As most of you know, I’m writing a book called We All Have Souls and I Think I Can Prove It. This is the description of the bottom region of the soul. I call it the Energy region. Other traditions refer to it as the root chakra. I’m not fond of the term chakra, as you probably also know, because it brings up images of spots inside the body. I’m happier with a model where the soul surrounds the body.
I’ve included an exercise to help readers understand the region better. Your thoughts on the description and the exercise will help the book get better.
Energy Region
The energy region of the soul is our deep connection to a mix of positive and negative energy we tap into to create or destroy our realities. People who speak of chakras call this the root chakra. I agree with that interpretation. This is a root in exactly the same sense as a tree root. It brings vital nutrients — the soul energy we need to live — into our souls.
The place where this region of our soul exists is in the lower world. Along with the Form region, it is our connection to soul reality outside of the middle world. It resides in an area of very powerful energies. These elemental forces are not something humans should think they can control. If we are not careful, the energy we tap into will control us more than we control it. Like the root of a plant, the Energy region works with the Wish region to sort through what is there to bring the kind of nutrients we want into our system.
There seem to be three thoughts about the purpose of this region.
The Yoga traditions see this as where we get energy, but they generally want us to escape from the influence of this region. They call this the root of our wicked impulses. Their goal is to focus on the Mind and Form regions.
Tantric tradition says this region contains the realization of greatest joy, natural pleasure, delight in controlling passion, and blissfulness in concentration. They accept the energies that are here and work to bring them into harmony with the rest of life.
Shamanic practitioners, native healers, Aboriginal hunters, and many others live in this land of energy or visit this land of energy as part of their spirit journeys. In this place they meet other travelers. If a spirit journey takes them down, they are working through the Energy region in the lower world.
I believe one of the reasons we are in bodies is to learn to process this raw energy by ourselves. When we are not in bodies, I think it is buffered by all the other souls around us. In a body we need to learn to tap into the energy and stay connected with it. This provides a deeper understanding of what the energy is all about. When people try to ignore or “conquer” this region, they are missing the reason we are here.
When most people take journeys into the lower world, they create the landscapes they are traveling through. The raw energy is there, but they need to impose some basic structure on it to be able to process the experience and understand how to gather the energy. I usually do that, too. But sometimes I sit there with my spirit guide in the shiny black of the lower world letting it be without form. We watch other journeyers create a tunnel of form with animals and plants and geographic features as they move nearby.
Life Force Processing
This region is much more concerned with the energy component of the life force then the information component. The rest of the soul system does the information processing to decide which type of energy to connect with. The Energy region just applies the requests of the other regions of the soul. Useful energy is gathered in and energy that is not useful is left behind.
Another purpose of the Energy region is to ground us. We gather life force energy from many people and places as we go through our day. It doesn’t all come from the lower world. Some of the life force is useful for what we want to do. Other life force makes our lives harder.
I expect we’ve all experienced days when we are too full of good feelings and joy of being alive to concentrate on a task. It is possible to have too much positive energy. It’s like floating in a cloud instead of having our feet on the ground where we can actually direct where we will go next.
There are also days when we absorb so much negative life force energy from where we are that is feels like we can’t even think. To actually move forward with some task is unimaginable.
The root nature of the Energy region works both ways. It can take the energy we don’t need and put it back in the lower world. Some people say back into the earth — same thing. We’re sending it out of us to place that can hold it so we can get on with what we need to do using the energy we need to have for the task.
When the soul is working at its best, all the regions agree on the task to do. They send the message of the kinds of energy that are needed to the Energy region. The Energy region gathers the energy and sends it to the other regions as required.
Lessons
We can draw enormous amounts of energy through this region. Some of us are better at it than others. It is something that we can practice and improve on. Here are some things for you to try. For these exercises, if something feels wrong, stop. Bring yourself back to your normal way of being. Ask yourself or people and spirits you trust if what you are doing is for your highest and best good. If not, ask how to change what you are trying to do so it is.
One Minute Exercise
The one-minute exercise for the Energy region involves searching into the earth for something physical. If you want to make it more interesting, find the spirit of what you are searching for, too.
• Put the book down (after you read the exercise, of course). Put you feet so your soles are touching something below them. If you are sitting, put you feet flat on the floor. If you are lying down, roll onto your back and bend your knees so your feet are flat on what you are lying on.
• Close your eyes.
• Feel roots or tendrils growing out of the bottoms of your feet.
• Go down into the earth, and spread the tendrils out until you can wrap them around a rock. Study the shape of the rock for about 10 seconds.
• Now move the roots around until you find an earthworm. Say hello. Feel the earthworm move. You have about 10 seconds here, too. Say goodbye.
• Next look for the roots of a tree. You have roots and the tree has roots. Feel the shape of the tree roots. Feel how the tree’s roots take nutrients up into the trunk, branches, and leaves of the tree. Ten seconds. Time to move on.
• Next move farther out until you find a river. Feel your tendrils move in the flow. Ten seconds here, too, then move on.
• The last place is a cavern. There might be one near you, or you may have to go a long way away. You’re looking for an open space under the ground. A mine will work, too. Let your tendrils move into the space and expand to fill it, at least as much as you can in 10 seconds. Find the edges of the space and try to figure out how it came to be.
• Bring those roots back up into your feet along with any energy (and wisdom) you managed to gather.
If you want to spend more than ten seconds in any of those places, good. That’s the point of these short exercises. Practice is fun. It doesn’t have to be hard. To really understand something, you have to do more than read about it. To understand something enough so it changes your life, takes more than a minute. Working on changing has to become part of your life. You can check on how much you have changed by doing this exercise every few months to see how your ability to sense energy has improved.
