Remembering “The Chakra Man”
The idea of chakras has been with me since my teens. I created my first spreadsheet listing all their known attributes sometimes in 1996 or 1997. But today, I just came across something I completely forgot about – an open letter to my close friends that I published online in February 2004, just about 15 years ago. At the time, I was still battling chronic fatigue. I enlarged an outline from a book to match my own size, filled it with colors and pasted it on the wall of my meditation room. Here is what I had to say about it at the time – little did I know…
[UNEDITED ENTRY FROM FEBRUARY 2004]
I guess I should explain for those of you unacquainted with this. Chakras are just one speckle of the ancient Indian knowledge about human body and it’s energies. The most “westernized” version of this can be found in later-developed Chinese Acupuncture. Everyone knows about the system of “points” which can be efficiently worked with. Well, chakras are the 7 main clusters of such points, but there are really thousands of them. As you see on my picture, each has its own color and they are the colors of light spectrum – a rainbow. But each charka has also “attached” sound, smell, element, musical note, planet, sense, organs and glands etc. So, when you have a problem with one of your chakras (or corresponding organs), you can expose yourself to the appropriate elements and get it back in balance. In this case, my “Chakra man”, which is in my body size, exposes me to the bright clean colors in the appropriate hight.
What I find fascinating is how complex, yet down-to-earth and non-mystical this knowledge is. And how we attach the appropriate colors to the appropriate events and occurrences in our lives without even knowing why. The bottom chakra is red and it has the direct relation to sexual organs – and that’s why we have the “Red-light districts” or sexy red underwear. The heart chakra is the chakra of pure love and healing – and all pharmacy signs and many hospital walls are green. Besides the green, it also has “flashes of pink”, which I
And learning. I realized that this type of knowledge requires learning the same way geography or history does. “Knowing about it” is not the same as “knowing it”. I know about the American Civil War, I know the reasons behind it, but I don’t remember the dates, names of generals or places. If I was able to remember, I could compare it with other data and put it all into context. I could say things like “Geez, and this is what the French ladies did when Americans were fighting a war about racism?” when reading about the Paris court. And here I am, barely remembering what I did at the beginning of this month.
Anyway, I recently read a couple of books on various themes, but in a sequence, which made them suddenly make sense. For years I was a Deepak Chopra fan, buying all kinds of books on Ayurveda and alternative healing because I needed to get rid of my tiredness and doctors didn’t know what to do with me. For a year I went to yoga classes because my back hurts. I tried various types of meditation because that’s pushing me forward because it was a practice of both American Indians and Tibetans and thus there has to be something to it. I learned Sanskrit for a while because I was unhappy with the way things were translated, but now remember only how to write my name in Devanagari alphabet. But suddenly I picked up the seemingly diverse books (on Chakras, Tantra and Chronic Fatigue) that were lying around unread and connected all this into one context that it came from.
I believe in the “three times repetition” of information we need to retain. This is the way I learned English. Jim always admired it, but it’s rather simple. Recently I’ve learned the word “cesspool”. I first hear it from Jana, who said it in a conversation with Jim and was able to translate it for me. A week later, Paul talked about cleaning out the cesspool and seeing a rainbow reflected in it, which is a funny enough story to remember the word. Then I saw it in some article and boom – it’s there, it’s mine. I already used it today in this letter – in the appropriate context.
This has worked just the same with the knowledge of chakras, doshas (body types) and other aspects of the Eastern concepts. I read it enough to internalize it and remember it’s meaning, to attach the meaning to the seemingly exotic word or symbol. Now, like an Ayurvedic healer, I’m able to look at a person and say – “Of course, she has problems with digesting and irregular sleep – she’s a typical Vata, what would you expect?” I’ve internalized the knowledge and can see its implementations in daily life. I’ve
Healers don’t need to guess, they know and I can see how they could indeed produce a full diagnosis just by looking at you and observing your body structure, skin condition, hair color, the pace of
Becoming a healer is someplace in the back of my mind. I might have been one in my previous life or some such thing. Or maybe I’m supposed to be one, but it’s a little too much to contemplate
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Well, I guess it did 🙂
Cover image by Okan Caliskan from Pixabay