“Love was born first; neither the gods nor the spirits nor mortals can reach it… As far as the sky and the earth extend, as far as the waters flow, as high as fire burns, You are greater, Love! The wind cannot reach you, nor fire, nor the sun, nor the moon: You are greater than them all, Love!” ATHARVA VEDA 9.2.19
The Fourth Chakra is Anahata, which in Sanskrit means “Unstruck” or “the sound produced without two objects striking each other.” This is because, symbolically, Anahata Chakra tells us that each of us can rediscover our wholeness, our integrity and our invulnerability within our own Heart, without the intervention of “external forces.” When the Heart Chakra is finally free of the wounds inevitably inflicted by the experiences along our path of growth, we can witness a free, innocent, fluid and radiant opening.
Physical characteristics
It is understandably located at the center of the chest, at the level of the sternum just above the physical organ, and it expands all around the Heart. Besides the Heart, the organs involved are the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, the immune system, the thymus gland, the lungs, the diaphragm, the shoulders, the arms and the hands. On an energetic level it is connected to devotion and surrender; on a physical level, being connected to the thymus gland, it regulates the individual’s development, controls the lymphatic system, and strengthens and stimulates the immune system.
The Fourth Chakra is located exactly between the three lower chakras and the three upper chakras, which respectively represent “the Body in all its physicality” and the “Evolution that transcends it while integrating it.” It thus marks the passage from a state of consciousness tied to matter to one of higher frequency, connected to our most ethereal and spiritual parts. From the physical world of the body, we rise into the depths of spirit.
Its element is Air, which indeed lies exactly between Earth and Sky. From an energetic point of view, it represents the point of transformation of physical energy into spiritual energy. It is in fact the least dense of all the physical elements and represents lightness, freedom, freshness and space. Air is an intangible yet indispensable element for our life, just like Love. It has a YIN polarity, that is, more feminine than masculine, more devoted to “letting be” than to “acting”; thus connected to “non-attachment” and to “allowing what is.” Love helps heal ourselves and others. But to do this, we must first deeply love ourselves. And to do this, we must come to “truly touch our own heart with our hands and feel it beating”!
The Heart Chakra is the gathering center of Prana (from pra, first, and na, unit), that is, of Life Energy; it is the point of contact between the physical and mental worlds through the Breath. And it is precisely through control of the breath that one enters the inner space of understanding and of physical and mental transformation. Through transcendence of the Ego and surrender to our Higher Self, we can free our heart from the chains arising from our conditioning and arrive at Peace and Happiness. This Energy Center is indeed commonly associated with Feelings and Happiness, and it is the center par excellence of Compassion, Sensitivity, Love and human Warmth.
Its color is Green-Pink-Gold.
Its sense is Touch.
The Crystals recommended for Anahata Chakra, the Heart Chakra, are: Rose Quartz, Green Aventurine, Amethyst, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli and Jade.
The Essential oils that can help rebalance the Heart Chakra are: Rose Oil, Bergamot, Sandalwood, Rose Geranium, Melissa (Lemon Balm) and St. John’s Wort Oil.
Symbolic characteristics
It is connected to the sign of Leo, whose ruling planet, the Sun, expresses itself through generosity, emotional intensity and sincerity; to the sign of Libra, whose planets, Venus and Saturn, express themselves respectively in the search for harmony, love, communion and the development of the Ego up to its transcendence, which makes unconditional love possible.
It is symbolized by a lotus flower with twelve petals.
Its Yantra is a light-blue circle with, at its center, two interlaced triangles forming a six-pointed star, also known as the Star of David. Symbolically, they represent the “spiritualization of matter and the materialization of spirit.” But not only that. This symbol also represents the so-called Sacred Marriage, the integration of the masculine with the feminine within us, a manifestation of balance, wisdom and wholeness, which, when manifested in relationships and as a couple, leads to the so-called Tantric Union.
At the center is the Shiva lingam, with a downward-pointing triangle (trikuna) bearing the seed symbol (yam). Also represented are Isvara, the God of Unity, and Shakti Kakini. Note that at the base of the star, an antelope in motion is depicted, a symbol of freedom.
Psychological characteristics
The most important reason why the Heart – and thus its energy center – is located precisely at the center of our physical structure is that this is where all self-conscious reflections begin, concerning all the perceptions in our physical body relating to each specific energy center. Having arrived at this energy center, we not only become deeply aware of “who we truly are,” after having well defined it in the third, but we also enter into relationship with everyone around us. This kind of conscious self-reflection allows us to integrate our psychic parts into the cohesion necessary for our balance, but above all it allows us to consider ourselves interactive with the other “units” in what is a fundamental relational interlocking.
This Chakra is indeed the seat of Forgiveness, because, the moment awareness pervades our mind, our body with all its subtle bodies – in particular our causal body, which is the only body that follows us in every incarnation – and our Soul, we inevitably arrive at the concept that “each of us human beings inevitably does what we can do at the very moment we do it!” Forgiveness thus takes on a totally different connotation and becomes sacred, deep Gratitude for everything that the Divine, through everything around us, sends us in every instant of our existence in this physical body, because it is exactly “what we need at the very moment we need it most” for our spiritual evolution. It thus becomes an act of necessity so that our elevation beyond every expectation can manifest, since we have transcended the need for an earthly understanding of What Is! There is no longer any need to forgive, because there is absolutely nothing left to forgive or to be forgiven for: “Life is perfect as it is,” and everything that happens is preparatory to our evolution and to the unstoppable journey of our Soul.
The Fourth Chakra is thus the control unit of the human energy system. This energy center acts as an intermediary between Body and Spirit, determining its strength and integrity. More than any other chakra, Anahata Chakra represents our capacity to “let go and surrender to All That Is”: this Energy represents the Essence of the Divine, the eternal flow of the nourishing Life Force! As we know, birth is surely the most traumatic experience of the human being! There must be a very specific reason why we come into the world through the single most destabilizing experience of all! Thanks to this, we know that we are not great experts at receiving and giving Love, but we dedicate our whole lives, consciously or unconsciously, to trying to become so.
Loving ourselves – in order to then be able to truly love others – is the real challenge of the fourth chakra!
The Archetype operating at the level of the heart is that of the “wounded child,” and it represents all the limiting experiences, the painful events and the damaged emotional patterns that become misleading deep within us. If we manage to sufficiently put ourselves on the line to have the courage to freely listen to the emotional messages and spiritual directives of our Heart, we will manage to leave the passionate whirlwind of the first three energy centers, and once we reach this level, a totally different vision and set of life conditions open up before us! But in order to be able to do this, it is necessary to manage to “see” our inner child, to listen to its most pressing needs, to nourish it, and to love it unconditionally.
The Heart Chakra is indeed the place par excellence of Christ Consciousness. Here we surrender to Unconditional Love, the most powerful Energy we have; we surrender to God without any resistance, dwelling exclusively in the Here and Now. And in the Present Moment, thanks to the acquisition of this awareness, we manage to rejoice in small things in an exchange between giving and receiving, with the Gratitude, Generosity and Simplicity of Unconditional Love. It is a clear and resolute Yes toward Life and toward Its deepest Acceptance from every point of view, and it is from this acceptance that Total and Selfless Service toward everyone around us springs forth! Having reached this energy center, we become aware that the development of ego-consciousness is not our downfall! It has been, and still is, extremely necessary for the development of an ever more elevated civilization and culture. But we must accept that it is a fictitious structure, one that we use to achieve relational goals in our contacts with other individuals and in every field of social action, but which, once used, we must abandon in order to open ourselves to a new, more “true” dimension. The intellect will gladly yield “control” to the intelligence that will from now on harmonize all behavior on a sensory level.
Indeed, from here everything can change! The intelligence arising from awareness will thus transcend the impulsive, aggressive, irrational reactions caused by mere psychophysical stimuli dictated by the so-called survival centers, since these three survival mechanisms of the lower circuit do nothing but separate human beings from one another and from everything around them. Fear, anger, acquisitive will, desire for possession and the need to overpower others will no longer have any reason to exist. Once at this center, through meditation, by acquiring a new psychophysical education that will allow us to enter a state of non-action, we will simply “entrust” ourselves to Silence, to Universal Intelligence, and to the Higher Consciousness that will take care of our Essence. The forms of servitude of our Ego – relegated to the first three energy centers – functional for the gratification of the Self, will be divested and will gradually disappear – or rather, they will be integrated, transforming into “something else”; we will then enter the dimension of the center of Love, of Compassion, of Connection with all other human beings, which is the true gateway to vertical evolution, to free listening and communication with all our brothers and sisters, the prerogative of the Fifth Chakra, to the intuition and expansion of Consciousness of the Sixth, to the awareness of All That Is of the Seventh, and finally to “perceiving oneself as ONE” of the Eighth Energy Center, the Nous.
The demon and the primary fear
The demon of the fourth chakra is pain. A suffering heart clenches shut. It closes in on itself and cuts off bridges with the surrounding environment in an attempt to avoid being further strained. So the heart, too, seeks self-protection in a state of survival. We try to survive where, in truth, there is no longer any life. This happens when we do not give voice to our pain, when we even deny it! Over time, this closure crystallizes, and inner coldness contributes to its “freezing.” A frozen heart is thus psycho-emotionally dead. It is only when we deeply and completely accept this block, and gradually become aware of our pain, that we begin to bring ourselves back to life. By first expressing it verbally, and then allowing ourselves to “feel it in the body,” this coldness thaws. But to do this, we must first face and defeat Fear, and in particular its primary fear.
The primary fear of Anahata is essentially the fear of being alone, of committing oneself totally to something, and of following the “heart” as opposed to the “head.” Many people persist in the mistaken belief that the mind is the one in charge, but we now know that the Heart’s energy is the true engine of our life system. Love is without doubt a divine power given to us, and it is up to us to learn to use it correctly and appropriately for our needs and our goals. Ultimately, our life is nothing but a “lesson on Love”! And, as we have seen previously, our Love for others is often based precisely on compassion for our own pain. Using our own suffering to transform it into understanding, compassion and union is without doubt the most valid path for the expansion of this energy center. Here too, everything starts from the awareness of “who we truly are” and of what our own psycho-energetic superstructures are that distance us from this Truth, in order to finally arrive at the spiritual awareness that Spirit inevitably passes through the Heart.
The most powerful affirmation to direct at ourselves regarding the Heart chakra, I personally believe, is the following: “I love myself, I approve of myself and I deeply respect myself! I unconditionally love all the people around me, and by them I am deeply loved! I humbly accept all this Love and I am deeply grateful for it.”
It is in our lower energy centers that the deepest and most unconscious resistances dictate the law, precisely because they are unconscious and fundamentally tied to our oldest experiences and to survival. So give the Ego what it needs to strengthen itself, and stop crying, weak like a “suffering child,” unaware of what it itself carries within and what it will one day become. Only in this way will you be able to detach yourself from your resistances toward the fourth energy center. But remember that the next step involves not only no attachment, but you will manage to truly love yourself only when you detach from any separation: you will truly love yourself when you have fully included any person or past experience, so that no wound can cause any further harm, neither to those we deny or grant forgiveness to, nor – and to a much greater extent – to ourselves. A famous saying goes: “Resentment and hatred are like a poison that, hoping to take revenge on the other, we drink ourselves.”
Caroline Myss writes:
“The energies of the fourth chakra draw ever closer to spiritual maturity and carry us beyond the parent-child dialogue with the divine, beyond prayers seeking an explanation for what happens, beyond the fear of the unexpected. In the eyes of the “wounded child,” the Divine operates a system of rewards and punishments, which includes humanly logical explanations for every painful experience. The wounded child does not understand that every experience, no matter how painful, contains spiritual insight. As long as we think with the mind of the wounded child, we will love conditionally and with a great fear of loss.”[1]
From the moment, then, that one fully understands that “Everything Is perfect as It Is,” Forgiveness will first become Compassion, then Gratitude, and finally Selfless Service, and Love, from a “good in demand,” will become an “infinite capacity to give,” and the road toward the Realization of the Self – which is nothing other than God Within Us – can finally be undertaken. This, then, is precisely the path toward Unconditional Love, which is the supreme goal of Anahata, the Heart chakra.
The proper development of the Fourth Chakra thus leads to the awareness and expression, at the personality level, of the right to love and be loved!
From the Fourth Chakra flow the commands of the human energy system, and from its opening, its expansion and the awareness of its power, the interactions develop both between the three lower chakras and the upper ones, and between our inner and outer selves, that is, between ourselves as individuals and the whole world around us. When we act in Love, we are one with the surrounding world, and this is precisely the most important lesson to learn in every incarnation. But, paradoxically, precisely because our relationship becomes unified, we no longer need to know ourselves in relation to someone else, but only in relation to ourselves. Here we discover what our needs are for our balance, for fully respecting ourselves and for feeling good both alone and with others, and for extending our well-being also to those around us.
The most important lessons to learn about the Heart Chakra and its opening consist in becoming aware that Love should not be analyzed, should not be weighed, and to be truly Love it must not be mixed up with the affairs of the mind! The opening and expansion of this Chakra communicate to us specific, fundamental information: always listen to your Heart! It promotes the Life within you. Always seek Truth from a relational point of view, from what the Life Energy within you perceives in relation to the surrounding world, and never live in falsehood. This means always listening to the Divine. Deeply thank whoever allows you to evolve, to grow, to confront others, even if they have been – or are – a cause of suffering, but above all for having allowed you to constantly confront yourself and your limitations, so that you can truly learn the lessons you still need to make your own. What needs to be understood is that struggle is not the way to integration: you must not wage a revolt against others, nor even against yourselves! The only “revolt,” if we can call it that, will be exclusively against what we call “resistance” to Love, to Compassion, to Union and to Interaction. It is exclusively in “exchange” that everything happens! And it is, indeed, Love that allows this exchange of Information and Energy! Without this permeating and allowing oneself to be permeated, nothing can happen: this is the only “revolt” that can be accepted, and this will lead to the true revolution of your Consciousness!
“Love is the dynamism that infallibly brings the unconscious to light.” C. G. Jung
The main outcome of Anahata is thus to awaken Christ Consciousness in ourselves and in those around us, if they are ready for this transformation. For thousands of years, within a culture obsessed with power, deep within us, in our most remote needs, we are nevertheless guided by the need to love and be loved, which is the fundamental right of the Heart Chakra. Indeed, Anahata is the Chakra of Balance, and it is no coincidence that it is located at the center of our body. And balance is achieved through deep inner listening and a continuous reformulation of actions and reactions, creating experiences that in fact connect past events with the new awareness acquired in the Here and Now, allowing the connection of mental images and emotions. Balance is the basic structure for the longevity of all existing things, and it is therefore also fundamental in the relationship between the various dual aspects of ourselves – mind and body, as well as the masculine and the feminine, the material and the spiritual, as well as the three lower centers with the three upper ones – as much as in the relationship established between ourselves and the world around us – union and separation, as well as giving and receiving. Only in balance can a healthy, lasting relationship be established, an exchange that respects both parties and their evolution. Nature seeks balance. Balance that unites without limiting, that creates intimacy and distance at the same time! But, beyond promoting deep Love for ourselves and for those around us, the path to the awakening of the Christ Consciousness that resides in Anahata Chakra inevitably passes through an ever-increasing reduction of the distance between us and the divine! Seeking God “outside” of ourselves is synonymous with separation, the prerogative of the first three so-called “survival” energy centers, in which one lives predominantly in “lack” and “demand,” dictated by the childish needs of our “inner child.” When the path of awareness and integration reaches the Heart, this search shifts from outside to within ourselves, becoming ever more mature. That is, one begins to close that gap of separation that “places the divine outside of us,” because of which we would remain stuck in a position of prayer stemming from an inner lack, begging for “something that is already within us!” And this shift is simple as soon as one truly becomes aware that our Self is the “divine spark within us”: an infinitesimal part of Creation shining within us, considered as a point – at the center of our Heart – that manifests “within consciousness but is beyond consciousness,” and that is in continuous and total connection with the Whole, beyond “time” and “space.” Moving thus toward a vision of unity with the divine – considering all differences and separations to be arbitrary – “prayer” begins to take on an evolved meaning of co-creation with Him/Her/The Whole, that is, Creation itself.
Functional characteristics
When Anahata is in balance, the emotions felt and radiated are Joy, Union and Love. Anyone around us will be pervaded by them, and Compassion and the desire to help others will be instinctual, natural emotions. Feelings will be immune to inner turmoil or to any conflict or uncertainty coming from outside us, and Serenity and Harmony will be the stable basic condition. The feeling of being alive will grow to the point of coming to understand the true meaning of “Life” in its most original and authentic form, that is, the expression of Eternal Love and Divine Bliss, and to wish to transmit it to everyone around us.
When Anahata is not in balance, the willingness to help others unconsciously has its roots in the expectation of recognition and gratitude, which inevitably leads to the emotion of disappointment. Or, the feeling of helping and being available will not actually be connected to the Source of Love, and one will feel strong and powerful to the point of thinking one can give away a bit of this strength, thus remaining in a state of inability to accept the love others try to give us, and difficulty in opening up to receive.
The dysfunction of Anahata thus concerns the most widespread energetic block: the difficulty of loving ourselves. How can we love others if we cannot truly feel love for ourselves? And Love for ourselves obviously includes the Respect we have for ourselves, for our Dignity and for our overall Well-being! To do this it is necessary to establish intimate contact with ourselves, with our sufferings, with our fears, with our needs and with our deepest hopes. The ability to love ourselves therefore inevitably passes through intimate knowledge of ourselves and of the most suitable ways of interacting with those around us, through which we manage to value ourselves and value our relationships.
The absence of Love for oneself indeed makes one extremely vulnerable to offense and/or dependent on the affection and attention of others. This triggers two different vicious circles: the first, in which, to compensate for the lack of Love, friendly and helpful behaviors are adopted indiscriminately toward everyone, with total lack of awareness and discernment; the other, in which the wound of rejection leads us to total closure, mistrust, sadness, depression, and terror of opening our Heart again. Total closure, over time, leads to indifference, coldness and insensitivity.
Love leads to spiritual Awakening, and the most effective way to invite Love is to offer it first!
Certainly, but not as a symptom of a veiled request for that romantic love on which we, children of lack and demand, have depended for centuries, disguising it as the only kind of Love that nourishes us and helps us evolve! In fact, it is something else entirely. Nor is it that love which compensates for abysmal emotional voids. One cannot heal a wound that is still open, and even less so from the outside! An open, suffering wound inevitably leads to a dependency that in fact represents an “emotional black hole,” impossible to fill by filling it with attention. The only way to integrate this void consists of an awareness that can only come from “within us”! And this healthy behavior can only manifest if the Third Chakra, Manipura, the Chakra of personal power, is balanced. This is because the eventual “loss” of Love can produce deep despair in those who have a weak, deficient Third Chakra, in which secure self-esteem has not been structured and the demon of Shame and Hypercriticism is still very strong. The Fourth Chakra, together with the Third, allows us to transform and integrate the wounds of our inner child, experienced and suffered in the Second Chakra, Svadisthana, so as to detach ourselves from Attachment, Anger and Victimhood, which clog our energy channels, the very channels that allow the free flow of Energy and Information in favor of our true spiritual evolution. If in the Third Chakra the need was to learn the energetic principles of holding on and letting go, in the Fourth Chakra it is instead essential to commit to reaching out and welcoming. By transforming Fear first into “openness” and then into Trust, the integration of Pain experienced in the past is favored, thus averting a block of the Heart Chakra.
“Ideally, the demon of shame has undergone a transformation in the third chakra, allowing us to be ready to enter the heart with an honest respect for the sacredness of our being. When we love ourselves, the actions we take toward ourselves are full of respect and responsibility; we take pleasure in being in our own company when we are alone; we respect our limits and tell the truth. More generally, self-love is the act of treating ourselves the way we would treat everyone we love — with respect, with honesty, with compassion, with feeling and understanding, with pride and patience.”[2]
Anodea Judith continues:
“One of the primary areas of balance of the heart chakra is that between mind and body, which occurs when one learns to decipher the body’s messages. A precise inner listening is therefore necessary, on the part of the mind, to the body’s subtle communications, which often lead to recovering past memories and allow us to work with trauma, to release accumulated tension, and to bring unresolved emotional issues to completion.”[3]
Through meticulous self-analysis work, becoming the “witness” who, from outside oneself, observes oneself, one can become aware of what our perceptions are in relation to our traumas, our deficiencies, our needs and our automatisms, and, simply by being able to observe and analyze them, they will release all the emotional charge that kept us blocked in suffering.
Tool for balance
Its Bija Mantra is YAM, and it is founded on gratitude toward the Universe, toward others and toward ourselves, and on the desire – almost a necessity, more than anything – to “Illuminate every living being with the Light one perceives springing from one’s own Heart.”
[1] Caroline Myss, Anatomia dello spirito, p. 202. ANIMA EDIZIONI
[2] Anodea Judith, Il libro dei chakra, p. 290. NERI POZZA EDIZIONI, I COLIBRÌ
[3] Anodea Judith, Il libro dei chakra, p. 292. NERI POZZA EDIZIONI, I COLIBRÌ
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