Eight Human Talents

Book Excerpt - Chakras

The purpose of this book is to provide you with small ways to help you become aware of your own chakra centers, and enrich your life by tapping into the vast technology of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation.

"Men of great knowledge actually found out about all these chakras -- their workings, their petals, their sounds, their infinity, their co-relationship, their powers. They found out what the chakras were. And, they found out that the life of a human is totally based on these chakras. They developed it into a whole science. This total science gave birth to Kundalini Yoga. That is how Kundalini Yoga was born."

--Yogi Bhajan

Chakra is the Sanskrit word for "wheel." Think of your chakras as spinning vortexes, each radiating a particular energy that's important to your health, happiness, and well-being. These eight energy centers begin at the base of your spine and continue upward to the top of your head, as shown in the illustration at the end of this chapter.

"The energy of the universe is yours. It is your birthright. Just claim it."

--Yogi Bhajan

These centers are divided into the "lower triangle," which refers to the first three chakras, and the "upper triangle." They meet in the middle at the navel point. The eighth chakra, the aura, is like a bubble surrounding the entire physical structure, and is a culmination or reflection of the being as a whole.

Chakras are complex, radiating more than one quality or emotion. To help you begin to understand how they operate, I have distilled each chakra to one human talent and one shadow emotion in this book.

The Eight Human Talents are those gifts that make human beings different from every other animal on earth.

"Talent will take you everywhere. There is nothing which talent cannot create. There is nowhere that talent cannot reach. It will give you every spot. It will give you every place. Talent is the vehicle of Infinity, which is yours in which you use your consciousness and intuition."

--Yogi Bhajan

Each chakra is associated with a particular talent, gift, or skill we can gain to enhance our lives, when the chakra is open and vibrating at maximum intensity. Each is traditionally associated with a particular color.

Sometimes people will refer to a negative emotional state, a psychological difficulty, associated with a particular chakra. These are not necessarily "set in stone" associations, since emotions tend to overlap and intermix with each other. To simplify, I have linked the chakras to "shadow emotions," if you will, and have described yogic tools to help a person deal with the darker side of the human psyche.

"Don't solve your problems, dissolve your problems -- so they should not reoccur again."

--Yogi Bhajan

These wonderful chakras make humans different from every other animal on earth. When we begin to honor the power and develop the talents they offer, we will heal as individuals and as a species.

My teacher, Yogi Bhajan, taught me to think of chakras as gears of a car. Each is important and useful for getting where you want to go. We call Kundalini Yoga the "Yoga of Awareness," because it teaches you how to become aware of the energies you contain, and then teaches you how to "shift gears" smoothly when you need to.

"To be successful in life, you have to learn to change your gears to meet the circumstances around you. If you are not in control of your own transmission, life will be a disaster for you, no matter who you are. You have to learn how to control your own energy. That's what Kundalini Yoga actually is. It teaches you to bring your transmission and your gas and your gears under your control."

--Yogi Bhajan

The challenge is that most of us get stuck in one or two gears. We aren't able to shift the power. Think about trying to drive on a freeway in first gear only, or get up a hill in overdrive. Pretty hard, right? But that's what most of us do all the time.

When a chakra becomes unbalanced, when we block its energy from radiating and neglect its inherent talent, we can sometimes experience disease. In the three decades I have been teaching students, I've become very aware of how people inhabit their bodies, and how having emotional and spiritual "blocks" will manifest in their bodies. I can look at people and know whether they have a hard time being open-hearted to others, or whether it's difficult for them to speak up for themselves.

This book will help increase your awareness of your Eight Human Talents on a physical, mental, and spiritual level by using simple meditative and yogic techniques. And what's really amazing is that most of these little tools, meditations, and exercises take as little as three minutes a day!

Copyright © 2000 Gurmukh with Cathryn Michon

Gurmukh's Overview of Chakra System