The shift from P-B to P-A can be instantaneous with a flash of insight or it can be a process over time or paradoxically it can be both. This process of awakening is represented in the physical body by the chakras which ascend from the security center located at the base of the spine, the sensation center in the genital area and the power center in the gut. It is not necessary to know anything about this synthesized Eastern construct to transcend suffering any more than it is necessary to know anything about Western philosophy. Treat it the same way as when someone tossed you a soccer ball. This is something that we can have a lot of fun with and it will enrich our experience of life.
The chakras are seven psychological centers distributed up the body from the coccyx to the crown of the head. When activated they release ever higher realizations of spiritual consciousness. This system is metaphorical and by practicing the principles of Simple Reality, the so-called system of Kundalini yoga can be realized. It is not surprising then that the key to the system is the breath.
The first and lowest chakra is the security energy center and Joseph Campbell compares it to “dragon behavior.” They hoard and guard things in their caves but derive no satisfaction from their cache of coveted ca ca.
Center number two, the sensation energy center Joseph Campbell calls Freudian in that it is at the level of the genitals and “Everything means sex to him.”[i] The mindless pursuit of pleasure, often leading to destructive addictions, when properly understood, is just more suffering because it is an expression of craving. Needless to say, Freud had oversimplified P-B suffering and its causes.
At the level of the navel we find the false-self need for power and control. Campbell characterizes this chakra as an “Adlerian type” in that in expressing this aspect of the false self, people will try to force everyone to conform to their way of thinking and acting.
When reaching the fourth level of the heart, we transcend the unconscious sublimated animal or instinctive aims and drives of the false-self survival strategy. Here we have entered the realm of the good, the true and the beautiful, so much talked about but rarely experienced by philosophers. At this level we reach the possibility of experiencing the “feeling” of the present moment whether as a momentary “peak experience” or the increasingly longer responses created by choosing response over reaction employing the Point of Power Practice. It is at this level of awakening that we can obtain our first internalized experience of Oneness or what we can call a paradigm shift.
The importance of this stage of awakening cannot be overemphasized as Campbell makes clear. “When the center of the heart is touched, in a sense of compassion awakened, a whole new stage of life in the spirit opens out. The opening of the heart to the world is what is symbolized mythologically as the virgin birth. It signifies the birth of the spiritual life in what was formerly an elementary human animal living [false-self survival strategy] for the merely physical aims of health [security]…power, and a little fun [sensation].”[ii]
The intellect is transcended at level five, the larynx. At this energy center we leave behind words and thinking itself as we come to rely on and trust our own silent and inner wisdom, the profound connection to the source of all Creation. Simple Reality has indeed become our only reality at this point.
The center of the forehead represents the sixth energy center. With the authentic power of transcendence, supported by having made our life a meditation, we choose response over reaction each moment of each day, we have left P-B behind and entered P-A.
Joseph Campbell describes the seventh level of awakening at the crown of the head as “the absolute, non-dual state beyond all categories, visions, sentiments, thoughts, and feelings [afflictive emotions] whatsoever.”[iii] We know this “state” from our Insight meditation practice as the experience of the observer no longer identifying with the body, mind and emotions. In shifting to the worldview of Simple Reality, we have “seen” the illusion inherent in suffering, impermanence, the false self, craving and aversion, the collective unconscious, the shadow, the personal unconscious and reliance on the intellect. We have become Self-reliant without a self. Life for us is now pure experience beyond time, space and ego. We are energy emancipated.
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Chakras
[i] Campbell, Joseph. Myths To Live By. New York: Bantam, 1973, page 111.
[ii] Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Bantam, 1988, page 210.
[iii] Campbell, Myths to Live By, op. cit., p. 116
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Find more in-depth discussion of Simple Reality in published books by Roy Charles Henry.
