The 5th chakra: the Power of Will

The 5th chakra embodies the challenges of surrendering our own willpower and spirits to the will of God. From a spiritual perspective, our highest goal is the full release of our personal will into the hands of the divine. Jesus and Buddha, as well as other great teachers, represent the mastery of this state of consciousness, complete union with the divine will.

Taken from the book Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss

Location: the throat

Energy connection to the physical body: throat, thyroid, trachea, esophagus, parathyroid, hypothalamus, neck vertebrae, mouth, jaw and teeth.

Energy connection to the emotional mental body: the 5th chakra resonates to the numerous emotional and mental struggles involved in learning the nature of the power of choice. All illness has a connection to the fifth chakra, because choice is involved in every detail what alarms and therefore in every illness.

Symbolic perceptual connection: the symbolic challenge of the willpower chakra is to progress through the maturation of will: from the tribal perception that everyone and everything around you has authority over you; Through the perception that you alone have authority over you; To the final perception, their true authority comes from aligning yourself to God’s will.

Primary fears: fierce related to our willpower exist within each chakra, appropriate to this chakra. We fear having no authority or power of choice within our own lives, first within our tribes, then within our personal and professional relationships. And then we fear having no authority with ourselves, being out of control when it comes to our response to substances, to money, to power, to another persons emotional control over our well-being. And finally we fear the will of God. The notion of releasing our power of choice to a divine force remains the greatest struggle for the individual seeking to become conscious.

Primary strength: faith, self knowledge, and personal authority; the capacity to make decisions knowing that no matter what decision we make, we can keep our word to ourselves or to another person.

Sefirot Sacrament connection: the 5th chakra corresponds to the sephira of Hesed, representing the love or mercy of god, and of Gevurah, representing the judgment of God. These two sefirot all the right and left arms of God, portraying the balanced nature of divine will. The implication of these sefirot is that the divine is merciful and that only God has the right to judge the choices we make. The siphera of Hesed reminds us to use loving words to communicate with others and the sephira of Gevurah reminds us to speak with honour and integrity. The sacrament of confession is aligned to the fifth chakra, symbolic of the fact that we are all accountable for the way we use our willpower. Through the sacrament of confession, we are given an opportunity to retrieve our spirits from the negative missions we may have sent them on as a consequence of our negative thoughts or actions.

Sacred truth: the 5th chakra is the centre of choice and consequence, of spiritual,. Every choice we make, every thought and feeling we have, is an act of power that has biological, environmental, social, personal and global consequences. We are everywhere our thoughts are and thus our personal responsibility includes our energy contributions.

What choices would we make if we could actually see their energy consequences? We can approach this kind of foresight only by abiding by the sacred truth surrender personal will to divine will. The spiritual lessons of the 5th chakra show us that actions motivated by a personal will that has trusted in divine authority create the best effects.

One’s thoughts and attitudes also benefit from accepting higher guidance. One woman who told me about a near death experience views every choice she makes as having an energy impact on the whole of life. For while she was in that state between physical and non physical life, she reviewed all the choices she had made in her life and witnessed the consequences of those actions upon herself, other people and the whole of life. She was shown that guidance was always trying to penetrate into her conscious mind. Whether she was choosing a dress or occupation, no choice was so significant that it was ignored by the divine. In purchasing a dress she was shown the immediate energy consequence of that sale, down a long chain of people who had been involved in its creation and distribution. She now asks for guidance prior to any and every decision she must make.

Understanding the energy consequences of our thoughts and beliefs, as well as our actions, may force us to become honest to a new degree. Lying, either to others or to ourselves, should be out of the question. Genuine, Complete healing requires honesty with oneself. And inability to be honest obstruct healing as seriously as the inability to forgive. Honesty and forgiveness retrieve our energy, our spirits, from the energy dimension of the past. Our fifth chakra and its spiritual lessons show us that personal power lies in our thoughts and attitudes.

The consequences of fear

The most costly energy consequences come from acting out of fear. Even when choices made from fear lead us to what we desire, they generally also produce unwanted side effects. These surprises teach us their choosing from fear transgresses our trust in divine guidance. We all do live, at least periodically, within the illusion that we are in charge of our lives. We seek money and social status in order to have greater power of choice and so that we do not have to follow the choices others make for us. The idea that consequences requires surrendering personal will to divine will stands in direct conflict with all that we have come to consider the measure of an empowered person.

Thus, we may repeat the cycle of fear surprise fear surprise, until we reach a point of prayer in which we say: you choose and I’ll follow. Once we release this prayer, guidance may enter our lives, along with endless acts of synchronicity and coincidence, divine interference at its best.

Emily, 35, is a grade school teacher who lost her left leg to cancer 13 years before, shortly after she graduated from college. During her rehabilitation she returned home to live with her parents. What they anticipated would be a year’s stay turned into a decade because Emily did not regain her independence but instead grew ever more depressed and frightened at the prospect of taking care of herself. She said minimised her physical activity that she would walk no further than around her block. With each passing year Emily retreated more into her parents home, eventually ceasing even pleasurable outings.

Emily’s parents suggested therapy, but nothing had any impact upon her. S mother said to me, all Emily would do, day off today, was dwell upon her belief that the loss of her leg ruined her chances of getting married and having a family of her own, or any type of life of her own. She felt branded by her experience with cancer and would sometimes comment that she wished the cancer would return and complete the job, as she put it.

As a result of her daughter’s illness, Emily’s mother became interested in alternative treatments. By the time we met, she and her husband were seeking the courage to ask Emily to move out on her own. Emily had to learn to take care of her own physical needs and to heal her psychological state. She needed to rely upon her own willpower again.

Emily’s parents rented and furnished an apartment for her and she moved in, angry and frightened. She told her parents she felt abandoned by them. Within a month she met a neighbour, Laura, a single mother with a 10 year old son called TJ. This boy always arrived home from school before his mother came home from work. Emily would hear him moving around the apartment, watching TV, eating snacks, waiting for almost 3 hours alone each day until Laura came home.

One afternoon Emily was coming home from the store just as Laura was coming home from work. They began to discuss TJ and Laura remarked that she was concerned about his schoolwork and the amount of time he was alone off to school. Emily suddenly volunteered not only to keep tea Jack company every afternoon but to tutor him in his schoolwork, since she was a qualified teacher. Low rider gradually agreed and the next afternoon, Emily began to tutor TJ.

Within a few weeks word spread around the apartment complex that a wonderful teacher was available to both tutor and care for children after school. Emily was deluged with requests from working parents. She asked the manager of the apartment complex whether a room could be available for three hours every afternoon. A room was available, financial arrangements were made and Emily, within three months of leaving her parents home, was as she put it, alive again.

As Emily told me her story, she referred several times to the spontaneity with which she volunteered to tutor TJ. Her offer flew out of her mouth before she had a chance even to think about it, she said. If she had thought about it, she said, she would never have offered to help. Precisely because this gesture was so out of character, she considered, just for a moment, that she was being told by the heavens to tutor TJ. Ultimately Emily decided to believe that she had been intended to tutor TJ, as well as the eleven other children who came under her care before she returned to teaching the following autumn.

For whatever reason Emily had the grace to recognise guidance. As soon as she began caring for others, her own fear of not being cared for was abated. She was living proof she realized, that God attends to the needs of everyone and this renewed her faith.