Reclaiming the Waters - Sacred CentersSacred Centers

Last night I was teaching about the second chakra, focusing on its element: water. I live in California, where we have extreme drought, yet recently I traveled from parts of the country buried in snow and ice, while other areas are drowning in rain. We can all see that the waters of the planet are unbalanced right now and becoming more so every year.

Drawing parallels to the second chakra our culture has also repressed sexuality, pleasure, and emotions, to say nothing of the feminine and is it any wonder that the element of water is affected as well?

In our own lives, we sit still at a desk for hours at a time, overriding the body’s basic need to move and flow. We repress emotions, locking their energies into the body and creating density and blockages. We work too hard, forgetting to relax, enjoy, and play.

And then we wonder why we don’t feel good anymore!

Reclaiming the waters of the second chakra is essential for health. Water is cleansing and helps us discharge toxins from the body. Water is renewing, essential for growth. The second chakra opens us to sensation and change, both of which stimulate consciousness and help us evolve.

It was a masculine superimposition that demonized sexuality and pleasure, replacing it with shame and guilt. That is now a plague that is driving our culture to destruction, replacing with more damaging or addictive secondary pleasures. The work of James Prescott shows how societies that repress pleasure and sexuality have been shown to have more violence (witness the Taliban, for example) while permissive societies are more peaceful.

In the ancient texts, the downward current through the chakras is calledbhukti, or enjoyment. To enjoy is to have joy within, just as enthusiasm is to have theos, or the divine within. Can we enthusiastically enjoy what creation has given us? Is that not our birthright?

Today, let yourself out a little. Give yourself a little more room for pleasure, relaxation and fun. Do your part to balance the waters of the world, and enjoy the process!

Light and love,

Anodea

2.26.14