2nd Chakra Series – Motherhood and Creating

This post is the third in a series I am doing this week on the 2nd chakra in women. The first post was on Tantric Sexuality, the second on Intuition and Seeing, and the posts after this are on Spirituality and Bliss and 21 Ways to Care for Your 2nd Chakra. If you are really interested in this topic, I encourage you to check out the comments on those posts, especially on the Intuition post, because a lot of good material got brought up there, and it is helping me clarify my own thoughts. And add your thoughts too, of course!

Also, these posts are all long I realize, so don’t worry, they will be here to come back to later (that’s the great thing about the internet.)  And I’ll be returning to my once or twice a week posting schedule when this is done:-)

I wanted to speak a bit more about working with the chakras from a healing perspective vs. ‘using’ them, the latter being what this series is about. I think most Western writing on the chakras is related to balancing, healing, clearing or repairing them, and this is the focus of the various techniques involving crystals, music, oils, clearing sessions, etc. But the occult traditions I am drawing on here focus more on how do you ‘use’ the chakras to develop unique skills – such as seeing, healing, manifesting and more – or for gaining spiritual insight (which is the next post.) It’s like the difference between healing your body vs. using it in sports. Just like professional athletes have refined their use of their body to a level most of us never attain, adepts in chakra traditions have refined the use of their chakras to a high degree. And we can all learn from their skills I think, even if we are not looking to go pro.

I also wanted to say that I do think all the chakras are involved in all these functions, just like all the muscles of the body are involved in almost any physical activity, but some draw on one muscle group more than others. The reasons I am focusing on the 2nd chakra are: 1) I have been getting strong intuitions to do so (and I’ve learned to ‘follow orders’ on this kind of stuff at this point!), and 2) the 2nd chakra is the defining ‘different’ element energetically between men and women, just like the reproductive organs of our body (which are related to the 2nd chakra) are our primary physical difference. So why not write about the 2nd chakra in men also? Because frankly it’s already been done – most of the surviving historical writing on chakras was written within traditions that were predominantly male, and they didn’t think much about how it was different in women. With the exception of the few traditions I have mentioned, there isn’t much on women’s 2nd chakras – most of it has been written in the last 50 years or so in the West.

OK, finally on to the target topic for this article – Motherhood and Creating. This topic is the flip side of the last article. Creating (including procreation) is a yang or outward-moving aspect of the 2nd chakra, while intuition is a yin or inward-moving one. While for intuition we absorb energy or ‘data’ into our energy bodies (which is partly pulled in by the centripetal nature of our 2nd chakra), while creating a life, a painting, or composition, or anything else, we push it out into the world, apart from us.

Of course in any type of creation, this inward and outward movement work together: In procreation, our body first has to pull the fertilized egg into the womb, nurture/germinate it for 9 months, and then push it out. Other acts of creation are similar – we have to sense/intuit an idea, then germinate and develop it, and then actually manifest/execute it in the external world apart from ourselves. This creative process is traditionally associated with the 2nd chakra  – in men also. (Of course the energy of other chakras might be involved along the way, such as the third eye for insight/ideas, the throat in terms of self-expression, the heart if we are trying to create something as a message of love or out of love, or the navel in terms of the will and intent required.)

So then, when the process is complete, and we’ve created something outside ourselves, what’s our relationship to that which we’ve created? With most artistic creations or other physical things that you create in the world, a bit of your energy goes into it and stays with it forever. In many occult traditions you find this idea of ‘transmission’, and the idea that a piece of spiritual art, or a spiritual text, can transmit a specific lesson non-verbally, directly into our awareness. (In fact, this kind of learning is the ‘real deal’ in these traditions – words and philosophy are considered a very limited form of knowledge and teaching.) This is the energetic aspect of a created object – the transmission from the creator.

Ideally, we let go of what we create – we ‘close’ the line, so to speak, between us and the object, letting it exist separately from ourselves. But motherhood is different. It takes eighteen years (or so) for the creation to be ‘finished’! And really it never is. So there is an energetic line from us to each of our children, for the rest of our lives. Cyndi Dale told me she thinks of this as an energetic cord between mother and child. Others have talked about it though – particularly in the Carlos Castenada traditions, some of the Tibetan Buddhist Tantric texts, Elizabeth Haisch in Initiation, and even Dr. Christine Northrup in some of her books (I’ll put a book list in the last post.)

This energy connection is extremely intense at birth – really for the first three months after birth our children are energetically still part of us – and gradually lessens in intensity over time. But managing it is tough, and initially the energy shift, and particularly the energy outpouring to the child, can be extremely tough to handle and accept, especially for women who have some 2nd chakra issues anyway (and again, prior sexual abuse is a main cause of this, but there are others, and Anatomy of the Spirit is a great book to consider in terms of delving into this.) I think this can be a contributing factor to post-natal depression as well. Then, the sense of dispersion increases with each additional child. Women who don’t learn to manage these lines well can get really wiped out, and lose their own manifesting abilities and vision entirely.

That’s the reason motherhood – and even sexual activity (which I’ll touch on again in the next post) – was considered an eliminating factor in a lot of these occult traditions. It just wasn’t considered possible for a woman to manage these energy lines and pursue Tantric or kundalini yoga practices, or to be a seer, energy healer or Shaman in some indigenous traditions (and I already mentioned the Oracles of Delphi in a prior post.) Of course, women had a lot more children in the past, and could lose up to half of them in early childhood, so the energy connections they were managing were very different. They also typically had much fewer options available to them to pursue their own creative and manifesting abilities, so the power associated with their 2nd chakras might have been less developed.

So personally, I do not believe those restrictions have to apply anymore, but it can be a challenge to strike the right balance. The main point is, managing motherhood and our other pursuits energetically (let alone the time factor!) is not easy. On the one hand, that energetic connection is the root of the special mother/child bond, our empathic and intuitive connection to our children, and our abilities to energetically soothe and heal them (and just holding them, at any age, is one way to really feel and activate this connection.) On the other, the energy line is another outpouring of our energy, and can leave us feeling drained, dispersed, or unmotivated.

I think just having this knowledge can be tremendously powerful, and start to shift how we subconsciously relate to this line. Then, there are three main concepts to keep in mind:

Pacing – Recognize that the energetic needs of your children will lessen over time (as long as you let go naturally, step by step, as they grow.) So whatever you are trying to manifest or create, or whatever occult skills you practice, pace yourself. Yes this means you can’t necessarily have it all, right when you want it. Welcome to real life! Personally, I don’t know any women who believe in that old maxim anymore anyway (and if you do, make your case in the comments!)

Balance – Paying attention to what both you and your children need on a daily basis, and as it evolves over time, is essential. If you hold too much back, that’s hard on your kids (and you are missing out.) But if you give too much, particularly more than they need at a given point, you exhaust yourself, and potentially hold them back from developing their own power too. Balance is an ongoing practice, a day-by-day, week-by-week, thing. It’s just like physically trying to balance on one leg – it requires constant attention, constant adjusting.

Access More Energy – The above two points are both based on the idea that you have a limited amount of energy, and on a certain level, that’s true at any given point in time. But it’s a fundamental teaching of any occult tradition that energy (or power) doesn’t come from us, it comes through us. So learn to access more. How? Volumes have been written on that! And I’ll try to cover some of them in my last post, but some are obvious – taking care of yourself, yoga, meditation, time alone, etc. But also, think about what already energizes you, especially any creative or manifesting type activities you enjoy. That’s something that is already pulling on your creative powers, your 2nd chakra powers, and understanding what it is about that activity that energizes you will offer you clues as to how you personally access your energy/power, and thus how you can increase it. Ultimately, it’s unlimited.

One final point I wanted to mention is that many women say that they feel more creative after becoming a mother, and I found some teachings on this by a contemporary spiritual teacher too. I think this definitely happened in my case, after an initial difficult adjustment period. For me personally, I think this was due to my accessing my 2nd chakra in a way that I hadn’t done before. Procreation helped me tap into those creative forces in a way that my prior life activities had not. Maybe someone who was already well-connected to their creative energies before becoming a mother would not experience that, I don’t know.

And just as a final aside, this post is NOT meant to be a case for or against motherhood, or for or against any particular parenting choices (please do NOT pull me into the ‘Mommy Wars’!!!)  I’m just trying to look at it from a technical, energetic perspective. This knowledge can really help us work truthfully with the life we have, and recognize both its gifts and challenges.

Your comments and questions are always appreciated.

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Also, check out the nexy post, Spirituality and Bliss.