First Chakra - Tribal Power | Spirit Connection

taken from anatomy of the spirit by Caroline Myss

Energy content of the first or tribal chakra is tribal power. The word tribe is not only a synonym for family but an archetype, and as such it has connotations beyond its more conventional definition. Archetypally the word tribal connotes group identity, group force, group willpower and group belief patterns. All of these meanings make up the energy content of our first chakra. The first chakra grounds us. It is our connection to traditional familial beliefs that support the formation of identity and a sense of belonging to a group of people in a geographic location.

To connect to the energy of your first chakra, focus your attention for a few moments on something tribal that speakers and emotional response in you.

Listening to the national anthem
observing and military spectacle watching an athlete receive a gold medal at the Olympics witnessing the marriage of someone you care about learning that a child has been named after you

as you focus on the experience you choose, be aware that the area of your body generating the response is your tribal chakra.

Location : base of the spine at the coccyx

Energy connection to the physical body : spinal column, rectum, legs, bones, feet and immune system.

Energy connection to the emotional / mental body : the first chakra is the foundation of emotional and mental health. Emotional and psychological stability originate in the family unit and early social environment. Various mental illnesses are generated out of family dysfunctions, including multiple personalities, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and destructive patterns like alcoholism.

Symbolic / perceptional connection : first chakra energy manifests in our need for logic, order and structure. This energy orients us in time and space and to our five senses. First chakra energy has trouble interpreting our lives symbolically, for our first five senses give us literal perceptions and cause us to take things at face value. Not until we are older are we able to seek out the symbolic meaning of events and relationships.

Sefirot / sacrament connection : the sefirah or Shekhinah, literally meaning the mystical community of Israel, is symbolic of the spiritual community of all humanity and to the feminine spirit of the earth known as Gaia. The symbolic meaning of the sacrament of baptism is to honor one’s biological family as sacred and divinely chosen as the appropriate tribe from which to begin one’s life journey.

Primary fears : fears of physical survival, abandonment by the group and loss of physical order.

Primary strengths : tribal family identity, bonding and the trouble on a code; the support and loyalty that give one a sense of safety and connection to the physical world.

Sacred truth : the sacred truth inherent in the first chakra is that all is 1. We learn this truth and explore its creative power through experiences connected to tribal or group dynamics. It carries the message that we are connected to all of life and that every choice we make and every belief we hold exerts influence upon the whole of life. This symbolic meaning of the sefira of Shekhinah is that we are all art of one spiritual community. It’s a part of our spiritual development and our biological health, this sacred truth has physical expressions in honor, loyalty, justice, family and group bonds, groundedness, our need for a spiritual foundation and the ability to manage physical power for survival.

We begin to discover that all is one as we start laugh within our tribe or family. To be a part of a tribe is a primal need since we are completely dependent upon our tribe for basic survival needs: food, shelter, and clothing. As tribal beings, we are energetically designed to live together, to create together, to learn together, to be together, sorry to need one another. Travel environments from our biological tribe, to the tribes we form with coworkers, to our tribal bonds with friends, provides the essential physical settings within which we can explore the creative power of this truth.

Tribal Culture

no one begins laugh as a conscious individual with conscious willpower. That identity comes much later and develops in stages from childhood through adulthood. Picking in life as a pot of a tribe, we become connected to our tribal consciousness and collective willpower by absorbing its strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, superstitions and fears.

Through our interactions with family and other groups, we learn the power of sharing a belief with other people’s. We also learn how painful it can be to be excluded from a group and its energy. We learn as well the power of sharing a moral and difficult code handed down from generation to generation. The study of behaviour guides children to the tribe during their developmental years, providing a sense of dignity and belonging.

If travel experiences energetically interconnect us, so do tribal attitudes, be they sophisticated perceptions such as we are all brothers and sisters, all superstitions such is the number 13 is bad luck.

, and all the issues related to it, are energetically connected to the health of our immune system, as well as to our legs, feet, bones and rectum. Symbolically, the immune system does for the physical body exactly what tribal power does for the group. It protects the entire body from potentially damaging external influences. Immune related disorders, chronic pain, and other difficulties with the skeleton are energetically activated by our weaknesses in personal trouble issues. Difficult travel challenges cause us to lose power primarily from our first chakra, making us susceptible should a challenge become an extreme stress to immune related diseases from the common cold to lupus.

The tribal chakra represents our connection to both positive and negative group experiences. Epidemics are a negative group experience to which we can become energetically susceptible if our own personal first chakra fears and attitudes are similar to those held by the cultures overall first chakra. Viral and other epidemics are very much a reflection of both the current social issues of the cultural tribe and the health of the social tribes immune system. This point is essential to note because each of us is connected through our first chakra latitudes to our culture and its attitudes.

A dramatic example of a social charged energy capacity to manifest an illness is the polio epidemic of the 1930s and 1940s. You’re in October 1929, the American economy crashed and the great depression began, affecting the entire nation. In describing how the American people felt, journalists and politicians, business executives end workers, men and women all describe themselves as having been crippled by the economic disaster.

1930s the polio epidemic surfaced symbolically representing the crippled spirit of the nation as a community. Those who felt most economically crippled, and the actual experience or by the fear of it, we’re energetically the most susceptible to the polio virus. Because children absorb their tribes energy American children were as susceptible to the viral disease as to the economic disease.

All is one : when an entire tribe becomes infected with fear, that energy extends to its children.

This sense of being crippled was that quickly woven into the travel psyche that American voters even elected a president crippled by the polio virus, Franklin D Roosevelt, a living symbol both of physical weakness and of indomitable resilience. It took a physical tribal event and experience of physical strength, World War Two, to heal the American tribal spirit. The scenes of heroism and tribal unity, supported by the sudden increase in jobs, restored pride, power and honour to each tribal member.

The war, the American nation had assumed a global leadership role again. In fact, the United states became the leader of the free world because it developed nuclear weapons, a position that brought enormous pride and power into the cultures tribal chakra. Once again, this recovery was reflected in the language of the tribal spokespeople who described their newly healed culture as economically on its feet again. With this shift in consciousness, reflecting A healed troubled spirit, the poliovirus could be defeated. The spirit and attitude of the tribe was ultimately stronger than the virus. Not coincidentally Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine for polio in the early 1950s.

A more contemporary example of the same dynamic is the HIV virus. In the United states this virus is most prevalent among drug users, prostitutes and the gay population. In other countries, such as Russia and numerous African nations, it thrives among those whose quality of life barely allows for survival. In Latin America the virus thrives among middle class women who are married to philandering men. These men are not gay but have sex with other men as a macho exercise. Those who contract this virus, regardless of the means, share a common sense of being victimized by their tribal culture.

While everyone has been victimised by something or someone, this victim consciousness reflects a feeling of powerlessness within the troubled culture, whether because of a sexual preference, lack of money, or lack of social status. These latin Americans believe they lack any means of protecting themselves. HIV positive Latin American woman, even those married to successful men, cannot challenge their husband’s behaviour because their culture does not, as yet, value the female voice. Viewed somebody tally, the HIV virus emerged into US culture just as the issue of victimization became mainstream. The cultural energy of our own country is being depleted by the need that some have to feel empowered at the expense of others deemed less valuable. Challenges to our biological immunity will follow accordingly.

Maintaining the health of our individual first chakra depends upon addressing our personal trouble issues. If we feel victimised by society, for example, we should deal with this negative perception so that it doesn’t cause us to lose energy. We can, for instance, get therapeutic support, become skilled at an occupation, seek a more symbolic view of our situation, or become politically active to change societies attitudes. Nurturing bitterness toward the cultural tribe embroils our energy in a continual inner conflict that blocks access to the healing power of the sacred truth all is one.

Our respective tribes introduce us to life in the world. They teach us that the world is either safe or dangerous, abundant or poverty ridden, educated or ignorant, a place to take from or to give to. And they transmit their perceptions about the nature of reality itself for instance, that this life is only one of many or that this life is all there is. We inherit from our tribes the attitudes toward other religious, ethnic and racial groups. Our tribes activate our thinking processes.

Everyone has heard ethnic generalizations such as all Germans are very organised or all Irish are great storytellers. We have all been taught some view of God or the unseen world and how it interacts with us, such as don’t wish evil upon someone because it will come back to haunt you, or never laugh at anyone because God might punish you. We also absorb numerous sex linked perceptions, such as men are smarter than women, or little boys love to play sports and all little girls love to play with dolls.

The tribal beliefs we inherit or a combination of truth and fiction. Many of them such as murder is forbidden, hold eternal value. Others lack that quality of eternal truth and are more parochial, designed to keep tribes separate from one another, in violation of the sacred truth all is one. The process of spiritual development challenges us to retain the tribal influences that are positive and to describe those that are not.

Our spiritual power grows when we are able to see beyond the contradictions inherit in tribal teachings and pursue a deeper level of truth. Each time we make a shift towards symbolic awareness, we positively influence our energy and biological systems. We also contribute positive energy to the collective body of love, the global tribe. Think of this process of spiritual maturation as spiritual homeopathy.