Basics
This feminine chakra (one that receives energy rather than gives it to other chakras,) is situated in the middle of your chest and its element is air. It has two aspects: universal love, and self-love. It corresponds with the heart organ, which is critical to biological life. The heart chakra is critical to your spiritual life.
Corresponding with each aspect are 2 different vibrations within the vortice itself; self-love is pink and universal love is green. It is the central chakra among the 7, and unites the 3 below (root, sacral, and solar-plexus), and the 3 above (throat, third-eye, and crown chakra).
The 3 lower chakras represent more gross levels of reality and consciousness; the physical plane, the emotional plane, and personal will. The 3 higher chakras represent higher planes of understanding; expression of the soul’s purpose in the world, divine insight, and divine guidance. How is it possible to bridge the vast distance between lower and higher, gross and sublime, and individual and universal? The answer is: through the heart.
A Mysterious and Multi-dimensional Reality
The heart chakra is home to many different conscious realities. It is the home of your soul. It is where the soul meets its creator in blissful, divine union. It is where the mysteries of human love and relationships unravel. It is responsible for unconditional forgiveness, love and caring. It is also responsible for self-love. It is the only chakra with 2 colors.
Diagnosing the Heart Chakra
Ask yourself: Am I okay with being loved? Do I regularly give my love to others? Am I generous with my time and talents and do I give them without expecting something in return? Do I feel grateful for my life or do I live in resentment?
These questions diagnose one aspect of the heart chakra; whether or not it is generally active.
There are other questions as well, to diagnose other aspects.
Do I feel self love? Do I care about what I do with my life? Am I sensitive to my higher needs, such as the need to continually evolve and understand why I was created and by what or whom? These questions ask about your relationship with yourself, ie., whether or not you are aware of your soul. They also ask whether or not you are experientially aware of your creator: the divine or God.
The aspect of soul and its relationship with God is beyond the scope of this blog, so we will focus on the general concern of the heart; its health.
If you answered ‘yes’ to the first set of questions, your heart chakra is healthy and well. If ‘no’ was your answer, you might have some work to do.
Blocked, Healthy, and Overactive Heart Chakras
A blocked heart chakra makes you feel closed and isolated, and distant from nature and from the cosmos. Cold hands are a symptom of a closed heart chakra as the heart sends energy to them. Depression is also a sign of a closed heart.
A healthy heart chakra results in being able to send and receive love easily. You will feel empathy, love, concern, and relatedness with others.
An overactive heart chakra results in starving yourself of energy; giving out too much and keeping nothing in return. You are also overly sensitive and small things that ought not to bother you so much seem to magnify in importance. Seeing an unwell street dog, for instance, might bring you to tears and make you feel negative about humanity, instead of just feeling compassion and helping the dog any way you can, then moving on with life.
Survival or Love?
The heart and the highest 3 chakras differ from the lower ones in that they have their own evolution. There are different levels in this evolution.
Are you living just to survive? Is your outlook on life somewhat nihilistic; that we are mostly biological beings in a rat race and must seek the least pain and most pleasure from life? If you answered yes to this question, it is possible for your heart to be healthy yet relatively less evolved.
Or are you perhaps living in a love story? You see souls everywhere, rather than just the illusions of ego that people cast about themselves. You see a higher purpose: evolution, as the fabric that binds all of us. You see destiny not as a black place which you have no control over, but trust that it is your creator’s plan for you to ultimately reach a state of love and bliss. If you believe in this, then your heart is both healthy and evolved.
Negative Experiences Close the Heart Chakra
The heart chakra is associated with the thymus gland. Scientists believe that the gland serves little purpose, because it usually atrophies during adolescence. But, we can also see that our spiritual hearts atrophy around this time too. Innocence is lost to the stark reality of adulthood. We are forced into things we don’t want to do and forced to accept things that go against natural order. Violence, greed, corruption, betrayal; we face all these things and, to protect ourselves from hurt, we shut our hearts down.
But, the more conscious a person is, the more they can live beyond these negativities, while maintaining an open and healthy heart.
Healing and Balancing the Heart Chakra
To heal your heart, you must go through pain. This is higher-emotional and spiritual pain, rather than physical. You must experience every heartbreak, betrayal, and hurt fully, before you can make your heart whole again. There is no other way but to experience all parts of your personal story fully. There is no shortcut; negating any part of what makes you ‘you’, will shut this chakra down.
You must also be ready to have a smaller ego. You must be ready to have your sense of self, as well as what you thought you knew or believed, shattered into pieces. This is because the heart is a doorway to a higher reality of universal consciousness and unconditional love. It can be scary at first. You will feel weak without your self-protective barriers, your beliefs, and your human story. But, you will find your true nature as a soul, and will experience divinity constantly.
Forgiveness is one key to healing the heart. Find it in you to forgive people for their mistakes. Remember, this does not mean that you can’t learn to avoid certain situations with some people because they are prone to messing them up. It just means that you forgive them for being imperfect.
Meditation heals the heart, as it does any chakra. But it is even more effective for the heart, for it deals not with an outer reality but with an inner one, and hence its healing comes from inner practices. Breath into your chest and receive love. While exhaling, release any hatred or negativity that you might feel in your heart. Keeping a gratitude journal also heals the heart. Every day, write down the different things you feel grateful for. Say a little prayer of gratitude before going to bed at night.
In Conclusion…
So, the heart chakra is multidimensional and deals with various realities, right from our human relationships and love, to meeting God our creator. It is primarily green in color, but the part that receives love rather than gives it, is pink. It is responsible for our higher emotions, sense of right and wrong, and for unconditional forgiveness and love. It bridges the lower 3 chakras with the upper 3 ones. Healing it is a matter of meditation and contemplation, and you will never unlock ‘higher living’, with purpose and divine direction, without healing this chakra.
