Wheels of Life Quotes

“Instead, will is the realization that we can regard each challenge as an opportunity to awaken to our highest potential. This does not deny what has come before, but incorporates it, using it as a springboard for the future. While we can’t always control what happens to us, we can control what we do about it.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Grounding is not dull and lifeless, but dynamic and vibrant. Generally it is our tension that makes us lethargic, and tension results from alienation between various parts of ourselves. As these parts are simplified and integrated, we experience increased vitality.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Tantric scholars and Kundalini gurus often draw a distinction between the chakras as witnessed through Kundalini experiences and the Westernized model of the chakras as a "personal growth system." Some claim that this distinction is so great that there is no meaningful relationship between the two...yet I do not see these experiences as unrelated, but existing on a continuum.

I firmly believe that clearing the chakras through understanding their nature, practicing related exercises and using visualization and meditation, prepares the way for a spiritual opening that is apt to be less tumultuous than is so often the case for Kundalini awakenings. I believe this Westernization is an important step for speaking to the Western mind in a way that is harmonious with the circumstances in which we live, rather than antithetical to it. It gives us a context in which these experiences can occur.

Likewise, there are many who say that the chakras, as vortices in the subtle body, have nothing whatsoever to do with the physical body or the central nerve ganglia emanating from teh spinal column, and that a spiritual awakening is not a somatic experience. Because an experience is not *entirely* somatic does not mean that its somatic aspect is negated.... I believe this view is just more evidence of the divorce between spirit and body that I find to be the primary illusion from which we must awaken.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Give up being safe and your power chakra will awaken more quickly.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“When we withdraw from life, we become a closed system. Our expression turns in on itself, often in anger and self-criticism, which wears us down further. Fire takes fuel to burn, and in a closed system, the fuel eventually burns up. Only in a dynamic state of interaction with the world can we keep up the movement and contact that feeds our fire and zest for life.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Without grounding, we are unstable; we lose our center, fly off the handle, get swept off our feet, or daydream in a fantasy world.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Limitation has success . . . . Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong a man’s life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Issues of power, control, energy fuels, and political strength have become key themes in our current events. We have come a long way from iron spearheads to nuclear warheads, yet the disease of power used for control and domination has remained.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“The more tightly our gate closes, the more we restrict the passage of energy through all the chakras. This restriction not only inhibits energy passage to and from the outside world, but simultaneously restricts the flow between our upper and lower chakras, causing alienation between our minds and bodies. Eventually, the heart chakra becomes depleted, and we have walled ourselves into a world alone.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“For many people, work itself is a grounding activity. Aside from providing our basic tool of survival—money—the routine of working a job according to a regular schedule can provide a basic structure that supports the life around it. This routine, while it may be drudgery at times, can actually be beneficial in its limitations. It builds a foundation. Through focus and repetition, energies become dense enough to manifest. If we are involved with constant change, we are like a rolling stone that gathers no moss. We’re kept at a survival level because we are constantly building new foundations. Only through focus and repetition can we achieve expertise in an area leading to larger manifestation of goals, be they physical or ideological.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“the essence of a communication is often distorted in translation.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Awareness of the other should be balanced by awareness of the self.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Maya is a projection of consciousness, but not consciousness itself.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Sometimes we get locked into a program and it becomes our habitual way of interacting with the world around us. The man who sees every situation as a challenge to his power orients from his third chakra.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“Pleasure and sensation are essential features of the second chakra. If desire is the seed of movement, then pleasure is the root of desire, and sensation is the medium of pleasure. Pleasure is essential for the health of the body, the rejuvenation of spirit, and the healing of our personal and cultural relationships. Unfortunately, we are taught to beware of pleasure, that it’s a dangerous temptress waiting to lure us away from our true path. We are taught to repress our need for pleasure, and in so doing, repress our natural bodily impulses, and once again, segregate mind and body. We don’t easily allow ourselves enjoyment of even the simple pleasures—time for a little extra sleep, a leisurely walk, or comfortable clothing. These stringent measures arise from the mind, but seldom from the body. We then may experience a backlash in our emotions.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System

“The chakras are the psychic generators of the auric field. The aura itself is the meeting point between the core patterns generated by the chakras and the influence of the external world.”
― Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System