Create the Life You Imagine ~ May 2019
Opening the Upper Triangle
“You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.”
~ Martha Graham
The next power center we will explore is the fifth chakra. The fifth chakra is associated with the color light blue or sky blue, is generally located in the throat, and is connected to the thyroid gland, jaw, neck, mouth, teeth, larynx and voice. It is associated with the element of ether which is an invisible gas or the clear sky in the upper regions of air beyond the clouds. In this invisible high air of the fifth chakra we find the first of the upper triangle spiritual chakras and it is where we come into direct contact with our Soul. Theologian Matthew Fox has described the fifth chakra as the birth canal for our Soul—a narrow opening “through which pass our deepest thoughts and hopes and dreams and poems.” The spiritual task of the fifth chakra is to bring these deepest parts of ourselves into expression.
If we think about the anatomy and function of the fifth chakra, it’s about speaking our truth and bringing through that narrow passage only that which is most true, most essential and most authentic about who we really are. The strength of the fifth chakra is the true creativity of our divine nature in that it activates our power to bring forward our most authentic selves through the co-creative process of life. The vulnerability of the fifth chakra is rigidity, judgment or dogmatism. If we refuse to speak or to choose or to live our truth, our hopes or our dreams, we will find ourselves too often speaking or choosing or acting out the truths or beliefs of others in rigid or judgmental ways, or becoming dogmatic, stuck and closed-minded. When we speak or act from the shadow or our fifth chakra, it stops our growth and creates patterns of negativity, tension, frustration and limitation, because we are out of alignment with who we really are.
Remember that as we move into the upper triangle we are moving into entirely new spiritual territory. Most people function and exist from the level of their personality using the three lower triangle human chakra centers. As we move through our fourth chakra and up into the upper triangle, we come into contact with our spiritual Self, our Soul, and we begin to function from a very different perspective. We don’t want to ask the central question of life, “Who Am I,” from the level of our lower triangle; we want to let that deep and authentic truth about who we are unfold from within us through the power of our fifth chakra.
Once this process begins, our fifth chakra will give us clues when our personality is operating out of alignment with our Soul. We may find that we can’t keep speaking the same old lower triangle victim stories about our life because the stories start to feel old and tired even to us; and unless we are willing to make some changes, the stories literally get caught in our throats. We may find that if we are standing firm in an old pattern that we know no longer serves us, or that we are afraid to speak our truth about a way that we are being mistreated or abused, or that we are holding back a change that we know needs to happen, that our jaw gets locked up. We may discover that if we want to play life small and safe and are afraid to live as joyful creative beings expressing our immense spiritual power that our thyroid gets out of balance. We may recognize that if we speak negatively or judgmentally about others, that we will activate negativity and judgment toward us from others.
Initially we may find that our lower triangle thinking tries to create a “spiritual life” using the rules of the lower triangle. Without making any fundamental shifts in our thoughts, feelings or actions, we just try to put on religious practices or spiritual values like a new coat over our old clothes. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work and it doesn’t hold up, because living from our Soul is a complete transformation experience that fundamentally changes us, like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. The caterpillar can’t just strap on some synthetic wings and become a butterfly. Instead it goes through a death of its caterpillar form in order for the new form of the butterfly to emerge.
Likewise, we can’t climb up into the upper triangle carrying all of our lower triangle baggage from our life and expect a transformation to occur. If you think about my hour glass analogy, it would be like throwing all of our disappointments, resentments, regrets and hard stories about our lives into a giant garbage bag that we throw over our shoulder, and then trying to pull that big bag up and through that narrow opening to enter the upper triangle. We simply can’t take all of the old garbage and all of the old patterns with us. This is the real meaning of the word “surrender,” and one of the critical processes that we undergo as we move into the fifth chakra power center. The surrender process is our willingness to let the old small self and all of its struggles and resistance to life die, and to let our spiritual Self emerge through the mysterious process of transformation.
In order to accomplish this surrender process, we need to pause in the fourth chakra and sort through all the lower triangle stories with love and compassion and find the life lessons and blessings that can be held in our heart, while releasing all the old baggage of the life events and surrendering all the grief, disappointment and frustration that are just part and parcel of our human experiences. Once we lighten our load in this respect, we open the channel to our upper triangle and allow the transformative energy of our Soul to begin to flow down from our fifth chakra, through our heart center and into our lower triangle. As our Soul energy enters our lower triangle and we begin to express that energy through our daily life, it transforms our life as we become more authentic expressions of our higher Self, and this shift in flow fundamentally changes the way we experience life.
When we begin to operate from the level of our fifth chakra it really is a re-birth experience. We are no longer willing to twist and turn and contort ourselves into physical, emotional or mental pretzels to stay safe, to please others, to satisfy external expectations, to live inside our small self false stories, or to continue reenacting self-sabotaging and debilitating life patterns. From the fifth chakra consciousness, each of us is a Soul which expresses the qualities of Spirit in a particular form and in a particular time, place and circumstance. It is not an accident that we are here on the planet and we weren’t dropped into the life we are living by some random or arbitrary cosmic coincidence. Even if we feel that the family we were born into or the people that we are surrounded by or the circumstances that we have experienced make absolutely no literal sense to us, our Soul is constantly urging us to drop our resistance and to learn the deeper lessons of life, despite the difficulties and struggles, and to rise up out of the small self to express our highest and most profound potentials and possibilities.
So when we talk about the fifth chakra we need to think about that change in flow I described over the last few weeks. You will recall that we progress up through our first three human chakras following a predictable developmental course, and then if we exercise just a little bit of awareness and intention we enter into the heart chakra. Once we enter the heart chakra, if we want to move forward in our spiritual growth and evolution, we are required to get a bigger view of ourselves and of our lives and to clear the lower triangle energy blockages using that heart center pathway of compassion-forgiveness-inspiration-gratitude-joy as we do a gentle life review. Once we have cleared the biggest energy blockages out of our lower triangle, the flow of our energy shifts and we are prepared to activate our upper triangle Soul energy and to begin living from the crown down. Living from the crown down means that we start to let our upper triangle Soul Self flow into our lower triangle personality self, and then our Soul can use our personality as a vehicle for expression of our truest Self and our highest life purpose.
I imagine the upper triangle as a giant funnel. It opens at the top to receive all the gifts and qualities of Spirit, and through the narrow opening at the bottom of the funnel it channels into each of us a stream of that energy of Spirit that makes us unique expressions of that Divine force. Each of us receives a slightly different stream of that Divine energy. The spiritual truth of the fifth chakra is that there is no one else exactly like us that has ever come into incarnation, and our most sacred responsibility in life is simply to be who we really are. And while this seems like an easy thing, just to be yourself, this is the incredible spiritual challenge of life and it requires awareness, intention, effort, perseverance and practice. It is a challenge we must take up each day and with time, patience and practice, we learn to surrender all that is small, petty, insignificant and false and to live in regular alignment with our highest truth. As Irish Poet David Whyte says, “It is an absolute triumph for a human being just to be themselves.”
Wishing you the blessings and light of the Soul, as you create the life you imagine.
Tracy
p.s. Thanks for your patience in the delay of this post as my recent injuries are making me move just a little slower than usual - part of my surrender process for this time. Thanks also for all the kind wishes and healing prayers that people have sent my way.
Stepping Stones:
Our lower triangle will always construct a life that is too small for us and our Soul will always whisper to us about a life that we find hard to imagine. For this week’s practice, read the poem below by David Whyte and reflect or journal about the following questions. Then watch yourself this week getting caught in energy that is too small for you and in energy that brings you alive:
What areas of my life feel restricting or too small?
What areas of my life or secret dreams about my life call to me or make me feel alive?
Who are the people that encourage me to live in alignment with my highest aspirations (these can be people in your relationship circle, people in history, public figures, teachers, artists, musicians or others – anyone who inspires you)?
Sweet Darkness
You must learn one thing,
the world was meant to be free in.
Give up all other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement
of your aloneness to learn that
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~ David Whyte
When we open the channel to our upper triangle, the light of our soul begins to shine through our life. To inspire you this week, click below to find Kate's Go Light Your World to remind you to let your soul light shine, by going to the Products Page on my website and just scroll down to the Transcendence CD and click the track. Both of Kate's CD's are available for purchase on that page.
