Systems of Understanding

The image is of Chinese feng shui tassels, meant to ease the path of a dragon through one’s home. Instead, we used these particular ones at our hand-fasting five years ago this Winter Solstice.

We meant them to signify each and every part of the best of ourselves brought into partnership with one another. And, of course, what better way to signify all those parts than the chakras?

I think I’ve unconsciously, a lot of the time, used the chakras to organize all sorts of things. When I look around my home now, every single room has some group of things that are a rainbow, and represent the chakras to me.

The chakras are a way of understanding the human species. They work at all four levels of life: body, heart, mind, spirit. I think of the chakra system as going ever deeper, broader, higher — there is no end to what I can learn through it. That’s why I find it perennially fascinating.

The only other discipline I know of personally that deepens as one learns it is astrology; most of the astrologers I’ve ever met are smitten with how it works. I’m sure it’s true for all sorts of other disciplines, too.

For me, the point is this: anything that allows me to understand myself and the people around me in the world around us is of supreme, neverending value. All this, from a buncha tassels hanging on a scarf rack …

What are the disciplines that give your life meaning?