The chakra system is one of many paradigms to explain how energy exchange works. And Westerners have taken ideas about chakra and Kundalini lore and spun out their own paradigms and pontifications about them--and have tried to tie them into to nice bows and ribbons with scientific --or scientific sounding--ideas. I have worked with chakras and so-called kundalini and also gone through the literature. I am in agreement that it is a metaphor or is an esoteric way of explaining psychophysical and neuroelectrical processes, all of which are not wholly explained by neurologists or consciousness researchers but are recognized by them.
When I meditate, I often feel movement in "chakras." This is experiential. I don't have rigid ideas about what exactly is happening mechanistically or esoterically. When I do energy work or magical work that involves psionics, I don't have a system in which I use this or that chakra. It is not important. I am in an experience, not an intellectualization or mechanization. But I know plenty of people who talk along these lines and have very systematized ways of visualizing energy and chakras and all that. Some people are impressively effective in what they do because they are true believers in that paradigm. There are other people who I tend to humor and tune out on when they get into get into that jargon because they are throwing around cliches.
--------------------
Leaving aside those principles of magic that play on the superstitious and that, whatever they be, are unworthy of the general public, we will direct our thoughts only to those things that contribute to wisdom and that can satisfy better minds . . . -from De Magia by Giordano Bruno (born 1548; burned at the stake February 16, 1600). My Webpage
|