Lower Chakras Lead to Suffering – 12.02.10

Student Question: In the chakra map, we tend to move within the first three chakras. And in understanding how and why we do it, we become able to use the higher ones. But is it more balanced to move within all seven, or to be within the higher ones?

“The higher chakras are sublimated versions of the lower chakras,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But the lower chakras, when you are in and operating from them, they lead to suffering. And they are operated as defenses against anxiety that end up leading to very inaccurate forms of karma. And at the higher chakras, one has unveiled the Real Self that is transcendent of the individual organism, or ego-based identity, and is therefore no longer acting from egocentric—or even anthropocentric—motivations, but can act in harmony with the whole cosmos.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 2, 2010.