Stepping Stones

Activating Your Inner Powers - Week Three

Focus vs. Firestorm

The Scarecrow of the Oz story represents the mental energy of the third chakra. The power of the third chakra is the focus we find when we use this strategic, rational thinking center to help us problem-solve along the path of life. Just as the second chakra is an emotional storehouse of our past experiences, the strategic mind of the third chakra is a mental storehouse of our past experiences. It represents acquired knowledge and mental patterns gained through life experience. The rational mind can be a tremendous tool as we negotiate our way along the path. The Wizard says to the Scarecrow when he asks for brains, “You don’t need them. You learn something every day. A baby has brains but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth, the more experience you are sure to get.”

Likewise, our journey along the path of life helps us gain needed knowledge and experience in the world. But the worldly knowledge of the third chakra is of no use unless it acts in service to our intuition and spiritual wisdom. When Dorothy meets the Scarecrow at her first crossroads on the way to Oz, he spins himself into circles saying, “You could go this way, you could go that way, many go this way.” Left on its own, our strategic mind will leave us confused and spinning in circles with its mental gymnastics, weighing options and seeking solutions to problems without even understanding the mystery unfolding in front of us. The Scarecrow wisely acknowledges the proper place of brains in the order of things when he declares to Dorothy as he joins her on her path that “I won’t try to manage things.” The Scarecrow, representing the third chakra, is wise to know that on the journey through our inner world to our spiritual consciousness, the strategic or rational mind can serve as a problem solver but must defer to the wisdom of the higher spiritual energies and follow the intuitive mind on the path of the soul.

The shadow side of the third chakra is the firestorm of thoughts, ideas and beliefs that can paralyze us as surely as the Lion’s fears or the Tin Man’s tears. The Scarecrow’s greatest terror is fire, but fire represents both the power and the shadow of the third chakra. When we use the power of the third chakra as a strategic problem solver, it helps us find the fiery focus we need to chart the way on our path with grit and determination. When we let the shadow of the third chakra get in charge, however, it can create a firestorm of self-defeating mental patterns and contradicting thoughts and beliefs that will burn us up along with our dreams. Remember that the gift of the rational mind is to take things apart and break them down into pieces that can be logically analyzed. If we turn that atomizing mind loose to make sense of our spiritual journey, it will break us down and tear us apart with confusion, insecurity and self-doubt, the way the Scarecrow is torn apart by the winged monkeys, or it will set our small minds on fire with fear the way the Wicked Witch hurls fireballs at the Scarecrow in the dark forest.

Again, we must remember that the path to our soul is through the higher mind—our wisdom mind—following our intuition. If we let the higher mind lead, then our strategic mind can function as a filter to sift through all the experiences that happen around us every day and to focus on the thoughts which support our highest possibilities. It is a new age adage that your thoughts create your reality, and our new physics and neuroscience are proving this to be true. The lesson of the third chakra is to manage our thoughts and to focus our time and energies, while we follow our intuition forward on our spiritual path.

Weekly Stepping Stones

How does your strategic or logical mind create self-doubt or stop you from moving toward your life dream? Can you be aware of thought patterns that stop you from moving forward? What have you learned through your life experiences that can help you to move forward when you get stopped? What positive experiences have you had in life where you followed your intuition even when it didn’t make sense to your logical mind?