Transforming Fire (Manipura)

       Manipura, located in the upper abdomen, is the very core of our feminine mystique.  The fires that burn from our bellies bring forth into the world our mental abilities, intellect, and confidence.  From these flames spit our personal power, identity, and confidence.  A woman who can make decisions, clear judgments, and assert her opinions and beliefs is a woman with a well balanced solar plexus chakra.  It's difficult, especially for a person still healing, to exert bravery and stand up for themselves.  We must learn to tame our inner fires so as not to misuse our power or let our ambition abuse those around us, but we must also learn to fan the flames within us in order to take control of our own lives and feel the independence that we so longingly strive for.
       In Sanskrit this word means "shining gem", which is very becoming considering the way that life's pressures squeeze us until we either turn to diamonds or dust.  To better understand Manipura, we must first look at the element that represents it.  When thinking of fire I think of the weakest, yet most unyielding, of the elements.  Fire is lovely to look at, beautiful, enchanting.  It draws us in and has a mystical allure that can't quite be explained.  Fire brings warmth, color, and even fun as it dances in a way that seems to say, "I can't be tamed."  When out of control a fire can scorch the earth and consume everything in its path, but when stifled the fire can be easily put out by every other element.  Air, water, and earth can all suffocate a hesitant flame with ease, but fire needs and craves all of the other elements in order to exist.  Fire needs the air in order to burn, the earth to contain it, and the water to temper it.  In this same respect, our personalities can display this imbalance as excessive control or helplessness, obsession or irresponsibility, intolerance or overindulgence, insecurity, fear, lack of confidence or low self-esteem.  A balanced Manipura allows us the much needed control over our thoughts and emotions to help us set healthy boundaries.
       Anytime we must fight within ourselves to muster up the courage to conquer a fear, or when we struggle to speak up for ourselves, or whenever we simply have to employ self-control in a situation, we are activating and exercising our solar plexus chakra.  We must learn to utilize this energy force for our own sake, to fulfill our own personal power.  We need to know that we have the means to tap into self-assurance, self-discipline, and to move forward in confidence anytime we get the courage to reach inside of ourselves and let our yellow fire shine through.  Fire has the ability to hurt others, but it also can take other elements and transform them into more than their original selves.  Through the flames water can become air, air can become water, and earth can become glass.  Personal power does not mean that we have the ability to manipulate others, it means that we have the potential to master ourselves, and that vital capability to choose is the softly spoken message of the Manipura.  We can overcome any fear, conquer any demon, and demand the respect that we deserve.  I will not judge or criticize myself any longer, but instead I will choose to seek out and live my life purpose.  I will light Manipura as a torch held high and let its light guide me to love and accept myself, to stand up for myself, and to be strong and courageous.  It will remind me that I am worthy of love, kindness, and respect.  Its blaze will awaken in me the ability to choose what is best for myself and express myself in a powerful way.  Its warmth will keep strong the ambition to direct my own life and my power to choose.  I am free in any situation.  I feel my own power, and I am at peace within myself.
What burns within you?

"Until you've found the fire inside yourself you won't reach the spring of life."
- Rumi

In My Shadow- A Short Story

       I walked through my life with my head down, just trying to get through.  I finally stumbled upon a cobblestone path where I was forced to look up and observe the scenery.  I quite suddenly realized that I had not been paying attention to the people in my life, and things were somehow different than before.  I found a shaded spot beneath a willow tree and decided to stay for a while.  I had journeyed far, and had visited many places.  Some places I came to had been beautiful and lovely, leaving an imprint on my heart forever.  Other places were dark and frightening, leaving a scar in the place of the untouched map of skin that once was there.  As I sat, I pondered my journeys and allowed them to change my thoughts.  I welcomed the sorrow and the joy alike, but couldn't help but wonder why I had been so absorbed with my own journey that I had forgotten to ask you how yours had been.  You've been on a journey also, as we all are, and we both ended up back on the same cobblestone street.  You on one side, and me on the other.  I sit beneath the willow branches and absorb the suns heat from the brown dirt beneath my legs, and you lay on feathers across the way anxiously awaiting.  For what?  I don't know.  I ask you about your travels, and you seem unimpressed with them as you shrug a shoulder and try to close your eyes to the chaos in your mind.  I can see it now.  The beautiful storm that surrounds your brain swirls endlessly with needs.  The storm needs attention, and you are tired from the weight.  I rise from my dirt patch and tread closer to your bed of feathers, squinting through the wind of your storm to see if I can retrace your footprints.  I follow them back down the cobblestone street, one small foot after another, until they turn down a dark and shadowy path.  The trees here are dense and familiar.  Owls query and ravens cry with each step that I take.  I press on because I need to know where you have been; I must understand this storm that surrounds you in your beautiful bed of feathers and gold.  The forest air chills, sending goosebumps up my arms and down my spine.  I hold myself for warmth and shrug further on.  Deeper and deeper into the trees I go, and just when I am beginning to think that I may never make it through, I see rays of sunlight stretching their arms towards me.  I hasten nearer to the iridescent fingers of warmth and step out into a meadow of red dirt and  kudzu.  Catfish swim through the clouds, gulping down birds along their way to the waterfalls of vines.  Stray dogs and broken bottles litter the earth where abandoned teepees stand torn.  I hear a growl behind me that sends me into a hard run.  I push my legs to run faster and not give out as my breath comes in ragged gasps and the skin of my feet is torn by the jagged edges of hundred year old arrowheads.  I can hear the heavy fall of the beasts paws as they strike the ground directly behind my heels, the snarling teeth never letting up, spittle splashing against my hurried calves.  My sides ache and my eyes blur with fearful tears.  My toes hit something hard in the clay, causing my body to tumble forward.  As I fall, time seems to suspend itself and I can see the scenery begin to change.  The rabid dog drifts farther away, the sun lowers across the horizon, and stars pop from the fishes mustached mouths.  A giant ocean wave rises up as high as the horizon and crashes down before me, slowly creeping its way up to lick at my fingers as I hold my upper body up from the sand.  Exhausted, I let my face fall to the damp beach as I pant to catch my still gone breath.  As I begin to relax, I open my eyes and see another footprint directly beneath the spotlight of the moon.  Pulling myself up from the beach, I dust off my legs and slowly make my way to examine the etching in the shoreline.  A soft song eerily drifts up from the surf, beckoning me to try the footprint on for size.  Unsure, I lift my foot and place it directly into the outline that lay in the sand.  Tears spring to my eyes as I realize that I had been following my own footprints the whole time.  I bend over from the weight of my heart, the salt falling from my cheeks to mix with the tresses of the ocean.  The water pools inside of my footprint in an odd way, much like a tide pool within a tide pool.  I lean in and look closely to discern that there is another, smaller, footprint within my own.  Full of shock, I turn and race back up the dunes towards the red dirt.  I gulp in the thick air as I run once more from the monsters that chase me.  Past the snarling dog, dodging the broken glass, leaping from the swooping crows, and stumbling back up the cobblestone path towards your familiar form.  "Why did you follow me?" I cried breathlessly.  I had never seen our paths cross while you grew and I went out on my own journey, because you had stepped in each footprint that I had left along the way.  You look up sleepily from your golden feather bed and whisper, "You are my duality and my mirror."  Your eyes immediately flutter back to close and I can hear your rhythmic breath falling softly upon the ground.  Feeling heavy and defeated, I drag my feet across the street and sit once more beneath my willow tree.  Hot tears continue to fall, making mud beneath my legs.  All this time I thought that I had left you in a safe place while I cast shadows and fought monsters.  But you had been behind me the whole time, treading on my shadow, blindly following me and having to fight the beasts of my journey as your own.  Unsure where we will go from here, I drop my head and whisper, "I could never judge you; I know you.  But taming this storm will be the hardest thing you've ever done, and the greatest achievement of your life."
Who's walking in your footsteps?

"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us."
- Samuel Smiles

Dance, My Soul

      Silence is a phenomenon that does not truly exist.  When we are alone, quiet, at rest, we can feel that void as a heavy cloud weighing and pressing down on us.  But the reality is that we are never alone and the earth is never silent.  When the chaos of the day turns into a cool night, and the chatter of the humans we share this planet with subsides, that is when the earth is able to reach out and beckon our ears to the place where the music truly lingers.  The song of the wind calls us to hearken as the leaves and branches of the trees it blows invite us to come sit and listen for a while.  In the starlight the cicadas and crickets charm us into a dance of sacred steps that can only be known to the dancer who reaches deep within to remember the soul movement that was understood exclusively by those who once resided among awareness.  There is an emotional untethering, a mental and even physical release that gushes from deep in our hearts when we close our eyes and recall that ancient music that lives within us all.  It is a song of primordial consciousness, a freedom that exists only when we forget our mortal bodies and weave a tale too complex to be spoken with language.  It is a legend too powerful to be seen with human eyes and too essential to be understood by physical senses.  The song that we feel inside of our hearts, the dance that we release from the bottom of our souls, is a force that can't be written, spoken, or rationalized.  There is a reason that music makes a party, that love is expressed lyrically, worship is sung into the heavens, that we meditate and journey to the rhythm of the drum.  Ideas much too deep and important to be told plainly are crooned and strummed into earthly existence, flowing from our inner worlds of spiritual depths.  Emotions are expressed in a way that only song can convey and only dance can appease.  Music is a therapy, an urge, a desperate longing, a sacred calling, a means of transformation for the hybrid divine.  The oldest instrument known to man is the flute.  Made from bird bones and mammoth ivory, the flute was played at night while tribes sang and danced round a fire of heat and passion.  Alone, or surrounded by like-hearted kindred, let the music connect you with the earth and all that is in realms that cannot be seen.  The drum is the intoxicating heartbeat and our voices rise to mingle with the neural pathways of the heavens.  As we let our limbs twist and wind through the celestial ether, blood pounding in time with natures pulse, our feet drumming the earth and sending shoots of roots into the under-realms of space, we can clearly see why we smile.  Our hearts quicken and our ears prick up to the sound of a tune we can grasp onto and our faces smile when we realize that the song in you is the song in me, because it is the joy of the earth and the secrets of God.
What is your soul dancing to?

"Dance Of The Moonlight..." painted by bohomaz13

Music by Sarah Howle & Wyatt Garey

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

- Victor Hugo

Surrender- Step 3

       I'm stubborn, that's obvious, and I'll admit that fact freely.  I've never been one to wave my white flag or give up easily, so when I'm told that the only way to truly heal is to surrender my life, my mind goes wild.  My chest immediately fills with pride and I feel the protective stone walls of my ego building higher and higher to block out the advice that I don't want to hear.  Yield, relent, back down, cave in, concede, acquiesce, fall, resign... these are words that I naturally fight against on a daily basis.  These are also the very verbs that I need to learn from in order to take the next step forward.  The third step is to make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.  It took me four years to work past this step, but the funny thing is that I never even knew that I was stuck on this part until after I was finally able to work it.  I remember the first time that my rehab counselor looked at the group and explained that in step three we would have to rely on our Higher Power, the God of our understanding.  Upon hearing those words I immediately stopped listening, thinking that step wasn't for me.  I live in the bible belt; I've gone to church three times a week for my entire life.  I thought to myself, "I already know who God is; I don't need to work this step."  But years later when I still struggled with my guilt complex and realized that I was still wrestling with the same old crap, I suddenly knew that I NEVER actually knew who God was.  I had never worked that step because I had no idea what it meant to trust the God OF MY UNDERSTANDING.  I had been missing those key words the entire time.  I thought that the God that my preacher had told me about was actually my God, but hell fire and the threat of eternal damnation hadn't helped my addiction or depression or self-esteem.  What I really needed was to find MY God, the way that I understood Him, in the way that made ME feel loved.  There is no way that any one person can teach about their God, how they perceive Him (or Her), and expect it to be true for EVERYONE listening.  As a child I was told a lot of stories that didn't seem to make sense, and they didn't particularly make me feel safe the way they were intended to.  But now that I am older I can decide what I believe and which parts are true to me.  Religion is NOT what my God is about, it in fact has absolutely nothing to do with my Higher Power.  Spirituality is everything.  The God of my understanding is in me and around me and flows through every living thing on this planet.  THAT is something that I can relax into and maybe decide to surrender to.  I don't have to be perfect (in the way that religious leaders think perfection to be), but I know that I am perfectly made in the balance of nature and energy.  I don't need an all-knowing being to judge every mistake I make and require me to throw myself into penance hoping for forgiveness and a fresh start.  What I need is the God who knows that when I decide to ask for forgiveness for something that I need only to ask myself, because my God never did stop loving me for that awful thing that happened, I did.  I am not interested in rules, requirements, or commands, but I desperately seek the approval of the one spiritual being who never loses respect for me, for I am everything that I was created to be.  Once I am able to search within myself and find how I TRULY feel loved and who I feel humbled to worship, then I feel comfortable in surrendering myself.  It's an honor to bow my head in reverence to the spiritual being that I DO understand, that DOES love me, and that I KNOW I can trust.  And really, that's all this step truly requires.
What are you surrendering to?

"The 12 Steps and Goddess Spirituality"
- Kelly Palmer