I spoke in an earlier post about singing through different parts of my body. I said that I discovered that the quality of the sound and the emotional content change as I explore different areas.

Since I started being more aware of my own inner processes in the past couple of years, I have learned about chakras and a little about what the meanings are in the different regions along the spine in the front and the back. The concept really isn’t that far out. It’s not unusual to hear people talk about a “gut feeling” or a “guttural sound” or “speaking from the heart”.

I think that to a large degree, people have come to judge the lower chakras, those that are more connected to the earth, as lowly and less deserving of attention. These areas are connected with basic survival instincts, security, money, home, appetites for food and sex.

These needs and instincts have been used as weaknesses; as tendencies to manipulate. We manage these needs of our own and each other with a focus other than love. We exploit ourselves and each other just as we exploit the earth itself. I want  to focus love and attention on these lower chakras especially. Maybe it is OK to be so very human. Maybe we need to accept each other’s humanness. Maybe it is OK to love and accept the very materiality of the earth. Maybe it is OK to be here, really here. Maybe here can actually be heaven.

My music is responding by coming from a gut level. It is often gravelly and very connected to my body. I can’t help but move as I play and sing. And I don’t want to intellectualize it. It is, I believe, what often is considered primitive; a wisdom that I believe is important now to offset a world which is so out of balance. The outward world seems to be based so very much on control, manipulation and exploitation. And perhaps also the inner world which has its counterpart in the control that we feel we need to exert over our bodies, seeing our bodies, and perhaps our very souls as simply objects to manage.

We need to remember that those “objects”, those bodies and souls are our very being. We really are alive. We really do exist. It is easy to lose track of our present reality when so much of our life is connected to computers, TV’s and cell phones. Maybe I can’t speak for anyone other than myself. I must open my eyes. I must do everything I can to save this thing while there is still time.

I am still so preoccupied, I spend most of my time in my brain. But I am finding my music to be an avenue which brings me back to a fuller perspective which includes my heart, my emotions and my great desire to survive.

I have a hard time putting all of this into words. I am used to using words in a narrow way. The best poetry can convey amazing depth of feeling and more. Perhaps this blog can be my practice in bringing words to that which I want to convey. What I want to convey feels so big and undefined to me, that I find it difficult to begin. My focus is general. It is both upward and downward. It reaches up to God, (and I am not even sure what I mean by that), and downward through my own body and self with all of my foibles and roots itself into the earth. I want to draw nourishment from both directions just like a plant. I feel like I have been focusing so hard lately on the sun that I have forgotten that I also need water and nutrients. The earth feels so arid right now. We need to take care of the earth.

tagged: appetites, chakras, earth, home, money, primitive, qiging, security, survival, wisdom

Posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:30 am under Too Blended to Pick and tagged: appetites, chakras, earth, home, money, primitive, qiging, security, survival, wisdom.
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