fifth chakra

When I meditate it's on the chakras.

Up until now I've only done meditation on the first four, those lower points on the tree of life of the spine, on its trunk you could say, which is rooted in the earth and governs those parts of our existence we share with the animals, fundamental instinctive behaviors driven by the urge to survive, the need to procreate, to experience the transformations of birth, maturity, and death, and capacity for love.

These four are the eath-bound chakras, corresponding to the earthly elements: earth, water, fire, and air. I silently say the name of each, think of its characteristics, its associated element, its attributes and qualities, then with the breath going out silently chant its one-syllable root mantra, five breaths for each chakra.

Today I incorporated meditation on the fifth chakra, called vishuddhi, which is at that big knob at the top of the thoracic spine, where the neck begins. It corresponds with the throat, and governs the functions of voice, communication, and speech. At this point as a species we depart from the animals, since words are not things, but abstractions which symbolically correspond to things, and are beyond animal understanding. This capacity to form words and make speech is something we share with the gods rather than the other creatures on earth, thus the material associated with the fifth chakra is the ether of space, which is not of this world.

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