Catching light with your camera requires three things: lens aperture (the size of the opening of the lens letting in light), the speed of the shutter (which regulates just how much light falls on the CMOS sensor), and the amount of light available to you out in the world when you take the picture (the exposure). When the photographer manually sets these three parameters, and composes an interesting picture, we know the results can be wonderful. But if one of the three are not aligned the results will be a failed opportunity. Everything needs to be set up right.

Similarly, the chakra needs three things to function well, and build an enlightened reality: a receptive (and healthy) chakra (equivalent to aperture size) that takes in all kinds of light, not just a limited frequency, an attentive mind/body (equivalent to shutter speed) that awakens to all input, and opportune life experience that can stimulate personal or spiritual growth (equivalent to exposure). Unlike the camera our chakras both interpret (intake) and co-create (output) events in the outer world. Increase the amount of light available to us (say, through a spiritual practice) and we will “see” things in a new way. Open our receptivity to the world (through energy healing or other modalities that assist personal growth) and new options suddenly open up to us. Put ourselves into a new experience (e.g., a course of study, a spiritual journey, a different kind of relationship) and we expose ourselves to previously-unexpected possibilities.

Manually operating our camera forces us to think about all three parts of how our camera works in order to catch light in a singular moment. Similarly, personal growth asks us to break down how we function in life, and offers us the opportunity to step outside of habitual patterns that will always bring us predictable outcomes.

Of course we can leave our camera – or our life – on automatic, and let the in-build programming make all the decisions for us. We’ll still get some nice snaps … but to make art with our camera (or with our life) we have to turn the don’t-want-to-think-about-this function off. We have to go manual all the way. We have to study, and see what does what, and why. Because with our automatic settings switched off, anything is truly possible.

]]> http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/the-camera-and-the-chakra/feed/ 0 http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/family-karma/ http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/family-karma/#comments Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:38:40 +0000 Dean Ramsden http://www.blog.deanramsden.com/?p=3714 There are two kinds of people in the world: those that have lost a parent, and those that have not. For many, the experience of the death of a mother or a father is a shattering experience … because you always expected them to be here. The inner child within each of us cannot imagine life without the mother, or the father. We are all unprepared for feeling like an orphan.

When a client books a session with me soon after a parent has died I am often aware of two main issues they are dealing with:

1. Emotional release (expressive) work

2. The energetic DNA transfer (family karma) that may pass between the chakra cords of offspring and parent

Emotional work is best taken to a trained counselor, as often the client has spent years supporting and sacrificing for an elder parent, perhaps having accompanied them through illness, or have suffered emotional estrangement of some kind. Psychotherapy can be an invaluable tool in coming to terms with past events, as well as exploring new options for the future.

It is the energetic DNA transfer (or “download”) across the mother or the father chakra cords after the loss of a parent where I can be helpful for a client. This is a process that happens to many clients, as the heritage information from their newly-deceased mother or father seeks to download into them, as lineage holder. This is the energy consciousness of the family system seeking passage of family patterns into the future. It is where the family patterns will replicate or sustain themselves, generation after generation. These patterns degrade over three to four generations, and the impact of an ancestor’s struggles upon our current life has been noted in various classical sources.

“The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children” – Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)

“For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer” – Horace (Odes, 3)

“The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy,forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generations”. The Bible (Numbers, 14)

The mechanism for the energetic DNA (or family karma) appears two-fold in nature. Firstly, the patterns are “downloaded” into your auric energy system, at birth so that you get to participate in your family system. Of course, this is usually unconscious on our part, as we assume the personal issues with which we wrestle are exclusively our issues. Shakespeare tells us that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts” (As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7). The roles in which we often find ourselves are often just like theatre. And we unconsciously participate in a family heritage (or ancestral) drama.

The second part of receiving the family karma occurs right after the parental death, and may extend three to six months afterwards. During that time the lineage holders are “downloaded” with karmic patterns through the chakra cord system, so as to allow the “family line” to continue forward in time. But not every offspring member directly takes on all the family patterns. There are many variables.

Energy healing work can potentially make the process of taking on (or of not taking on) family karma much more conscious. For many of us, the “sins of the fathers (and the mothers) may need ending right here, with us. We can interrupt the unconscious assumption of family karmic burdens, and come to make new choices. By becoming aware of what is being passed on to us we can pick a new direction.

Using chakra heritage cord work we may find the tools for the transformation of ancestral “iniquity” (absence of spiritual values) and then work towards a fresh start. We can move into the future freed up from much of the compulsion to repeat the past. Or, at the very least, to come to recognize old family karma quickly, and then to nip it in the bud. We can move from being a player on the stage of life, and graduate to authorship … and write the true story of our life, rather than repeat the life of those long gone before us.

Related Post: Working With Heritage Chakra Cords.

Meditators experience the thinking process as analogous to watching clouds drifting across the inner landscape. All spiritual paths point us towards necessity of the breaking of the illusion of the thinking process as being an objective reality. It is the watcher of our thoughts – the observer self – that truly deserves our focus. This is because while thoughts emerge to try and make sense of the outer and inner worlds, thoughts default to a black-white splitting of reality into polar opposites (duality). Manipura chakra is designed to do this for the young mind: to simplistically break down the world into meaningful experiences, and to then orientate itself around those experiences. Manipura digests meaning.

After our emotional connections to things in the outer world (see second chakra) comes the meaning we layer into the outer world using the third chakra, We come to believe in conclusions our minds have formed as though these snapshots of truth are reality. But the truth revealed by spiritual awareness is that our thinking mind is always flavored by emotional attachment (second chakra) and by our physical drives (first chakra). In a nutshell, our so-called rational minds are not objective and logical about anything. The mind is programable, and easily fooled by conclusions or perceptions that are false. Just ask the hypnotist, the psychotherapist, or the politician, about how easily the mind is fooled.

Where the second chakra forms relational cords to people that anchor in feeling states or provide relational attachment, the third chakra cords link us to our constructed concepts and opinions about others. An opinion is when you ally yourself to one side of any idea in opposition to the other side.  We all build the “house” of the self using these building blocks of opinion. The mind of the personal egoic self is an accumulation of opinions … with some truth scattered around. This means that the mind itself can become a hindrance to personal development because, as Mark Twain famously said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”. Hundreds of years before Twain the third Chinese patriarch of Zen would immortalize this vital wisdom in the Hsin Hsin Ming:

“If you wish to know the truth

then hold to no opinions for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you dislike

is the disease of the mind ….

Indeed, it is due to our grasping and rejecting

that we do not know the true nature of things….”

Unless we come to appreciate the reality of how the mind works we may simply move through life from opinion to opinion, from one false choice to another false choice. Until the observing self is recognized and honored we may end up lost in fantasies spun by the mind. Any form of personal development or spiritual growth has to arrive at this point: the willingness to confront what we think is the problem, and then to move from opinion into reality. Only by a personal growth shift from mind-dominated choices into a true choice, where we shift from our illusions into creative options, can we evolve efficiently.

When I work with the cords of the third chakra my task is to make the opinions and inherent choices built into Manipura’s opinions become more clear to my client. This is done not by psychotherapy but by cleaning the cords, clearing them of lower astral material, and by strengthening self-cord development. Internal shifts may then follow when the client allows more material to become conscious to him, or her. As long as we think we know what the problem is we will tend to reinforce the mental groove worn into the consciousness system by that opinion. The opinion of the mind has power by virtue of both habit and by our lack of perception of other options. Growth comes when we break free from those habits.

If we live with a closed mind we only see what we are allowed to see. We are the prisoners of our own thoughts. But if we clean the third chakra cords, and begin to open the mind towards new possibilities, then tremendous shifts in consciousness can manifest in our lives. This is the same process as in good psychotherapy, or in authentic spiritual seeking. It is what happens when a seeker begins to dissolves the chains of their emotional and mental slavery, and starts down the road towards freedom. This freedom is from both emotional addiction or slavery (second chakra dysfunction) and conditioned opinion (third chakra dysfunction), and is the door leading to higher chakra functioning.  We all have to do the personal development work with our body, emotions, and mental conditioning before we can become truly free.

The sanskrit name for the third chakra is Manipura, which means “City of Gems”. Our ideas about reality and ourselves become gems to us, precious enough to protect. We defend our mental conditioning at all costs, often equating our very identity with whatever we hold to be true. The traditional spiritual paths always stress the importance of dissolving this conditioning: to replace habitual thinking with personal presence, an awareness that is able to track the natural reflex of the mental process. We learn to “keep an open mind”, as opposed to seek the false comfort offered to us by the opinion of others, or our own thinking process. The training of an inner witness forms a major part of many spiritual traditions.

Physiologically, the central location of the ten-petaled third chakra (different writers place it either in the navel region or the solar plexus area) connects it with the pancreas, the stomach, and other digestive organs. The third chakra is symbolically reflected in what we “take in”, “digest”, and how we further refine that nourishment. The pancreas balances sugar, the liver purifies the blood, all of which reflect Manipura’s function of creating building blocks out of available material. The red-gold color assigned to Manipura by Sanskrit sources best symbolically describe this alchemical chakra: it refines the gold of potential presence out of the rock of raw thoughts. Getting to the point of having an opinion about something is only a half-way step. The next step is to question your opinion, and to then drop back into the presence of your observer self. Manipura’s higher function is to refine our thinking process towards the creation of inner presence. It is also preparing us for the next stage of our spiritual evolution: the opening of the compassionate heart.

This energy center of human consciousness that emerges from the spine like a flower, and terminates in a six-petaled structure above the pubic bone. Its function is to provide an emotional connection to other people, as well as to the self. It accomplishes this by linking emotional reaction with relational attachment. The second chakra energizes relationships with desire (“I want it”) or with aversion (“Get away from me”).

The second chakra draws energy up from the Earth prana accumulated by the first chakra (see Muladharachakra here) as well as being stimulated through food and other sensual delights. Visual appeal, tactile pleasure, pleasant sounds such as music, delicious tastes … all the human senses help to create aliveness in the second chakra that may then shared with others, or turns towards nourishing the self within.

In addition to its functioning as a sensory center that forms initial attachments to others and then shares pleasure with them, the second chakra can also form attachment to unhealthy relationships, or can become addictive. The same mechanism designed to connect us to healthy people can also attach us to unhealthy and toxic individuals. The childlike and pre-verbal IQ of the second chakra may be unable to discern the difference between all these options for relationship until later in life.

If the second chakra develops well we are able to form healthy relationships with others that provide companionship, and with whom we can share pleasure. This is one of the reasons the second chakra is usually characterized as the sexual chakra: the center for longing and desire. But healers who work with the chakra system also acknowledge Swadhisthana’s place in building a healthy immune system, especially the necessary response to danger. Second chakra healing work usually includes additional support for the gastrointestinal immune system (GALT) – especially Peyer’s Patches – and the adrenals. These are the specific lymphatic and endocrine glands linked to the second chakra.

The vital energy created in the second chakra flows through all parts of the human body, to provide the fire that burns within us, to both create and maintain life. Unless we learn how to form attachments to others both in infancy and in later life, we will not develop into fully functional people. The second chakra keeps you emotionally healthy, and your energy field charged with prana. It also tells you what you don’t like, or warns you of potential danger. If something doesn’t “feel” right, or doesn’t “smell” good, it probably isn’t right. We refer to this as our “gut instinct”, the common experience of intuitively knowing something hidden about people, or sensing something about a situation that may cause us problems. This chakra also accesses the Enteric Nervous System, a primitive webbing of nerve cells intertwined throughout our gastrointestinal tract.

In Relational Energy Healing we work with an important part of the functioning of the second chakra: how it forms non-visible cords of attachment – chakra cords – to significant people in our lives. This is how we get our basic human needs met (infant survival), seek emotional nurturance (companionship, sexuality) and how we sustain long-term relationships. Healing in these areas can be enhanced by work on two important second chakra connections: the chakra cord to the mother, and the chakra cord to the father. It is these two earliest connections (or substitute connections to other caregivers if the birth parents are absent) that most heavily influence our adult emotional life. Here is the matrix within which we will grow our emotional reality. These influences are often the unconscious and yet deciding factors in many of our life choices. The experiences with our parents, and the download of DNA/heritage patterns from their family line, flows into our second chakra from the moment of birth. Many of the emotional challenges that we deal with stem from the non-conscious impact of family patterns downloaded into our emotional system. An important part of personal development is to see the difference between our own feelings and longings as separate from the issues in our family.

Of course, resolving family karma is always grist for the mill for personal development, and also is a part of our spiritual journey. Often when we clean the chakra cords, and clarify the emotional patterns laid down by our DNA/heritage, we can come to release the past more quickly, and make relational choices that are much more in alignment with our authentic self. We can come to live our lives for ourselves, and not live just as an extension of an ancestor’s karmic pattern.

At a practical level this means strengthening and clearing the second chakra as an energetic organ (so that if functions well), to heal trauma if present, and to support any lack of development in second chakra development. Then we can move into cleaning the chakra head of lower astral influences that may be feeding off any unresolved past emotion. One example is sentimentality - which is any lingering feeling state disproportionate to a real situation – as well as any other emotion pattern that keeps a person locked into the past. These emotional habits can be energetic food for the lower astral world. We all deserve to have our second chakras be in-the-moment, to be clean of history, and able to fully serve us in the moment.

The addition of chakra cord cleaning and repair work in Relational Energy Healing is built upon other work done on the healthy functioning – or healing – of the second chakra. By directly addressing the cord connections to significant others we inventory those relationships so as to make vital in-the-moment decisions about are lives. Are you in a lingering relationship that no longer serves you, and saps your life energy? Are you with an addictive person who you can’t let go, or with someone who won’t let you go? These are two examples of where cord work can help you move forward. The cords of connection can be reset when they are living in the past, and not rooted in the present. This process is supported and enhanced by good psychotherapy.

We grow as human beings through relationships, and through the ending of relationships. Chakra cord connections into (or from) the second chakra provide the basic attachment functionality of our personality. They transmit the consciousness in how we make – or end – relationships. They energize our desires, and support our immune systems response to danger. The second chakra cords are the way we grow into our humanity, but they may unconsciously hold the consciousness of how we unknowingly restrict our potential. The pleasure and pain of human relationships rests on this, the “root” consciousness system flowing out of (and into) the second chakra. If you want to grow a healthy plant you have to nourish the roots. Human beings are energetically rooted into other people, and into family karmic patterns. Our strengths and problem-solving skills flow from our emotional functioning. We all know that if we don’t heal the past we will revisit it, again and again. Let’s get to the place in our unsatisfying relationships where enough is enough … let’s heal them, or move on from any restrictive, self-abusive habits of our past. Let’s embrace our full emotional potential now, and not die an unfulfilled life.

Related post: The Third Chakra.

Here is a short extract from my Tokyo seminar entitled Practical Aspects of the Chakra System, taught in English with Japanese translation provided by Yui Wang.

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My first interest in the chakra system came from my Indian spiritual teacher who taught me about the energetic consciousness system, and how the chakras were a map representing various stages along a continuum: birth through enlightenment. Development of each chakra was supposed to bring out exceptional qualities (or siddhis) within the individual. Through specific meditations, and transformational energy practices such as Yoga and Qi Gong, or the direct pranic transmission from a teacher, spiritual seekers could make rapid gains in chakra development.  The chakras, my teacher had explained, are the spiritual body’s equivalent of the physical nervous and endocrine systems, and are the vital links in manifesting our spiritual potential, or personal growth.

Choosing Your Path

I learned from subsequent teachers how each chakra effects our psychological and emotional development. A functioning chakra will help us become happy and effective adults, whereas a dysfunctional chakra will manifest as personality or relationship problems. We can now see how the lower chakras and their functioning easily fits with current Western research into human development. Similarly, the middle chakras clearly guide our individuation from narcissistic infant into a caring and mutually-aware adult. The transition from infant consciousness into adulthood is an ongoing journey according to many researchers and theorists. Ultimately, the fundamental basis of living is to be happy, and to learn to have nourishing relationships with others. A healthy chakra system provides us with many of the resources to attain those goals, because chakras grow and develop conscious awareness within us.

We can work with the chakra system as a map in how to develop conscious awareness, to heal trauma and other hindrances to awakening, and thereby live up to our potential. A part of this map includes the linking mechanism between chakras: the chakra cords, or non-visible connective filaments. Chakra cords transmit information from one person to another. And, as that individual is also connected to others (or to an earlier generation in our family) we are impacted by those connections. I have found that heritage cord healing work - the clearing of family patterns passed down to us – has much more personal growth value than past life healing work. With past lives healing we are separated from the trauma from which we wish to heal by time and space; with heritage healing work we are always plugged into the family system, which makes the material much more easy for us to access.

My work with clients often leads me towards supporting their process of spiritual awakening. After we have become individuated as adults, and we have learned to live happy and connected lives with others, there is a natural tendency to move towards awakening into higher states of consciousness. The upper chakras (and their associated neural and hormonal connections) are a part of our development into spiritually-based adults. But we cannot evolve alone. All of us need a teacher (or teachers) to help us find a plan or map for self-development. Choosing the right “map” is important, because when you follow the directions on any map you should arrive at a certain place. The map you choose should lead your soul where it wants to go.

Following Directions

Choosing your Teacher

Maps of personal development need teachers to help us make sense of them, and to help us navigate through each stage of the journey. But in choosing a teacher (or ritual elder) to help us with our personal or spiritual growth we must learn how to differentiate the problem teacher with narcissistic and ungrounded fantasies from the truly helpful teacher: one who possesses an authentic – or initiated – experience of the material. This is not an easy task; everyone of us has unhealed narcissism, but here we are talking about degrees of the narcissistic challenge rather than the presence of it.

We can use two tracking systems to orientate ourselves in our search for the helpful teacher:

*  Does a teacher’s spiritual awareness significantly rest on unhealed narcissism? Or, does is show up as the playing out of hidden agendas, leading to the exploitation of their students? You will need to study the basics of the narcissistic personality so you can recognize this major problem when you meet it.

* The teacher saying something impressive does not necessarily make it real; only observation and actual experience will provide us with verification that the teacher’s inspiring words – or their “map” of awakening – match up with their vision. The narcissist personality may dazzle you with descriptions of what they have done … but have you witnessed these results for yourself? Or, do you simply accept what they say, innocently, and at face value?

The good news is that we can learn from anyone, even from the problem (or misguided) teacher. But it is better to find teachers and ritual elders that are more healed than wounded, more educated than uninformed. In your search for higher consciousness and higher chakra development I wish you well in tracking down those who can help you flower into your potential, and I hope that you can avoid those who would waste your valuable time and money. Mae West, a famous actress from the last century, says it best: “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.” Choose a spiritually-rich and generous teacher, a person who wants you to grow, and not someone whose actions exploit you for your riches.

Now I was sitting on Napolitano, a full-blooded Lippizan horse, and we were slowly treking downhill towards the olive fields and vineyards that surrounded our hotel. We were not getting along very well. Napolitano was young, but slow and stubborn. I respect that, but he was also big, strong, and a muncher. Every time we passed anything remotely green he was trying to grab it. There’s a lot of green stuff on a Tuscan hillside, so I was spending all my time trying to manage my horse. Symbolic, no doubt, of my frustrations with having to let go of two weeks of sessions.

I’m not an experienced rider, but I can hold my own with the average horse. And today Napolitano was in Silver Chakra mode, making me do something I didn’t want to do: spend all my time staying on his back while trying to guide him down the dangerously-steep rocky trail. And not fall off. As for the continual munching… very frustrating.

But I’m still only a few days away from my Higher Chakra Intensive in Germany, which has left me open to new experiences and perceptions. A Silver chakra situation calls out what you don’t want to face but must face: it is the hard work part of the transformational process. I begin to wonder what the point of all this struggling is, for me.

Not all of us want to deal with life as a challenge; mostly, we want life to accommodate to our desires, and to our demands. It takes struggle to spur new growth, to create an enhanced response to any life situation. Otherwise, we just stay the same. Without accepting our challenges we will grow older, but we remain the same person inside. It is the level of difficulty, and how we wrestle with it, that stimulates our personal and spiritual development. In this most mundane of moments, I was engaging in only two challenges: to stay on the horse’s back, and to control his head without being overly harsh with pulling on his bit. Sightseeing the vineyards was not currently an option.

Energy healing can be like this, in that we all want to get results but we don’t necessarily want to welcome the drudgery of practice. If we are healers we may want to become a “Master”, or a teacher, or another authority-enhancing title, and with a minimal effort. If we are a healing client we may want someone to do our personal work for us, to hand us all the answers so we can get back to life as usual. Very few of us enjoy the monotony of practice, and wrestling with a strong-willed being. We don’t want to let the Silver (Eighth) Chakra mess with us; we want the Gold (Ninth) Chakra to appear to us with the end result. Personal development is hard work.

Almost two hours later my uncomfortable relationship with the Lipizzan began to change me. My heels were down, not because of what I had been told but because, well, because that is how you stay on your horse as you descend a steep rocky trail. But you need to take care. Feet too close to his belly and it may trigger a cantering response, while too far away and you can slip off the horse’s back. Repetition results in competency. Also, my attention has been moving continually down, not through my feet chakras as usual but through Napolitano’s body, and into his hooves. I am no longer two legged, but a four-legged creature.

It’s now the end of the ride, and we are returning back up the hill. I’m standing up in the stirrups to shift my weight forward and off his back, to make the climb easier for him. My stubborn silver muncher is breathing harder, and our male competitive natures have relaxed and come together, so as to manage the steep climb efficiently. Then my heels accidentally touch his belly, and the Lippizan surges powerfully uphill, and we are joined as one. Silver is transformed into gold, and I am no longer the rider. For a few seconds I am centaur, and not just a man. Sightseeing is not why I am here; it is for this experience that I am here.

It is the day after my Higher Chakra Intensive in Germany and Yui and I are in Tuscany for Lipizzan horse riding, and to pay a visit to Florence. And I feel awful. The base of my neck is tightly contracted, and I have a headache. My brain is slow, and although I am functioning fine there are no thoughts in my mind. Oh, and it feels like someone is holding a flashlight over my forehead, and everything is very bright. Even with my eyes closed, and in a darkened room.

Welcome to chakra upgrade time. It’s not always fun.

With intellectual studies you can expect to feel tiredness after all your efforts. You may even have a normal tension headache. That’s to be expected. But with consciousness transformation studies, such as spending time with a spiritual teacher or the days following a meditation retreat, there are often physiological changes that may be a result of an energetic upgrade to your auric consciousness system. These upgrades may be uncomfortable or – as in my case – downright painful. They usually pass after a few days, and so there is nothing to do but wait for integration to happen. Discomfort is part of the price we all pay for change.

When we attend any kind of spiritual healing training we are not just spending time learning from the teacher, but we are making ourselves available to the spirit world that accesses the material and etheric world through that teacher. In previous blog entries I have stressed the need to assess your teacher thoroughly, as well as suggested some differences between initiation (transformation into a whole new stage of consciousness) and an “upgrade” (a shift in level of consciousness and chakra functioning). The ideal teacher has moved through various initiations and upgrades of their own, and can now act as a doorway for others. But you should know that an uninitiated/failed initiation teacher cannot fully initiate others; they can only unconsciously exploit the longing of their students for authentic initiation. They cannot take you to where they, themselves, have not evolved. And how to spot the difference? An initiated teacher helps you grow and become free to fly on your own; an un-initiated teacher keeps you in bondage to them.

At the Higher Chakra Intensive I would spend a lot of my time lying on the floor, closely attending to Rosalyn’s words, but mostly my eyes were closed and I was in a state of rest. Yes, I had jet-lag, and the Intensive was a welcome break from my busy private practice, but there was more was going on than mere recuperation. My system was being rewired, by the spirit helpers in the room.

I would not have trusted this “upgrade” process to anyone, or just to any energy healing event. In fact, on many occasions I have consciously erected psychic boundaries and rejected spirit beings who wanted to mess with my auric field. Why? Because it did not intuitively feel right to me at the time, and I seriously questioned their motivations. Just because spirit beings don’t have a body does not mean they always have our well-being as their highest priority. It is important not to confuse naivete with a healthy trust.

In my case, clearly the chakra upgrade work is centered around Talu chakra (brainstem), Sahasrara (crown chakra) and Ajna chakra (aka, the sixth chakra. Verification of my current state came from Yui, who experienced a similar upgrade experience at the similar Higher Chakra Intensive with Rosalyn many years ago. That’s how you get useful feedback, by the way: from someone who has been through the process themselves. Experience beats opinion hands down.

Upgrades occur in any chakra. If you are doing a creative movement or dance workshop, the upgrade can occur to Muladhara chakra; your physiology and balance may become altered. If you are doing emotional clearing or trauma healing work, the upgrade will be in Swadhisthana, your second chakra. You will begin to “feel” emotional attachments to others shift to a higher functional level, and you may gain increased emotional safety. And so on, up the chakra system. Upgrades will alter the chakra that is related to the issue you are transforming in your life.

So, before you grab your aspirin or head out for a CAT scan to search for physiological complications, wait a few days after your workshop or retreat. If the discomfort subsides, and your mind becomes still and clear, know that your energy consciousness system is “rebooting”, and you will be starting at a new level in your personal growth.

Be willing to be uncomfortable, upon occasion. The wiring of your auric system will always need to be upgraded in order for you to progress as a spiritual being … which means you will need to embrace upgrades and change. And change is not always fun.

Background Info: I studied concurrently with Rev Rosalyn Bruyere and with Barbara Brennan from 1988-1992, yet still consider Rosalyn my primary inspiration for energy healing knowledge and guidance, despite my long and loyal career at BBSH. I feel tremendous gratitude to Rosalyn for her generous spirit and vast knowledge base over the decades, and I am looking forward to this particular learning – and nourishment – experience in Germany. So much so that I’d like to share it with you.

For new student healers unaware of Rosalyn, she is the premier spiritual healer and energy healing ritual elder in North America, with skill sets ranging across multiple disciplines such as mediumship, energy healing scientific and medical research, Native American ritual eldership, Ancient Egyptian mystery studies, and Bon (Shamanic Tibetan) studies. When Barbara Brennan wanted training as an energy healer prior to opening her school she chose Rev. Rosalyn Bruyere. The BBSH chelation and brain-balancing skills are both descended from Rosalyn’s original techniques, and are taught at BBSH by permission. In conjunction with her partner Ken Weintrub, a martial arts instructor and healer, she currently teaches high-level Energy Healing intensives internationally.

DAY ONE: Wednesday September 8, 2010

2.00 am: I’m wide awake early in the morning at the Sonnenstrahl Retreat Center, just outside of Munich. After two days of traveling to Germany from North Borneo, which including a missed flight in Malaysia and a short layover on the Persian Gulf, Yui Wang and I finally arrived here earlier yesterday. After a typical German breakfast of freshly-baked bread, cheese, granola, and yogurt we did manage to grab a few hours of sleep but we feel remarkably fresh after our long journey. Flying West around the globe does produce a less brutal jet-lag experience than when flying East, but it still knocks you off your game. Luckily, the cultural matrix in Germany is heavily grounded into the earth and – like our solid breakfast – will anchor us quickly.

My hopes for live-blogging directly from the Intensive floor itself were dashed upon arrival when I discovered that the retreat’s Wi-Fi exists only in the Astro Bar (see below), leaving me to update this page every few hours rather than hour-by-hour. Oh, well.

I do like the Sonnenstrahl retreat center. Most of the staff speak good English, which is great because my Deutsch is minimal (mostly confined to basic polite expressions and earthy German expletives). If you are concerned about attending any future Intensive here do not be worried about language difficulties; you’ll manage just fine.

The accommodation rooms are small and very basic, more seminary-style than a regular hotel, but you have everything you need, including a heated towel rack in your room (essential in this damp climate), and a hair dryer (ditto). True, the mattress is a back-ache inviting foam rather than a coiled-spring, but the essential thing you need in Germany is … heat. The rooms do have solid radiators, and are nicely insulated from the outside. Don’t forget to bring a bunch of those pig-nosed German electrical adapters, for your electronics and your computer. In a nutshell, everything here is very functional, and I would expected nothing less from the German people. They do lose points for an absence of wide-ranging Wi-Fi access, however.

The dining room here is delightful, and the buffet dinner food last night was excellent. I’ve been on other Intensives at retreat centers, and I usually lose a kilo or two because the food, well… it usually sucks. But no weight loss here, methinks. Delicious vegetarian food, significant root vegetables, German beer or apple juice to accompany the evening meal, and I may as well kiss my waistline goodbye right now.

We met Rosalyn and Ken briefly, in the hallway, soon after we first arrived. They both look rested and in good health, and are clearly happy to be here. They told us that there will be 120 participants this week, the perfect group size for this retreat center. There will be English-to-German translation, so while I will miss Rosalyn’s trademark quick-fire delivery there will be additional time for reflection between translations.

I’ll update again in a few hours, and just add to this page as we move through our first day here. Feel free to post your questions or comments in the “Leave a Reply” box below, and I’ll try and respond to your specific needs.

8.15 am

Heading out to breakfast, on this misty and cool morning. I’m watching hearty German people jogging along the road, in front of the retreat center, and then Yui and I will walk over to the Intensive room, for a 10.00 am start with Rosalyn and Ken. Well, I’m guessing more like 10.30 am …

9.40 am

Yui and I have staked out our place in the prepared Pyramid Room: our home at the Intensive for the next few days. People are still having breakfast, but we will be starting soon.

6.00 pm: The first day morning session ran from 10.00 am to 1 pm, and was a delightful introduction to Rosalyn’s work here in Europe. My concern that her natural flow of teaching would be interrupted by the German translation proved not to be the case; bite-sizing her teaching topics allows for more digestion of the material, and additional coherence. Similarly, when Ken added his own observations or comments to the mix the translation “pause” worked well for me, as an English speaker. More space between their sentences led me to a deeper appreciation of their material.

Rosalyn began the morning by talking about brain research, and the process of remembering things as she becomes a little older. Then she branched out into family stories, a familiar teaching motif of Rosalyn’s teaching delivery, but always important to track. She is not rambling. These tid bits of her family life always contain extreme relevancy to the topic, and it pays dividends to listen carefully.  Sure enough, she suddenly began to relate the first six major chakras to that which embodies your family history, and the challenges of your current personality. Then came the important statement: “What is in your seventh, eighth and ninth chakras is what is in your distant past, and in your (impersonal) distant future.” Where the first six chakras are orientated around developing your shortcomings and growing as an individual, the upper chakras extend Rosalyn’s seven-colored chakra model into a Silver center and a Gold center, adding another intake and output chakra to her existing schema.

The importance of the chakras as alternating intake and output functioning is fundamental to Rosalyn’s way of working as an energy healer. For those of you interested in this I highly recommend you attend one of her Intensives and find out all about this directly from her. The gift you will give yourself is to bridge an intellectual understanding of the chakras and their function with a practical experience that to what is useful, not merely adding information to what you already know.

Then she is back to talking about brain research, as well as meditation states, and the importance of daydreaming. And, of course, she brings in the vital importance of humor. For the first time in twenty-two years of studying with Rosalyn it suddenly dawned on me the tremendous importance in the way she always uses humor in her teaching work:  her humor breaks up our studious egoic effort to stay in safe intellectual territory, and allows for the possibility of a brand-new insight, a life-changing understanding. As well as a delightful part of her personality, Rosalyn’s irreverent humor tips the serious mind off balance, so perhaps something new can come in, through the back door of your awareness.

“Let me tell you how I define neurosis: it’s the inability for us to learn from experience.” – Rosalyn L. Bruyere.

Rosalyn was now at the whiteboard, and drawing out the four directions, while stressing the need for equal personal development in mind, body, emotion, and spirit. The upper chakras extend this personal growth towards your own hidden potential, inclusive of service towards others. The upper chakras combine our highest nature (and what we create or attract into our lives) with a higher perspective: that which connects us to something greater than the personal self.

So, healing our neurosis (breaking apart intellectual stagnation and learning to move past our habits or family patterns) is the transformational work of the first six chakras. The practical uses of the seventh, eighth, and ninth chakras are a leap above the personal, into our higher consciousness. These higher chakras speak a different language to the first six chakras. How do I know this? Because Rosalyn has just launched into an entertaining tale about her pet parrot,  and the wild parrots now hatched in her front yard. This was going to be long – and fun – story …

8.00 pm

The afternoon segment of Day One, a few hours ago, was a stretching and exercise class with Ken. An integral part of Rosalyn and Ken’s Intensives is the emphasis on the physical development work of being a healer. For healers, exercise that stretches, strengthens, and integrates spiritual concepts into the physical world is not an option; it’s a requirement. It’s not enough to simply “intend” energy to move; one must actually move the muscle, the limbs, the breath. Only then can the prana flow strongly, and can change things.

Getting healers into their body and away from intellectualizing the material is far more than just an add-on addition to Rosalyn’s map; it is the foundation of it. One example of this came later during the evening segment when Rosalyn moved into a demonstration of how she and Ken work in a hospital setting. Avoiding any esoteric hand movements is an important part of working in any medical facility, or other public setting, Rosalyn stressed. Don’t scare people. Let me show you, she said.

Rosalyn took up a standing position behind a seated Ken, to demonstrate how to run energy into someone’s heart area. To most beginners it would look like a relaxed Rosalyn with hands resting lightly on Ken’s upper chest. But feel into the energetics of this demonstration and you become aware of Rosalyn’s strong rooting into the earth, with her casual hand placement energetically very active. Look and feel into the demonstration even closer, and you can perceive her auric field wrapping around Ken, first to make gentle and peaceful contact, and then to begin increasing the joined field strength. No theatrical gestures or statements here; just deep contact, caring, and the boosting of energy fields.

Rosalyn then made an almost imperceptible shift in her hand placement, her energy fingers deepening directly into heart tissue, while making a parallel movement in the upper part of her auric field. Now she seemed to be embodying the practical use of the material we were studying – the use of the upper chakras – in how to become available to a miracle happening, (i.e., a positive event outside of the healer’s design that occurs during the act of healing.)

Learning how to be available for a miracle happening for the client seems to be an important part of this Intensive. We are not so much “intending” or controlling the flow from the higher chakras (using our personal preference as to the outcome) as aligning ourselves in a balanced way, and  being open to a higher outcome to present itself to our client. Watching Rosalyn work I began to look at my own style of working, with its strong focus on energy flows, and astral clearing. I can begin to see where the next level of my development can start to open: for a miracle to happen for my client, something outside of my knowing or intention. And, something that I can never take credit for…

Yui and I have now shifted our position from our seats at the back of the room and closer to the action, so that we can more easily observe Rosalyn and Ken work on an intensive participant. I have been aware of the multileveled teaching style Rosalyn uses for two decades, and yet it still impresses me every time I see it in action. The best analogy I have is that of visiting an Egyptian temple, where ordinary people will only see the statues, the symbols, and perhaps listen to the stories. But look deeper, and you can feel how the statues run powerful energies, see how the symbols have multiple levels of meaning, and allow the stories to change your life. It’s up to the student, not up to Rosalyn, in deciding what to take away from each healing demonstration, or lecture. As students it is our job to pay attention, to strive to drop our intellectual rigidity, and to endlessly cultivate Beginners Mind. Only when we are willing to let go of what we think is happening can something new enter into our consciousness. Our work as healing students is the polar opposite of the Western way of accumulating knowledge; our work is to let go of what we know, again and again, and …. to wait for a miracle.

More questions from the group come, but it’s been a long day and I’m losing interest and getting sleepy, ready for my jet-lag induced sleep. As I leave the Pyramid Room I am grateful for being here, today. And, I note to myself, I have changed.

DAY TWO: Thursday, September 9 , 2010

8.30 am: A late breakfast, but I am feeling nicely rested today. The rain is clearing, and we will have a blue sky and some sun today. .

5.30 pm.

Looking around the Intensive, you know you are getting old when all the new participants look like babies.

“I want to remind you about our schedule … in the morning with do the technical material and in the evening we do the spiritual stuff…” So began Rosalyn on Day Two of the intensive. She continued, “ I can’t emphasize enough to energy healers that you must understand energy theory. Healing is not going to become more religious, it is going to become more technical. You have to be able to explain what it is you do…”

Rosalyn and Ken had started the day with questioning how fast thought is transmitted across space, before transitioning into talking out the various vibrational rates of the organs within the body. Then we jumped into a discussion about auric vision (more accurately, auric “perception”), and the necessary ability of healers to assess the energy body. These were connected discussions, linking in to  yesterday’s material (“don’t limit any outcome from your healing work”) and into the energy healer’s ability to know something about the client’s auric field prior to working on them.

Rosalyn chose a German participant from the front row and demonstrated basic hand scanning, and then did a drawing of what she had picked up, on the whiteboard. Fifteen minutes later we were all happily hand-scanning a partner, and then were instructed to use a specific energy healing procedure: running energy into the lungs. Finally, Rosalyn led the group through an intermediate-level organ-balancing protocol, giving all the participants a chance to work on their practice partner, and to learn something about organ vibrational states.

Yui and I worked on each other, and I was happy to feel my lungs quickly return to good functioning after our long trip from SE Asia.

There are multiple advantages to learning energy healing skills in any group setting such as this one. Firstly, the leader of the group energetically holds the skill as a template, and then transmits (“teaches”) it to attendees. The skill presented will be interpreted at multiple levels dependent, of course, upon the openness of the student. For the beginner student, it may be their first introduction to tangible energy work. For the intermediate-to-advanced practitioner it is a chance to upgrade what they already know. If we bypass our Western habit of exams (ie, performance for authority) this form of transmission teaching can move us quickly past the rational mind and directly into a significant energetic upgrade.

Rosalyn and Ken were now teaching the technical aspects of the higher chakras. The Seventh Chakra is the gateway out of the body, where we leave at the point of sleeping. The Eighth and Ninth Chakras are not fixed in permanent locations but move in specific ways, and relocate themselves according around the spiritual needs of the individual. The intake function of the Eighth (Silver) Chakra brings challenges and opportunities towards you that you are not yet ready to fully master. The output function of Ninth (Gold) Chakra is that state of highest resonance: your potential – and ultimate – future.

Rosalyn demonstrated the various positioning of the Silver and Gold chakras, leaving me both observing and to do my usual cross-cultural internal comparison of the material. It always helps me to understand new things by comparing it with something I know from another system. Rosalyn’s system of aura dynamics always hits me as hydraulic in nature (ie, practical, down-to-earth, extremely functional) rather than vague and New Age (as in “just set your intention”), while at the same time her teaching style always provides multiple access points to much higher levels of understanding. Remember my Egyptian temple metaphor from earlier in the article? Listening to the practical functioning of the Silver and Gold chakras began to lead me down some speculative paths.

One of the thoughts I had was a fascinating concept in psychology called Affect Theory, which is Tomkin’s idea of biologically-based motivators (See Donald L. Nathanson’s book, “Shame and Pride”). Affect Theory is one of the many recent paradigm shifts in psychology, suggesting that all human experience is filtered through nine discrete feelings (or affects), and that these all lead into a stimulus-response pattern. Therefore, a “crisis” is necessary to occur in the seeking of any emotional resolution, or personal growth-enhancing situation. This is how we evolve as psychological and emotional beings.

I began to wonder if the function of the Silver and Gold Chakras could be a variation on Affect Theory, if applied to soul development. The use of the Silver Chakra (that which pushes you towards what is challenging for you to experience – or to come to accept – about life) and the Gold Chakra (your potential and integral creative experience that comes along after the challenge is completed) suddenly took on a coherent meaning for me as I sat in the room. Perhaps the Eighth (Silver) Chakra attracts life lessons to us (or challenges), activating the stimulus-response pattern (of letting go of our habitual viewpoint and opinion so as to re-initialize the consciousness system with something new) via interaction with the Ninth (Gold) Chakra. So, we accumulate life experience and can choose to be stimulated into greater growth by confronting something that is uncomfortable (Silver Chakra), even though the process eventually asks us to drop everything we have accumulated throughout the learning process except for the distilled soul’s knowledge (Gold Chakra). Alchemy?  Perhaps. It’s very Hegalian, also. Hmmm, my jet-lagged brain is slow but happily chewing on all this new information. But I suspect that this may not necessarily be what Rosalyn is teaching or meaning here, so I will be staying open to other possibilities.

It’s getting late, and today the Intensive material has spiraled around the Higher Chakra teachings, dipping down into the foundations and practice of energy healing theory, swirled up through snippets of medical and scientific research, keeps shining a searchlight on miracles and on faith, before it once again has dived down into the physical body. And right now my own physical body is tired, but in a good way. Time to grab some rest.

DAY THREE: Friday, September 10 , 2010

In Day 3 we are transitioning from the Silver and Gold chakras into the practical uses of running gold energy with clients. Ken has been teaching some Qi Gong and martial art exercises to help develop the ability for participants to run this particular frequency, which is good for nervous system conditions.

Rosalyn has also been lecturing extensively on the gold frequency, and its uses, with almost no emphasis on the silver frequency. One of the things that strikes me about this particular Intensive is the time spent on the extremely practical application of energy healing. In other Intensives I’ve attended with Rosalyn there has always been a heavy weighting of the material towards spiritual development, with energy healing skills sitting on the sideline. Now I feel I’m taking classes at an energy healing school, with Rosalyn and Ken taking participants through both demo and practice sessions. This is great news for both new and experienced energy healers looking for quality training.

Rosalyn presented example after example of the uses of the gold frequency, from direct transmission to fine, laser precision work. While there is little time to practice every skill she mentions we are left inspired to learn more, and to study more. There is so much to learn.

“The most fun thing in the spiritual world is to take the spiritual and lofty and make it real practical” – Rosalyn L. Bruyere

Despite the rich material there is plenty of opportunity for questions, and  I am left feeling full and satisfied with the day. But we have a special evening planned tonight, as Rosalyn will be ordaining one of the German students. This is a rare and auspicious event, as ordination with Rosalyn is not just a case of a student showing up and doing a certain number of intensives with her; it’s about being ready to take a huge step into service for others.

DAY FOUR: Saturday, September 11 , 2010

We’ve listened to a lot of information about the Silver and Gold chakras, and experienced some useful practices that help a student healer channel gold energy into the top of the head. One student pointed out that he observed different colors of gold energy in the pyramid room as people worked, with which Rosalyn concurred. Just as there are different kinds of gold metal in the earth, so there are different colors of gold energy that each healer will run.

There was a short discussion about how to get gold energy to run, and more general questions around related topics. But it looks today like we are transitioning into another useful skill for healers: the brain balancing technique. Earlier in the week Rosalyn had taught us a simple but powerful breathing technique to open up the head, and the brain balancing skill seemed like a natural part of that sequence.

The group split up into pairs, and began to practice this most important of skills. Every energy healer will use variations of this skill on a regular basis.

Afterwards, Rosalyn talked to us about using crystals and certain stones for healing, as one way to boost the different frequencies available for healing. She related the qualities of minerals and chemical composition of stones to specific needs of the physical body.

Now we are back to our main topic: The Silver Chakra “pushes” you, and the Gold  Chakra “pulls” you. “Your best self pushes you towards your possible self”, said Rosalyn. “… and there is no end.”

But we were looping back to a familiar and important theme: the importance of developing and maintaining a strong physical body while also developing increasing chakra frequency versatility. In essence: practice. The more you do – either in the gym or in your healing practice – creates even more energy to be available. This is what we pass on to clients, to either reduce their suffering, or enhance their healing process. But we all need to work at it, we all need to study and practice.

In answer to a question Rosalyn pointed out that the rising of the kundalini is only a problem for intellectual people, as increased prana overstimulates the rational mind and can drive some people a little crazy. But if you are strong in your body, and grounded, you can increase your pranic level safely and get good results.

Looking around the intensive I can truly appreciate the strong community formed, here in Germany. I can only expect Rosalyn’s influence on European healers to grow in the future, given the richness and depth of the energy healing training she and Ken are offering here, with four Intensives each year in Germany.

But now it’s time to pack up our things soon, as we must leave the Intensive early. We have a flight to Tuscany in the morning, causing us to miss the group closure on Day Five. I do hope these few notes I’ve jotted down during this event have been useful to you, and perhaps even inspire you to study with Rosalyn and Ken in the future. There is no other teacher of energy healing in the West that comes close to Rosalyn’s skill, knowledge, and experience, and we are most fortunate that she and Ken offer these ongoing Intensives for us all. Please take advantage when you can, and I don’t think you will be disappointed.

For myself, I can most definitely leave the Intensive in a place of expansion and increased insight, especially around an increased appreciation of the practical uses of the higher three chakras. My main insight has been the importance of activating the “miracle” energy: supporting a client to move from ideal resolution towards the potential self. For this, we as healers cannot plan or even have an opinion for the client … we can only help them move from a painful or restricted place inside themselves, track where they are being pushed (Silver) or pulled towards an as-yet unknown expression of their Golden potential. This is our act of service with others: to help where we can, and to let the Gold – and God – do the rest.

Related post: Chakra Upgrade.

A recent interview with Rosalyn Bruyere.

Upper chakra energy work consists of:

1. Guiding the natural energetic flow of prana up the client’s Sushumna nadi (the energetic aspect of the spinal cord) with the intention to widen it, allowing for more bandwidth to become available for Earth Qi to energize the client’s system.

2. The previous clearing work on Talu chakra (during the first two sessions of the Six Session Series) is then taken to the next level by drawing refined prana (i.e., prana now transmuted through the client’s consciousness system from journeying up the chakra system) around, and into, the depolarized and astrally-cleared brainstem.

3. The flow of refined prana is then directed up and towards the back of the head, to nourish Bindu chakra, and access to the Higher Astral.

4. This increasingly highly-energized prana is then directed horizontally through the structures of the energetic brain, inclusive of the pineal and pituitary glands, the amygdala, and related structures.

5. The final destination for this protocol is Agnya chakra: the third eye, and pre-frontal lobe development. The pranic flow terminates here, feeding Agnya chakra with information gleaned from its journey throughout the entire energy body. Agnya chakra can now provide the specific insights needed for further personal growth.

The practical result of all this work is to support or stimulate the client towards increasingly higher levels of consciousness. In effect, it speeds up your personal process. All of us are wired for upper chakra functioning, but most don’t have it activated or integrated into their functioning senses. This work is designed to help you gain access to greater insight, and increased perception.

The final part of any Six Session chakra work is to encourage the Guru chakra to enhance its connections with the lower and more personality-focused (or individuated) chakras. The Guru chakra, located just above the top of the head, contains the distillation and advanced witnessing capability that reduces all life experiences into distilled soul learning. It digests and leaves behind personality-driven memories, and deposits only spiritual awareness and compassion into the higher consciousness of the soul.

This is what we take with us into our next incarnation: distilled life experience, drawn through the Guru chakra. What is not fully processed or completed in our lives may remain lodged in the auric field until such a time as it can be solved in another incarnation. Undigested life lessons are the subject of Past Life healing, and are dealt with separately outside of the Six Session Series format. Past Life healings move towards completing the life lessons of a previous life, thereby freeing up vital reserves of “auric processing power” for our current incarnation.

To book for a Six Session Series please go here for more information.