Open Your Heart, The Healthy Way

Summary

Esoteric concepts such as the chakras often spark controversy. Some say they are empirical facts. Some say they're just interesting metaphors. Some dismiss them as sheer quackery. What are we to make of the competing claims of scientist and sage?

The answer is that chakras are a real interior experience. If you look "out there" in the world of electrons and photons, you won't find any chakras. You will, however, find organisms whose interior experience consistently includes chakras. As such, they are a valuable tool for practice. Their purpose is not to describe or control the exterior world, but to clarify our inner experience. Their purpose is to support us in our practice and thereby help us grow into our full potential.

The secret to healthy heart-opening is simple: align your lower chakras first. This will improve your functioning in your family and immediate group relations. It will help you to integrate your fundamental drives for food, sex, and power. This means less pain and frustration, more confidence and wellbeing, and a deeper connection with everyone in your life. But there's more. Based on her extensive teaching experience, Michal reports that once you do this work, your Heart Chakra will open almost automatically. Align and integrate your lower chakras, and your higher chakras will start falling into place.

This dialogue is not to be missed. At the end of the talk, Ken makes a comment to the audience that leaves no doubt about his regard for Michal as a teacher: "One of the unique things about Michal is that it's been her own awakening that has showed her these various points and facts and issues about the chakras. As she says, she wasn't really trained or taught. I'm often a little bit suspicious about that, because the traditions are there for a reason. But, once in a while, somebody comes along who's done that, who is basically in full accord with the traditions but is bringing something else - something fresh and new - through in the process. Those individuals are really worth studying with because they are extensions - sort of a transcend and include of the traditional lineage minds that are out there."

For more about chakras and subtle energies, be sure to read Ken Wilber's extraordinary essay Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies here on Integral Life.

For more information on Michal Levin, visit her website.
 
Retreat in Northern California March 4th - 7th 2010

This intensive with Michal will take place at Commonweal Retreat Center on the edge of a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It is one hour north of San Francisco. The retreat will be an introduction to Michal's energy work, covering the chakras and her own unique meditation technique, known as LEAP or Life Energy Activation Process.  For more information please contact felicity@michallevin.com  
 
http://www.michallevin.com/group_retreats.php
 

     Instant Insight

• Once you align your first three chakras, your higher chakras will open almost automatically.
• Opening the heart without the first three chakras in place is unwise. It leads to "bleeding heart syndrome," where you have plenty of care and compassion, but no grounding or power to do anything effective in the world.
• All of the higher chakras are harmonics of the first three. They repeat the same characteristics, but in a finer and more mature form. This means that problems at the higher chakras are often solved by addressing their lower counterparts.
• Because of its connection to the voice, the fifth chakra can be an important indicator of what's going on in your whole body. When any part of you is out of balance, it will also show up in your voice.
• As a harmonic of the the third chakra, the sixth chakra (the Third Eye) is a concentrated point of knowledge and power. Some even associate this point with the emergence of intuitive and psychic abilities. But one thing is sure: if the lower chakras are aligned, it is knowledge and power in the service of all, governed by an open heart.
• Regarding all visualization practices, Michal invokes an eloquent line from William Blake: "If sun and moon should doubt, they'd both go out." In other words, visualization practices require the willing suspension of disbelief. You are engaging your capacity to form images and also your body-sense, in its various levels of subtlety. You don't have to believe that there's something "real" going on outside of you, you just have suspend your disbelief for a moment - service of becoming a more integrated and functional human being.
• As you advance in your chakra practice, be willing to allow yourself to be called back to the lower chakras. This does not mean that you are regressing or slipping backward in your practice. Rather, it is another turn in the spiral of development - returning to where you began and seeing it for the first time. You are now able to deepen your alignment in a way that is guided and informed by the work you have done at the higher levels.