A clear and comprehensive text for the restoration and maintenance of your subtle energy system. McLaren, who has worked with survivors of abuse and trauma, shows how to clear the chakras of old hurts and to cleanse and strengthen the aura for protection against invasive energy. Bibliography. Index.
A clear and comprehensive text for the restoration and maintenance of your subtle energy system. McLaren, who has worked with survivors of abuse and trauma, shows how to clear the chakras of old hurts and to cleanse and strengthen the aura for protection against invasive energy. Bibliography. Index.
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Overview
A clear and comprehensive text for the restoration and maintenance of your subtle energy system. McLaren, who has worked with survivors of abuse and trauma, shows how to clear the chakras of old hurts and to cleanse and strengthen the aura for protection against invasive energy. Bibliography. Index.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609252137 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 01/15/1998 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 2 MB |
Read an Excerpt
YOUR AURA AND YOUR CHAKRAS
THE OWNER'S MANUAL
By Karla McLaren
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Copyright © 1998 Karla McLarenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-213-7
CHAPTER 1
Getting Started
You won't need fantastic psychic power or vision to become a competent self-healer; all you'll need is simple, in-the-body, grounded awareness. If you are already a psychic and you've come to this book to increase your abilities, please know this: there is no ability higher than the ability to know yourself.
I have known too many gifted psychics whose lives went nowhere; I have seen and known the tragedy of using spiritual gifts on others instead of on the self. I have also found that truly well and integrated people are the best healers of all, though their healing is usually hidden in perfectly timed phone calls, searching questions, and loving gifts. The best healers don't swoop in and remove all discomfort; they simply assist people in healing themselves. The best healers remind you of your personal connection to God, or to the creative energies of the universe. They won't stand above you, god-like, and block your view of the divine.
Don't fall for the idea that some other human is more spiritual than you are, and don't try to wield spiritual power over others. Healing is not a self-aggrandizing event or a sideshow. Healing is a process of awareness, intention, and discovery. This work is not about channeling, past-life readings, precognition, fortunetelling, or external psychic power. This work is about getting into the meat of your life; it's about dealing with the issues you brought here, and the issues you've created. This work is about getting you grounded.
A real healer can heal because he has done, and continues to do, his own work. He works with his own health or lack of it. He is honest with himself and he is honest with others. His healing is not a bag of tricks or pills, but a collection of awareness techniques and supportive stances. He attains these through study— both of his healing modality and of his own life. He attains healing status by maintaining his inner life and his healing practice.
Your first job—before you learn to heal, before you learn to read your aura and chakras—is to create a place from which to read and heal. You will need to clear a space in your busy life and your busy mind. If you don't, you'll be coming at this information as a dabbler, and not as a serious student. You won't come away with knowledge; you'll only have facts.
Consider alchemy, which is the fabled ability to turn base metals into gold. The very idea is exciting. Imagine having that kind of power! But no one does. The reason isn't that alchemy is impossible, but that the steps to becoming an alchemist are arduous and time-consuming. In times past, an aspiring alchemist had to learn all the arts of herbalism and magic, fire-making and divining, reading, writing, dead languages, and more. As you can well imagine, none of this drudgery was tolerable to people who just wanted gold, gold, gold!
Somewhere along the way, the few alchemists who accepted the drudgery and "made the cut" became less interested in gold, and more interested in the learning itself. The gold fever dissipated as the soul discovered more tangible wealth. Perhaps the ability to transform metal was achieved, perhaps not. The role of the alchemist in society, however, was always gained through his or her vast and deep knowledge. The flashier magic tricks played only a minor (though memorable) role.
If you'd like to be a Merlin without doing any work, I'm sure you'll find a teacher or a book to help you. I'm not that teacher, and this isn't that book. Feel free to skip ahead to the sections on flashy aura and chakra readings, but know that the flash only comes after the work, and then, the flash turns to light and awareness. The path of the competent psychic reader is one of work, study, self-appraisal, more self-appraisal, more study, and more work. It's good work, if you can get it.
AND NOW, THE WARNING: Change is wonderful and change is vital, but most living systems will resist change. This resistance, this stasis, is also wonderful and vital. Both are needed in a healthy body, a healthy family, a healthy community, and a healthy society. However, because we are a people trained to look at one thing or the other, and very seldom both, we objectify change and stasis as good or bad, depending on our situation.
We love it when our bodies utilize stasis and continue to function and maintain their weight when we forget to eat, sleep, and care for ourselves—but we hate it when they utilize stasis and won't drop weight when it's time to get into summer clothes. Conversely, we love changes when they benefit us, and hate them when they don't. We aren't trained to take the long view— to see change and stasis as equal parts in a perfect and healthy continuum.
This book will change your life, which means that your life and the people in it may attempt to utilize stasis in order to keep you from changing. Though your people may drive you out of your mind, and their stay-as-you-are tactics may feel unsafe and unsettling, stasis just is. When people slow you down and question you and threaten you and get in the way of your change, it means they consider you a part of their universe. By stifling you, they are protecting you, their universe, and the status quo. This pull toward stasis is a sign of a working (though not necessarily healthy) system that is being disrupted by your steps toward consciousness.
Depending on your environment, stasis may come at you as concern, interruptions and increased attention from others, or criticism and derision to bring your self-worth back to a manageable low. All interference needs to be addressed either verbally, or through the separation techniques included in this book, such as destroying images and burning contracts (see pages 56 and 77). You must understand however, that interfering people are only trying to help you live up to the relationships you have worked with, fought for, and agreed upon together.
When we enter into relationships, we often create energetic contracts that state which behaviors are acceptable, who does what to whom, how we will all look and react, and so on. These unconscious contracts create a shape and a container for the relationship. Even in healthy relationships, the freedom to make sudden change is rarely a part of such contracts. When people make changes, their contractual partners may feel a right to reexamine those unconscious contracts and force compliance in whatever way they can. This is not a bad thing in itself. It just is. Often, people who won't allow change are simply trying to protect a position and a relationship that was agreed upon over time—whether the parties were consciously aware of it or not. It is immeasurably helpful to remember this fact when working through this book.
In this book, there are a very large number of separation and safety tools to help you make your vital changes without pulling a huge blob of stasis down onto your life. It is important to realize, however, that stasis is an irreplaceable aspect of any natural system. Once your healing tools are a part of you, and your system accepts new ideas like grounding and centering, reading your chakras, and healing your aura, these tools will become a part of your new stasis. You won't have to consciously ground and heal yourself every day. These techniques and abilities will become a part of your life; they won't feel foreign or threatening. Soon, any threats to your newfound healing abilities will pull that blob of protective stasis over your aura and your grounding. Then, you'll know you've moved to a new place in consciousness.
As you move on in consciousness, you will most likely move on in your relationships as well. This can be lonely and frightening if you don't realize what's happening. As I made my changes, I became disconnected from my entire nuclear family. I now have a group of friends and relations who are my spiritual family. The energy of stasis helped me realize that I was losing something that had importance, but the energy of change helped me to know that I was moving on to something closer to my real self. Both change and stasis are necessary in any real forward movement.
As you move onward, your old ways of living will call to you. Sometimes, they will scream. If you can recognize these calls as stasis energy and thank them for protecting you, you will move on more gracefully. If the calls for stasis come from the people in your life, no matter how painfully loud the calls are, you can see them as love and safety offerings of one kind or another. If you can see the concern behind the calls and address them from that knowledge, instead of from a knee-jerk peevishness, you will not only move on more gracefully, you will bring light into the lives of those around you.
It's important to note, as you make these changes, how other people attempt to maintain the status quo. You may be very surprised, in the weeks and months ahead, at who supports you with concern and attention and who hinders you with violence and shame. Your circle of friends may change in startling ways as your energy changes. You will soon reach a new stasis, however, and create a new contractual foundation for your life and relationships. The key here is to remove yourself from people who try to maintain stasis at the cost of your health and sanity.
If you are in an abusive environment, or if you want to stay in an abusive relationship (to people, to work or living arrangements, or to drugs), I would ask you to put this book down immediately and stop right here.
This work will navigate you out of unworkable situations. You will begin to break away from old patterns. You will shake up your world. If you're ready to move on, this shake-up is excellent. If you want to stay where you are, and you are being abused or are abusing yourself, this work will create terrible upheavals. When shake-ups happen, your lack of resolve will turn them into full-scale, inescapable dramas—instead of interesting detours on your journey home.
The real warning is this: don't go any further if you want to stay where you are. It is a very dangerous thing to undertake a spiritual journey if you have no intention of ever getting anywhere. Please, if you want to stay put, accept my regards and put this book down. There are many paths besides this one. You have the time to honor stasis in your own present-day world. Your change may need to come later.
However, if you're ready to go on, turn the page and let's get started.
A Room of Your Own
Our very first step in becoming competent intuitive readers is to create a safe and quiet place from which to read. Many therapies and meditation systems help people create mental sanctuaries. We'll go one step further and create this sanctuary within your body, within the present time, and within your actual life. We'll create a room inside your head.
The room in your head is a private and unreachable place that does not depend on others or on physical surroundings for its peacefulness. It doesn't even require quiet or large blocks of time. It is a place where privacy is always available, inside your body. The room in your head can help to anchor your consciousness in your body by giving you a way to control what goes on inside it.
For many people, being inside the body will be a new sensation. Most of us spend our time in the past, in the future, in conflicts, and in what-ifs. This first tool gives us a chance to gather our awareness and begin to integrate.
CREATING THE ROOM IN YOUR HEAD
Here's how to make the room: draw an imaginary line straight backward from the top of your nose to the back of your head. Now draw another line from the top of your right ear to the top of your left ear (see figure 1, page 10). The point where these two lines intersect will be the center of your room. Make sure that the floor of your room is centered low in your head, at about the middle of your nose, and not any higher. If it's centered higher, you could experience dizziness (see the Troubleshooting Guide, page 268 for an explanation).
Create four walls, a floor, and a ceiling—all inside your head. In the front of the room, there will be two windows (your eyes) with a door between them. Hang a Do Not Disturb sign outside this door while you work.
Now comes the fun part. Decorate this room in any style you like, but remember that this is your sanctuary. Don't fill it with noise and bustle, or make it inviting to anyone else. Other people are absolutely not allowed in this room. Bring in art and pillows, a hot tub or a fireplace, and perhaps a totem animal or two. Make your room into an Egyptian temple, a crystal cave, an Old English castle library, or a Mesopotamian pavilion. Do not replicate a room that exists in your life already; instead, make this room your fantasy destination.
Create a luxurious, comfortable seat for yourself (and no one else) right in front of the windows of your eyes, and imagine looking out at your very favorite nature scene. With this scene before you, you can have a sense of peace and a connection to nature that won't depend on your surroundings. Even in the middle of a traffic jam, you can be looking out on a garden or a forest, or on a desert at moonrise.
When your room is ready, take your seat in it and practice looking out from behind your eyes. Try staying in your room for a minute or so, but don't worry if you can't just yet. It can take a little practice to actually stay in your body. I've had my room for almost twenty years now, and sometimes I stay out for days or weeks at a time. When I notice this, I don't smack myself, I just get back in. I'm always reminded, however, that I never do my best work during these totally out-of-body times.
One very easy way to tell if you're not in your room is to bring your hand toward your face and press the top of your nose with your fingers. If you feel your attention being moved back into your head, you probably weren't there to begin with. Another quick way to check in is to notice whether you can see your nose and your eyelashes without focusing on them. If your awareness is centered behind your eyes, your nose and your lashes will always be within your field of view.
Keep working at staying behind your eyes and in your room. If you don't want to be there at all, change the decor or the configuration until you are comfortable. Check in with yourself throughout the day to see how your room or your feelings about it have changed. Don't hesitate to redecorate, and remember that this room can be as opulent or fantastical as you like. It won't cost you anything!
* * *
Most people have heard that it is best to "Be Here Now." I have heard over and over again that the only real power lives in the present—that the past is a memory and the future a dream. None of it clicked for me, however, until I got into my body (I left my body during a childhood assault; see my book, Rebuilding the Garden [Columbia, CA: Laughing Tree Press, 1997]). The room in my head anchored me to the real world because it gave me, for the first time that I could consciously remember, a place to be alone, in control, and at peace. One of my students describes this room as the control center. I agree with that description. Being in your room feels like being in the cockpit of an airplane, in a lookout tower, or on a throne. There's a lot of quiet power inside our bodies.
As for the "Be Here Now" theory, each of us lives in a vessel that can only be here now. Our bodies cannot live in the past; they cannot travel to the future; they can only exist in each moment. If we climb into our bodies and sit behind our eyes, we will live in the moment. It's as simple as that. Since all power exists in the present moment, living in our bodies will give us the power we need to live and grow and heal.
* * *
If creating your room is difficult, it is perfectly acceptable to just pretend to do so. Creating the room in your head may be the first conscious contact you've had with your body for a while. As such, your body will usually have a great deal to say to you about this pain here, and that person there, and these emotions, and so on. This chatter will fade, and the technique called grounding (see next section) will help your body to calm down. For now, it is perfectly sufficient to establish the space behind your eyes, fill it with things you adore, make yourself a comfortable chair, and look out on your favorite nature scene for as long as you can manage.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from YOUR AURA AND YOUR CHAKRAS by Karla McLaren. Copyright © 1998 Karla McLaren. Excerpted by permission of Samuel Weiser, Inc..
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