The Divine is Calling You… Are You Listening?
“Open your heart like a flower opens to the light of the sun and drink in God’s love. Know your true self and God will show you the way.” - Hildegard
To grow spiritually means a regular religious practice that involves daily meditation. There are many forms of meditation for you to choose from. We will list a few links below for suggestions. The goal for your practice is to “be still and know God”. You must become adept at entering into this stillness and knowing it. This is also referred to as the active/receptive state.
We suggest the following meditative process is using the Calistrophe meditations:
- Practice meditation for at least 20 minutes daily (active-receptive state)
- Follow daily meditation with a chakra balancing meditation (see below)
- Set an intention to open your heart and spirit to the messages in a Calistrophe meditation, then read the passage
- Sit again in meditation using the active/receptive process. Don’t think, but allow thoughts and images to come to you. If you begin to analyze a thought or image, push it aside and go back to resting in the stillness and allow what comes to flow.
- Write down any thoughts, emotions, music, images, words, etc. that come to you and keep a journal. Repeat - keep a journal. Be present in your daily life and be aware of thoughts, dreams, encounters with others, books, articles, movies, music, etc. that jumps out at you and make an impression. The Divine is speaking to you through all…. Your job is to listen, to learn and to be open to God’s call.
The Chakra Balancing Meditation:
What are chakras? If you are not familiar with the chakras, there is much written about them. So much information is available online. We suggest visiting the SOUNDS TRUE website (see link below). They offer a number of books on the subject, as well as a free download on meditation and free podcasts on many spiritual topics from internationally recognized experts and leaders.
The Chakras - We each have eight major chakras that make up our subtle bodies. There are more than eight, but we will focus on these. Chakras are multi-dimensional energy centers that connect our physical body to the spirit – and it is through our chakras centers that we connect with the Divine or Holy Spirit. Each chakra is associated with a color or vibration, as well as a sound or vibrational tone.
A basic chakra meditation involves visualizing the color of the chakra and location of the energy center in the body. Visualize breathing in this color slowly, drawing the color/energy up and all around you. Visualize drawing the color in to your mouth, nose and eyes, filling with this color.
For each color you will draw the energy in, hold your breath, let it out. As you let your breath out, visualize the energy swirling around your body, balancing the energy of your body and spirit. On the first breath with each color, your intention is to balance that color within your body with your spirit.
Here is the twist with this meditation: On your second breath visualizing each color, you will breath in the color, hold it, then let out the breath. On the out breath, your intention is to send that color out and up to the Divine, connecting with the Divine.
The order and location for each color/chakra is as follows:
Red – base of spine – draw energy up from the Earth
Orange – Pelvic level
Yellow – Solar plexus
Green w. pink thread– Heart
Light Blue – Throat
Deep Blue – Center of forehead or third eye
Purple – Top of your head
Gold – above your head
The red, orange and yellow chakras are called “root” chakras. They ground us to the Earth and energy is drawn upward to our bodies in this visualization. The green, blues and gold energies connect us to the Divine and we draw these energies to our bodies from above.
Here is another description for this meditation that might help, along with a drawing of the chakras as you send the energy up and out on the second breath:
I’ve attempted to draw the chakra meditation I had with Hildegard. She told me that in my meditations the first “alignment” of the chakra was for me to tune myself. The second time I envisioned that same chakra I was to do it with the intent to align it with the universe. She explained that we are instruments being tuned by the universe for the universe. On the alignment of self, we keep that chakra close and use our intent to settle ourselves and harmonize our mind, body and soul. On the second round we project our selves to the universe. Red and orange project upward with a wide opening to the universe. Yellow and green are projected outward to harmonize with others in our world. The other chakras project upward.
ABOUT CHAKRA BALANCING MEDITATION FROM HILDEGARD APRIL 5, 2010
Here are some good links for information on meditation, chakras and spiritual development:
SOUNDS TRUE offers free podcasts online, so look for these. We are big fans! In addition, they offer books and tapes on so many spiritual topics, including meditation and chakras.
Hello there... I stumbled across your crayon drawing of the chakras and included it in a small "gallery" of Chakra related art. I included your name, and a link back to your blog. If you prefer I do anything different, let me know. You can view the post here:
ReplyDeletehttp://runningfather.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-chakras-explained-by-kimberly-at-httpbuddhists-org/
Again, a very nice rendition of the chakra energies and peace, Jim Aldrich