You make my day

I would like to thank Rebecca from Gratitude Practices for honoring me by awarding me the You Make My Day Award.

Rebecca, it has indeed been an honour sharing this journey with you and the other participants at Rainbow Dreams -- in fact, you made my day!

I thank you all for your support and love, its humbling. So now its time to honour my fellow travellers.

The Rules: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!
There are so many people who inspire me on a daily basis with their courage in showing up for their lives, following their hearts and working to manifest their dreams. I don't read a lot of blogs, but the ones I read are listed on the side of my blog.

All these goddesses visit and participate in Rainbow Dreams regularly. Visiting their blogs always brings a gentle smile to my face as I witness their strength, vulnerabily and beauty:

1. Hélène Deroubaix
2. Aurora
3. Creative Spirit Faery
4. iGoddess
5. The Modern Goddess
6. The Dream
7. Midwest Musings

Please visit their blogs!

The Third Eye Chakra

Your vision will become clear only

when you look into your heart.

Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Chakra Six: Light, Archetypal identity, oriented to self-reflection

This chakra is known as the brow chakra or third eye center. It is related to the act of seeing, both physically and intuitively. As such it opens our psychic faculties and our understanding of archetypal levels. When healthy it allows us to see clearly, in effect, letting us "see the big picture."

After refining your energy body through the purification of sound in the fifth chakra, the journey moves deeper into your inner world. Anodea Judith guides us to our sixth chakra, the centre of illumination, the gateway to wisdom, and the luminescent source of the light within.

To enter this chakra is to discover a world of indescribable beauty. It is to seek the light of consciousness and learn how to focus that light in order to see clearly. This is the homeland of intuition, dreams and visions.

The sixth chakra is often called the third eye, an etheric organ of consciousness that lies directly behind and between your two physical eyes. The third eye is capable of seeing beyond the density of the physical world into the subtler realms of energy and spirit. Only be training your consciousness to be focused and directed can you harness the immense gifts of this visionary centre.

Shiva, one of the principle Hindu gods, is sometimes depicted with a thunderbolt emanating from his third eye for the purpose of destroying illusion. As you learn to focus your attention, you have a means to free yourself from illusion and begin to perceive the ultimate nature of reality.

The name of this chakra, ajina, means both to perceive and to command. To perceive is to see or recognise a pattern. To command is to hold a picture in your mind as a guiding template for manifestation. It is important to be conscious of these internal pictures so that you create from clarity and intention rather than illusion.

The sixth chakra is about seeing in the deepest sense. What does it mean to really see? Even when our eyes are open, we remain unaware of many things that are within our visual field. To see deeply requies a focus of consciousness in a particular direction and to look at something long enough to turn its patterns into meaning. We use the expression "I see" to denote understanding, even using it in reactin to words, feelings, or ideas. It is this kind of seeing that is the basis of insight, the ability to see inside, and to perceive the patterns we create. Through insight we are able to free ourselves from constricting patters and to achieve liberation.

As you enter this chakra, look deeply within. Take time to detach from your suroundings and look at them objectively. Focus your attention. Validate your intuitions. Follow your dreams.

Chakra Attributes

Color: Indigo/Cobalt

Function: Intuition

Healing Essence of the Chakra: Located in the center of the forehead between the eyebrows, it is identified with the Third Eye. This chakra asks that a person look within to find the wisdom of the soul. It affects the brain and the neuralgic system, which stimulate the endocrine and pituitary systems. At the highest level, when this chakra has connected with the Heart Chakra, divine love and light emanates out to the world.

Keywords: Clear Vision, Genius, Imagination, Dreams, Quiet, Inner Peace

Affirmations:

• I see the light and it guides my way.
• I listen, I hear, I speak the truth.

Interpreting excess or deficiency in the sixth chakra

Excessive characteristics:

• Hallucinations
• Delusions
• Obsessions
• Nightmares
• Intrusive memories
• Difficulty concentrating
• Excessive fantasising

Deficient characteristics:

• Lack of imagination
• Difficulty visualising
• Insensitivity
• Excessive skepticism
• Denial (can't see what's going on)
• Inability to see alternatives

Blanced characteristics

• Strong intuition
• Penetrating insight
• Creative imagination
• Good memory
• Good dream recall
• Ability to visualise
• Has a guiding vision for life

The sixth chakra self-evaluation

1. Can you see what is really going on in your life or do you try to keep certain things buried?
2. Do you have a personal vision for your life?
3. Are you aware of what archetypal influences may be guiding or limiting your life?
4. Are you aware of your dreams and the symbolic messages they may hold for you?
5. Do you trust your intuition?
   

The Throat Chakra

Kind words can be short and easy to speak,

but their echoes are truly endless.

Mother Teresa

Chakra Five: Sound, Creative identity, oriented to self-expression

This is the chakra located in the throat and is thus related to communication and creativity. Here we experience the world symbolically through vibration, such as the vibration of sound representing language.

As we move into working with our Throat Chakra, Anodea Judith tells us to take a beath and listen to the air rushing into your lungs. Let the breath out with a sound, touching your fingers to your throat, and feel the vibration of the fifth chakra. With this simple motion of moving air through your body you express the consciousness inside and influence the reality around you. This is the essence of communication.

Sound, vibration, rhythm, music, voice, words, communication. Thse are all aspects of the fifth chakra, located in the throat, literally the bottleneck of the whole chakra system. Its name, Vissudha, means purification, as the release of sound urifies and orders the energy body for entry into higher consciousness.

This chakra is about opening the voice, speaking your truth, and freeing your creativity. It is where you take the will from the third chakra, add it to the breath in the fourth chakra, and energise the ideas coming down from the mind to express yourself in the world. Through communication you connect, expand, and unite with others, creating your world as you go.

The essence of this chakra is to find resonance and harmony with all that is vibrating around you. It is to open to speaking and listening, toning and singing, moving and dancing, and from this synergy you open your creativity to express your deepest self.

To open the fifth chakra is to commune, a word which forms the root of communication, and literally means to be one with. To communice with self and spirit is to take yet anotehr step toward the realisation of unity with all things.

Chakra Attributes

Color: Blue

Function: Communication, Creativity, Connection

Healing Essence of the Chakra: Located in the throat and neck region of the body and extending upward to include the lower region of the brain or cortex, this area holds the communication center. Through the Throat Chakra one may speak long-held truths of past hurts and, in the process, find much inner peace and a sense of personal freedom. With a healed and healthy fifth chakra, one’s words are kind, clear and truthful.

Keywords: Truth, Self-Expression, Song, Poetry, Clarity, Communication

Affirmations:

• I am the messenger.
• I speak my truth with clarity and courage.

Interpreting excess or deficiency in the fifth chaka

Excessive Characteristics

• Talking too much or inappropriately
• Gossiping
• Stuttering
• Difficulty being silent
• Excessive loudness
• Inability to contain (keep confidences, etc)

Deficient characteristics

• Difficulty putting things in words
• Fear of speaking
• Speaking with a small, weak voice
• Secretiveness
• Excessive shyness
• Tone deafness

Balanced characteristics

• Reasonant, full voice
• Clear communication with others
• Good communication with self
• Good listener
• Good sense of timing and rhythm
• Lives life creatively

The fifth chakra self evaluation

1. Are you comfortable with your own voice? Have you ever listened to its reasonace?
2. Do you allow other people to have their say and be heard?
3. In what ways do you express yourself creatively?
4. Do you feel that people hear you?
5. Do you communicate your feelings open and honestly?

The Heart Chakra

"To love is the great amulet

that maks the world a garden."

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Chakra Four: Air, Social identity, oriented to self-acceptance

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This chakra is called the heart chakra and is the middle chakra in a system of seven. It is related to love and is the integrator of opposites in the psyche: mind and body, male and female, persona and shadow, ego and unity. A healthy fourth chakra allows us to love deeply, feel compassion, have a deep sense of peace and centeredness.

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Now that we have awakened the firest of our will, we are ready to enter the sacred and tenderrealm of the heart. Here lies the very centre of the chakra system as well as the heart of our being, the chamber from which we give and receive love.

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As we move onto the fourth chakra in Anodea Judith's Chakra Balancing Workbook, we must ask ourselves these questions:

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How do we open our hearts to love? What is this mysterious essence that has such power to rule our lives? What is its purpose in our journey through the chakras and how can we align ourselves with this purpose?

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These are the essential questions we ask of the heart, the organ whose beating defines life itself. But when we speak of the heart, we are speaking not of a physical organ out of a realm of connection, where we are beckoned to expand beyond ourselves and find union with another.

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Love is the essence of life. It is the ultimate healer, the most potent teacher, the inspiration for great works. For the child love provides the assurance of survival. For the adult, it brings the intimacy that allows acceptance and invites expansiveness. And while the desire to receive love is a basic need of all human beings, this alone will not open the heart.
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The Sanskrit name for this chakra is Anahata, meaninging unstuck or unhurt. To open the heart is to treat others (as well as things) with honour and respect and refrain from causing unneccessary harm. This occurs naturally when we discover the divine nature of the self within and realise that a similar nature resides within others and indeed all of life.

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An open heart feels compassion and empathy for both self and others. It understands the tender nature of spirit, the delightful joy of connection, and the deep peace of body, self and other, light and shadow, masculine and feminine, inner and outer realms. The result of this balance is peace.

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Chakra Attributes

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Color: Green

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Function: Love

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Healing Essence of the Chakra: Located in the region of the heart and between the shoulder blades, it is the area of the body where love resides, in the cave of the heart. The ecstasy of love teaches us to let go and trust in the world, ultimately transcending the flames of sexual passion and emptying our life, giving spirit and spirituality into the world.

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Keywords: Love, Unconditional Love, Surrender, Compassion, Forgiveness, Grace,

Peace

Affirmations:

• I am unconditionally loving of myself and others.
• There is an infinite supply of love in the world.
• I am love.

Interpreting excess or deficiency in the fourth chakra

Excessive characteristics:

• Codependency (focussing too much on others)
• Poor boundaries
• Jealousy
• Being a martyre
• Being a pleaser

Deficient characteristics:

• Antisocial, withdrawn
• Critical, intolerant
• Lonely, isolated
• Lack of empathy
• Fear of intimacy

Balanced characteristics:

• Caring
• Compassionate
• Empathetic
• Accepting
• Self-loving
• Peaceful
• Centered
• Content

The Fourth Chakra Self Evaluation

1. Are you able to love yourself as you are or do you put up certain conditions?
2. How often do you show your appreciation to those around you including strangers?
3. Are you holding onto any feelings of grief?
4. Do you have any feelings of hatred or resentment towards someone in your life? If so, what can you do to forgive this person and free yourself from these old wounds?
5. What parts of yourself do you deny? What can you do to reclaim aspects of yourself that you may have sacrificed to be accepted?

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See participants' responses:

1. Aurora
2. Mich
3. Hélène Deroubaix
4. Creative Spirit Faery

i Goddess meditation

by Anita Ryal Revel

I'm back

So sorry that I've been away for the past month - travel commitments for work became very overwhelming and made it impossible for me to post.

When I returned, I came down with a bad case of tonsillitis, which seemed to suck the very life out of me.

I'm now on the mend and will start posting again next Monday.

I hope you've all had a magical Christmas.


mich
x.

The Solar Plexus Chakra

“There is a force within that gives you life—Seek that.
In your body there lies a priceless jewel—Seek that.
Oh, Wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside.
Look within, and Seek That”.

Rumi

Chakra Three: Fire, Ego identity, oriented to self-definition

This chakra is known as the power chakra, located in the solar plexus.

It rules our personal power, will, and autonomy, as well as our metabolism. When healthy, this chakra brings us energy, effectiveness, spontaneity, and non-dominating power.

Chakra Attributes:

• Color: Yellow


• Function: Will, Power, Laughter, Anger, Joy

Healing Essence of the Chakra:

Located above the navel, it corresponds to the solar plexus in the physical body.

This chakra opens the channels of power and acts like a radiant sun, storing power and energy for future use.

By directing the full force of our intention toward our dreams and goals and moving creatively through life, we leave the limiting aspects of our childhood behind.

We are transformed into sacred and peaceful warriors.

Keywords: Leadership, Power, Authority, Integrity, Consciousness, Courage, Action

Affirmations:

• I honor myself.


• I offer my light and service to the world.

Interpreting excess or deficiency in the third chakra:

Excessive Characteristics

• Dominating
• Controlling
• Competitive
• Arrogant
• Ambitious
• Hyperactive
• Stubborn
• Driven (compulsively focussed toward goals)
• Atracted to sedatives

Deficient Characteristics

• Passivity
• Lack of energy
• Poor digestion
• Tendency to be cold
• Tendency toward submission
• Blaming
• Low self-esteem, lack of confidence
• Weak will, poor self-discipline
• Use of stimulants

Balanced characteristics

• Responsible, reliable
• Good self-discipline
• Positive sense of self
• Confident
• Warm
• Energetic
• Spontaneous, playful, humorous
• Able to take risks

Answer the following questions:

1. How do you rate your energy levels?
   
2. Do you take appropriate action when your energy feels diminished?


3. Do you feel the need to conform?


4. Do you seek approval from other people?


5. Do you take responsibility for your own actions, or do you let other people control you?


6. Does shame influence your behaviour?


7. Do you assert yourself without dominating others?


8. Can you stay focussed on activities and see them through to completion?


9. Do you take risks in your life?

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Participant's responses:

1. Hélène Deroubaix
2. Mich