Stepping Stones

Activating Your Inner Powers - Week Two

Passion vs. Purgatory

The Tin Man represents the second power that we need to claim on our hero’s journey—the energy of our passion—our vital life energy. The second chakra is the home of our passions and feelings about life. Our passions and feelings are part of our internal guidance system and are critical to our success in walking our path. When we can harness the passion of the second chakra, we use our feelings for guidance and for inner awareness as we make our way through life.

But the Tin Man also shows us the shadow side of the second chakra—the danger of getting overwhelmed and paralyzed by our emotions. The second chakra is where we have stored all of our past emotional disappointments, wounds and traumas with other people. If we get lost in these old stories, we create a purgatory in our second chakra where we repetitively re-live the emotional patterns of our past and find ourselves unable to find the path out of them. We become locked up like the Tin Man, paralyzed and stuck in the grip of our disempowering emotions.