Nondual Qualities of Self & Chakras

Nondual Qualities of Self & Chakras

A central way we experience unified consciousness in the body is as a felt sense of wholeness-of-being. This is not simply an idea, belief, or philosophical understanding. It is something we can directly sense as an underlying continuity of being that is already present and already intact, even when parts of our emotional life feel fragmented, frightened, or incomplete.

This wholeness follows what might be called a holographic principle: each expression of it contains and reflects the whole. Every nondual quality (whether stillness, openness, timelessness, universal pervasiveness, unity, or love) is complete in itself while also inseparable from the larger field of wholeness. Stillness is not one fragment of wholeness and openness another. Each gives us a different way of experiencing the same underlying unity. In this sense, each quality is simultaneously a whole and a part. This paradox is difficult to understand conceptually because our ordinary mind tends to divide experience into separate categories. Yet through embodied meditation, it can become surprisingly natural to experience.

As we refine our senses in meditation and learn to attune to the subtle, unchanging ground of our being, the “unchanging-self,” these qualities of oneness become increasingly apparent. We may experience stillness throughout the body, an inner spaciousness relatively free from psychological content, a quiet sense of timelessness, unity with our surroundings, or a subtle but unmistakable sense that nothing within us is fundamentally missing.

We do not need to manufacture these experiences. Rather than altered states that we create, they can be understood as qualities of existence that become recognizable as our perception becomes more refined. Just as we may fail to notice a quiet background sound until we become still enough to hear it, these subtle qualities can remain unnoticed beneath the much louder activity of our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and habitual reactions.

In Whole-Being-Embrace meditation, we gradually discover that this presence is not somewhere outside us or beyond the body. It pervades the body itself. We may initially perceive a particular quality more clearly in one place than another, but with practice it can be experienced throughout our whole being. When we become sensitive to the space within the body, for example, we discover that it does not necessarily feel empty in a lifeless or vacant sense. It can have a luminous, awake presence of being, a kind of living stillness that is spacious enough to include everything without needing to control anything.

Wholeness Changes Our Relationship With Ourselves

What matters most for Whole-Being Embrace is not simply that these qualities can be experienced, but what happens when our ego, “evolving-self,” encounters them. Our evolving-self has learned to organize experience through everything that has happened to us. If closeness once felt unsafe, we may automatically withdraw. If expressing our needs threatened an important relationship, we may learn to suppress them. If being different brought criticism or rejection, we may become overly accommodating. If the world felt unpredictable, vigilance and control may become ways of creating safety.

These responses once made sense. They were ways of adapting to the relational environments in which we developed. But because they become deeply familiar, they can continue organizing our emotional and relational life long after the original circumstances have changed.

The qualities of wholeness introduce another way of experiencing ourselves. Stillness can be present underneath agitation without demanding that the agitation disappear. Spaciousness can pervade contraction, giving difficult emotions more room to move without becoming overwhelming. Timelessness can accompany painful memories, reminding the body that what happened then is not necessarily happening now. Endings gain new meaning. Unity can bring a sense of connection to parts of our existence that learned to expect abandonment or isolation. Wholeness can embrace the places within us that feel fragmented, damaged, ashamed, or incomplete. In this way, each nondual quality offers the evolving-self a different kind of support:

• Stillness softens the momentum of reactivity.

• Spaciousness gives emotions room to unfold without consuming our whole experience.

• Timelessness loosens the sense of urgency that often accompanies fear of loss and painful memories.

• Unity offers and connection where we have experienced separation or isolation.

• Wholeness provides a larger context for parts of ourselves that feel wounded or incomplete.

  
  

The important point is that we are not replacing one experience with another. We do not use stillness to get rid of anger, spaciousness to escape fear, or wholeness to deny our wounds. Both dimensions can be present at the same time. We can feel fear while sensing stillness. We can experience contraction while remaining aware of spaciousness. We can feel emotionally wounded while simultaneously recognizing an underlying dimension of ourselves that remains whole. This simultaneous experience creates the possibility of relationship between the evolving-self and the unchanging-self. This inner relationship is governed by many of the same principles inherent to any relationship. With practice, we develop a secure bond between our changing and unchanging self.

A Different Kind of Information

Wholeness also introduces different sensory, motor, temporal, and spatial information into our experience. An injured part of ourselves may know the world primarily through contraction, vigilance, urgency, isolation, or the impulse to fight, flee, freeze, or accommodate. The qualities of oneness offer another experience: softness instead of continual bracing, stillness instead of constant preparation for action, spaciousness instead of constriction, timelessness instead of urgency, and connectedness instead of isolation.

This can be especially meaningful for emotional injuries formed in relationship. Rather than trying to heal a frightened part solely from within the frightened perspective that created its defenses (ego), we begin to meet that fear from a larger field of experience. The wound is no longer alone with the wound.

This is one of the central principles of Whole-Being Embrace. We do not simply transcend our emotional injuries by recognizing a dimension of ourselves beyond them. We allow our injured and uninjured dimensions to come into intimate relationship. The qualities of wholeness become an inner environment in which fear, shame, anger, grief, longing, and defensive patterns can be felt, understood, and gradually reorganized.

Different injuries naturally require different kinds of support. A frightened part may need grounding and stability. A constricted part may need spaciousness. Shame may need warmth and intrinsic worth. Helplessness may need access to power and agency. A part that learned to silence itself may need permission to know and express its own truth. As we become familiar with multiple qualities of wholeness, we develop a richer and more precise capacity to meet ourselves.

The Chakras as Different Expressions of Wholeness

This brings us to what are traditionally described as the chakras. (These reflections repeat and expand upon a previous article, “Creativity, Wholeness & Emotional Healing.”) Rather than viewing the chakras simply as fixed subtle energy locations in the body, Whole-Being Embrace understands them as different embodied expressions of wholeness. Each quality may be felt most clearly in a particular area of the body, yet because it arises from the same unified ground, its presence can ultimately be experienced throughout our whole being.

The chakras therefore provide a bridge between unified consciousness and our individual psychological development. The one ground of being expresses itself through different qualities, (such as existence, creativity, power, love, expression, knowing, and wholeness) and these qualities have particular relevance to different dimensions of our human development.

This is important because we do not develop psychologically all at once. At different stages of childhood, we face different developmental challenges. We learn whether it is safe to exist and belong, whether we can explore and discover what we want, whether we can exercise power and agency, whether we can love without abandoning ourselves, whether our voice can be expressed, and whether we can trust our own knowing.

When these developmental needs are adequately supported, the corresponding capacities can emerge more freely. When they are not, we may develop protective patterns around them. We may lose trust in our desires, become afraid of our power, close our hearts to avoid being hurt, silence our voice, or doubt what we know. The underlying quality of wholeness has not disappeared. Our access to it has become obscured by the adaptations we developed in order to remain safe and connected.

This is why bringing a particular quality of wholeness into relationship with an injury associated with the same developmental stage can be so meaningful. The injured part encounters precisely the quality that was difficult to embody when the original pattern formed. What once developed in an atmosphere of fear, disconnection, criticism, intrusion, or neglect can now be experienced within a very different relational field, one characterized by presence, spaciousness, connection, and wholeness.

Over time, the old pattern no longer has to organize experience in quite the same way. What was held in isolation can be experienced within connection. What felt overwhelming can be held within greater spaciousness. What felt powerless can discover agency. What felt unacceptable can encounter a deeper experience of belonging. Healing, from this perspective, is not primarily about eliminating our habitual limiting patterns. It is about changing the larger relationship in which those patterns exist.

As this relationship becomes more familiar, it gradually becomes part of how we experience ourselves. We become less likely to respond automatically from old defenses and more capable of responding to what is actually happening in the present. Our emotions remain meaningful, our individuality remains intact, and our history is not erased. But our patterns become less rigid. We gain greater choice.

What emerges is not a perfected evolving-self that never becomes frightened, angry, hurt, or confused. It is a more integrated relationship between our evolving-self and unchanging-self. We can experience difficult emotions without becoming entirely defined by them and experience wholeness without using it to escape our humanity.

From this relationship, resilience can deepen. Reactivity can soften. Our boundaries can become clearer without becoming rigid. We can remain connected to others without abandoning ourselves and remain ourselves without needing to withdraw from relationship. And gradually, the peace we once sought as something to attain can reveal itself differently. It is not necessarily the absence of emotional difficulty, but the recognition of an underlying wholeness that remains present within it. Inner peace becomes less something we achieve by overcoming our humanity and more something we discover as we learn to embrace the whole of our being.

My book “Nondual Chakra Awakening: A Hero’s Journey to Healing Relationship Injury in Seven Holographic Stages. Yoga Meets Attachment Psychology,” offers a detailed description of each stage of development, and how the chakra can help heal the specific relationship injuries we still harbor. While each injury is supported most by a particular expression of wholeness, often the most influential nondual-quality of wholeness is unconditional love.