A chakra meditation I have been engaging with recently and which has also influenced my drawing today….
Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and as you breathe out release the stress and tension in your muscles. With each breath pay attention to your muscles relaxing and the mind slowing down. Breathe into your first chakra or into your belly as deep down as you can, while imagining a red light of physical energy. This is your root or base chakra. Spend some time picturing a ball of red light glowing strongly at the base of your spine and reproductive region. This area has to do with survival, instincts and safety. Then you can explore what emotions, sensations and thoughts or images come up. Now move up just below your belly button, in your mind’s eye. You are now at your sacral chakra. Many important physical organs are located here, as with all our chakras. This area has to do with creativity and sexuality. Spend some time picturing a ball of orange energy and then observe what emotions, sensations, thoughts, memmories or images may come up. Move further up to your yellow chakra, the solar plexus chakra, a little above your belly button. This area stands for power, control and freedom to be yourself. Breathe into to this area while imagining a ball of yellow energy. Spend some time here observing what may come up or what may be blocking this area. Then move to your heart chakra, the green center for love, compassion and balance. Imagine a green ball of light washing over this area. Again you may explore what emotions, thoughts, images come up or what may be blocking this area. Now move up to the throat chakra. Imagine a light blue ball of energy clearing this area to allow free communication, speaking and self-expression. Then go to your third eye chakra, the indigo colored energy center located between your eyebrows. This is your vision center, the area of insight, imagination and intuition. Spend some time here exploring emotions, thoughts and other things that might be coming up. Now moving up from your third eye to the area just above the top of your head imagine a ball of violet light. This area has to do with spirituality connection, unity and knowledge. Spend some time paying attention to what may arise. Continue to breathe, allowing the air to move through your whole body. When you are ready open your eyes and come back to the now.
(https://www.rickhanson.net/writings/just-one-thing/). He writes ‘abuse of power can be called many things, including intimidation, fraud, discrimination, and tyranny. I’ll use a term that’s down-to-earth and gets at our nature as social primates: bullying’. He goes on to say that bullies and bullying are common ‘from homes and schoolyards to boardrooms and presidential palaces, they create a vast amount of human suffering’. He describes bullies as ‘a) Dominating; b) Defensive – Never wrong; fault and scorn others; avoid personal responsibility; c) Deceptive – Manipulate grievances to gain support; blame scapegoats; cheat; hide truth since power is based on lies’. He writes deep down ‘the mind of a bully is like a hell realm of fended-off feelings of weakness and shame always threatening to invade’ so this suffering deserves our compassion. He also makes suggestions of how to deal with bullying at all levels from naming the bullying for what it is and confronting their lies and their denial of the harm they’re doing to confronting enablers that are complicit in bullying to engaging the legal system and so on. And finally, he reminds us to see the bigger picture and the fact that ‘bullying is enabled and fostered by underlying conditions’.
I hope to describe the process in some future post. Meanwhile, here’s a short extract from her book of the many un/conscious negative core beliefs that we often carry: ‘In this week, we will work at uncovering our negative beliefs and discarding them. Here is a list of commonly held negative beliefs: I can’t be a successful, prolific, creative artist because: Everyone will hate me. I will hurt my friends and family. I will go crazy. I will abandon my friends and family. I can’t spell. I don’t have good enough ideas. It will upset my mother and/or father. I will have to be alone. I will find out I am gay (if straight). I will be struck straight (if gay). I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool. I will feel too angry. I will never have any real money. I will get self-destructive and drink, drug, or sex myself to death. I will get cancer, AIDS—or a heart attack or the plague. My lover will leave me. I will die. I will feel bad because I don’t deserve to be successful. I will have only one good piece of work in me. It’s too late. If I haven’t become a fully functioning artist yet, I never will. None of these core negatives need be true. They come to us from our parents, our religion, our culture, and our fearful friends. Each one of these beliefs reflects notions we have about what it means to be an artist’.