Well, it's about that time. A month and a half has passed and I again feel pulled to write on the next chakra, the 4th.
The 4th chakra is your heart center. It is "the center" in many ways. It is the center of your seven chakras, when you live from your heart you are more "centered," balanced and happy, and your heart connects heaven and earth, serving as the center between them. We are here on earth, in part, to learn about love in many different ways and forms. We have loved ones on the other side assisting us in this journey, and our mother and father in heaven love and adore us, their children. Love is what gives us the desire to unite as a human family and raise up to something higher, and to bring all of the loved ones we can with us.
Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of love for giving every ounce of his being, his life, his pain, his joy, and yes, his unconditional love to us, his very flawed brothers and sisters. He was the ultimate example of love when he healed the leper, caring more for the leper than for himself, and he was the ultimate example of love when he said, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and "forgive them Father for they know not what they do." The Lord, our brother, showed us through out his ministry on earth how to live with an open heart. Oh if we could only be taught by him how to keep our hearts so open despite being spit upon by life in various ways.
This is by no means an easy task. It is much easier to react to our emotional lives in an "eye for an eye" type of way. If someone is mad, you get mad back. This is why in several books they use the term, "the great leap," for when a person begins to live from their heart rather than the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd chakras. see note at bottom of post As a follower of Jesus Christ, you are asked to do your best to live with unconditional love, compassion, charity, and non-judgement. You are asked to live with an open heart and put off the natural man who says "an eye for an eye."
Your heart center is associated with your capacity to give and receive love and service. It is associated with your cardio vascular system, immune system, and endocrine system and color/frequency is green. If your heart center is blocked your emotions will be distorted. You may know someone loves you, but not be able to FEEL it. You may love your child, your spouse, your parent, your friend, but if your heart is hardened, or blocked, with anger, distrust, judgement, or any other emotion, you may not be able to feel it. Blocks on the heart, like blocks in any area of your life, rob you of a piece of the joy that is available to you.
It is so interesting how all of these emotional/spiritual things can show up in our physical bodies.
Foods and herbs that feed and cleanse your physical heart center body systems, will also help feed and cleanse trapped emotions from that region. We are such complex beings! If any of you have done much yoga (pranayama or asana) you may have experienced holding a pose and feeling unexpected emotions flood to the surface. Crazy right!? Well, when you physically open and breath light and life into a blocked area, you feel those emotions as they cleanse out. Cayenne pepper and garlic are powerful herbs for the 4th chakra. If you are working on cleansing your 4th chakra, that cleanse will be empowered by doing a blood cleanse. (Remember when you are doing cleanses to work from the bottom up. You don't want to do a blood cleanse just to have all of those toxins get backed up in the liver, bowel, or kidneys.) It is interesting to note that when your heart is open, your immune system is strong. If you are feeling down, depressed, lonely, and broken hearted, your immune system is weakened. That's scriptural too! (Anyone have a reference on that? I'm feelin lazy I think ;))
The scriptures talk about having a broken heart and a contrite spirit. A broken heart is an open heart. When your heart is broken, you pour out your soul to heaven. and the Lord can mold and shape you.
There is so, so much that could be said about every chakra. Feel welcome to ask me for more information if you wonder about something that I didn't include! I'm not much for taking my sweet time on reading, editing, and such. I hope this gives you something to ponder over and that it brings more awareness to you in moments when you feel your heart begin to harden. This is a big one! Times like these perfection seems SO far away! Thankfully, we don't have to be perfect on our own. We do it in and through Christ, or not at all.
[The lower chakras are typically more associated with the physical world (the world outside of you), while the upper chakras (beginning with the heart center) are more spiritual ("the world behind your eye"-to quote Carolynn Myss), although all chakras ARE associated things both spiritual and temporal. Here's an example: the 1st chakra relates largely to being grounded and feeling safe and taken care of in the PHYSICAL world, but even something that physical is also spiritual because it requires faith and trust in Heavenly Father to find a true sense of safety and peace that your needs will be met, thus connecting to both physical and spiritual aspects.]
