul and spirit are different and reside separately.
The soul, believed to be your timeless light, incarnated through many lifetimes, is thought to live in chakra 8.
In contrast, the spirit, that which is quintessentially “you” is thought to reside within the aura.
There is a beautiful shamanic teaching that describes the relationship between the soul and the spirit.
Consider the soul to be like a carpenter who makes a chair, but then throws it in the fire to burn.
The carpenter feels no pain at the chairs demise because it's easy for him to make another.
The soul feels the same way as the spirit reaches the end of its lifetime.
Another incarnation will soon arrive.
In Tantra, especially, chakras are depicted like flowers with many petals. The more petals a chakra is deemed to have, the higher and lighter its vibration.
Within Tantric iconography, there hides many secrets about the chakras, which can tell us great truths about the spiritual journey. As the article unfolds, we'll analyze not only the modern-day wisdom about each one, but also the noble truth hidden within the petals.
One such recent acquisition to our more modern understanding of the system is the discovery that each chakra seems to correspond to its own endocrine organ, and indeed to “hubs” of neurological energy in the body.
Opening and closing, like clockwise spinning vortices, the chakras seem to vitalize the physical body by “charging” the glands to produce and distribute hormones throughout the body.
A personal tale from Liz, who's worked with the chakras for over twenty years:
«I’ve always seen extraordinary results from them, but even to me they seemed mysterious and difficult to explain, until in 2012 I read the following words by Dr Candace Pert, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and the person who discovered the opioid receptor to which morphine and other opioids bind:»
From Dr Candace Pert:
Though many of these modalities had a basis in Eastern philosophy and other non-Western traditions, which as a Western-trained scientist I would not ordinarily have known anything about, I had in fact had a limited exposure to Eastern ideas that dated back to the mid-eighties during my NIH lab days.
Because of the growing public awareness of my research on endorphins and other neuropeptides, people from all kinds of unexpected backgrounds had sought me out at the time. A bearded yogi dressed in white and wearing a turban showed up at my office one day to ask me if endorphins were concentrated along the spine in a way that corresponded to the Hindu chakras.
The chakras, he explained, were centers of “subtle energy” that governed basic physical and metaphysical functions from sexuality to higher consciousness.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but, trying to be helpful, I pulled out a diagram that depicted how there were two chains of nerve bundles located on either side of the spinal cord, each rich with many of the information-carrying peptides.
He placed his own chakra map over my drawing and together we saw how the two systems overlapped.
Thinking back, it had the same shocking effect on me as historic news events. The very fabric of time seemed to stand still for me when I read it.
Finally!
A scientist.
A truly important and respected scientist…, someone so deeply ensconced in orthodox medicine she’d played a part in the Nobel Prize winning discovery of endorphins… was explaining their existence and function.
