I set myself up for the weirdest meditation experience this morning.
On Sunday my yoga class practices meditation. We have tried many techniques over the years – everyone has a different way of getting to their inner silence and we don’t know what will trigger an interesting insight. So we try as many as I can find.
As I sat down before practice today, I felt called to revisit the 112 meditation techniques of Shiva in Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. I paged through the list and my eyes were drawn to this one:
79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you.
That seemed heavy for a Sunday morning, but despite that, it called me. Burning away the body to reveal the soul is what I introduced to my class. And then we sat.
At first, I imagined my toes on fire just like the prompt suggested. But the flames wouldn’t rise up my legs. Maybe my feet were too cold in the chilly studio or my crossed legs blocked progress. So I directed the warm energy in my palms to start a second set of flames. It didn’t quite work as expected.
The image of flames completely disappeared and I was enveloped in warmth. My flesh faded away, sublimed from the skin towards the center and from feet to my torso then up to my shoulders and head.
I stopped paying attention to that dissolution when I realised that my body was glowing with chakra energy. I focussed on the rainbow colored lights, noticing which were fully visible and which were felt stuck or obscured. I saw the twin green and the pink of the heart chakras and felt a new teal color between my collarbones.*
Is my soul made of chakras? I don’t think so. Our life force comes from the massive, unnameable All. Chakras are a device for imagining that energy in ourselves.
As the energetic centers revealed themselves, I observed from the root all the way up to the crown that each chakra was connected to the next with a string of white light. One at a time, I cut the cord between them. Some junctions were easier to cut than others. As I thought about the lights being cut apart, they drifted free.
I imagined that they might coalesce into a single white light and fly upwards into a distant plane. But like characters in a book you write but don’t control, they had a different plan. Which is fine, because isn’t a bright white light want people describe about near death experiences? I didn’t want that for myself today.
And here is where it was weird. Yes, I know meditation visions are weird anyway but this struck me as especially strange.
I watched the loose chakras float around me. They scattered forward and back and to the right. They spiraled around the center line, but none of them drifted to the left. My left side was dim and shadowy.
Do I only have half a soul? What am I supposed to take away from this?
This isn’t the first time I have had this sort of vision. During a meditation in the US in August 2019, I felt a similar sensation when asked to feel the energy in my body. It had an impact on me deep enough that I drew it right after the session.
My dark side. A lost twin? Blocked yin energy? Unprocessed trauma? Maybe I hate the moon. Unknowable possibilities.
*I went and looked up that collarbone spot later and had a conversation with Claude.ai about it. It fit the description of the “thymus chakra” or “higher heart” and is a modern Western addition. Interesting new knowledge. Also, Claude is a good guru.
