I was all set to teach a class about turning expectations into intentions last night, and then someone asked about chakras.
Now, chakras are a topic that can easily veer into Sweeping Generalization territory. They are really just another abstract model, a kind of map or picture of the actual territory of our bodies and minds.
Western culture has many such models already: Freud's id, ego, and superego, and the work that builds from him in psychology; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in sociology; the endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, nervous, etc. systems of physiology. All very useful for analyzing, as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that these are just MODELS. Just approximations of how things really are, for instance, how you can't really separate what the heart does from what the lungs do.
Chakras are another useful model, as long as we don't get stuck on actually finding wheels of energy spinning along our spine. Why add them to our conceptual toolbag for understanding ourselves at all, though, if we already have all these other ways of thinking about the body and mind?
The chakra model offers us a way to understand the material of the body--its physiological systems and anatomical parts--as intricately interwoven with our emotional, rational, psychological, spiritual (whatever word you wish to use) issues. And there's not a whole lot in western models that does that (thank you, Descartes, et al).
So over the next few blog entries and classes we'll explore this yogic model and see if it's useful for setting intentions, without clinging to expectations. Because, after all, that's the pitfall of any model, western or eastern: forgetting that it is the map, not the territory.
