If the Chakras Had a Voice:: An Intimate Conversation

By Ira Rechtshaffer Ph.D.

This highly original work breathes life into each of the seven chakras and creatively transforms them into living entities with whom we can engage in conversation. Each chakra is a specific energy center and represents a state of awareness and a level of personal development. The chakra system is a map of personal transformation that can be used to discover how and where we get stuck in our development, and how we can liberate ourselves from these places so that our spiritual journey continues to evolve.
Through dialogue with each of the chakras, you will learn how to befriend every part of yourself, even the shadowy parts, and cultivate your creativity, intuition, and deepen your awareness. The chakra system provides an ideal framework for doing this, as it addresses both our issues and our gifts. Such an integrated process can reconnect us with our lives as a whole. This book invites you into a new and expanded perspective for how to understand and creatively work with your body, heart, and mind in order to become all that you can be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663257383

Book preview

ENDORSEMENTS

"An unexpected take on the chakras written in the form of a conversation and woven through with wide-ranging insights from psychology, Buddhism, the Tantras, and the author’s experience as a long-time spiritual practitioner and mentor. Light-hearted, practical, and rich with wisdom, If the Chakras Had a Voice grounds what at first seems an esoteric topic into the nitty-gritty of human life."

—Jane Brunette

Author of Riddle: Koans, poems & Question Marks

A highly original yet thorough approach to understanding the chakras. Written with a depth of understanding, this dialog takes you through all the nuances of each chakra, exploring their philosophy, psychology, and practice. Like a workshop in a book, you get to sit with a great teacher — the chakras in your own body! I would highly recommend this book to anyone studying chakras, or simply wanting a wise guide for their own life.

—Anodea Judith, PhD

Author of Wheels of Life; Eastern Body-Western Mind

Buddhist philosophic traditions and teachings; several streams of psychoanalytic thought; the ancient somatic system of chakras — Ira Rechtschaffer weaves these smoothly together in imaginative, integrative conversations. Beyond a painless suspension of disbelief, a great deal waits.

—David Schneider

Author of Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey;

Crowded by Beauty: The Life and Zen of Poet Philip Whalen

"If you’re interested in a fresh and creative perspective on the ancient system of the chakras, you’ll find it here. Dr. Ira Rechtshaffer draws upon many years of Buddhist practice and a career as a psychotherapist to distill the essence of each of the chakras and their significance in our spiritual journey. Weaving the ancient wisdom of India with imagination, humor and deep psychological understanding, he casts each of the seven chakras as unique personalities who engage in lively dialogues. The chakras reveal that our spiritual path involves complete embodiment, an intimate connection with our surrounding world, and the willingness to embrace both the light and shadow of our personality. If the Chakras Had a Voice is a remarkably insightful book that offers us greater clarity and ease in navigating the challenging terrain of everyday life."

—Marci Shimoff

#1 NY Times bestselling author, Happy for No Reason and

Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul

"In his new book, If the Chakras Had a Voice, Dr. Rechtshaffer takes a deep dive into the numerous possibilities for transforming our consciousness and our very lives through a closer understanding of and relationship to each of the seven chakras described in classical Yoga and Buddhist metaphysics. Though long a subject of esoteric literature, particularly in Hinduism and Buddhism, but also in many other traditions (e.g., the Sacred Heart of Jesus), the literature describing these psychospiritual centers within the human body has often been vague and superficial. The author has given us, through a serious yet entertaining hypothetical dialog with each of the chakras being interviewed, a clear new approach to understanding and activating these powerful centers. It is heartening to see how the book has been able to use contemporary methodologies for communicating with and integrating these centers within our body and mind. Within each chapter is presented a candid interview and dialog between the author and one of the seven classical chakras. This question and answer format becomes a rich and effective vehicle toward familiarization with each center by setting forth discussions that touch upon a wide range of topics: creativity, love, intuition, spiritual vision, individuation, sex, and healing, among many others. The metaphors chosen by the author are highly relevant to today’s reader, for example in the image of one’s chakra and one’s consciousness operating as two tuning forks that can be tuned to match one another’s vibratory energy flux. I would highly recommend this book as a highly accessible map for anyone on the path of spiritual transformation who seeks a clear exposition of these important centers of psychospiritual transformation."

—Shelli Reneè Joye, PhD

Author of Developing Supersensible Perception,

Tantric Psychophysics and Sub-Quantum Consciousness

IF THE CHAKRAS

HAD A VOICE:

AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION

Ira Rechtshaffer Ph.D.

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IF THE CHAKRAS HAD A VOICE

AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION

Copyright © 2024 Ira Rechtshaffer Ph.D.

Published by: Indra’s Net

                       San Rafael, CA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5739-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5738-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023921866

iUniverse rev. date: 02/21/2024

This book is dedicated

to Anodea Judith whose remarkable books have reawakened my lifelong interest in and study of the chakras, and added psychological depth to my understanding of their role in the evolution of consciousness.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword: A Sublime Conversation

Preface

Introduction: From Alpha to Omega

Chakra 1: Survival and Self-Protection

Session #1. The Foundations of Life

Session #2. The Open Secret

Session #3. Pitfalls and Blindspots

Session #4. The Psychosomatic Body

Session #5. Healing the Mind-Body Split

Session #6. Masculine and Feminine Aspects

Chakra 2: Pleasure and Desire

Session #1. Eros and Deficiency Desire

Session #2. What Buddha Said About Desire

Session #3. The Shadow of Pleasure

Session #4. The Big Leap

Session #5. Reclaiming the Right to Feel

Session #6. Melting Emotional Knots

Chakra 3: Autonomy, Power, and Personal Identity

Session #1. The Power of Choice: Promise or Peril?

Session #2. The Superego

Session #3. Holding on and Letting go

Session #4. The Authentic Self and the Demon of Shame

Session #5. The Master of the House and its Servants

Session #6. The Subversive Power of Distraction

Session #7. Karma and the Open Moment

Chakra 4: Love, Compassion, and Intimacy

Session #1. The Challenge of Love

Session #2. Fearless Love

Session #3. A Path with Heart

Session #4. The Men and Women Within Us

Session #5. The Genuine Heart of Sorrow

Session #6. Emotional IQ

Chakra 5: Communication, Creativity, and the Dimension of Sound

Session #1. What Are You Saying Before You Open Your Mouth?

Session #2. Right Speech, Right Silence

Session #3. What’s In the Room Before You Walk Into It?

Session #4. An Enchanted World Revisited

Session #5. Meaningful Coincidence

Chakra 6: The Third Eye of Spiritual Vision

Session #1. Spiritual Vision

Session #2. Imagination and Intuition

Session #3. Symbolic and Metaphoric Thinking

Session #4. Your Mythic Narrative

Session #5. The Connective Thread

Chakra 7: Enlightenment: Realizing Our True Nature

Session #1. The Nectar of the Gods

Session #2. The Dance of Kundalini

Session #3. The Last Temptation

Epilogue: The Lotus Blossom and Our Survival

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With appreciation for my highly accomplished editor, Laura Duggan, who has provided insightful editorial suggestions and support and encouragement for this work.

FOREWORD

A SUBLIME CONVERSATION

We all appreciate having someone to talk to. It’s especially rewarding when that someone knows us intimately, and better still when it’s someone with intelligence beyond our own to offer us wise counsel.

What if that person was found in the voice of your own chakras? What if you could tap into the wisdom of your energy centers, gain the gentle guidance of an elder mentor or teacher, and you didn’t have to go anywhere or pay anyone to do it?

This is what you’ll find in the delightful conversation that unfolds in Ira Rechtshaffer’s book: an inner guide to your own awakening through the chakra system. But why is the chakra system so important? What can it do for us?

We are all on a journey through life. We’re trying to figure out why we’re here; we’re trying to heal our wounds and discover how to make the most of these few decades we get to spend on this plane.

Yet none of us were born with instruction manuals! And few of us were given any kind of map for life’s complex journey.

The chakra system is a profound map for the human journey. It helps us navigate the great chasm we inhabit between earthly reality and limitless consciousness. It maps onto our nervous system, our inner psychology, our collective human history, states of awareness, and to many symbols, elements, colors, sounds, deities, yoga postures, and planes in the outer world. You could say it is a master map that connects most everything.

This map not only describes the territory we travel in life, but also the vehicle in which you take the journey. Think of it as the owner’s manual you wished you had. It comes with instructions of what to do when that vehicle breaks down; it tells us how to make it run more smoothly, and how to make the journey worthwhile. It gives us directions for the twists and turns of emotional roller coasters, the challenges of finding our power, opening our heart, expressing our truth, or enhancing our intuition. It shows us that each of us can span the full spectrum of human existence, and become more than we ever thought was possible.

I’ve been navigating this journey for myself and countless others for over 50 years. I’ve probably thought about the chakras in more ways than just about anyone in modern times. The chakra system has been my guiding template for transformation, my ladder of liberation, and my map of manifestation. I’ve traveled from the bottom up, the top down, and taken the spiral into the heart. I’ve mapped this profound system onto psychology, human evolution, the creative process, yoga, and relationships. And in all this process, my chakras talked to me; they taught me from within.

Sure, I studied everything I could in terms of psychology, yoga, spirituality, evolution, and more. But when you have a framework, like the chakra system, everything you learn helps fill it out a little more. But always the real teaching comes from within. It’s my chakras that have taught me the deepest lessons. Understanding their framework helps put everything into perspective, helps it all fall into place and make sense.

As I’ve traveled the world teaching in most every major continent, there’s one thing that has stood out for me: We’re more alike than we are different. Whether in China, India, Europe or the Americas, most people deal with the same issues. They wonder whether they’re good enough; they struggle to make a living; they’re trying to find more love, to express their creativity, or they’re searching for inspiration and meaning. Men, women, young or old, they’re all searching for answers. And they all have issues that can be mapped onto the chakras.

We know those answers are to be found within, but sometimes we need a deeper conversation with our chakras to understand who they are, how they function, and how we can fine tune them to take us even further on the journey. Through this conversation the chakras become alive and personal.

What’s unique in Ira Rechtshaffer’s book is that all this information unfolds in a conversational style that makes it easy to follow and understand. Just when you think you have a question, the interviewer (which is YOU!) pops the very question you were wondering about. Think of this as the Carlos Castaneda of chakras.

In all that I have read and studied, I have found that this book is solid in its understanding, unique in its perspective, and enjoyable to read. Take it a little at a time, like a conversation with an old friend, through which you grow closer. Only in this endeavor, you grow closer to your own chakras.

Anodea Judith, PhD, author of Eastern Body, Western Mind, and Wheels of Life.

PREFACE

Coverphoto.jpg

Why another book about the chakras when there are already so many? I’ve decided to breathe life into each of the seven chakras and creatively transform them into living entities with whom we can engage in conversation. My hope is that this would humanize and personalize the wisdom of the ancient Indian tradition from which they come and make these teachings relevant to readers in our postmodern world.

The image above is a depiction of the chakra system, which illustrates the evolutionary path of the life force in its ascending journey through us. Each chakra is a specific energy center and represents a state of awareness and a level of personal development. The chakra system is a map of personal transformation that can be used to discover how and where we get stuck in our development and how we can liberate ourselves from these places so that our spiritual journey continues to evolve.

Through dialogue with the chakras, you will learn how to tap this wise life force within you, so that you could have a change of heart and perhaps give birth to something entirely new. But for this to succeed, it is necessary to honor and befriend every part of yourself, and this involves traveling the descending path as well—dealing with issues around trust, sexuality, power and control, and love and intimacy. This complements the ascending path that helps cultivate your creativity, intuition, and deepening awareness. The chakra system provides an ideal framework for doing this, as it addresses both our gifts and our issues. Such an integrated process can reconnect us with our lives as a whole.

This book invites you into a new and expanded perspective for how to understand and work with your body, heart, and mind in order to become all that you can be.

INTRODUCTION

FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA

Jacob’s ladder is a Biblical story in Genesis that describes a revelatory dream that Jacob had one fateful evening, where he witnessed a magnificent ladder extending from the earth to heaven. He saw that angels were traveling up and down the ladder, making their way to earth and back to heaven. Then Jacob sees God standing above the ladder, and he hears the Lord say that He will stay with Jacob wherever he goes.

The dream clearly signifies the divine connection between God and human, and between heaven and earth. The image of Jacob’s ladder portrays intermediaries who make the divine-human relationship possible—but God remains transcendent to earth and human. Although we can establish a relationship with the divine, God remains holy other, and there remains an unbridgeable gap between human and the divine according to this biblical narrative.

By contrast, the view held in the ancient Indian system of the chakras, which originated in India more than 4000 years ago, is that we have our own intermediaries that connect the alpha and omega points of our spiritual journey. Rather than angels, we have psychic energy that moves through and communicates with all of our parts, much as our internal organs all speak with each other through biochemical and electrical messages, keeping our mind-body balanced and healthy.

In the chakra system, the supreme intelligence of heaven, our transcendent awareness, continually radiates through us so that we may use the raw materials of the natural world to create an abundant life and establish a good society. But to do this successfully, we must develop and cultivate the various centers of intelligence within us, known as chakras in Sanskrit.

Chakra literally means circle or wheel and refers to a spinning sphere of energy emanating from the major nerve ganglia of our spinal column. There are seven major chakras from the base of the spine to the top of the head. The chakra system reflects our progressive development to full humanhood, which is based on the integration of the individual with the divine, or the realization of the divine within us. This marks an evolution towards greater depth, complexity, and profundity, as well as greater intimacy with our world.

The chakras may be explained as follows: We typically enter into various states of awareness during the course of a day, which we’re not usually aware of. These states are associated with different regions of our body. For example, when we feel strong love, tenderness, or yearning, we experience intense energy in our heart. When we speak, our awareness is focused in our throats. When we’re involved with thinking, our energy moves to our head. And at the moment of orgasm, our awareness is usually centered in our genital area. In order to become fully developed humans, all seven chakras need to be cultivated and integrated with the psychophysical structure of a human being.

From our Western perspective, the brain is the seat of consciousness, but according to the chakra system, our brain consciousness is only one among a number of possible forms of conscious awareness that are located in various centers of the body. Currents of energy, or life force, flow through our mind and body in an ascending and descending circuit. On the left side of the spine flow the yin or feminine energies, and on the right side, flow the yang or masculine energies. These serpentine currents eventually meet in a sacred marriage that makes a rebirth or complete change of heart possible. Our body gives us a visceral experience of what a cosmos is—a living, functioning unity composed of innumerable, interconnected parts.

Beneath the life we lead everyday, there’s another life within us, but it’s frequently paved over by our perpetual busyness and our habitual patterns. This inner life is an intelligent energy that suggests an evolutionary journey within ourselves, within the psychophysical structure and process of our mind and body. This is parallel to Jacob’s ladder—the theme of which is continuous communication between the transcendent realm of spirit and our earthly human domain. The angels traveling up and down the ladder are parallel to the descending and ascending currents of the life force, of which all of life partakes.

Our human development can be understood in terms of a dynamic principle present in the seed of every organism and working toward unfoldment. This self-directive principle contains it’s goal within its own nature. Just as an acorn has an oak tree invisibly embedded within it in potential form, we each have Buddha nature or spirit always already within ourselves. It is as if there was a code within all of us, a deep structure that acts as a magnet for the actualization of our true nature. In this way, even the highest state of integration or enlightenment does not disconnect from the lower but demonstrates their interpenetration and ultimate harmonization.

In Buddhism, the ten oxherding pictures depict ten stages of the spiritual journey. Initially, we see a man who is searching for a way to liberate himself from his suffering. He seeks big mind, or enlightenment. He goes through a sequence of stages, each a progression from the previous one, [the ascending path] until he reaches the eighth stage, which is depicted as a black brush circle, symbolizing emptiness, or the absolute. But his journey doesn’t end there.

From the realization of the formless Absolute, he drops down more and more into form [the descending path], reaching the fruition of his journey in the tenth picture. Here he appears fully in the world, humble like dust on the road, at the service of suffering sentient beings. He has not transcended worldly life but the struggle to be other than who he is—an awakened one, who has integrated the immortal divine with the mortal human. This is the final destination of the journey through the chakras.

Please join us for this adventure through your own mind, body, heart, and soul.

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CHAKRA ONE

SURVIVAL AND SELF-PROTECTION

Session #1. The Foundations of Life

Interviewer: I’d like to welcome you on behalf of our team of interviewers. We are delighted that you’re willing to share with us the inside story of what it’s like to be a chakra. Perhaps you could begin by telling us what motivated you to speak out and share your personal story as a chakra. Oh, and by the way, how should we address you?

[Muladhara] Chakra: Let me begin by thanking all of you for providing this platform and this opportunity to speak personally on behalf of the ancient tradition to which all of my chakra siblings belong. From the very beginning, I’ve been involved in working exclusively with my six siblings, but my communications have been confined to the members of my family. Recently, it occurred to all of us that it would benefit spiritual practitioners if we offered a perspective from outside the traditional explanation of our family system. So, I’m going to present the inside story, as you put it, as will my siblings. I’m known as muladhara chakra in Sanskrit, which simply means the root or foundation of the chakra system.

Interviewer: Would it be alright with you if we abbreviated your Sanskrit name and referred to you as Mula?

[Muladhara] Chakra: Yes, of course.

Interviewer: Please tell us about yourself and the role you play in our human lives.

Mula: I’m the first and oldest chakra. You could say that, in a manner of speaking, I’m your organic body as well as the body of life. As the first chakra, I’m the instinct in all beings for survival and self-protection, the indomitable urge to draw the next breath, to survive in each succeeding moment. I am the very basis for life.

As the first chakra, I am associated with the element of earth. I root you in your body and in the physical world. Your roots represent your organic origin, where you came from—the earth, the womb, your ancestors, your family, and your personal history. If you work intelligently with your inner earth element, you will experience a sense of groundedness and basic trust. This is what allows you to have that reassuring feeling of basic worth—that you belong here, and that you have a rightful place on Earth, with as much validity as mountains, streams, and forests.

Interviewer: Thank you for that explanation. Your role is more far-reaching than I had imagined. So, you not only promote survival and self-protection in all species but also the feeling of well-being and basic worthiness. However, given the conspicuous brutality of the jungle, the law of eat and be eaten, I can’t help but wonder how you cultivate the basic trust in life that animals possess. I mean, nature is a gory spectacle where billions of individual appetites are unleashed, where animals eagerly devour one another to further their own lives. And unlike other animals, we humans can anticipate our demise and so we suffer anxiety over our necessary mortality. As magnificent as life is—we will eventually become food for worms!

How are you able to promote the instinct for survival yet also instill all beings with basic trust in life?

Mula: At the level of the first chakra, the life force radiates through all flora and fauna, free of speculative thought and self-reflection. It is simply the primordial hunger to seize life, to take the next breath, to persist another moment—in the immediate present—with no thought of the future. The instinct for survival brings you back to your roots, to a time when life was constantly threatened. The survival instinct becomes a powerful force when an intimate relationship threatens to end, or when you’re at risk of losing your job, or when you’re diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. It energizes your whole system in preparation for what feels like a life or death struggle. You see, when you connect with your own roots, the most elemental dimension of your physical being, you tap into my primordial power to survive. This indomitable force of life is what instills you with confidence and a trust in life itself.

Interviewer: Hmmm,