Spirits and Chakras: Making some distinctions

While Catholics know a good deal about how the Spirit has acted in the Church, they've left the spirit of God that's in each of us largely unexamined.  And so a great many Westerners have been uncomfortable in their own skin.  If God's spirit can be treated as an anthropological reality, for a moment, and not something on which one faith corners the market, a great deal more can be said--in a manner, (if you'll permit me to sound a bit nuts,) that's biblical and traditional.  My questions, of course, are about manageable living, coming to acceptance and being humble, but they're just as rooted in becoming intimate with my own incarnation.  What follows is just a roadmap to self acceptance--which will be different for each of us, surely, but worth talking about nonetheless.

I'm convinced: there's no such thing as light or dark energy, only energy to which we're attached or non-attached.  The energy that animates all life is the Spirit of God, and that energy is sentient.  Egoically, the basic human needs manifest as "darker" desires--hyper-focused and possessing their own personalties.  These were the "demons" that the desert fathers fought.  In a similar way, psychologically, the Spirit of God manifests as lighter desires, and appears to come from outside us--as angels, for instance.  It moves through the body and gets a different name for each place it typically comes to rest.  But it's important to note: just like God called himself "I AM," sentient divine energy is just wearing the language of ego and psychology to make itself knowable.  The whole time, it's been within. [bxA]

"Deep calls upon deep, in the roar of waters."  In the chaos of life, energy resonates sympathetically.  It's trying to unite--the world with us and us with each other.  I don't want to talk about that energy, I want to address it.  And I don't want to talk to that energy, I want to be totally united with it.  It's you I'm talking to.

I could say this to my fiancee or to the bodega owner as much as to God's spirit: I don't know that I see you as much as I should or as clearly as I should.  My inattentiveness causes me a great deal of both guilt (which I can change by making amends) and remorse (which my ego won't let go of until I assist "healing and letting go" at doing more of their work.)   A great number of people--from Catholics, to Hindus, to Amazonian Shamans--have been hollering at me for years: there's a need, says their united voice, for purification.  

I'm being called to actively listen, whether sound is present or not.  It's a practice made more difficult by the assault on the senses that modern daily life can be.  Tuning out counts as a survival tactic, but pretty soon someone's got to sing a song about the "sound of silence" in a central park crowd of thousands before I can hear it. I'm being called to take my time, to taste and be grateful for subtler flavors than my salty, fatty, sugar rich diet has, the one I crave to mask stress with.  I feel for the slices of the human family who are so starved for safe affection that they pounce on any touch, (or, hell, any depiction of touch,) like it's bread in the wilderness.  Fasting and consciousness are well nigh impossible in a situation of scarcity.  Despite that, I have to recognize that I'm a being of infinite longings in a world of finite satisfaction.  The Logos is speaking clearly: go within, bear the cross. Take responsibility, be honest.  Otherwise don't be surprised when life is hard--my pervasive escapism, and society's, is always (in some measure) voluntarily chosen.

There are analogues for spiritual energy, and little more.  Spiritual energy is Eden's fourth, secret river, searched for uselessly on land, till at wits end it wells up within.  It is the Christ, faltering up the via dolorosa to the "place of the skull" where the Spirit of the Lord and the voice of honest grief are one, love hangs between worried thieves, and Christ and his devotee are not two.  

However, if we want to be absolutely clear, the energy that is the Spirit of God, (apparent to those who have prayed and purified,) is addressed in the prophet Isaiah.  In what I ultimately think is a description of every human being, it says "The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,  the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,  the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord."

First, this fabulous piece of lectio divina isn't my own: it comes from a woman named Bonnie Breniser.  It's her contention, and mine, that these seven "spirits" are accurate analogues for Hinduism's 7 Chakras.  The truth of it was shockingly clear, and deserving some examination. 

There's a chakra at the base of the spine, where blocked energy causes feelings of neurotic insecurity.  The "spirit" that our reading of Isaiah would place here is the spirit of fear of the Lord.  Let the reader understand, this is more like awe than terror, and it brings to mind biblical voices like the author of of Proverbs.  "Fear of the Lord," says God's Word "is the beginning of Wisdom."

Creativity and healthy sexuality flourish when the chakra just below the belly button is unblocked.  At this chakra, the spirit of knowledge descends and rests.  Therefore, it became a saying that a man would leave his mother, cleave to his wife, and "know her"--so deeply as to become one flesh.

The chakra just above the belly button regulates ego.  In negotiations with this spirit, we work out our relationship--for good or ill--with power.  So the spirit that hovers over this chakra is the "spirit of might."

At the breastbone, at the heart chakra, we're emptied of all of our resentments and willful angling when we're present to the spirit residing there.  Indeed, just as the conquerors of the temple, expecting riches, were surprised to find the Holy of holies completely empty--just as Jesus's sacred heart was emptied by grief and pierced with a lance--in that same way, we will not find real compassion until our hearts are empty as well.  Only then can the spirit of counsel balance listening and speaking with gentleness.  Only then can I find kindness for others, because I've found that their dark corners and mine are the same.

"I thirst!" To me, this is Jesus at his most basic and honest: stripped, as he is, of all theologies and trappings of a teacher. Speaking personal truths is the throat chakra's job. And that's appropriate, because it's the spirit of understanding that rests at the throat chakra. It's a paradox: he who understands speaks his truth plainly, in few words. So it wasn't "I hunger and thirst for this or that Holy Thing as part of this or that spiritual objective." Jesus said "I thirst," and went back to the business of embracing life's paradoxical nature. Jesus was less and less able to avoid, I think, knowing that every bit of living is also a dying, every bit of vitality and rejoicing calls for a measure of grief as well.

At some point, the beloved either internalizes the lover, or dies tormented by longing for him.  Before disciples become masters, students die, teachers perish, and wisdom passes away.  The Hindu teacher Ram Dass said his teacher maharaj-ji vanished after death "because [guruji] had gone inside."  Jesus says Father, why have you forsaken me!--and it was a sign of the third eye chakra opening to the spirit of wisdom that lives there. Jesus' theological worldview had to die--just as much as he himself did. And the sense that "[the Father] who sent [him] is with [him]" had to die too.

In the end, the whole thing becomes positively eloquent. Crucified at "the place of the skull, Jesus gives up his spirit and cries "It is finished." The Spirit of the Lord descends and remains at the crown chakra, atop a brow encircled with thorns. Scores of Hindu teachers say spiritual energy, when it ascends to the crown chakra, yields an experience that can't be accurately described in words. Thomas Merton's words showed this to be true across religious world views: "sometimes no explanation is sufficient to account for suffering. The only decent thing is silence."

So the truth of it is this: those in whom spiritual energy can move freely will move serenely on the earth: their self knowledge will overflow in compassion for others. To paraphrase Ram Dass, when ordinary people attain wisdom, they become sages. When sages attain wisdom, they become ordinary people. 

Like blood or breath, God's spirit animates from the background. That divine intelligence is the most significant thing ever to consent to living in obscurity. In short, it's no big deal. Neither am I. And when it finishes its work in me, I'll see it plainly.