A Path to the Divine in Human Life: The Role of Chakras in Religious Dedication

A Path to the Divine in Human Life: The Role of Chakras in Religious Dedication

Elaine Marie Prevallet, SL 2020 Copyright 2020 Sisters of Loretto All Rights Reserved

Dedicated to all seekers of the Divine and all seekers of peace on planet Earth.

May love draw us together in unity of heart and mind.

With deep gratitude to the Loretto Community and all who have worked to bring this booklet to completion, especially: --to Martha Alderson and Vivian Doremus for careful proofreading and --to Michele Minnis for the final copy edit; --to Sharon Kassing SL for her patient and skillful work of design and formatting; --and for the encouragement and support of the Emerging Forms Committee throughout the process.

Elaine Prevallet SL

Foreword Can you remember when you first became aware of Earth as “our home planet,” a small, round, and very vulnerable object in an infinity of black space—and realized that we humans are essentially “earthlings?” And do you remember the excitement and the reverence with which James Irwin and Edgar Mitchell reported back to us from the moon that our planet “looked like a Christmas tree ornament,” or “a sparkling blue and white jewel…a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery”? “It takes more than a moment,” he said, “to fully realize that this is Earth…home.”1 When did you begin to understand that the roundness of the planet inevitably means that everything is in touch with everything else, and that there is no “away” to throw anything?

Those reflections and questions represent something of my (our) mindset as far back as 1971, the year of the first moonwalk. Writing now, nearly 50 years later, I am aware of how deeply and drastically my own—and presumably “our”—perceptions of our world and our planet have changed. With those perceptual changes, our own identity as habitants of planet Earth has changed as well. Surely, we are now more aware of our planet and how it is positioned in a cosmos whose mysteries we have scarcely begun to uncover. This enhanced knowledge brings home the realization that we have glimpsed only a speck of the marvel of this planet, recognized only the tips of its treasures, and penetrated only the most obvious of its wondrous life-giving mysteries: how life continues to emerge from death, for instance, or how our lives are completely bonded with the air, the water, the soil that this planet provides. The phenomenon of life—our lives—has been sustained by its generosity.

Unknowingly, we have destroyed multitudes of Earth’s species, regarding them as mere commodities, ignoring their role in a larger, more intricately connected whole. And now, even when we know better, instead of treating planet Earth as our cherished home and protecting it, instead of recognizing it as an amazing, beautiful, delicate and vulnerable source of nurturance, we have continued to despoil it. Now, we are trashing outer space: “It’s already getting difficult to operate satellites and conduct launches amid all the junk zipping around up there. Reportedly, there are 4,300 satellites in space, 72% of which are non-functional.2 Further, the U.S. military has recently announced the planned development of a Space War defense unit.

What lens can we find together to imagine and to work our way into a hopeful, peaceful future?

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I share these reflections as a Roman Catholic Sister of Loretto for some 60 years. I have the advantage of a long trajectory of life and the opportunity to reflect on the radical changes that have taken place in every area of my life, years of stretching to change, to include new and extraordinarily widened perspectives, new vocabulary—in effect, a whole new world that continues to change as I watch.

For women like myself who entered Catholic religious communities before the second Vatican Council (roughly prior to 1970), “taking vows” or “making vows” of poverty, chastity and obedience in religious communities, implied something special and separate, esoteric and mysterious, relevant only to a few chosen souls. Through the vows we dedicated ourselves to active lives of compassionate service where there was need; we committed ourselves to deepening union with God in prayer. The vows we made were already packaged, their meanings already interpreted, with a long history of development behind them.

The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience had become fairly standardized by canon laws that were universal in their application to religious communities. In many ways they repressed rather than freed gospel energies. The vow of poverty, usually lived in community, meant “holding money and other goods in common.” A vow of chastity was often interpreted as devaluing human love and placing it in opposition to love of God. The vow of obedience was intended to curb, if not stifle, individuality and expressions of natural talents and gifts. Our lives were grounded in a commitment to ever-deepening relationship to God and Christ through communal and personal prayer and to works of active compassion. However, our lifestyles were clearly separated from ordinary neighborhood living.

The Second Vatican Council helped religious communities open the door to embrace the world. Poverty translated to a simple lifestyle, frugality and seeking to relieve the needs of the poor. Chastity meant loving all people and the whole creation without attachment.

Obedience became listening deeply within to hear the voice of God and doing whatever God, through the community, was calling one to do. Whereas the heart of the matter remained the same, the Council shifted the emphasis of vowed life away from collective identities (a “nun”) and invited individuality and respect for the person. It invited us to engagement with “the world.”

Packaged though they were, the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience became a sturdy container for important gospel values. The vowed life led those who chose it into a life deeply dedicated to seeking God as disciples of Jesus and to a life of compassionate service.

At some point following the Vatican Council, I began to realize that, after a long history, the interpretations of the three areas of those vows—poverty, chastity and obedience—had ii

become ambiguous. Along with many other women religious, I felt the need to acknowledge the change in context. We wanted to see the vows not as separating us from the world but as paths to responsible, compassionate action in the world. We were aware that the gospel invited followers of Jesus to respond to the crying needs of societies and cultures of the world of today. It was no longer helpful to be bound by monastic prescriptions and pieties. In other words, we wanted to develop a contemporary ethos of religious life.3 Many communities, including my own Loretto Community, engaged in de-mystifying these commitments. Just as when we see things differently if we look through a different lens, or view them from a different perspective, so too when we view the vows in a new context, they don’t look the same. This being said, there is no intention whatsoever to set aside or abandon the deep gospel commitment intended in the three traditional vows.

Looking freshly at the meaning and the present practice of these vows, I began to discover that far from being esoteric, these three vows actually involve, or arise from, early instincts that have been the “engine”—the energies—driving the survival and development of all living species from the beginning. It seemed to me that if we understood our vowing as giving a certain direction to these energies, we would find that we are actually consciously connecting our lives with the larger movement of Life that draws the whole process of Life forward. Those three areas, poverty, chastity and obedience, connect or integrate us with our evolutionary history. They are congruent with the energies named in some Eastern traditions (especially Hinduism) by the word “chakras.” I began to wonder what we might discover if we were to recognize the vows as basic human energies embodied in all of us.

In these pages I want to share what has been, for me, a kind of journey of integration. I start with the cosmos because it is critical that we understand how drastically and how speedily this world of ours has changed and is changing! I end with our hearts, alive and ready to be active participants in this present critical phase of our human adventure. I hope those hearts are full of amazement at the miracle of it all. In between beginning and end I want to uncover new approaches that may begin to revive and integrate these life energies so that they may continue to be of service in the world that lies ahead.

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NOTES 1. Kevin W. Kelley, ed., The Home Planet (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1988), 38.

2. Garrett M. Graff, “The Outer Limits of War,” Wireless, July 2018, 44-51.

3. Elaine Prevallet, S.L., In the Service of Life: Widening and Deepening Religious Commitment. (2002); Making the Shift: Seeing Faith Through a New Lens. (2007).

(Nerinx, KY).

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Section I Background: Our Current Consciousness Part 1: Permanence/Groundedness Not long-ago ordinary citizens like me probably considered the quality of permanence an important characteristic of our Earth, one we took for granted. Planet Earth has, for incalculable years, been a stable home to our human species and to all the species that have evolved to this point in planetary history. Of course, we knew we relied on change as a necessity for life, but we regarded permanence as fundamental to our human security. We presumed we put our feet down on terra firma. We were “captivated by the spell of solidity, the fallacy of fixity, the illusion of immobility, the semblance of stasis….”1 But now we have learned that the whole creation, from the tiniest molecules to the sturdiest mountains—everything—is engaged in a continual process of movement, continual exchange. We humans are participators, stewards perhaps, but are we the real proprietors?

As one writer has named it, we are basically “blobs of energy,” energy that extends in and out through us into a vast, unbroken field. Every breath we take, each inhalation/exhalation is affecting the quality of the world around us. We have become aware that every cell in our bodies joins with other cells to form organs and then systems, and each system connects with others into a larger whole, a mysteriously functioning unity, a single human body. In turn, that body depends for its life on being connected into a larger community of humans and other creatures, and all are dependent upon Earth’s processes of producing air and water and food. It is forming a communion of communities, each involved with and depending upon the proper functioning of the others.

We do understand, at least in our heads, that the terra is not so firma. We know that above, upon and underneath Earth’s skin, molecules are engaged in constant creative dances. We talk publicly of an on-going process of melting and disappearing icebergs. In the United States we have watched with awe while what we know as the Hawaiian Islands changes face minute by minute. At the same time, we scarcely notice that large areas of the planet’s land and water are becoming, or already have become, toxic for humans and other living beings. We mostly ignore the possible effect of once-immortal oceans being occluded with 8 million tons of plastic, numerous noxious oil spills and dying coral reefs. Land once rich for farming has become desert; rainforests are being destroyed. At present, increasing areas of Earth that have served as life-fostering elements, that is, its air, water, land and food, are becoming toxic to an increasing number of its inhabitants.

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In other ways as well, our understanding of Earth has changed. Exploration has opened unknown and unchartable reaches of outer space that we once might have thought were “empty.” With this exploration, we now realize that we know only about 4-6% of the universe; even within a very small patch of sky, the Hubbell telescope has found about 5,500 galaxies. Our precious planet is a rather small unimposing body reflecting the sun’s light dimly in our midst. It is still hard for us to imagine a cosmos that has been engaged in a developmental process for perhaps (who can say for sure?) 13 billion years. Young as we are, we are only just beginning to recognize Earth as a single, self-regulating system, a living organism.

Very slowly we humans are learning to reconsider ourselves, from many different angles.

“Being has yielded to becoming; process rather than permanence characterizes the world as we know it.” 2 What does that mean—process rather than permanence? What difference does that make to our human being? How are we to understand ourselves, minuscule human beings on one minuscule and continuously changing planet?

If life itself is constituted by change, how on Earth can we ever feel secure?

We humans have the privilege and the power of consciousness: we can watch, make connections, imagine meanings, recognize development, identify what seems to be progress, and lament what seems to fall short. In accord with our human awareness, we can separate the useful from what seems to be useless, or even hurtful or destructive.

Consciousness gives us an amazing capacity to learn, to know, to communicate, and to appreciate what we experience as beautiful or ugly, as attractive and useful or as distracting and dispensable. In short, we can make judgments, and our judgments, large and small, are at all times changing the world. We are caretakers for planet Earth. We are responsible for recognizing our planet’s health and/or its illness, how its systems thrive and when they are debilitated—and responding appropriately. We need to tend to local situations and to the good of the whole. Such a comprehensive role would require a worldwide perspective and a willingness to engage our energies in broad, wise and careful cooperation.

But we live in a world that seems to be unraveling before our eyes. This unraveling, unveiling, carries with it a growing perception of the utterly amazing connectivity of the universe. It has also deepened and expanded our realization of all we do not know. Even our most powerful instruments can reveal only a tiny portion of the universe. With our Earth eyes, ears, touch, imagination, intellect and technology, we are both blessed and limited when we realize/understand that our Earth is one tiny planet in one of myriad tiny solar systems. In spite of ventures with space travel and Ultra Deep Field Space Telescopes, space and time seem to have become more and more unfathomable, more and more 2

complex and yet, more and more connected and related. Everything that is, is having an effect on everything surrounding it. Everything! It/we are all connected. Duane Elgin describes it as “…a single orchestration happening all at once.”3 Every human is a sentient cell in the body of humanity. Therefore, each of us must act in our own best self-interest as well as for the good of the whole system. As our present generation expands its capacity to explore, it is also increasingly realizing the mindbaffling scope of the human situation. Who are we, really? We have to be awed, perhaps even silenced, by all the possibilities and responsibilities that fall to this human species.

How can we develop an ethic, a consciousness that is broad and deep enough to encompass respectfully all of these relationships?

The ancient psalmist chose words that are very fittingly timeless: “When I behold the heavens, the moon and stars which you put in place, what are we that you should care for us?” (Ps. 18) That is a perennial question for us. Age after age we continue to ask ourselves: who, what are we? What is the purpose of our presence here on Planet Earth? What happens when the context changes, when everything is becoming more complex, more indefinable, more mysterious, more amazing, more expansive? Is there any place or any way to plant our feet and stand steady? How can we find a frame of reference from which to respond to the whole, alongside attention to the critical detail?

Can we trust a creating God deeply enough to live securely and peaceably aware of our total interdependence with and in this continually changing world?

Might religious traditions find ways to honor and respect their differences, while claiming their unity as humans, discovering their essential unity with the whole planetary community of life? Might we join together in a peaceful, unified, process of participation in the evolving life on planet Earth? Can we dream into being a new creation?

The challenge is massive, but ancient wisdom assures us that crises are often the catalysts of opportunities for fresh developments. “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.”4 Are we ready?

Part 2: Interdependence/Connectedness “When our worldview shifts, new possibilities emerge from the very same landscape we already inhabit. …The possibilities…will become clear when your worldview allows you to see them.”5 3

Let’s move to a different perspective. Let’s take a closer look at the endless interconnections that are holding everything together. We spoke above of cells and how every cell of our body is joined to a community of cells that form an organ—our heart, our liver, lungs, pancreas. Each of these organs is also a community of life. None can exist apart from all the others. Each of us is actually a community of communities—“me”—kept alive by cells and organs and systems all working together. Further, we can imagine each human as a cell in the larger body of humanity, responsible, therefore, not just for its own wellbeing, but also for the wellbeing of the whole. If then, we looked at our planet from the perspective of outer space, can we not perceive all living species as a single organism covering Earth, all connected with each other, and connected with every other species in essential life-promoting ways? Can’t we also then recognize how totally interdependent our lives are, and doesn’t that recognition evoke a deep sense of cooperation, of care and responsibility, of gratitude for every single participant?

Some years ago, Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “For our age, evolution means something very different from and much more than having discovered one further fact. It means that we have become alive to a new dimension.”6 (italics mine). What is that “new dimension?

How does it affect us? The worldview has shifted, and our new possibilities emerge! So, now we must see ourselves as active, significant participants in a cosmic evolutionary process. That shift expands our consciousness of who we are, and of what role we play in the unfolding future of the planet. All of our relationships, all of our life energies shift into different configurations. This change places on us a serious responsibility—personally and collectively/culturally—very different from the choices we make right now. In the ways we are altering the planet, we are determining the future that will emerge for humankind and all other species on Earth. Whether we care for the planet or plunder it, whether we keep the soil and the food we grow healthy and sustainable, whether we pollute our water sources or keep them clean, whether we create relationships of enmity and competition or relationships of peace and cooperation with our neighbors all across the planet: our choices are having planet-altering impact in ways both large and small every single day.

When we see our planet and its future in an evolutionary frame, we see ourselves as part of a much larger project than just our own human future. As we have begun to visit the moon and the other planets, we are affecting wider and wider circles of creation. We see that we’re involved in an eons-long development of galactic and planetary scope as well as in the development of the character and quality of what lifeforms will be able to survive, let alone flourish, on planet Earth. In such an immense frame, as we have said, humanity seems to shrink in size; but our sense of responsibility widens and deepens. The universe has been laboring for billions of years to bring us into existence, and now we are participating in the creation of the world of the future.

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What is the role of our species in shaping a world in which all species may flourish long into the future? What is my personal role? How do I wish to direct my life energies?

Our human perception of the world has changed radically over centuries of time. Beginning with early tribal gatherings, our species has formed various social configurations, each representing certain cultural developments of human consciousness. Right now, we are participating in the evolution of our own species—and even more, in the evolution of consciousness itself. Human consciousness has developed the capacity for self-awareness, allowing further development of a sense of ethics and the creation of cultures and civilizations. But we have lost track of our essential life-relationship and dependence upon the rest of creation. Our Earth Mother has been commodified; her life-giving energies turned into “stuff” that may often become environmentally damaging trash. We have lost sight of how gently, abundantly and inconspicuously generous Earth is with her gifts. Our capacity to delight in beauty, for instance; the essential nurturance we receive from green growing plants; our ability to construct needed shelter into homes with material from trees, rocks and soil: we are seldom aware.

Even our capacity for desire, absolutely essential to life’s continuance, even that fundamental gift goes unnoticed. It is desire that draws us to recognize and to reach out to meet our own needs and those of our neighbor. What if our human lives were not deeply enriched with the gift of love? Our capacity to desire and to love is central to our human being: it draws us into connections of every kind, and especially into life-giving relationships. We take all these relationships for granted, without a thought of appreciation or gratitude or reciprocity. Nor do we recognize how, both visibly and invisibly, we depend on these energies that draw us to, and sustain our connection with, the rest of creation.

Amazingly, at the base, it’s simple molecules exchanging with one another that develop into the gift of conscious love!

Technology has connected humanity globally, providing means of instant communication and rapid transportation. We have open entrée into a new phase of exploration, now beyond the boundaries of planet Earth and into a far distant Cosmos. We seem poised at the brink of the Unknown. It is a new connection. Will it occasion a new step in Earth/human evolution? What will it mean for human identity?

We may look back at indigenous cultures who have survived into the present, who retain a very different and intimate relationship with the land and with other-than-human nature.

We may ask ourselves whether we have lost some extremely valuable human wisdom in what we identify as progress. Nevertheless, the development is irreversible: human bodies, minds, and cultures have been evolving. With present-day global communication, our 5

brains are constantly being re-wired. We are being modified with increasing speed, and in ways we cannot recognize or identify. We have become conscious of consciousness, and we are contributing to its development. Our power to affect the planet’s future is far more extensive than we ever imagined, precisely because we are now aware of our role!

How can we open our minds and hearts to understand that our lives are not just about us individually, or even just about the future of our species?

Our individual personal life-energy is participating in shaping consciousness for the future, part of a life process far larger than we can imagine. We need to understand this: our lives are not our own.

How might we shape our consciousness so that this intricate, inescapable connection with each other and with the whole community of life contributes to its flourishing?

Several decades ago, people across the planet began to let a new, expansive perspective give shape and motivation to their lives. Some forerunners dedicated their life-energies to a particular cause, or species or region. Rachel Carson dedicated her energies to exposing the deadly effect of toxic chemicals in our soil and our food; John Seed, to protecting rain forests and Julia Butterfly, the redwoods. Dian Fosse and Jane Goodall have brought the vulnerability of African primates into our awareness, and Greenpeace “warriors” have alerted us to the dangers besetting many species and habitats. Doctors Without Borders have united to share their competencies with needy people across the globe. Teilhard de Chardin’s writings have played a decisive role, and his evolutionary perspective has been spread by the works of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Several Sisters’ communities were quick to put evolutionary thinking into practice.

Especially influential was Miriam Therese McGillis OP, who courageously began a livein teaching community, Genesis Farm, to turn Teilhard’s principles into living reality. That venture drew many communities into a new understanding of the role of the human in an evolving world and shaped the contours of many of the developments that arose in communities of Catholic sisters. These developments would have a strong influence on the future sense of mission among religious sisterhoods.

Many people, mostly unknown to one another, have felt in this new consciousness what they experience as “a call,” something that draws them in a way they cannot deny, that gives meaning and purpose to their lives. They experience something that seems to evoke not just a sense of commitment but of excitement and new energies.7 This commitment gives shape to their desire to live for a higher, deeper purpose, a broader intentionality that motivates their actions and desires. They want to embody a different way of relating to the world. They want to live into a life-style that would enhance the life of every creature on the planet and that would call forth the untapped, unrecognized potential of every human being. It is a very serious, very demanding call indeed, and it is experienced as something 6

given, a matter of fact. Such persons feel a deep need, and a deep surge of energy, to participate in midwifing a new consciousness in human beings on planet Earth.

The movement has continued to grow: many individuals and groups have joined in resisting corporate mining that is plundering the sacred lands of indigenous people across the world; many find themselves drawn to group-resistance, resistance to fracking, to toxins in food production and to climate change. Closer to home, here in Kentucky, Bob and Sharon Ernst have developed a working farm and retreat center named Plowshares where children and adults can learn in a respectful, prayerful atmosphere the meaning of our relationship to land…and where their milk comes from.

The obvious breakdown of systems in our U.S. culture—the increasing effects of climate change, nuclear endangerment, rampant militarism, ocean and soil contamination—all signal a foreboding crisis for the future of the whole planet. Moreover, churches have been struggling to find a contemporary expression for Christian faith to accompany the new and far broader span of a global vision. But, as we have noted, if we pay attention, crises beget opportunities and hope. The number of persons who consider evolutionary theory to be scientifically convincing continues to grow. The old wine skins are proving inadequate to contain the burgeoning new life that is emerging within them. They are splitting open.

Can we humans, with the capacity of love, create a culture that honors all aspects of life on planet Earth? Could we become (to use Judy Cannato’s image)8 a field of compassion spread across the planet? Could my own life-energy be directed toward that end?

Part 3: Power/Cooperation If we look closely at the world around us, we realize that nothing, absolutely nothing, stands alone. We have spoken of the visionary perspective that has led many known and many more unknown persons across the globe to dedicate their lives to trying to raise public awareness of the desperate plight of specific species and habitats. These modern prophets offer their lives to encourage a conscious awareness of the sacredness of all life. That awareness will define a critical part of the mission: specifically, to identify and to care for the members of Earth’s community of life who are the least among us, the ones who are most imperiled, neglected, in danger of dying out.

As we become aware of the presence of the Creating God both around us and within us, we humans begin to seek to reach deeply, to realize our own conscious awareness of our communion with that Holy Mystery in and through the whole of creation. Remember: nothing, absolutely nothing, stands alone. Nothing can rightly be called “my own.” While owning may be a helpful arrangement, the truth is that we do not own anything! Sometimes it takes a loss—a fire, a death, an accident, a species’ extinction—for us to realize that 7

everything we own is in fact received and held as a gift, as is our very existence. That understanding most often comes as painfully gained Wisdom.

Here we meet face-to-face with our own human process of psychological development and spiritual maturity. The role of ego comes onto the stage as we begin to claim identity and learn the meaning of “mine” and “yours.” The ego becomes our sense of who we are, and it will function as the source of both our personal power and our security. On the one hand, it is important for us to develop an identity, an ego that can recognize its responsibilities for the thriving of its own being. On the other hand, spiritual development will require that persons learn the necessity of monitoring ego’s behavior (metaphorically), its tendency to control. One of the most critical tasks of spiritual development may be to discover both the importance and the deceptiveness of ego.

Psychologists recognize that we make up and cling to our own personality, our “illusory self.”9 Our personalities, our individual identities will differ from and may come into conflict with others’, introducing the factor of power into our relationships. Our egos may set themselves in opposition to or competition with each other. If we are to negotiate these issues, we will need to learn to recognize our ego’s elusiveness, its often subtle intrusion in the form of envy or jealousy, demeaning another’s character or accomplishments, making comparisons, needing to be first or best, to be ahead of all others. Or, ego can work negatively, raising fear of failure, preventing or undermining projects we wish to engage.

Our task is to keep close watch of our own motivations and the nature of our self-talk, to learn to identify the machinations of the ego and to consciously relax its grasp on our own will to dominate. We will gradually need to usher the ego out of its central position of dominance, as little by little we learn to place our energies in God’s hands, and find security in trusting that we will have the help, and the outcome, that is needed. Above all, we will need to be honest, willing to admit our weakness and, perhaps, learn to recognize our ego as a familiar friend who helps us stay humbly truthful. We can then allow space for compassion, dialogue, willingness to hear other points of view. We will need to relax these power energies into the heart of an all-loving God. But that development will require consciousness, intentionality. Our first response, when the fight-or-flight impulse in ego guise raises its head, will usually be an effort of possessiveness, dominance, and will to overpower the opposition. We humans have yet to learn that competition is not the engine of survival in this creation.

Let’s turn for a moment to biologists, to see how other species operate here. They report that “nature uses all its ingenuity to prevent competition.”10 Studies suggest that bees, moths, hummingbirds and bats satisfy their appetites and at the same time provide crossfertilization for flowers. An animal eats fruit and excretes undigested seed in a rich supply 8

of fertilizer. (The fruit ordinarily has a mild laxative effect to ensure that the job gets done.)

One bird can break open a nut and enjoy a feast and leave the remains to be cleaned up by another species of bird that happens to like the leftovers. A myriad of scavengers works with lightning speed on animal droppings which provide both their nourishment and enrich the soil. A peony requires the service of ants to eat the sticky surface of the bud, enabling the flower to unfold. Amazing cooperative services of this kind are also observed in aquarian species. They all offer free transportation systems. Species grow in areas that provide friendly, helpful neighbors where services are exchanged. What serves one can serve others in a reciprocal fashion.11 What lessons can we learn from our companion species?

This is not to deny that competition also plays a rightful role in some matters. However, in our present U.S. culture, competition is often the first, dominant response. It would seem that the prevalence and value, the forward movement, provided by cooperation and collaboration ought to be given precedence in human ventures directed toward peace and mutual flourishing. Instead, those approaches are often disregarded or given second place to competition. And when competition dominates, as in accumulation of money and financial prowess, then it is almost inevitable that questions of justice and fair distribution will arise as moral issues. And when competition involves nuclear weaponry, disruption and destruction are inevitable, infallibly impeding the forward impetus of Earth’s passion for Life. The lust to maintain the position of #1 in weaponry becomes the new norm. We fail to remember that our very lives depend upon sharing. From molecules to money: if we do not share, we die, spiritually, morally, humanly.

How can we empower one another to dedicate our energies to providing just and equitable distribution of resources and to replace the current culture of greed and domination?

In response to nature’s exuberant prodigality—color, aroma, sound and beauty of every kind that nourishes our souls—we humans also have the gift of appreciation, of gratitude.

We can enjoy the elan of sharing, which fosters the magnanimity of mind and deepens the capacity for love in our hearts. We need to stay awake lest we become fixated upon competing for possession and fail to recognize the significance of the prodigality with which our Creator has endowed us. The effects of our blindness are obvious as we now experience global distress such as climate change and oceanic pollution, the threat of nuclear accidents and so many disastrous losses of plant and animal species. The consequences of myriad other situations may remain hidden for years.

Endowed by the Creator as we are to be conscious creatures, we have the power to be generous or selfish, to share or to hoard, to make peace or to make war, to include or to exclude. We can close our eyes or open them. We can use our energies to promote justice 9

or to amass personal fortune. Each of us in our own milieu is shaping the culture and defining the future, our human future and that of Earth itself. That is to say: we have power, power that can be used in ways that are large or small, violent or peaceful, unjust or compassionate, disinterested or engaged, hidden or open. We can align our energies with wounding or healing, with destroying or building, with lying or seeking truth, with hating or loving. We can cooperate and we can resist. We have the power of conscious choice.

Whether or not we are aware, our lives are having an impact on our surroundings. Our lives are short and they make only the tiniest of impact on this long-lived Earth. But impact it they do! Shape the future they do! We are determining the condition of life for all species who appear, or who will appear, on this Earth.

We have not begun to understand or appreciate the reality that our own being is composed of dancing molecules in continual exchange, moving soundlessly in and out of our pores keeping us alive, connecting us with the rest of creation. Remember: we live by sharing.

Could we humans, with our human energies, create a “field”—or “fields”—of honesty, gentleness, peace, and compassion?”12 Part 4: Reflection Over the centuries, we humans have been learning, re-learning and re-forming our notions of what it means to be human and what role we are to play in this life. We have spoken here of the need to rethink how we have been defining our humanity, given the new perspectives raised by science and technology and our contemporary cultures in general.

The same situation exists now in religious traditions. Tenets of faith and long-revered rituals no longer hold meaningful sacred truth for believers. But there is another—this one helpful—dimension to the times. In the last half of the 20th century, many religious traditions have had the opportunity to meet and exchange beliefs, rituals, and ethical values.

Believers of many traditions find themselves joining with one another in resistance to issues such as war or nuclear development or drugs or discrimination with its many faces.

They find they have much in common. What was conflict or competition before can gently shift into collaboration and friendship. Many also find themselves sharing difficulty they find with the discrepancy of some of the tenets of their faith or their forms of ritual that no longer have meaning for contemporary congregants. The frame change is obviously having its impact on what was thought to be eternal or revealed truth in their sacred books. The need for reinterpretation is clear.

I can speak here only for many in western Christianity, although the extent may be considerably broader. God had been personified as A BEING “up” or “out” there somewhere in the sky, who judged between the good, obedient people, and the evil ones.

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God rewarded the former with grace, and heaven, and the latter with eternal punishment in hell. HE was father, king, warrior, but HE was exclusively male in Christian theology. That spirituality created the perception of a chasm between the human and God, between the natural (our humanity), and the super-natural (grace). Heaven could be accessed only by the grace which had been dispensed by God in reward for good behavior. The human task in life was to earn salvation by doing good, which was pleasing to God. Jesus, the only Son of God, taught the only True Way to his followers. Such exclusivism—the “only” way—has characterized many religions.

Current spirituality has been enriched by an evolutionary perspective, psychological insights, global awareness, cosmological discoveries and many other developments. We have begun to reconnect our sense of God’s presence with the rest of the creation that surrounds us. Elizabeth Johnson has shown clearly how the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures speak of God’s presence to and care for the whole of creation, from whales to minnows, from trees to seeds: all are equally created, loved and cared for by the Creator God.13 Thomas Berry has spoken of the necessity to cultivate and to live out of a deep inner sense of the presence of the Divine in everything around us. That awareness would require development, focused attention and a deep “innerness.”14 We need to be open to experience God creating in the present tense, as opposed to creating only at the beginning of the world.

As Duane Elgin said, Creation is “a single orchestration happening all at once.”15 Teilhard de Chardin alerted us, “to have become conscious of evolution means …that we have become alive to a new dimension.”16 A very tentative attempt to give words to that “new dimension” might be this: an abiding awareness of the presence of God creating. Such an expression would suggest hearts open to the omnipresence of God (or the Divine) throughout the whole of creation, right here, right now, (including you and me).

At the same time, our contemporary global connections offer us opportunities to contact and exchange views with many different faith traditions. We find that at base, there is very often a great deal of similarity both in emphasizing pursuit of inner depth through meditation practice, and in what Jewish tradition names tikkun olam—mending the broken world through service of neighbor. Jesus, too, taught the necessity of selfless service, expressing it in terms of losing ourselves in order to find ourselves. (Mt. 10:39) That same teaching is, in some form, bedrock wisdom in most, if not all, religious traditions. And, as we have said, neighbor now includes all of this inseparably connected creation.

Many of us in this generation, with the help of neuro-science, are also beginning to realize that meditation practice can prepare us to fulfill our human role. We now understand that all of Earth’s species are intimately bonded together. Our human role, then, as we noted 11

earlier, might be graciously imagined as creating “a field of compassion” unifying the community of life on planet Earth. Deep meditation can help to synchronize the right and left hemispheres of the brain, allowing an elegant interconnectedness between us and everything else to emerge. This may be a key to the kind of consciousness that needs to emerge collectively if the human species is to survive and flourish.17 This consciousness instinctively knows, from deep within, the sacred unity of the whole creation, and reverences the integrity of creation. It elicits from human beings altruistic, compassionate behavior across a wide ethical field. Only such a consciousness can fulfill the longing for unity that has been gestating in the human heart. That longing now reaches an urgency as our planet faces into the present critical juncture: either destruction or breakthrough.

The integration of meditation practice with the ethos of selfless service has brought Eastern and Western religious traditions to the realization that, though coming from different perspectives, different cultures and languages, we share common ground. If we can learn to honor and reverence the differences, we may find that commonality that holds promise for unity and peace among humankind. God is a mysterious presence endowing the creation with its own processes. It is interesting to see that many contemporary writers refer to “the universe” as acting in what seems to be empty space left by the absence of God-language.

Some are simply using the word “Universe” as a substitute for “God.” God can never be contained in Earth-formulated definitions or names. God is rather the presence that sustains the continual emergence of a developing cosmos. In any case, God must remain Mystery.

Further, it is being suggested that Earth itself may be a living entity.18 All of this speaks to the development of the new frame in which we humans must learn to perceive our reality.

As noted above, when the frame changes, everything will have to be seen in new perspective. Everything will assume new relationships; some now-antiquated perceptions will be set aside, or simply drop off. Although all these new understandings may be housed theoretically in our minds, we are collectively very far from translating this awareness into our everyday lives.

If we really knew that we are all one body, or knew ourselves to be creating active fields of energy, or knew that meditation deep into communion with God was a critical path into our evolutionary future, or knew the whole of creation as the numinous presence of our Creating God . . . if we really realized all that, what impact would it have on how we live?

What would we do differently?

The framework of evolution gathers many formerly disparate strands and provides an organic common bond. The evolutionary impulse that we are participating in at this juncture in time is simply continuing the impulse that has been unfolding from the beginning. Each of us is a strand intricately, integrally woven into the forward movement 12

of the whole creation. The Universe is journeying toward an ever-deepening sense of communion in the Oneness of all creation in God. It is crucial that we humans understand and internalize the significance of the organic common bond that actually defines the identity, the relationship, the role of human beings on planet Earth. It is not enough to aim at righting the injustice in human society. A new and broadened challenge arises for humans to ground their motivation in the communion of life that underlies the whole of creation. That is the forward step to which the evolutionary pull is drawing us. It is a new sense of identity for us human Earthlings, a new role we must now consciously play in our planetary future: to know ourselves as bearers of this incarnational consciousness into the future of life on Earth. Humans are invited to recognize, to realize the Divine as the Source of the coherence of the universe.

It must be noted that this call will require the balance of serious inner work. “Freeing our own inner lives and freeing the societies we live in have never been so clearly interconnected. . .Your work is to dismantle oppression from the inside out,” says James O’Dea. (italics mine). “As you work on yourself, you begin to be a little more effective in transforming the world around you.”19 With the influence of contemporary psychology and neurological science, we humans are increasingly sensitive to the fact that the quality of our inner life will inevitably be reflected in our relationships in the world. For example, if we are feeling angry and judgmental, that energy will be translated into angry and judgmental interactions with others.

Many specific spiritual practices or disciplines have evolved throughout history to help humans deal with attractions and distractions, with such common difficulties as the mind’s inclination to attachments and resistances. Much of that ancient wisdom and many of these practices in every tradition are easily accessible now. In any case, attentiveness to the inner life has always been a necessary companion to action or mission in any spiritual path.

This moment of our history may well be a moment of no return. If we are to survive, we must attend our inner life as well as our action with wholehearted dedication. We must understand: “Every human is a sentient cell in the body of humanity and must simultaneously act in the self-interest of the individual and of the whole system.” 20 (italics mine).

The evolutionary call goes deep. External, social/cultural barriers of discrimination and injustice are essential foci of our concern and compassionate action. Inner work on our own “stuff” as it reveals itself is indispensable. As noted above, the evolutionary impulse is expanding in both breadth and depth. As we reach out to include, we also reach to our own inner depths, to recognize the presence of God as the Ground of all Being, and to unify creation in One Great Communion of Love. The evolutionary call that presents itself to us 13

now adds the necessity that we be consciously moving more deeply into the sense of communion with the whole of creation. This has been the work of the Holy Spirit from the beginning. We humans are unusual creatures. We are given the unique capacity of selfconsciousness and self-reflection. That capacity opens directly into its fulfillment: awareness of the potential for communion not just with one another, and not just with the creation that surrounds us, but into communion with the Creator, that is, the God whose presence is moment-by-moment holding everything in existence right now. A potential that once seemed reserved to special mystically-inclined people is more and more being realized as a potential in every one. And not just a potential, either, but a capacity whose development is fundamental and critical to our present crisis.

We live in trust that the Spirit of God has been guiding the process of creation’s evolution from the beginning, drawing it forward in ways we cannot explain. Alongside the planetary evolution, all of humanity’s early ideals and aspirations have continued to evolve in our awareness. They are expressed in the variety of spiritual practices and ministries, in the variety of ways that opened in each particular time and place. Ministries have changed; needs—and doors—have and will open and close. Forms of prayer and meditation are modified as consciousness changes. Our human role is always to look ahead, always ferreting out where there is need, how it might be addressed or alleviated, what response is called for. The aligning of spirituality and action must continually evolve and expand in coherence with our worldview.

How has the present shift in perspective affected your religious beliefs? What has been your response—to ignore the questions, to decide to remain “faithful” to the established teaching, to drop your faith, to find a freedom in exploring?

How might the widened perception of participation in an evolutionary process translate itself into our lifestyles, our commitments, our practice? What needs to be let go? What needs to emerge anew?

NOTES 1. Diarmuid O’Murchu, Incarnation: A New Evolutionary Threshold (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), 29.

2. Roger Haight SJ, Spirituality Seeking Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014), 2.

3. Duane Elgin, The Living Universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009), 28.

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4. David Steindl-Rast quotes Eckhart Tolle: “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.” See Deeper than Words: Living the Apostles’ Creed (NY: Doubleday Image Books, 2010), 43.

5. Marilyn Schlitz, Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publishers, 2007), 18-19.

6. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, trans. Rene Hague (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 193.

7. “I do recall…experiencing a sense of conviction and excitement about life that was unlike anything I had experienced before. I remember feeling as if I were tapping into some current of energy within myself, not exactly physical, but a deeper sense of freedom, as if the very core of my being had dissolved and in its place was a very powerful surge of consciousness, welling up from within the depths of my own psyche like a fountain of liberated potential.” Carter Phipps, “Eros, Cosmos and Psyche,” in What is Enlightenment (Feb/Apr., 2008), 61.

8. Judy Cannato, Field of Compassion. How the New Cosmology Is Transforming Spiritual Life (Notre Dame Ind.: Sorin Books, 2010), 115 ff.

9. For a thorough study of ego in the Buddhist tradition, see Kathleen Dowling Singh, Unbinding: The Grace Beyond Self (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 20l7).

10. Elaine Prevallet, In the Service of Life, op. cit., 29.

11. “In the past scientists thought that competition and the struggle for survival accounted for the predominance of our species. Now we realize that cooperation is essential to survival. Recent studies show that cooperation is not based on family ties, but on reciprocity, empathy, and mutualistic cooperation, which is the most ubiquitous form of cooperation in the animal kingdom.” Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness (Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 2015), 52.

12. Judy, Cannato, op. cit., 117.

13. Elizabeth Johnson, Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018). See Book 5, “God of All Flesh,” 158 ff.

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17. Carolyn Toben, Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry.

(Timberlake Earth Sanctuary Press, 2012), 61 ff.

14. Duane Elgin, op. cit., 128.

16. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall (NY: Harper Torchbook, Harper & Row Publishers, 1959), 265.

17. Judy Cannato, op. cit., 116-117.

18. Diarmud O’Murchu, op. cit., 64. The “Gaia Hpothesis” was popular in the 60s, and seems to be re-appearing.

19. James O’Dea, op. cit., 31-32.

20.Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution (CA: Hay House, 2010), 279-83.

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Section II The Chakras Introduction Humans are most often unaware that, hidden from our ordinary consciousness, we carry within ourselves the influence of the eons-long history of our evolutionary ancestors. Our human brains have their precursors in our reptilian ancestors. Fight-or-flight, hoarding and propagating, turf protection and domination: these instincts are common to all species, including the human. But for humans they become matters of choice, requiring awareness and attentiveness. We recognize the advance of evolutionary purpose as we see these impulses moving from biological and physiological to personal, social, psychological and spiritual levels. The energies of Life, passed on to humans in the evolutionary process from the species which preceded us, now need to be recognized and given conscious direction in specifically human form. For instance, a fight-or-flight impulse (usually our first reaction to threat) must pass to the brain’s limbic system to be modified by empathy, then to the brain’s neo-cortex where it is modified by reason, imagination, and most importantly by love, compassion, creativity, altruism, reconciliation, forgiveness, dialogue, mediation, rationality. For humans, then, these energies need to be consciously claimed, freely and deliberately transformed into genuinely humane responses. We recognize the advance of evolutionary purpose as we see these impulses move from biological and physiological to personal, social, psychological and spiritual levels, requiring discernment and intention so that they give expression to genuinely adaptive and humane behavior.

Biologists inform us that in both animals and (consciously) in humans, these fundamental life-instincts take the form of seeking security by means of possessions (acquisition and storage of food), the drive to connect (mating, propagating, defense and nurturing of the young), claiming niches and defending turf. The instincts are passed down from generation to generation, playing a critical role in species’ capacity for adaptation. Though they may be expressed differently in different species, these instincts have a common purpose: the preservation, adaptation, and abundance of Life.

In ancient Hindu thought, these instincts are understood to be centered in chakras, energy centers in the body. They are regarded as critical loci of health and healing. The label chakra refers to energy centers in our bodies similar to what we in our culture might identify as survival instincts. Adrian von Kaam recognized those instincts as providing a biopsychological orientation in human beings, and pointed out the appropriateness, for spiritual development, of attending to those energies.1 Thomas Keating often referred to those same instincts/energies in his works on Centering Prayer, naming them survival/security, affection/esteem, and power/control.2 17

The chakras are located within our bodies, and they can be readily recognized. In humans, they start at the feet and move upward. The first three are energies which we recognize as “survival instincts:” the lowest chakra is engaged when we are seeking security, often by means of possessions and acquisition of food. This root chakra is the source of energy that grounds us in relationship to Earth, our internal sense of gravity. It relates to our basic sense of security vis-a-vis who we are and what we have, including our need for food, shelter, and physical comfort. This energy is located at the base of the spine and extends downward toward Earth. Moving upward in the body, the second chakra, encompassing the genital area, is the source of our relational capacities, our generativity and creativity. It is connecting energy. It is engaged in mating, propagating and preserving the species, and it includes our connections with the beauties and generosity of nature. The third chakra, located in the solar plexus, is the sense of ego-self, our personal power and its practical use: how we live in, organize and/or manipulate our environment. This chakra would be engaged when we claim personal power or control, when we act using the skills or authority that is ours, making decisions, choosing or giving direction.

Only as the energy of these lower chakras is unblocked, opened and properly channeled, does a person become free and open for engagement with the higher chakras—seats of deep compassion, integrity, wisdom and divine love—in a life dedicated completely to love of God and all of God’s creation.

These instincts are passed down from generation to generation playing a critical role in species’ capacity for adaptation. Though they may be expressed differently in different species, they have a common purpose: the preservation, adaptation and thriving of life for each species. These energies will require—invite—a religious or ethical underpinning to ground, shape and temper their development.

To summarize: these instincts are recognized fairly universally, and given varied, specific cultural expressions. They reflect the advance of evolutionary purpose, moving from biological and physiological to personal, social, psychological and spiritual, becoming, in humans, matters of choice, requiring attentiveness. Humans have to learn to approach the energies with deliberation and intentionality, to transform them so that they can enhance life on the planet for all species. These are the energies of Life embodied within us, and each individual person has the task of giving them direction in her or his own life. The energies must be conscious, free, and honored.

These three lower “life energies” could be recognized as kin to the three areas of the Christian (or Catholic and Episcopal) vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which formed the dedication of many Christian religious communities. In the second half of the 18

last century, for Roman Catholics in the West, the Second Vatican Council opened a call for expression of a spirituality dedicated to a gospel life, and intimately bound with values of love, justice and peace as they are lived in the modern world. Whereas western religious life had traditionally included a strong, rather militaristic emphasis on obedience to authority and a tight adherence to a rule, the door was now opened to respect for individual gifts and freedom of expression.3 Culturally, we would require a different lens. Rather than controlling those energies, the emphasis of vowed spirituality would seek to free those energies so they could be directed into life-giving action. There emerged—and continues to emerge—a different ethos of religious life, one which gives expression to that impulse or call to a dedicated life in ways that connect rather than separate us, and that have integrity for us at this rapidly changing moment of history.

So, while the East speaks of chakras, the West, particularly in Roman Catholic and Episcopal religious communities, speaks of three vows: poverty, chastity and obedience, which translate into the same energies as the lower three chakras. The vow of poverty addresses security or grounding; the vow of chastity addresses human relationships or connections, and the vow of obedience addresses our use of personal power. Those vows are easily recognized as partners, if not sister and brother, with the three lower chakras which could also be identified as security, connection and power. Naming the vows that way could provide an appropriate structure for consistent, deliberate attention to these instinctual, embodied energies. Here, East and West may share a similar experience of desire to invest their Life energies in deepening their hearts’ love for the life on Earth, and giving their life’s energy to express that love.

For Catholic religious orders the vows have represented a shared commitment to place those energies in the service of the reign of God. Now, at this juncture of history, we will need to understand our mission—our service of the reign of God—in the larger frame of which we have been speaking. We can see these energies as characteristic of the whole community of life, and understand how they connect us with rather than separate us from the rest of creation. We need to understand that this lifeform of communal dedicated energies is not esoteric, exclusive or mystical. Each of the areas of commitment is present in every human; each is also aligned with and mirrors the larger life processes of the whole creation. (See Section One) The energy of Life, passed on to humans from the species which preceded us in the evolutionary process, now finds recognition and is given conscious direction in specifically human form.

While we do not here attempt to speak about Eastern forms of religious life, it is interesting to find that East and West recognize the same three areas of energy as fundamental in human development. For us in the West, at least, these chakra areas have been identified in the development of a form of life commitment engaged by persons who take very 19

seriously their desire to dedicate their lives to seeking God through active expression in justice and compassion, and/or in practice of deep contemplative meditation and prayer.

The intention is to channel one’s Life energies in the service of a larger Life. These seekers often wish to connect their own dedication with that of others of like intention. The commitment is not an easy one; a shared lifestyle can be an important support.

Might we look forward to further deepening of the relationship between religions of the East and the West through this grounding of chakras?

THE CHAKRAS: Embodied Life Energies As we have seen, Life’s forward movement is powered by essential Life energies, with which every species is endowed, consciously or not. In the West, these energies would be roughly equivalent to what we call survival instincts. We will explore these energies using the template of an ancient Hindu tradition (India, 1000-1500 years BCE), in which the energies are known as chakras. The word chakra referred originally to a rapidly-spinning wheel or disc. As we have seen, the term chakra refers to energy centers located at specific places in the human body close to nerve ganglia. These energy centers seem to be related to specific organs, though opinions may differ about this. Although chakras do not exist in a physical sense, they create a bioenergetic field which can be located in specific areas of the body, and they affect both body and mind in specific ways.4 Figure 1:

LOCATION 7-cerebral cortex 6-forehead, brow, “third eye” 5-throat, pharyngeal plexus 4-chest, heart, cardiac plexus 3-solar plexus 2-lower abdomen, genitals 1-base of the spine

EFFECT Enlightenment*** Wisdom Integrity Love Personal Power Relating, Eros Grounding, Roots

***In some versions, this chakra is identified as God-Consciousness, or simply Awareness.

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Awareness of these energy centers is truly ancient, and there are co-relative systems in Buddhist traditions, in Jewish tradition (the Kabala), by Muslim Sufis, and traces in Christian hesychasm, though they may be named differently and differently nuanced.

Chakras have recently gained attention as they are recognized by contemporary masseuses, body-workers, or healing touch workers.5 My use of this figure is as a template only. I am extracting it from within larger systems such as yoga in order to adapt it to our purposes here. What particularly recommends our attention is its universality, and the fact that energies are recognized as embodied. Chakras address both outer and inner, body and mind. Their use has taken many forms, including, in some cultures, dance!

Chakras can put us in touch with embodied energies (spirit and matter, in the old dualistic configuration), and open to us a spiritual path. This path aligns us with our evolutionary history. It is a universal path for every human, which can be understood within or adapted to any religious tradition. Further, we are learning that, rather than seeking God “out there” in some heavenly domain, we are moving (slowly) into a frame in which the God whom we seek and serve is to be found incarnate within the creation, within our deepest yearnings and embedded in a creation numinous with divinity: “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.”6 That makes it even more imperative that we work consciously with embodied energies and not high-minded, abstract formulations of spirituality.

So, we want to look through a wide, inclusive lens. We can see the figure of Jesus in this template – a human in whom the Divine energies were circulating fully and freely, so that he can truly be seen as God’s Word to humans, inviting us to participate fully in the divine life. We’re looking at the same energies religious communities identified in the three vows, but we may see them here with new eyes, and find new insights that are congruent with our contemporary worldview.

We humans have only recently become aware that our survival cannot be separated from the survival of all the other species who form, with us, a single community of life. As we form our consciousness through the choices we make, we are consciously participating in our own evolution, and we are shaping the consciousness that will emerge in our species’ future. Our lives do not belong to us alone; they are nested together, they are a single web, the Community of Life. It is important that we see—and embrace—this new dimension of our human being and the role we play in a future far larger than our own.

In fact, our energies do connect with the whole planet/universe. Every pore of our bodies is receiving and exchanging energy at every moment. Imagine a community on this chakra 21

path together, aligned in and with deeply compassionate hearts, creating a field of compassion!7 It could design some practices, some commitments that would help frame a new, more inclusive but deeply intentional kind of community. Might that not be a much needed, creative response to the present planetary crisis…as well as expressing a deep fidelity to peace on planet Earth? Might it be a path that could lead to new connections, new links with others of like or similar commitments?

How might this gathered energy create conscious community…or communion? How might such energies create a conscious energy field? What would draw them together? Is this the real purpose of church gatherings? The deeper purpose is not mere surface bonding, not even just friendships, though that is critical too. Rather, as Christians what we seek is a sense of being rooted and grounded, aware, together, embodied and intending to embody, as truly as we can, the reign of God as Jesus lived and taught it. What behaviors, structures, processes, practices would we create that might facilitate our becoming a field of compassion? What, then, is our sense of mission if we enlarge the frame?

Note that as we work with these energies, we are following the track of our evolutionary past as it moves from reptile to mammal to human. The reptilian brain in us—the instinct we identify as fight or flight—will prompt us to seek security. And so, we will want to examine that energy and how it works in us: when does our insecurity move us to resistance, to violent or war-like behaviors; or, when does fear prompt us to close our eyes, to deny danger or difficulty, to fold, to refuse to engage in resistance, or to defend ourselves? The limbic brain in us—known as eros—will want to make connections that can assist and enhance our lives and the lives of others, and we will want to probe that energy.

When do we greedily consume more than we need, when do we cling possessively to relationships, or when do we withdraw into addictions or close our eyes to the needs of others? And finally, the control/power instinct will move us to manipulative selfaggrandizement that serves our egos, to seek to dominate others, or conversely, out of fear, to supine submission, to allow ourselves to be used and abused. When do we reach for power to dominate or control a situation so that our outcome will prevail, or, when do we keep silent and join in a project that actually violates our principles? We can see these instincts playing out culturally—a self-centered, frenetically consumerist culture, ready to reach for nuclear means to be #1, and an individualist me-first ethos blinded to the needs of others.

As we begin to work with the chakra template, we will see that these energies, (commonly identified as “survival energies,”) represent—but enlarge the scope of—the same energies addressed by the vows of poverty, chastity or celibacy, and obedience. It is important to remember that although these energies can be identified individually, they are always interacting with each other. They constitute one Life energy. They can be distinguished, 22

but they cannot be definitively separated. For example: if we are feeling insecure (first chakra, grounding), we may call for help (second chakra, connecting), and the help may empower us (third chakra, personal power) to meet the challenge. Thus, the energies flow back and forth, joining in operation to protect or enhance Life. The significance of these three lower chakra energies will come into perspective when we see them in context of the unified working of all seven energy centers.

These energies, as we said, are in continual interplay with each other. But we can recognize that the three lowest chakra energies—which I will name as grounding or security, connection, and personal power—are most basic and critical to human/spiritual development. We can see that these three chakras will work together: grounding energy will stabilize and keep us centered, connecting energy will keep our vision wide and inclusive, and personal power will provide energy for cooperation or resistance. We will highlight these energies, for if we do not monitor and attend to these energies, we will not be able to access our higher human capacities. Our energies will be trapped in behaviors that prevent us from developing our full human capacities. We will keep repeating the responses of our biological/ cultural past.

It is critical to understand that the areas of the vows are still basically survival energies— we must attend to their intentionality or direction. At this time in history, the patterns that have become embedded from our past are now leading us to increasingly self-destructive, counter-productive behaviors. We can see this development in our obsession with ever more lethal military weapons such as nuclear bombs and drone fighter planes as well as civilian violence. We can see it in the gross materialism and consumerism that drives so much of the economy. We can see it in racism, in the unjust distribution of wealth, and in the utter disregard of the integrity of the community of Life on the planet. Notice how each one of these embedded patterns involves the energy of the three lower chakras: security, relating, and power. These are survival instincts held captive in collective injustice. They are rightly, then, the areas traditionally associated with the vows of religious life, whose intention is to bring compassion, justice and peace to planet Earth.

Behavior change is now not optional but imperative. Our planet has reached survival mode for the whole community of life; hence the survival energies are now critically involved.

Speaking metaphorically, the energies of the lower chakras must be kept free to flow “upward” so that they can reach the heart, where they may be joined with energy flowing “downward” from the divine center, through the “third eye” or wisdom center, and through the throat (or the center of integrity). These energies then meet in the heart, to be released into the world in the form of active, wise, compassionate love. Our human future, hinging as it does on the survival of the rest of the community of life, is at stake. Everything depends

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on the conscious direction of these three lower chakra energies, whether they are drawn into life-enhancing relationships, or…not.

Could concerned persons, then, with deliberation and commitment, shape a communal lifestyle that would aim to liberate these culturally embedded energies? Might that not be what the Spirit of Wisdom, who is continually working within this creation to draw it forward, is summoning us to do for the sake of the promised “new creation?” “Our breakthroughs are fed by taking the best of the past and discarding its dysfunctions. New possibilities sometimes emerge out of bold originality, but they are more often than not a creative synthesis of past and present aligned toward a better future.”8 SUMMARY  We ourselves are life’s energy. Life is a very large project; it has been developing for eons.  We are the manifestation of Life right now. In fact, at every moment, we are receiving the energy that is my/your life. Life is living itself in and through us. We did nothing to get it, but we do critically influence its enhancement, its diminution or its demise.  Life’s energy is impersonal; it expresses itself as personal in us.  We want to understand ourselves as the vehicles through which this larger Life that has been evolving for millions of years, is now finding expression in me and you…and sense ourselves as part of a process much larger than ourselves. Your life is not your own...it belongs to a larger process.  Realize something of reverence for this gift...of yourself.  Internalizing this understanding may be the most critical factor in re-imagining our lives—our religious lives: that we are nested in, belong to, participate in a much larger life than our own. We are the future of evolution on the planet. Our lives are not only about us. They are about the on-going evolutionary development of life on planet Earth.

How it evolves will inevitably involve us - it will not happen without us.  There is one single Life energy, embodied in each of us, creating fields, condensed into “material” in bodies. It is dynamic, flowing, active, life-giving.

Remember: the energy of each chakra will be engaging our whole, embodied selves. Each chakra has its own contribution to make to the whole. While each chakra energy is “located,” it is always confluent with other energies. These energies must be kept fluid (as opposed to becoming clogged or attached) if the body’s energy is to be free to open into the higher chakras, open to the Divine.

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THE FIRST CHAKRA: Grounding “…that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your heart, through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love…” (Eph. 3:16) The first chakra, located at the base of the spine, extends downward through the legs and feet into Earth. We instinctively reach for and expect a stable surface to support us—the primal connection to Earth as the steady foundation supporting us. So, this is grounding energy, related to the sense of security and belonging: how we are rooted and grounded, what we depend on that enables us to live with trust, without fear or anxiety, confident that we have what we need to survive, aware that God’s graciousness undergirds this whole creation. I don’t have to prove myself! Reaching down into my own depths, I know myself grounded in the Divine Presence. This energy will involve our response to the question: in the deepest sense, where do I place my trust?

This chakra is an anchor point for inner security and trust. We are aware of our embodiment; we know we have physical limitations; we know we have sensory/motor intelligence. We want to live in this body, to care for it appropriately, to respond to stimuli in life-enhancing or protective ways. We can identify ourselves with the rooting of trees taproots that go deep, roots that spread wide underground and above ground.

This energy center will take us into facing the injustice and inequities of our culture, and deep into an intentional gospel commitment. It is likely that our present worldview may raise questions about where we find the Source for our trust. What or whom do we trust?

If the God we seek is not located up there in heaven but rather transcendently immanent within this creation, does our trust in God deepen into a trust in Life and its fundamental processes? What are our security needs now, and how do we meet them? We’re dealing with fundamental questions of dependence/ independence/interdependence; security and trust; attachment and detachment; need and want; use and waste, simplicity, frugality, possessiveness, generosity and sharing...all of which are related in very fundamental ways to security.

But now we experience these issues in a new frame. Use and waste, for instance, there’s no ‘out there’ to throw your trash, so frugality becomes imperative! Water and air are polluted, the planet has been changed chemically, biologically, geologically, genetically: how does this new scenario change our sense of security? Military weaponry now threatens life on Earth: how does that threaten our human sense of secure grounding? When populations by the thousands are fleeing unlivable situations in their native countries and unable to find a home; when huge numbers of humans are dying every day from drought, 25

fire and flooding, from starvation and lack of medicine; when precious species are going extinct every day—does that awareness impinge on our own sense of security?

What do we see differently in this new frame? How does our awareness of responsibility to the whole community of Life and its evolutionary future affect our sense of responsibility?

And what effect does all of that have on how we think about the energy that is intended to ground us? Where can we place our trust?

 We instinctively reach for and expect a stable surface to support us. This is grounding energy, related to the sense of security, belonging. It will involve our response to the question: in the deepest sense, where do I place my trust?  This chakra expresses our right to be here in our bodies, to live, take up space, participate, eat. I am worthy – I don’t have to prove myself! I don’t have to feel that I have to earn my existence; I can freely receive whatever I need to survive; I can live comfortably and trustingly with the awareness of the “reciprocity” that undergirds this creation.  I can enjoy my relationship to the material world—my primal connection to Earth, matrix for our lives; home, environment, self-preservation. I can feel safe and secure with a steady foundation supporting me.

Here we find the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit at the very ground of our being. To reach down to our own depths and to know ourselves grounded in the Divine Presence is the task and the gift of this chakra energy. Our deepest presence to ourselves opens into the presence of the Divine—and in that same Presence, to the sacredness of the whole creation.

We need to understand that we depend on relationships (connections, the second chakra) for our lives, as well as for our self-knowledge. But cultivating a deep presence to ourselves requires an accompanying intentional process of consciously keeping the chakra energies clear of attachments, not getting “stuck” in “stuff” or relationships that can clutter the path and play substitute for that Presence.

Spend some time imaging the characteristics of this grounding. If you wish, you might begin by imagining yourself a tree:  This energy is stabilizing. Like a tree, we need to be in soil that gives us a sense of being firmly held, but not too rigid, to give a sense of stability. Yet it needs to be yielding enough to allow roots to grow deep (appropriate flexibility).  Its roots need to be both deep and extensive. Imagine trees that have both a taproot that take it deep to reach flowing groundwater, to stabilize it in strong wind. We can think of the gigantic redwoods, which do not have deep roots, but depend upon growing in clumps, so that their roots can entwine with others to hold them steady. They cannot survive in isolation.  We are aware of embodiment; we know we have physical parameters, limitations.

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 We have sensory/motor intelligence—we know how to live in this body, to care for it appropriately, to respond to stimuli in life-enhancing or protective ways.  We have a will to live, to flourish; we enjoy being alive!

The energy of this chakra, then, is associated with survival, roots, support, nourishment, trust, home, family.

Notice that when threatened, this fundamental survival instinct will dominate all other functions of consciousness; our capacity to think clearly, to imagine alternatives, perhaps even to ask for help will be eclipsed by feelings of fear and anxiety. We’ll instinctively lose flexibility and turn rigid; we’ll want to grab, hold on, attach to something or someone.

Learning to recognize the signals of threat or fear or mistrust, and learning how to transform that response will be part of the practice of keeping this energy moving freely. Inner work, to keep us conscious of the various forms and shapes our insecurities take, and what triggers them; processes and skills of discernment, to expose impulses or motivations that might be counter to our deepest intention; friends, who can support and strengthen our deepest and sometimes scary vulnerability in learning to trust; all these will be essential to keep us in touch with our deep, unself-ish convictions, and allow the first chakra energy to deepen our grounding in God, our true Source. That trust will be expressed in a willingness to trust Life itself, and it will inspire us to share with or provide for those human and other species who are deprived of necessities for life.

It will become clear that this energy will need to be complemented by partnership with energies of the next higher chakras if it is to be freely placed in the service of the larger Life.

Some characteristics of imbalance in this chakra, either deficiency or excess, include these: we are unable to appreciate our own embodiment; we don’t like to attend to carnal reality, and we may fail to provide appropriately for needs; or, we may be preoccupied with body, by overeating, hoarding, being greedy or overly concerned with material comfort, with fear that there may not be enough.

When in balance, this energy will enable healthy contact with Earth and with one’s body.

It will enjoin feelings of solidity, reliability, and presence. It will create a sense of being comfortably earthy, centered. The sense of grounding will enable one to approach life with a realistic attitude, able and willing to attend to details. It will provide a sense of stability and a capacity for perseverance in difficulty. A balanced chakra will radiate a sense of safety and grounding.

What does it feel like to feel grounded? Can you sense grounding energy in yourself?

Reflecting on your own experience, “feel into” a time when you felt insecure, an occasion of

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insecurity or fear, being as specific as you can. What provoked the feeling of insecurity?

How did you deal with it? What did you learn?

In your experience, what role does prayer/meditation/reflection play in freeing these grounding energies?

Name areas of your life and lifestyle, values, attitudes, practices that are affected by your sense of security.

Aware that this is a survival energy, name some “embedded” habits, behaviors, ways of relating to this energy that have contributed to the global crisis of survival we now experience.

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THE SECOND CHAKRA: Connecting “…that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your heart, through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love…” (Eph. 3:16) We want to remember that the whole community of Life is connected by a process of community of goods. Nothing can exist without sharing its life consciously and willingly or not. Our true sense of security is grounded, not in autonomy and independence (our cultural illusion), but in integrating, at the deepest level of consciousness, an awareness of our willing, total dependence on/interconnection with all the rest of creation. God, the Divine, is encountered incarnate in this whole creation.

We believe that God is present in the whole creation, with and in and through these connections. Actually, it’s not connections we’re trusting, but at their depth we’re trusting God. It is our connections with all the other species that keep us alive, but we’re aware that the Source of them all is the active presence of the Holy Spirit who is creatively making the connections, wanting to draw all things into one unity of love. This is chakra energy which draws us, through every kind of sensation, into relating with the rest of creation.

Especially for Roman Catholics, but also ecumenically, the Second Vatican Council opened a new era for spirituality with its invitation to see the world as good, as blessing.

We were urged to participate in its processes. We learned (what we always knew) that friendships were among God’s greatest gifts, and that the beauty of the world was reflecting the presence of God, and was to be relished. We wanted to participate consciously in creating a sense of a common good through sharing and generosity vis-à-vis all our material goods. We understood that the whole of creation lives and thrives through a fundamental principle of shared life.

In the wider picture, we began to think in terms of connections rather than separations. We sought ecumenical connections and established relations of cooperation with other religious communities or traditions. We began to realize our commonalities rather than emphasizing our differences. We began to value connecting with other organizations of peace and justice.

The second chakra deals with emotional, connecting, generative energy. It is located in the area of the sacrum—hips, pelvis, genital area, groin. It is erotic energy, and Eros in Greek literature was a powerful god! We usually identify it as sexual, procreative energy drawing man and woman together, ensuring the continuation of the species, or drawing same-sex partners into committed relationships. Currently, in many countries, the growing LGBTQ 29

movement suggests the emergence of a more complex understanding of human sexuality.

Cultures and religious bodies across the globe are now engaged in passionate debate over the appropriate boundaries for expression of this energy. Most commonly, sexual energy provides the continuation of the species in children, while alongside, some are called to a life of celibacy, so that their energy is concentrated in serving the poor or needy, in work for justice and peace; and still others concentrate their energy directly God-ward, in prayer or meditation.

We can consider that our culture is en-thralled (i.e. held captive) with the eros of sexuality—but we are equally, if not more, held captive by selfish ambition for wealth.

“Connecting,” then, has been poisoned by the demon of greed.

This second chakra energy actually permeates every dimension of our lives—smells, colors, tastes. All sensations and emotions are actually connecting us with the rest of creation. This energy will draw us and hold us in connection with everything, but right alongside it will reveal to us the need to stay free from attaching, clinging or clogging. It is survival energy. It will put us in touch with life’s needs…and we will need to develop the gift of discernment, so that we are able to distinguish the difference between closelyrelated feelings of want and need. And survival will also depend upon this connecting energy to find the ways of living that are cooperative, enabling others to survive and promoting life for all. It is generative: it moves to connect and relate us to other humans and to the whole world in life-giving ways. It inspires the elan of being alive!

The second chakra involves the invaluable phenomenon of desire, or longing in us, which moves us to seek God inwardly, in human relationships, and in the numinous diverse glory of creation. It forges the connections. Its intentionality is toward activity that promotes life both on the biological level of species survival, and on a wider and deeper level of cocreating in the evolutionary process. This is creative energy that wants to share itself, to share life with others, to evoke creativity in others. For all persons, no matter the sexual orientation, this generative energy intends to be directed toward evoking life in oneself as well as in others, promoting comfort, satisfaction, pleasure, enjoyments of all kinds, all experiences that enhance and generate life. That erotic/generative energy will be the fuel that moves us to desire and seek, at its deepest level, to be in communion...with God, the human community, with the whole creation.

If our energy were grounded in a trusting sense of interdependence/communion, we would know that we don’t own anything, that we live in a gift (and not an ownership) economy, and that our lives must express our sharing of that gift. What if we understood the word “community” as referring to the whole community of life on planet Earth, including the “global commons,” the water, the soil, the air?

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If we intend, through this connecting energy (the second chakra), to develop a spirituality of interconnection, how will we do that?

“Falling in love” might be an example of potential life-enhancing connection through the second chakra. But if the love remains at the stage of infatuation, with the heart held hostage rather than growing more expansive and increasing connections, there would be need for discernment, to keep the energy directed toward genuine freedom for selfless love.

Sexuality is the most obvious and strongest inclination of this energy. Sexual activity is genuinely life-enhancing—that is, deepening the bond of relationship, opening the heart to selfless love at deeper levels of freedom, enhancing the enjoyment of mutual presence to each other. Sexual activity can be procreative, but it can also be creative of energy to serve the larger Life in selfless service. Celibacy is one way of husbanding that energy in order to focus it on seeking the Divine within, in meditative or contemplative practice or liturgical celebration, or through selfless service directed toward the needs of the world.

Temperament and personality may predispose either an inner or an outer starting point.

Deep self-awareness and outward expression in compassion are equally essential to genuine depth of human spirituality. And either homo- or hetero-sexual love between committed partners, or celibate life can nurture that development. It is a question of intentionality. We learn who we are chiefly through connecting in interactions with others.

Psychological projections, (seeing your own quality mirrored in someone else), would be another example of connecting energy. We are created to connect, and often it is precisely projection that enables us to discover something of ourselves. But here too, the inner work of sorting what is “hers” and what is “mine” is called for, so that the energy does not become attached, stuck, but rather enriches one’s own self-presence. The deeper our selfknowledge, the more secure we become and, the more we sense a deep longing that transcends any particular attachments. Our rooting deepens.

The work of the second chakra is the intentional direction of our energies toward actually realizing the integration of relationships within a larger whole: with other persons, or presence to our own selves, and an internalized sense of kinship with other-than-human creation. We recognize that the whole creation—all—is embraced within the allencompassing Love of the Creator. The deepening of that self-presence through connections is the journey to God. Now we know that all of creation that has preceded us is our own ancestry. If we want our species (as well as other species) to continue, our attitude toward them has to be respectful, caring, thoughtful. We know that there are no separate beings, that we are all a field of energy. The amazing construct of our “self” inescapably involves relating with others. We 31

know about the community of Life on the planet, the interconnection of all creatures; and that we are responsible for the future evolution. Our lives are enhanced and enriched by all manner of sensation: birdsong, brilliant sunset, the aroma of baking bread—and the taste of the bread—and the taken-for-granted miracle of this amazing creation. We know that our experience of awe and wonder puts us in very direct contact with the Creating God. Like Teilhard, Thomas Berry spoke eloquently of the need for humans to develop their inner sense of deep kinship with the rest of creation. It is only the cultivation and spread of this deep, connecting presence to creation through our awakened senses, they believed, that will move us from our present destructive lifestyles, and allow evolution to make the needed leap forward.9 But that relatedness is all-of-a-piece: it arises with and from deep presence to oneself, by which we come to know ourselves as genuine, individual selves.

And presence to oneself depends upon our cultivating depth of interpersonal presence, as well as the deepest grounding in God. We are all one, bound together in one great, creative Love.

The work of the second chakra, then, is the intentional direction of our energies toward actually realizing the integration of our relationships within the larger whole—our presence to our own selves, to other persons, and an internalized sense of kinship with the whole of creation. All are embraced within the all-encompassing love of the Creator.

To consider:  This is survival energy. It is intended to put us in touch with our life’s needs. But as humans we have to distinguish need from want.  Making connections is an essential capacity for every species, and that is what this second chakra does in the human. The necessity of interdependence and for cooperation is critical at all levels of the creation. The more connections species are able to make, the more stable their life situation, and the stronger their chance for survival. If a species depends upon one single connector to keep it alive, it will perish as soon as that connector disappears.  The vitality of our human life is enhanced by way of sensation: our senses draw us to be “in touch,” to move toward the stimulation, or away from what appears to be hurtful.

Sensation is a force of attraction, affectivity, pleasure, enjoyment, comfort.  When this energy, the second chakra, makes connections, it can create a passion for life, engaged on an emotional, sensual level.  This chakra is the source of “emotional intelligence,” that naturally knows how to seek pleasure, and leads us to what we can enjoy. It gives us information, drawn from our environment, that points us toward what will be life-enhancing, and draws us away from what will be dangerous

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 There is polarity in the energy, an ebb and flow; it can contract and expand, divide and unite, turn on and turn off. This second chakra is connecting generative energy, intending to move us. It is an effective means of growth and change.  It is fluid, it moves toward stimulation, sensation; it wants intimacy, to “get close,” seeks contact at many levels.  It gives us a way to nurture self and others.  All our senses are connectors; ready to provide expansive sensory input, contact in deepening ways.  Sensation responses simply “happen;” we don’t choose them. We accept the feelings that come, but we judge whether or not to act on them, whether or not to “water the plant”, as Thich Nhat Hahn says. Inner work with attentiveness and mindfulness can keep the channel clear.  Expressed as desire, this energy is life-enhancing, the engine of life’s forward movement. On the negative side, desire may be thwarted, unfulfilled or unfillable, and become a source of suffering. It can take the form of infatuation and en-thrallment, and override more balanced perceptions; it may develop into emotional dependency or attachment; or it may foster resistance, repression and insensitivity.

This energy requires discrimination. It can be prone to extremes—addictions or revulsion.

It may need to be examined: where it is rooted, what triggered it, what it intends, whether it liberates or captivates.

The second chakra’s connecting energy joins the first chakra in the search for security. This indicates the need for trust and grounding (first chakra) to be stabilized. The more stable that first chakra energy is, in other words, the deeper one’s presence to oneself, the readier one is to reach out, to connect.

In a situation of insecurity or fear (first chakra), the healthy response would move energy toward the second chakra to seek help. If help is forthcoming, the energies would move toward the third chakra of personal power to do something to deal with the fear. They form a single, vital energy. Rigidity of body, beliefs, and behaviors can indicate a weak relationship between security and connection, (the first and second chakras), as can flighty, unreliable behavior, and lack of decisiveness or capacity for commitment. Again, only consistent and conscientious inner work will insure a right relationship between these chakra energies.

Once again, imagine yourself a tree. Put yourself in the tree’s root.  Imagine yourself feeling hungry and reaching…reaching…connecting with nutrients in the soil and feeling nourished and sustained.

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 Or imagine yourself the tap root, feeling as if you’re drying out, and pushing down, down into the soil, reaching for the ground water. Imagine finding only dryness…having to work hard… sensing water coming near… feeling how it accepts you, embraces you.  As you work with images like this, or others of your own choice, internalize the feeling of making life-giving connections…. What lessons might you learn from a tree’s root?

What attitudes were you taught toward feelings/emotions in general, and sexual feelings in particular? What about sexual feelings in relation to “spirituality?” Have your attitudes changed? How comfortable are you in your own body? Do you love being “in” your body?

What experience of your own creativity can you associate with this chakra?

What role does prayer, meditation or reflection play in helping you keep this connecting energy free from entanglements? lively and creative?

We know the value of friendship; we also know (and desire) a communal grounding unity beyond personal relationships. How might both personal and communal bonding be deepened and strengthened?

Aware that this is a survival energy, name some “embedded” habits, behaviors, ways of relating to this energy that might have contributed to the crisis of survival we now experience. How might this crisis affect/form a sense of mission?

The second chakra will get things moving. Feelings (desire, pleasure) move us – passion arises and stimulates the will, moving toward the third chakra.

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THE THIRD CHAKRA: Personal Power “…that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your heart, through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love…” (Eph. 3:16) The second chakra moves to the third: personal power. This chakra is located in the solar plexus. Its purpose is to direct action, carry out a task, make something happen. Its characteristics are decisiveness, clear focus, and intentionality. (Note that this chakra will be modified when it connects with the heart chakra.)

This survival energy configures our personal power, the energy that relates to our human capacity to control the world around us, to organize, to make an impact, so that it sustains and enhances us. This energy intends the development of whole human beings, strong, mature individuals who decline the safety of cocoon-living, who are able to make decisions, to face challenges and take risks, to discern when to resist and when to yield.

Initially, this energy constellates in our egoic self-image, but in spiritual development, we must inevitably learn to loosen that energy from its self-serving tendency and place it consciously and lovingly in the service of God and of the larger Life. In Christian terms, it is the energy we put in the service of the Body of Christ, the people of God, the whole community of Life, living lives of love and compassion, followers of Jesus. It is the energy of our particular gifts expressed in the ways we are led to further the evolutionary development of all life.

It seems that in Western cultures (and much of the East as well), humans have interpreted Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” as referring to power in the form of force and might. We have concentrated our third chakra energy in patterns of domination and militarism that may once have been useful but which are now counter-productive and actually destructive.

We may have arrived at unprecedented individuality, individual consciousness and expression. We may have become independent (or so we believe), and we may have trade and communication connections all across the globe, but those developments have their debit sides as well. Our fascination with, our addiction to, technology has disconnected us from the patterns of the rest of the natural world. The despoliation of much of Earth’s richness, the disparity of available quality of life for all species, including human—the debits are becoming more and more visible. We do not know our neighbors. It has become difficult, if not impossible, for us to determine a “common good.”

Remember, this is survival energy. There is also evidence now that humans are “wired” for cooperation rather than (as we used to think) for competition. Michael Dowd10 and others have suggested that we need to change our understanding of evolutionary process from 35

“survival of the fittest” to “survival of the fittingest.” That means survival for those species that are best able to adapt harmoniously to their environs. Having developed irrationally lethal weaponry, we humans face the necessity of realizing that instinctual turf-claiming power must be consciously transformed, by humans, into focused, willingly chosen activity, given form and conscious direction for the common good.

We have said earlier that if we take our cues from the rest of creation, we learn that other living organisms survive by connecting, and by living cooperatively with the other members of the family of Life so that together, all will thrive. We humans, however, must make choices. We have to consciously recognize our gifts, find our niche, cooperate and contribute individually and collectively. We must have the wisdom to discern, in prayer and consultation, our unique gifts, and determine their role in the service of Life. As a species, we have unwisely lived as if there are no limits to our habitat, with no respect for the habitats of other species. Species-wide, we may be the only species that has not found, or does not respect, its niche.

In the end, for all species it is adaptability—the ability to live cooperatively—that promotes survival. It is interesting that in many Roman Catholic religious communities, the vow of obedience has been re-named “a covenant of cooperation.”11 In the close-up lens, that covenant would mean finding others in whose company our gifts can find harmonious expression, where we fit together. For us humans, this “power chakra” energy will have to be channeled into conscious participation in sharing life with the rest of the community of Life. It will mean being willing to join our energies to create a synergy, a field, with all others who are engaged in promoting the common good of the planet. Might having our energies aligned in compassionate, cooperative relationship be a contemporary expression of “doing the will of God?” Humans are now connected technologically all over the globe. Many now speak of our having developed a global brain. Further, much of the deepest wisdom and practices of all the religious traditions are available to us now, offering significant enrichment and depth to our religious perspectives. It seems clear that something new is poised to happen— potentially. But we know that our collective awareness has remained largely embedded in our human species’ inherited patterns of competitive behavior and the tendency to rely on domination, force and might for survival. Humanity on this planet has a critical need for a new consciousness: to integrate lower and higher chakra energies.

We have succeeded in creating a technological global mind, but “virtual reality” can potentially lure us to leave behind the humane, grounding and sensual connecting energies of the lower chakras. Our task may be to direct the lower chakra energies to find their integration with the higher energies, gathered and centered in the heart. What we need now 36

is a global heart. As Teilhard reminded us, “Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them…for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of [humans] and the earth.”12 We want to be aware of how this third chakra draws on the energies of the two lower chakras—the need for grounding/security and the sense of connection. The task, then, is to keep those energies free so that they are accessible to contribute to choices and actions that will flow from this third chakra. All of these energies together, then, will be available to be given direction from the fourth chakra—the heart, or love and compassion, as we face into the world.

Without the contribution of the lower two—grounding and connecting—energies, “power” is reduced to force, stripped of its vibrant engagement with our senses. It is critical that this power chakra energy join with the second chakra, connecting energy. Un-modified by connecting energies, this power chakra will turn humans inward to claim to dominate. Then ego will come forward, selfishly ready to close itself off from the rest of creation, finding fodder for its own enhancement. If, on the other hand, ego continues to play its role appropriately, it will be ready to orient itself toward cooperation, joining the second chakra and moving forward toward the next higher chakra, the heart.

This third chakra focuses energy on the development of a strong self-sense, individuality, and strength of will, enabling us to set goals, make decisions, formulate our intentions.

Initially, it integrates our energies into an identity, a self-definition, what we recognize as ego. We can be conscious of our motivation, focusing our energies on do-able goals, We humans are able to control, but, importantly also, to arrange our surroundings in meaningful and helpful ways.

Eventually, however, if we are on a spiritual path, this process will begin reversing itself.

We will want to transform the ego/self-definition, to loosen it, even to allow it to dissolve so that it is not operating in control mode, but rather seeking to align itself with the deeper intentionality of the Creator, participating in the on-going process of the emerging, evolving universe. From a sense of power that is mine, ego moves us to understand ourselves as part of a larger whole whose purpose includes, but transcends, our own small intentions. Its movement is toward the next chakra, the heart. We do what we sense is given to us to do, aware that we cannot know or control outcomes. It is crucial to remember: “It’s not about me.”

As we will see, this chakra will connect with other chakras. It will be grounded in reality (first chakra), with enough connections to be steady (second chakra). The power (third 37

chakra) will be modified by heart’s energy of compassion (fourth chakras), cleared and strengthened by integrity (fifth chakra, throat), enlightened by wisdom (sixth chakra, third eye) and in communion with the Divine in and through the whole creation (seventh chakra, crown.)

Reminders:  Third chakra energy is geared toward the development of a strong self-sense or individuality. It requires courage and strength to separate the individual from the collective, the status quo, and to develop its own personal responses. This chakra brings that strength into awareness, creating a sense of confidence and competence. As this energy develops, it will, little by little, allow that ego-sense to disappear into the “emptiness” of the power of Divine Love.  Inner work will be needed to keep us conscious of our inclination to want to control and dominate. We need to develop processes and skills of discernment, to expose motivations that might be self-promoting and we will need friends who are committed to re-calling us if we get off track.  All these will be essential to keep us in touch with our deep, unself-ish convictions, and allow third chakra energy to be gathered into the heart of compassion (fourth chakra).  This energy (“power”) requires leaving the realm of attachment to safety. Power cannot be created by staying safe. Rather, we want to develop a sense of being safe, having one’s safety within oneself (first chakra grounding). We are willing to risk the possibility of criticism, challenge, misunderstanding, failure. The power develops through confronting unknown situations and challenges, taking responsibility for one’s own decisions, confronting any tendency to surrender our power to others, or to be defined by forces outside ourselves.  Women have only recently been finding their own voices (fourth chakra). This is an evolutionary cutting-edge, applying both to church structures as well as civil and social ones. Development will involve balancing the use of personal power on our own behalf when self-care is appropriate, with the commitment to give our lives over to the service of the larger Life.  At this juncture of our history, it is critical that we bond together in communities that can work together to develop a thoughtfully counter-cultural lifestyle, contributing to the emerging of the reign of God on Earth or, in other words, to the forward-moving evolution of the human species. In a culture of violence, it must mean developing a practice as well as a comprehensive community ethos of non-violence.  Paradoxically, it is the power of the ego which must develop a strong self-sense and awareness of both gifts and limitations, and be ready to place them in the service of the larger Life. As Jesus taught, we only find ourselves by losing ourselves. We have to develop the capacity to move beyond acting out of our own self-interest, strong, secure and free enough to contribute this energy in service of the common good. Personal 38

power must yield itself into the mystery of transformation which pervades the whole creation: dying that allows new life to emerge. This is the un-selfing that opens onto the seventh chakra, communion with the Divine – which includes the whole creation.

Personal power becomes impersonal (i.e. free from demand for outcome) when dedicated, surrendered to God, and freely placed in the service of the larger Life.

We are called to share our lives and our love with the whole creation. We are one, single, energy of life. The core of our commitment, then, is to align our life’s energy with the dynamism of Life, to be ready and willing to share life so that others might live…the ego placed cooperatively in the service of Life. For Christians, this is what we identify as our participation in the paschal mystery: the willingness to enter into dying and rising with and in Christ.

Imagine this scenario:  You watch as a large person half a block ahead of you begins to try to snatch the purse from a woman who seems to be resisting. Experience feeling both drawn to say or do something, and feeling paralyzed by fear; it looks like the man is armed.  Imagine moving from fear (first chakra) to connection: you shout for help and you see others begin to move together cooperatively, toward you and the scene: (“WE’LL HELP!” – [second chakra], and your fear changes to feeling empowered I/WE CAN DO IT – [third chakra])  Your energy may then move to the fourth (heart) chakra as you see the woman collapse and you move to help her. It may also move to the fifth chakra (throat, integrity) as you are called to testify, aware that there may be some danger in public exposure.

Or remember an incident in your own life that involved fear/help/power, and factor out that process in your feelings. The point is to understand the interplay of the chakra energies…it is one single energy of Life.

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The Importance of the Higher Chakras THE FOURTH CHAKRA: Unconditional Love We are probably familiar with the popular saying of Pascal, “Le coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connait pas” (“the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing about”). Recent studies show that the heart has the highest energy vibration of the body. The heart’s electromagnetic field envelops every cell of the body and communicates information throughout the entire body. The heart “is a sensory organ and an information encoding and processing center, with an extensive intrinsic nervous system that is sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a heart brain.”13 It plays a unique synchronizing role in the body, ,at least partially through heartbeat, sending more messages to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. Heart energy can also be detected several feet around the body, taking in information and communicating it to the surrounding field. It would appear that this chakra is where the lower chakra energies meet, are integrated with love, affection or compassion, and are joined with the higher energies to enable the fullest wholistic functioning of the human being.

Let’s stop for a moment to reflect on the relationship between the third and fourth chakras—the chakra of personal power, and the chakra of compassion/unconditional love.

We have mentioned the importance of developing strength of ego, the capacity for decisive, responsible character. But, as we said, it is precisely this ego-strength that enables a committed person to surrender, to set aside, the ego’s natural tendency to dominate and control strategy, process, and outcome. Ego (usually equivalent to “myself”) must be prepared to yield its more surface negative motivations (pride, competition, anger, revenge, etc.) to the chastening and deepening motivation of compassion, and to let go of investment in or attachment to a certain designated outcome. It must allow itself to be modified or mollified by the invitation to cooperative participation in activity that is life-enhancing for others.

There is a startling paradox here: the stronger the ego, the more energy there is available for compassionate action. But in the process, the ego will inevitably have to learn, gently or painfully, that this process requires its own willingness to die to itself in order to be transformed by/into selfless, loving service. The deeper Self, (the “True Self”) is the emptiness through which the presence of God reaches into the world. It might resemble a simple inner spaciousness filled with Infinite Love. The tight fist of power becomes the spacious dwelling place of Unconditional Love. The True Self will remain mysteriously unnamed and ungraspable: it is the presence of the Divine. It is only the continuous letting go of ego’s hold that allows the True Self to manifest itself—in the form of Unconditional Love.

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As we reach the heart (fourth) chakra, we begin to see how the preparation done in the lower chakras to free energy for selfless, compassionate action, will interplay with higher chakra energies. We might imagine it this way: a security rooted in deep trust (first chakra) awakens to a conscious sense of solidarity or alignment with life (second chakra). It joins personal power, now emptied of ego constraints and aware of its own individual call or purpose (third chakra) in the medium of the heart’s love (fourth chakra). Those confluent energies now join or are joined in the heart by integrity (fifth chakra) which makes known the injustice, and wisdom (sixth chakra) which points to what needs to be done, even if risky (back to third chakra). Little by little, Universal Love flows from the crown (seventh chakra) and all energies become engaged together, spending themselves on behalf of the Reign of God. Again, imagining the way it works, we can picture the heart with spacious room for an unconditional love that transcends ego’s divisions of race or gender or culture. Love is unconditional, inclusive, and it has compassion at the center. That is the dwelling of the True Self, the home of the Divine.

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THE FIFTH CHAKRA: Integrity All of us have probably experienced how our voices or our blushing, or our shaking hands, any number of other manifestations, can “betray” us when we are fearful. Perhaps it is when giving a speech, or delivering unwelcome news, or when we intend to lie, betraying our own inner awareness, violating our integrity. Our hearts may be pounding; we may find it hard to breathe evenly; we may stutter, or forget our lines; our voices may shake, or sound sharp or have an edge to them. The energies of this chakra take the role of a silent inner witness, which will try to keep us alert, to prevent us from violating our own inner truth. It will try, in other words, to protect our integrity, our truest wholeness.

It is important to notice how embodied this witness is; the many parts of our bodies that participate in this effort on behalf of our integrity. But experiences such as deep trauma can silence or impede access to the voice of truth. Or, if a person is a habitual liar, covering an addiction, for instance, she or he may have grown immune to this nudging. That person may have lost sensitivity to it, and deadened its promptings. The organism has become sick. The deeper, truer human impulses may be overridden. Energy of the lower chakras can be blocked or jammed by continual ab-use so that it can no longer reach the throat. The deeper human will dis-integrate. Often, then, it will take the power of a deeply committed love to reconnect the person with his or her own genuine truth.

A story from the life of Jacques Lusseyran14 might help to illustrate this. Lusseyran was born in Paris in 1924. An accident at his school blinded Lusseyran at the age of 8, but his parents resolved that he would grow up unimpeded by this so-called disability, and he himself almost immediately discovered an inner light that matched and even exceeded the light he remembered seeing outside himself. He developed a capacity to “see” by means other than his eyes; a “radiance” that he perceived as “touch.” For instance, on a hike with a friend, he could detect “there is a range of mountains over on our right…” He could feel their “touch.” He spoke of a kind of “pressure.” This “other vision” required deeply focused attention, perhaps inner emptiness on his part; he became the space penetrated by light.

This “vision” could be disrupted only by fear, hesitation, doubt, or calculation.

As a young adult of 19, he became active in the French resistance movement against Nazism. Because he was almost infallibly accurate in “reading” dishonesty in the voice, Lusseyran was chosen to do the interviewing and final recommendation of recruits to the movement. The story takes place at this time. Lusseyran was interviewing a man whose credentials were faultless—high recommendations from all the most important personages.

Lusseyran, however, heard in the man’s voice signals that told him the man was dissembling. He struggled. Should he trust his instinct, or…yield to all the (contrary) positive evaluations? He weakened, and chose the latter. The man betrayed them.

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Lusseyran eventually was transported to Buchenwald. Remarkably, he, a blind man, survived to tell the tale.

The point is this: the energy of the fifth chakra, in the voice which carries speech, will make the connection between inner awareness and the outer expression of truth. If speaking truth with conviction, the voice will be solid, resonant. On the contrary, the voice will reveal the presence of fear or hypocrisy. If faking or fearful, the throat may tighten, the sound may be sharp or edgy or quivering. Lusseyran’s ability to detect the quality of sound was the result of inner attentiveness, an unimpeded, silent space of receptivity. His blindness enabled him to detect the field of vibration communicated through the voice.

This story may serve to relate the fifth chakra to the three lower chakras, and also to the heart. Fear, doubt, hesitation, calculation—all would create interference from or imbalance in the lower chakras. Grounding, connections, and, most importantly, ego’s power to speak the truth would be compromised. And Love’s deep bonding with human integrity/truth would be compromised. It was dishonesty that put the detectable edge on the interviewee’s voice. When his internal space was free of blockage, Lusseyran was able to clearly detect hypocrisy. But when his clarity became blocked by whatever it was—ambition, self-doubt, insecurity in some guise—the fear overcame the other energies. Fear and insecurity dominated in the lowest chakra and he was betrayed.

We begin to see, also, the importance of motivation, attentiveness to one’s inner sense of truth, deep receptivity, courage and “letting go,” which becomes increasingly important as the chakras move upward.

Reminders:  The fifth chakra centers in the throat, the vibration chamber of communication and creativity.  It is the vehicle of our Inner Witness, the guardian of our truth and our authenticity, the means of communicating our self-expression from within ourselves to the outer world.  We say what we mean, and we mean what we say. Our expression is attuned and accurate, authentically representing our inner sense of truth.  When balanced with the lower chakras, the voice will be strong, smooth and trusting.  When inhibited by fear or doubt, vibration will be labored, strained and agitated.  This chakra enables freedom to think for oneself, to believe what we believe, and to express it freely and without fear.  This chakra characterizes a person of integrity.

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Can you find in your own experience an incident when you failed to speak truth? Can you identify the role of the lower chakras in that incident?

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THE SIXTH CHAKRA: Wisdom The sixth chakra is located at the “third eye,” centered between our two eyes. It is a center of self-reflection, which allows us to see the whole pattern, the big picture. It lights our path, integrating our past experience, helping us decipher what we’ve learned and encouraging us to walk trustingly into the future. It is Wisdom, representing reality in a wide frame, seeing beyond self, comfortably spacious.

This is not ordinary seeing as with the eyes. Jacques Lusseyran considered ordinary seeing to be “superficial” because “our eyes glide over things,” and we think we see them. But we really see only the surface, the outer appearance.15 On the contrary, this sixth chakra seeing is a seeing from within, a vision not originating in the eyes, and not dependent solely on material reality. It is the inner eye of intuition. This seeing provides a slowly emerging perspective that holds all earthly reality in relationship. Vision, also recognized as Wisdom, sees nothing singly, but sees everything in relation to everything else. The true identity and the fullest meaning of any single being can only be perceived within its context, integrated within the pattern woven of the totality of its environment.

Is this where humanity now finds itself? New vistas—technological, evolutionary and cosmological—have been opening the horizons of our perceptions. We are seeing a bigger picture, making new connections, realizing responsibilities and “calls” that we hadn’t sensed before. Could it be the impetus of the Holy Spirit trying to move humanity to a higher level of capacities to open the higher chakras to more and more persons?

Perhaps for the first time, in 1893, a small group of leaders from several religious traditions came together to share something of the dogma and practice of their traditions. Small groups apparently continued meeting intermittently over the years. In recent years, however, since global travel allows more frequent gatherings, even yearly, “ecumenical” groups have continued to gather in various groups and various places. Slowly the focus has shifted from discussions of dogmatic differences to the communal silence of meditation that engenders a deep resonance, an unmistakable spirit of unity. The recent Conference of “The Parliament of World Religions” in November of 2018 (Toronto, Canada) gathered some 10,000 persons of myriad traditions. Partnered with conversation, as well as sharing cultural experiences of praying, singing, dancing and eating, new, multi-religious connections are being created. While there may still be, in some places, postures of animosity or competition toward other traditions, there is now an increasing awareness of the necessity for humanity to learn to respect and even to learn from the many forms worship of the Divine take.

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Essential also is the inclusion of indigenous populations, whose closeness to and reverence for the life patterns of the land brings a wisdom virtually lost in Western circles. The open communication also allows so-called developed countries to contribute helpful technological skills to indigenous cultures, as well as receiving from countries less technologically oriented some of nature’s own wisdom forgotten by “more advanced” countries.

We are becoming conscious of the rich variety of wisdom that has arisen in various ages, cultures and religious traditions. We can integrate that richness into our own lives, in values, in theological insights and spiritual practices, all to the advantage of our human development. We have experienced the phenomenon of the “global brain,” the connections technology is able to forge. Groups can now organize globally to speak and act on behalf of the health and integrity of the whole community of Life, sharing hopes for our future.

We know beyond doubt that our actions and our attitudes affect the whole global community, although the totality of the over-all effects could never be calculated. It is slowly dawning on us humans that we are simply participants in something far larger than we could have imagined, and we are barely beginning to realize the fundamental oneness, the wholeness of this interconnected creation.

The needed unity cannot be achieved by science, but only, as Teilhard warned more than half a century ago, by Love. In Christian theology, it has always been the role of the Holy Spirit to draw all things into One. The awesome gift and responsibility of humanity at this moment of history lies precisely in the fact that here on our own planet, the Spirit of Wisdom is elevating and expanding our human consciousness. And we are aware of this development! How do we learn to recognize her nudges? What practices open our hearts?

We must keep asking the question: what/how do we need to change?

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THE SEVENTH CHAKRA: Realization Located in the cerebral cortex, the crown of the head, the seventh chakra opens to the Divine. This chakra brings everything into completion, fulfillment. We recognize our identity within the context of the cosmos, as Earthlings, all held in Holy Mystery, beyond our imagining. All are One, united.

Here we have to face the question of how we find the Divine Presence in our lives, and/or what we do to invite that Presence. We are familiar with the wisdom that comes to us from the past, encouraging times or places of silence and quiet prayer, scripture or other inspirational reading and reflection, spiritual direction, discernment, and “inner work” of many varieties. We are also familiar with encouragement to listen to and learn from the wisdom communicated to us from other species, animal, vegetable, mineral. Our Scriptures – and our hearts – keep us alert to the many dimensions of injustice and inequality, suffering and neglect experienced by our fellow human beings and, more currently, the need to direct our energies to the well-being of our planet. Simply, we have to open our pores and our hearts to invite our energies to greet each other, and recognize our kinship.

Have we taken seriously that our evolutionary role might include a responsibility to live within this new awareness of our evolutionary kinship? And further, to be aware that we live within the Divine Presence, in communion with the whole of creation? Do we recognize that we live on such Holy Ground?

If we took that responsibility seriously, what would we add to or subtract from our present lifestyle and daily practice?

We are accustomed to relegating that awareness of the Divine to mystics, and we may risk dismissing it as beyond our purview. And yet it appears that currently some sense of deep longing is drawing people into meditative practices. It is true that most often when mystics have experienced the Divine—whether they named it Yahweh, or God, or Allah or Great Spirit, or any of the myriad of words people across the ages have used to name the Unnamable—these mystics have always recognized a profound Oneness at the Ground of all being. God is to be found in the creation, even while transcending it, a transcendence from within God’s immanent presence. Religious traditions carry the possibility of an experience of communion that draws an individual to recognize everything as held together in a harmonious whole in One Unconditional Love.

Seen within the evolutionary frame, then, the Reign of God cannot be limited to establishing peace and justice among humans. A desire for God is traditionally the central motivation of spiritual search, a sense of something transcendent, something More. But that More can never be defined or contained. Our hearts sometimes convey an inarticulate 47

longing for communion, but we cannot define what the phrase “communion with God” means.

Might it mean infinite, unimaginable, unfathomable Love? The more deeply we search, the more our horizons of both mind and heart are pried open. Might it be that the oneness, the communion we seek is really communion with everything—or, that communion with God includes everything? That desire is for all life to thrive, for all life to be able to operate in harmonious relationships of justice, peace, equity, for all life to know itself held in the bonds of compassion.

Could it be that what we call the desire for God has something like two sides of a coin that cannot be separated: the insatiable inner longing that cannot be defined, and the deep, relentless call to mend the broken world?

Both are fundamental, and unified in the desire to know the oneness, the connectedness of everything in God. The Reign of God, our desire for peace and justice, the longing in our heart that is our passion, our motivation: that thirst is in fact the Holy Spirit of Wisdom nudging us toward unity, toward communion with God in and through creation. Our desire for God is God’s desire working in us to bring creation into union. The recognition that All is One in God, that God lives in us and, reciprocally, we live in God, points to communion with all that is because God is here, everywhere. For us, the continual inner work is to keep that passion clear of ego-agendas, clear of focusing on some part of the whole and forgetting that it is only part of the whole evolutionary project of life. What we most desire –the unconditional love that the word God points us to—is what the world needs from us: to be drawn together and held together in this One Great Love.

The key word in this crown chakra, I believe, is receptiveness, total receptivity. Instructions in Centering Prayer, once past the first lessons, are instructions about learning to let go, let go, let go. Cynthia Bourgeault16 links this discipline of letting go to Jesus’ kenosis: Jesus, “who, though he was by nature God…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave….” (Ph. 2:9-16) Alongside the discipline of quieting the mind in meditative processes, the emptying out for us is also the work of keeping the lower chakras free from entrapments of insecurity and greed, and cleansing the power chakra of any vestiges of ego-claims that may lodge in the dark corners of our self-awareness. The letting go, both inner and outer, is a loosening that quietly morphs into simple receptivity, an emptiness, a quiet readiness of infinite expansion in radiant light or Unboundaried Love.

In Christian Scriptures, that receptivity is the total emptiness of Mary as she awaited the Divine descent into her womb: “May it be done.” Or perhaps it is the experience Thomas 48

Merton referred to as la pointe vierge. “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point of spark which belongs entirely to God.”17 “From time immemorial wisdom teaching has insisted that only through the point of nothingness can we enter the larger mind.”18 In some ways, it does seem that the emptying comes from the lower chakras upward; and fulfillment from the higher chakras downward, to meet in the heart, the energy divinized. Still, it is all a single energy of Life.

Such total receptivity is not limited to times of prayer; it can arise in the midst of deep, dedicated action. I cannot locate the source, but I remember reading of a Vietnam war protester during the 1970’s who with some friends risked sneaking onto a military base.

They had made it into the inner sanctum. They knew they would be discovered and would have to pay a price. The man felt paralyzed with fright. But at a certain point, he felt a total, quiet peace come over him, and he surrendered himself completely into God’s hands. The fear was gone; he entered a spacious peacefulness. ********* These higher chakras are not so obviously accessible to our human practice; that is, we can’t make things happen. For instance, we can only pay attention when the Inner Witness alerts us to deceptive postures. We can’t integrate ourselves. We can’t practice being wise.

Wisdom and love seem to come as grace. We can and probably should try to do the letting go, but, paradoxically, it too seems to come as a gift. Maybe the lower chakras predominantly involve doing, while the higher chakras involve receiving. It is the heart chakra that unifies them all. Religious traditions bear witness that there is an innate capacity and tendency for the human organism to be drawn toward participation or union with Divinity that is universally recognized as our human destiny.

Remember: access to the higher chakras and their ability to function (energy to flow freely) depends upon keeping the energies of the lower chakras flowing freely, without impediment.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS How can this chakra template be useful to religious communities?

These chakra energies are in fact only one Life energy; they interplay, combine, influence each other every step of the way. But it can be helpful to identify them separately and learn their (our) strengths and weaknesses, inclinations and debilities. Each of us, individually and together, are in process of co-creating a community, a field of compassion. The lower 49

chakras join with higher chakras in a mission. It is our responsibility to attend to the quality of our personal presence and our presence with and for one another. We know that we humans are now wired for cooperative, compassionate behavior. The Holy Spirit of Wisdom has been moving this process forward from the beginning. She is now using every guise at her disposal to awaken us to our responsibility to consciously participate in the evolving of the human on planet Earth. We humans play a critical role in the evolutionary press of Life seeking deeper union. There is human potential to be discovered ahead of us.

The Divine has never left the creation, or stopped creating. But now the creativity begins to manifest itself in new ways. We humans are able to be aware of the long evolutionary history that has spawned us, and just now, in the second millennium after Jesus, we are beginning to understand that process. We have begun to understand that we ourselves carry the seed of that forward movement. It isn’t just about procreating (survival). It is about being able to participate in the forward movement toward deeper and deeper awareness of LOVE. And love will instinctively reach for unity. Divinity has entrusted to US its own future. God has staked everything on our participation, depending upon us to work within this creation to bring it to deeper and deeper unity. We name that work the gift and presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom, of Life, of Love alive within us.

And that’s where we are. “Creation is waiting with eager longing for the revelation of the children of God…” (Romans 8:19) The rest of creation, Paul says, can hardly wait for us to begin to recognize our role, for us to begin to understand that the Love of God is working through creation trying to draw us into unity with God, with each other, to finally realize that creation itself is filled with God’s glory. We are responsible for how our species behaves on this planet, what we do that enhances Life and Love, and when we obstruct or destroy it. Each of us is only one very tiny but irreplaceable part of this huge project that began 13.7 billion+ years ago, when the Divine Love exploded into the world. We have that treasure in earthen vessels. May we be guided to find our way.

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Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.”

Look what happens with a love like that -it lights the whole world.

Hafiz, in Love Poems from God. Translated by Daniel Ladinsky (NY: Penguin Compass, 2002), p. 170.

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Notes 1. The connection between religious vows and the chakra energies is not new. Adrian Van Kaam, CSSp. wrote of that similarity in The Vowed Life (Denville, N.J., Dimension Books, 1968), especially pp. 1-26.

2. Thomas Keating refers to the role of these energies in human development as survival/security, affection/esteem, and power/control. See Invitation to Love (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Co. 1996), p. 6-7.

3. Sandra Schneiders, IHM. Religious Life in a New Millennium. Three volumes. (Paulist Press: NY/ Mahwah NJ, 2013).

4. Persons who are beginning to work with chakras may need to be alerted to the experience of kundalini, energies known to accompany the awakening of each of the chakra areas. In the Hindu tradition, the energies are identified as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine, and moving upward as the chakras are awakened or aroused. If not alerted, the energy arousal can be surprising, and perhaps frightening; it is sometimes even considered dangerous. It is well to be informed of this phenomenon before advancing, so that one can be prepared to deal calmly and without fear, using sensible judgment of one’s own capacity to integrate the power of the energy aroused. Obviously, it is also helpful to confer with someone who has experience and can help guide one without difficulty.

Ordinarily, books or essays dealing with the chakras will include reference to kundalini, and some instructive guidance.

5. In researching the topic of chakras, I have found particular relevance in the work of Judith Anodea, Eastern Body Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self (Berkeley, CA., Celestial Arts, a division of Random House, 2004), revised edition; as well as Chakra Balancing. Workbook and Guided Meditations.

(Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2003).

6. David, Steindl-Rast. quoting Eckhart Tolle in Deeper than Words: Living the Apostles’ Creed (NY: Doubleday Image Books, 2010), 43.

7. This is the theme of the excellent study by Judy Cannato, Field of Compassion (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2010.)

8. James O’Dea. Cultivating Peace (San Rafael, CA: Shift Books), 191.

9. Carolyn Toben. Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry (Timberlake Earth Sanctuary Press, 2012.)

10. Michael Dowd. Thank God for Evolution (New York: Viking Press, 2007), 42.

11. Sandra Schneiders. New Wineskins (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986), 151 ff.

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12. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall (New York: Harper Torchbook, Harper & Row Publishers, 1969), 265.

13. Dominique Surel. “Speaking from the Heart,” Edgescience #6, (January-March 2011).

14. Jacques Lusseyran. And There Was Light, (New York: Parabola Books, 1987), 32-33.

15. Jacques Lusseyran. Against the Pollution of the I: Selected Writings of Jacques Lusseyran, (Sandpoint, OH: Morning Press, 2006), 51 ff.

16. Cynthia Bourgeault. Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (New York: Cowley Publications, 2004), 83 ff.

17. Thomas Merton. A Thomas Merton Reader, ed. Thomas McDonnell (New York: Image Books, 1996), 347.

18. Cynthia Bourgeault. Wisdom Jesus (Boston, MA.: Shambhala Publications Inc., 2008).

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