As white snow flakes gently gather on the ground once again today, we may forget the layers of dirt now hiding under it. In the same fashion, human beings have a tendency to want to see only their brightest side. However, we forget the darker parts of ourselves. In the darker parts of the physical and subtle bodies, the grit of daily living gets deposited in our cells. This gradually accumulates depleting our vitality, limiting our enjoyment of life and bringing illness.
Fortunately, there are multiple ways to tackle the job and bring back harmony to body, mind and emotions. This month, in planning for the switch of the seasons, we present “technologies” that clean the sense organs, the Earth bodies, the aura and the chakras. You can see these only as a means to an end, as a practical tool to get rid of aches and pains. Their aim much deeper: in the “other dark side”, the mystery of who you are, to what your reality is really made of and to enlightenment.
First, you need to know that each sense is given to you or created by its corresponding element:
- space gives you sound
- air gives you touch
- fire gives you sight
- water gives you taste
- earth gives you smell
By cleaning each sense, you clean that element within you and its equivalent aspect on planet Earth. Remember this power when your ego makes you think that you are insignificant!
Cleaning and rejuvenating the sense organs
Have you heard your grandpa complain that food is no longer as tasty as when he was young? Noticed that your mom doesn’t hear so sell? That you personally need glasses or an adjustment to those you already have? Most people blame aging. In fact, aging is not so much the culprit as the result of decaying tissues due to poor maintenance.
You may ask: “But how can one clean one’s eyes or mouth or ears??!!”. Actually ayurveda has had a solution for a few millenia. It’s pragmatically called “Purification of the senses.” They are five treatments, one for each sense. Each it simple, efficient, pleasant and relaxing. It doesn’t mean you won’t age but it will slow the process, attenuate hereditary tendencies and reduce the impact of bad habits.
They all use organic oils, herbs, spices and/or dairy. The process: first clean, then moisten, then rest. The treatments can be done individually, in series of the same or as a series of the five together, on their own or as the first step to pancha karma. Repeating this twice a year, every year will make you look, feel and think younger than most people around you. And this is only the surface result of the treatments.
What these treatments do — including the pancha karma treatments mentioned below –, is to remove memories from your cells and the emotional charge attached to those memories. When you clear your senses or deprive them of perception, you could start asking yourself “What are the senses?”, “What is it that I really perceive?”, “How do these perceptions affect my reality?”, “Who am I without the senses?” In that space of enquiry, you may come to realize that the elements are there to serve you instead of enslaving you with the illusions they create.
Enlightened masters say that once you realize that nothing you perceive exists, you get free. You know that what you see, taste, hear, touch and smell is only a reflection of the energy flows going on within you and through you. They say that this realization brings awareness of your own enlightenment, a state that you have always been in. The senses were given to you only to create the illusion of separation from all that IS and to allow you to learn that.
More on the treatments: http://facetograce.com/en/portfolio/purification-of-the-senses/
Cleaning and rejuvenating the cells of the body
Anything the body doesn’t burn, digest, eliminate or process fully leaves behind residues in the cells that ayurveda call “ama” or toxins. Some are organic, others are chemical, while others yet come from emotional and mental patterns. Eating to much, fretting too much, moving too much or not enough, holding on to feelings, ignoring the various signals of the body such as waiting to go to the washroom… you get the picture.
Again, ayurveda has devised a system: Panch karma. Various forms of massage, generous doses of herbalized oils or milk, a light diet appropriate for each person’s constitution, rest and recommended silence ensure that the ama stuck to or in the tissues loosens up and end up in the digestive tract. This facilitates proper elimination of organic matter, dead cells and old emotional and mental patterns. The same oils leave the tissues supple, resilient and better able to absorb the air and nutriments ingested or applied topically.
As with the treatments for the senses, pancha karma eventually brings you to a place of such purity and clarity that you ask yourself “What is my body?”, “What are my thoughts and emotions?”, “Who are those around me?”, “Who am I, really?”
More on the treatments: http://www.ottawaayurveda.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=273
Cleaning the aura
The aura is not a permanent organ per se, simply an emanation from the Earth bodies. It is formed by the union of the different frequencies that emanate from those bodies.
The physical body emanates gravity; it is like a magnet that attracts the gravitational forces of the other bodies. The second layer is the etheric body; it is stuck to the physical body as in a nylon envelope, sealed or attracted by its gravitational force. The third layer is the gravitational plasmic emanation, like the water or gelatin, from the emotional body.
The emanation of the mental body is electrical and produces a frequency. As you know, electricity has positive charge, a negative charge and the neutral charge. In the same fashion, human beings have positive, negative and neutral thoughts. This gives each of you a specific signature or charge, and it fluctuates every moment. As you can imagine, these force fields can pull or push things that are beneficial or not, like a physical magnet attracts or repells iron filings.
Smudging with herbs, diffusing essential oils and other modalities on a daily basis certainly contribute to keeping the aura in good working order. However, using the aura cleanse we make with its accompanying prayer is equivalent to a thorough spring cleaning. It:
- unclogs unhealthy emanations and allow them to be more plastic, fluid and smooth
- offers protection when travelling to other areas of the world to facilitate integration where vibrations are different.
- strengthens the weak, the sick or those being attacked by the thoughts of others
- helps you when you get feelings of heaviness; these feelings may not even be yours but do affect you
- invigorates you during your karma months (the month preceding your birthday) when your aura is most sensitive and unresolved or unfinished business from the past year surface
- supports you in difficult situations when your aura is shattered by an accident, a shock or when your mind subdivides.
In light of the optimum results of the purification of the senses and pancha karma treatments mentioned above, what kind or realization do you think you will you find once the emanations of your aura are squeaky clean?
Cleaning the chakras
Chakras are vortex-like structures that receive and distribute energy to all physical and subtle layers of the self from the outside world inside and vice-versa. When they are clean and their shape is healthy, life is harmonious and balanced. But the chakras can get cluttered, dirty, dysfunctional, polluted or never have a chance to evolve, just as any other body part. That’s when the flow of life is hampered and relationships with self and others can’t stay on an even keel.
As thought and emotional patterns harden and crytalize, they tend to lodge themselves in the aura or the chakras. Sources of dirt or dysfunction in the chakras include incomplete, unprocessed, habitual emotions among others. These dysfunctions can even distort the structure of the chakra, cause atrophy or completely block its functions. As a result, some people will become overly reactive, completely inaccessible emotionally or have inappropriate reactions for the circumstance that occurs in the moment. Nobody is immune to this. That’s why everybody needs to clean up their chakras, just as they would clean their teeth.
Knowing that the most direct way to connect with your emotions is via the limbic system, Berdhanya Swami Tierra and Isabela Blanchet, from Face to Grace, developed the Émotions – Chakra Creams kit. The set gently stimulates the lymbic system with natural scents and a meditation to bring back harmony. A workshop was also developed to assist those who want support during the process.
Again, cleaning of the chakras offer opportunities for health and prevention of illness. It can also be used as a springboard to investigate the real nature of who you are as a human being. It just depends where you are in your development and what are your priorities.
More on the workshop: (http://facetograce.com/en/portfolio/balance-your-emotions-with-aromatherapy-and-meditation/.)