Create the Life You Imagine ~ March 2019
Balancing the Lower Triangle
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
~ Marianne Williamson
The last power center in our lower triangle is our third chakra. The third chakra is associated with the color yellow and is located in your solar plexus, just below your diaphragm. This is the mental processing center of our chakra system and is attached to our left-brain, conscious thinking process. The third chakra keeps a running data base of all of our life experiences and catalogs and sorts those experiences as part of an information warehouse that helps us to make sense of the world and to master how it works. It is dualistic in its thinking and sees things in polarities: good or bad, pleasure or pain, positive or negative, right or wrong. The third chakra is associated with the element of fire and it uses that mental heat to distill down the watery emotions of the second chakra into mental patterns and operating belief systems that allow us to focus, make decisions, solve problems and take action in a quick, clear and logical way. Our healthy third chakra is attached to our sense of good judgment, will power, mental clarity, personal integrity, and ability to make sound choices.
Developmentally, the third chakra is most active during adolescence and early adulthood. It is the chakra center responsible for our developing sense of independence and personal power. As we move out of that second chakra womb of our childhood and begin to move toward adulthood, the third chakra kicks in to help us organize and manage the world around us in a sensible and stable way. You notice the third chakra energy waking up in teenagers when they begin to break away from the family and start forming and testing their own thoughts and beliefs about life. It may show up in behaviors that look rebellious or even oppositional, but it’s just the third chakra learning to navigate life more independently. We use our third chakra energy as we discover how to stand on our own two feet, as we develop our sense of personal responsibility, and as we figure out how to make our own way in life. It is home to all the powerful self-words: self-reliant, self-sufficient, self-managing, and self-confident. But the fire energy of the third chakra can also give rise to a firestorm of scorching thoughts that generate self-criticism, self-doubt, and self-destruction.
The third chakra is where we create the thoughts and the stories we live by, so we must remember that our thoughts, our words and our stories have enormous creative power. Most of our operating stories start in the second chakra feeling center and work their way up into the third chakra where we create some well-developed story lines that we act out over and over again. The process goes something like this: We have an experience of the physical world in our first chakra; our second chakra reacts to the experience with a pattern of feelings that are sent up to the third chakra for processing; our third chakra runs the experience and feelings through its data base and decides how to think about it. Those thoughts move out like energy and attract our next experience; and the cycle circulates this way through the lower triangle again and again. If the experience generates positive feelings, we develop thoughts that open our energy system and attract more positive experiences. For example, you get a gold star on your spelling test, that makes you feel special and happy, you create the thought that you are smart and capable, and consequently you attract new learning experiences that reinforce that story about yourself. The Experience + Feelings + Thoughts create an emotional pattern or a mental belief system that gets solidified and planted in our third chakra. If this is a positive belief, we feel our confidence rising and the strength of that third chakra causes us to stand tall, opening the space of our solar plexus, and we can literally see that energy rising in a person’s body language and carriage.
But what happens if we have a difficult life experience that triggers a negative thought pattern? Imagine you worked really hard on a project at school and you are so excited for your teacher to see your work. In this case, however, the teacher doesn’t respond with gold stars but rather, gives you a negative appraisal of your work. You may experience feelings of disappointment, frustration, embarrassment or shame, and those negative feelings filter up into your third chakra where the thought attaches that “school is hard” or “teachers are mean,” or worse yet, “I am stupid.” When we get stuck in a negative thought pattern in our third chakra, especially if it attaches directly to our sense of self, we can watch the space in our solar plexus close down. When we experience a negative reaction in our third chakra we instinctively cross our arms over this part of our body or close our body around our solar plexus by rounding our shoulders and ribs forward to protect ourselves from this negative energy flow. If the experience is particularly painful or disempowering, we might physically close up around this center in the fetal position. If a habitual thought pattern like this gets planted in our third chakra and becomes a negative belief system, we can quickly lose our sense of competence and confidence, and that creates a spiral of recurring experiences that confirms and reinforces our small-self story.
Our third chakra can be home to positive stories about life and about ourselves, or to negative stories about life and about ourselves. A positive life story might go like this: “Even when life is challenging, I have the skills and resources I need to be successful.” A negative life story might go something like this: “Nothing goes my way, life doesn’t work out for me and I can’t handle anything.” These habitual stories will drive the thoughts, feelings and actions of our lower triangle, and produce life experiences that are an energetic match. Our third chakra is also home to our sense of personal integrity and justice, and if we act in ways that compromise our integrity or our sense of justice, we will notice it in this center. If we operate regularly in negative story lines, operate outside our sense of integrity, or are frequently caught in stories of unfairness or injustice, we might notice imbalances in our third chakra showing up in our body as digestive issues, ulcers, acid reflux, stress headaches from the acid imbalance in our guts or adrenal dysfunction. We metaphorically create hot, acidic thoughts that burn us up and burn us out.
If we really listen to our inner dialogue, to the “truths” we tell ourselves over and over, we will recognize how our thoughts are translating into our experiences. Negative belief systems about ourselves, about others, or about life become hardened thought patterns that form obstacles to the natural flow of our energy system; they jam up the lower triangle like large boulders blocking the flow of a river. If we recognize negative belief systems may be jamming up our third chakra, we can use our third chakra mental power to scan our thoughts, to identify the unhealthy thought pattern and to choose some new thoughts. Just like you might tell a reactive teenager that their thinking or analysis of a difficult situation may not be altogether accurate, you can remind yourself that habitually negative thoughts you planted in your third chakra at an earlier life stage might not be serving you well, and then work to consciously change them.
Your third chakra mental processing center is charged with focusing your attention, scanning the world for patterns, possibilities, problems and threats, and then reacting to those patterns based on its logic and past experience. It can help us sort through and balance the tide of feelings that arise from our second chakra and create strategic action plans that allow us to steadily navigate life with focus, care and attention to support our sense of personal power and competence. The danger of the third chakra, however, is that it might adopt negative belief systems that interfere with our perceptions, judgments and mental flexibility, and that can create a firestorm of self-destructive thoughts and responses. Remember, our source of personal power and our sense of confidence about life resides in the third chakra, so the wisdom of Obi-Wan Kenobi applies here: “Be mindful of your thoughts.”
Wishing you the blessings and light of the Soul, as you create the life you imagine.
Tracy
Stepping Stones:
Neuroscientists propose that we have approximately 70,000 thoughts a day, or just about one thought per second. If you accept the idea that your thoughts create your reality, then starting to pay closer attention to your thoughts makes good sense. If you are going to harness your incredible co-creative power in the world, you must begin to pay attention—to attend—to your thoughts. According to the dictionary definition, to attend to something means:
To Look After
To Be Present
To Pay Heed
To Accompany
To Escort
To Take Charge
The latin root of “attend” is “to stretch.” As we begin to understand our nature as co-creators, we first need to follow along inside our heads and be present to our thoughts. If our thoughts are always creating, we had best accompany those thoughts and pay heed to their potential. If they are not the thoughts we wish to create our next experience, we need to take charge, escort those thoughts to the cosmic recycling bin, and stretch ourselves to create some new thoughts. Your life will reflect your habitual thoughts and beliefs, so here are some positive affirmations to power your third chakra this week:
I believe I am strong, capable, confident and courageous. I believe my life matters and makes a difference. I honor my purpose and presence in the world. I am important.
I believe in my dreams and inspirations. My mind is a powerful activator of my future.
The thoughts I have today create the experiences I will have tomorrow.
I am focused, patient, powerful and perseverant.
I believe in my power to grow and change. I love and approve of myself in this moment
and encourage myself to move toward healthy new patterns. I take small steps each day to transform my life for the better. I am calm and confident in the process of life.
I believe love is stronger than fear. I believe every thought, feeling or action based in love
changes me and changes the world. I am a powerful source of love in action.
And This One From Kate's Song, "I Believe" (Click below to listen to this original song):
I believe in possibilities. I believe in things I cannot see.
I believe dreams can become reality. If you just believe.
Our third chakra gives our life focus and creates experiences that match our thoughts and beliefs. Listen to Kate's original song, I Believe to remind you to stretch toward your highest possibilities this week. by going to the Products Page on my website and just scroll down to the Transcendence CD and click the track to inspire your journey this week. Both of Kate's CD's are available for purchase on that page.
