Short Chakra Video
• Introducing the Chakra’s (Judith)
• Muladhara Chakra
Base or Root Chakra Muladhara (pronounced as Moola Dar Uh)
• The Muladhara Chakra is
located at the base of the
spine.
• The word Muladhara in
Sanskrit means Foundation.
• It is this Chakra that anchors
us to our grounding
connection to and root
support from the Universal
Source of All That Is, to our
center within, to our
foundation.
Spiritual / Consciouness Growth
•
Spiritual growth through the chakra’s is a process of incorporating even-larger
areas of the ground into the self.
•
Chakra’s are not created by ego or self.
•
Living energy system within the physical body connecting physical the spiritual
•
As we connect to the physical body we connect to each other and to the infinite
web of life toward the adoption and returning to pure consciousness.
•
Alas, like climbing a ladder… Thus the Chakra’s are rungs connected together by
the spiritual ground.
Climbing the Ladder
• As one ascends each chakra this activates a series of fundamental
resonances that sets patterns for each stage of life.
• Higher chakra’s grant access to greater quantities of information and
wisdom.
• While lower levels never disappear, optimal spiritual growth requires that
lower chakra’s enfold into higher.
• While all humans seek unity, life offers no guarantee that each stage will
march in unison or will be free to open naturally.
Ladder Derailment / Block / Cracking
• When chakra’s open out of phase, are
blocked, or are closed, psychotic ASC’s may
arise or be imprinted to arise later in life.
• 3 Types
• Fixation
(arrest of growth)
• Repression (abuses)
• Intrusion
(ego rupture by SP)
First Chakra Developments
• Jason add tomorrow!
Moving From Level to Level: Ego Death
• Moving from level
to level requires
the developing
self/ego to
relinquish
previous chakra
attachment
• Feels like psychic
death… “because
it is”
First Chakra: Spiritual, Psychological
Development and Impingement
• Life in the Womb
– Fetus resonates with outside environment
– Mom / Dad
• Birth Trauma
– Imprinting (laying down pathways)
– Psychosis predisposition
– Repression
Mother / Father Infant Bond
•
Unitary consciouness inside womb
•
Upon exit from birth canal infant
seeks for loving secure object to begin
the task of making sense of things
•
Searches intuitively for these things in
mother / father / primary caregiver
–
–
–
–
•
Face patterns
Smell
Tastes
Voices
After all the sense of security and
presence of the ground usually made
the womb a place of “oneness”.
Spirit to Spirit Resonance or Failure
•
For better or worse, without
a closed boundary enclosing
consciouness these early
resonances set the stage for
trusting the world and an
existence beyond the
undifferentiated matrix.
•
Hence, as the infant emerges
into the world he or she must
negotiate the “I/not-I” split
and the vacant emptiness in
the absence of primary
caregiver.
•
This is also in the face of the
ego’s early identification with
the body as “I”.
Margaret Mahler’s Theory of Ego Development
•
These early repetitions of cleaving
spirit into matter, and matter into ego,
is what Margaret Mahler called the
separation individuation process.
Solowoniuk, 2007
12
Towards An Object-Related Developmental
Understanding of Madness and Addiction:
Building an Ego
• Self-Object: mental representations of others that we experience as part
of ourselves; there are three types.
– Mirroring self-object: is a object that responds to and confirms the child’s
innate sense of vigor, greatness, and perfection.
• For example: it is the gleam in the mother/father’s eye that is tune with the
infant/child’s achievements.
Solowoniuk, 2007
13
Mirroring Self-Object
•
Therefore if the
parents/caregiver/or other
mirror these feelings to the
infant he or she develops a
healthy sense of self with an
appropriate sense of
assertiveness and ambition.
•
Failure of the self-object to
optimally gratify the infant
hungry needs results in an
individual who needs constant
admiration, confirmation, and
recognition from others due to a
sense of psychic emptiness,
which remains in the
background of their
consciousness.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8169159604168360620&q=Mirroring+%2B+mother+and+child&total=52&start=30&num=10&so
=0&type=search&plindex=6
Solowoniuk, 2007
14
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2757068201635933659&q=Proud+%2B+toddler&total=45&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=5
Idealizing Self-Object
•
Idealizing self-objects are objects
with whom a child can merge as an
image of calmness, infallibility, and
healthy empowerment.
•
If the infant/child is presented with
a strong , self-object who allows
idealization, they gain the ability to
self soothe and seek solace in
themselves in times of stress.
•
In contrast, if infants and latter
children who do not have
idealizing self-objects available are
forever attempting to achieve a
union with an idealized object or
escape into fantasy to ward off a
feeling of non-being (birthing
ground for sex addiction).
Solowoniuk, 2007
15
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6521317519421305512
Twinship
• Occurs in later childhood
• Incorporating good role models who model
sense of group membership, agreed-upon
reality, affiliation with society.
• Lacking twinship, a child may feel like a
perpetual outsider.
Stage I: Normal Autism
•
During the first month of life, the
infant is encapsulated in a psychic
orbit that serves as a stimulus
barrier protecting the child from
excessive outside intrusions.
•
It is considered normal because of
its an adaptive function, allows the
child to purposefully use the mother
as an auxiliary ego.
•
If however, the environment is
grossly pathological the early
development of ego does not begin
and fusion or less than optimal
differentiation between mother,
world, and child may result.
Solowoniuk, 2007
(birth to 4 weeks)
17
Normal Symbiosis – Attachment
• By the second month of life, the infant becomes aware of the
mother/father/caregiver (MFC) as an external object.
• During these early months (2 – 5) the infant internalizes the
MFC and uses it as a beacon of orientation, engendering a
basic sense of:
1.
2.
3.
Security
Safety, and;
Basic Trust in existence (right to be here).
Solowoniuk, 2007
18
Splitting the Good and the Bad
• During these times, a crude differentiation between object
and self, good and bad, and pleasure and pain begins to
develop...
• Because the baby begins to experience the imperfection of its
parents . Thus, order for the baby to deal with its developing
psyche differentiation, he/she begins to
– **Split the good and the bad, and projects the bad (frustration / energy)
outside of the symbiotic partnership. Eventually this splitting will have to be
reconciled…
Solowoniuk, 2007
19
Failure to Attach to External Other
• Failure of this defensive functioning here, may lead to a ego or
“I” that is
– Affectionless
– Withdrawn from interest in the world, self/other (engendering a basic
mistrust) personality, or ; failure may lend its self to the…
– Creation of a False-Self
Solowoniuk, 2007
20
False Self / True-Self
• In the event that the infant/child’s ego or I is threatened, defensive
compensatory structures (false-self) are established to prevent further
injury.
• Such an individual develops an as if personality bolstered by a pomposity
that hides their “true self” from further fragmentation.
• Instead of grounding the self in the body, energy is moved upward into the
higher chakra’s where the body begins to be split from mind (feelings
sealed off)
•
This defensive process prevents baby from further nourishing their true
self because each success is attributed to the way they “acted” rather than
“who they are”.
Solowoniuk, 2007
21
Returning to Mahler/Stage II: Separation
Individuation
• Differentiation and Hatching (5 to 10 months)
– As strong as the child’s yearnings for attachment are, the infant gradually
begins to experience even more powerful urges to move away from his/her
MFC’s. - Hatching
– Such a phase marks the beginning of the child’s emergence as a separate
individual free from the symbiotic attachment to his/her MFC’s.
– Failure to negotiate this developmental process results in an adult who
becomes disorganized and suffers dissolution of the self when faced with
object loss.
Solowoniuk, 2007
22
Failure of Differentiation
• When severe, the individual is unable to discern inner experiences from
outer experiences, leading to confusion regarding what is me and what is
not me (Schizophrenia).
• In extremer cases, internal stimuli become confused with external reality,
which may be the breeding ground for hallucinations and delusions.
• These individuals may have an infinity for hallucinogen type drugs or
similar behaviors.
Solowoniuk, 2007
23
Practicing
• From approximately 10 – to 15 months, the child’s focus shifts from the
MFC’s to autonomous functioning.
• He/she begin to stand, walk, climb, jump, etc… He or she truly believes
they are the center of the universe (primary narcissism).
• However, if the child is not given boundaries, or if boundaries are too rigid
or diffuse, or the child’s process of development is impaired by
unavailable, intrusive, or uncaring self-objects…
Solowoniuk, 2007
24
Grandiose Self: Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
•
A grandiose self may then take shape;
especially when these qualities are not
assimilated into the ego or they or not
challenged throughout maturation!!!
•
Such a self is often found in individuals
with addictions, and because such a
self can be recalled , it will used be
used as a defense against loss of selfesteem and or loss of control.
•
This defensiveness comes out usually
at the beginning of the treatment
process or is revealed when a
significant other tells their partner …
“Go to treatment or where done.”
Solowoniuk, 2007
25
Developmental Impasses, Borderline
States, Relationship Addictions
 Ultimately, we must first be
autonomous and independent
before we can fully engage each
other.
 However, if we do not know our
boundaries, we can lose
ourselves in our relationships and
confuse that which is ours with
that which is not ours.
 Hence, “can I be close to another
without losing myself and can I
really tolerate being alone”?
Solowoniuk, 2007
26
Enter Addiction and Mental Illness
• This is an important theme in the treatment of
addiction and mental illness because many
persons for whom addiction/mental illness is
reoccurring problem feel at their core that:
A) They don’t know who they are;
B) Their history displays a rash of failed relationships or
none all;
C) They present as unworthy, unlovable, and;
D) They either have rigid boundaries or none not at all
Solowoniuk, 2007
27
Enter Addiction and Mental Illness
 Ultimately, a persons’ use of
a drug or a behaviour
(mental illness) is a way to
combat their feelings of
worthlessness while also
burying a sense of
emptiness that
intermittently permeates
their consciousness.
 And yet through extended
use these phenomena only
become more hauntingly
real; leading to further
escape via a false-self
schema.
Solowoniuk, 2007
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=541156611257410240
3&q=Emptiness&total=1437&start=150&num=10&so=0&type
=search&plindex=9
28
Enter Addiction (contd)
• Thus, addiction or mental illness can represent
or take the form of
• Yearning for praise and approval or a merger with an idealized other in
order to self-sooth; or it can…
• Take the form sexual acting out with persons, figures, or symbols so as to
feel wanted, real, alive, or powerful; or it can be …
• An escape through drugs into a fantasy world to keep the void and
meaningless at bay, which is actually spiritual energy that has not been
assimilated into a self, but seen as foreign, further alienating the body
from its ground.
Solowoniuk, 2007
29
Muladhara Chakra and the Spiritual
Ground: Summing Up
• Your are consciousness / whole right now
• Ego accepts its infallibility
• Learn to ground and surrender false self
• Live an Embodied Consciousness
Muladhara Chakra: Two Final Quotes
"The first ego organization comes from the experience of threats of annihilation which do
not lead to annihilation and from which, repeatedly, there is recovery."
DW. Winnicott.
“When love is my only defence, I am invincible”...
Lao Tzu