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An Artistic Rendering of the Seven Chakras

According to Hindu tradition, the energy field of the human body is made up of seven major energy centers called chakras. There are more chakras, but for the purpose at hand these are the main ones that seem in my experience to get reflected in dreams. Each of these energy centers generates its own kind of energy to deal with certain life issues. If there is a wounding correlating to one of these issues it affects the quality of the energy in the chakra and can cause disease to a part of the body related to the chakra. Thus, any disease or emotional imbalance is viewed as relating to one or more of these chakra areas.

Getting to Know the Color and Shape of Your Chakras

As with any other kind of issue, once you are aware that a chakra and its energies are presenting themselves in a dream, you can work with that chakra and any relevant issues through dreamwork. You just need to know what to look for in terms of symbolism and metaphor. A good book on chakras can help provide you with the usual colors for the chakras as well as corresponding issues. A good book on dreams may provide the commonly held symbols for the chakras in dreams. On-going dreamwork will reveal the colors of your chakras that are unique to you and your private dream vocabulary. Your colors may appear in different color tones, often depending on the type of energy manifesting from the chakra.

Colors

From the many different sources I’ve read on the subject, the following colors of the chakras are usually given in the manner of how they appear on the spectrum of the rainbow:

1st Chakra: Red
2nd Chakra: Orange
3rd Chakra: Yellow
4th Chakra: Green
5th Chakra: Blue
6th Chakra: Purple
7th Chakra: White

Shapes and Symbols

In my dreams chakras usually present themselves as big round buttons on a tunic I am wearing. They sometimes need to be polished; a hint that I have some spiritual work to do. Also, I have found that a predominant color in dreams (other than black) on a major symbol such as the walls of a room is a good indicator that a chakra issue is present. For example, in the following dream the bright red of the walls was so odd and overpowering it immediately drew my attention to it. Since the wall indicated a space of that color I took it be the “space” of my 1st chakra.

Example (Dream): I am entering a bathroom that is oddly decorated with big, bright red tiles on the walls. The tiles are hard to miss. I start to pee in the toilet.

Peeing in the toilet naturally made me associate with the words “pissed off,” suggesting that perhaps I had a 1st chakra issue needing release. Reflecting on this possibility raised several concerns related to 1st the chakra such as finances and my place in the world that perhaps I needed to work on.

Tom Paine’s Nightmare by James Gillray, 1756-1815, artist.

Ongoing dreamwork and consistent intuitive meditation will acquaint you with not only the dreamwork symbols archetypes we share in common as humans but will also reveal the personal vocabulary used by your unconscious mind to communicate with your waking mind. You will find certain symbols being used over and over again in a way that is unique to you. This vocabulary seems to draw on each person’s own life experiences, culture and language. For example, in waking life I have lived in Japan, Taiwan and many places in the United States. I also traveled to China and the Middle East. It was natural that I had many dreams about being in these countries or traveling to them. However, after a while, I realized that my dreaming mind presented countries overseas as symbols for the foreign and unknown parts of my own inner psyche.

Therefore my dreams presented Asia and anything connected to Asia, such as the Chinese language or a Japanese teacher, as expressions for the unconscious.  Along these lines, Chinese characters in my dreams came to symbolize intuitive messages that needed deciphering.

Traveling in Familiar and Strange Places

Because I had lived for so long in Japan and was familiar with the language and culture, Japan came to represent a new place within myself I could travel with relative ease, a place inside myself where growth wasn’t so difficult because I was already somewhat familiar with the territory. Using this analogy, a very common theme in my dreams has been trying to find my way around Tokyo, something that in waking life wasn’t difficult because I spoke the language and read the signs. So when I had a Tokyo dream, I knew I was entering new but not necessarily challenging emotional and psychological territory.

A place like Thailand was more exotic; and represented stranger, unexplored parts of myself. Because I have only been to the Middle East once and found it very “foreign” and different from anything I personally knew, the Middle East represented an even stranger place inside myself, where things began to get scary. Since I have not been to the jungles of Africa, they came to represent some of the most unknown and mysterious parts of my deepest self—places that were so totally foreign and scary I had almost no known associations with which to get a handle on them. I was quite blind to the situation and my dreams of Africa let me know it.

What is important is to recognize your personal dream themes and symbols of this interior journey you are making that oddly coincide with the outer journey of your life. You will come to know these unique expressions by their repetitive synchronous appearances in your inner or outer life.