I’m touched by the many comments I’ve received in response to my recent posts about working with doubt. Based on some questions about the heart as the fourth energy center, and how that plays a role in the process – which we explored briefly in Part II – I thought it might be helpful to review the other energy centers involved and how we work with them.

Let’s review a few concepts together. Each energy center has its own unique energy (or frequency) that carries a corresponding level of consciousness; its own mind or intent that expresses specific information; its own associated glands, hormones, chemistry, and plexus of neurons.

Since different hormones change our chemistry, they cause us to feel different emotions. And, as I wrote in that most recent post, when it comes to doubt, we’re primarily working with the emotions of survival – the emotions associated with the first three energy centers – and transmuting them by opening our heart to feel the emotions of creation. Let’s explore that a little more.


The First Three Energy Centers: The Human Self

It’s important to remember, when we talk about alchemizing the power within each of these centers, there’s nothing wrong with them. In fact, we need every energy center; they’re all essential to our human experience.

If you’d like to better understand energy centers one, two, and three, I suggest reading the post I wrote when we released “The Courageous Heart” meditation a couple of years ago. There, I go into more detail about the function and emotions associated with them – and discuss the importance and value of each.

And those centers are important. But when we’re experiencing doubt or lose our belief, it means they’re out of balance. We’re seeing challenging circumstances in our life, or the condition we’re facing, from the emotions of survival – and are therefore operating from a lower, or more limited, level of consciousness.

When that happens, instead of supporting us in their primary functions – to procreate (the first center); to nourish and provide; to feel safe and secure (the second center); to strengthen, to do, and to willfully empower (the third center) – these centers feed and fuel the feelings we most associate with doubt.

When the first center is out of balance, we might have addictions, obsessions, and compulsions centered on our sexuality. When the second center is reactive, we might be flooded with insecurity, worry, fear, shame, and guilt – or feelings of lack, need, victimization, or unworthiness. When the third center is imbalanced, the feelings that come up would be anger, frustration, hatred, judgment, entitlement, envy, jealously, control, impatience, unhealthy competition, or self-aggrandizement.

These survival emotions are so hard-wired into our nature, they’re automatic. They’re so familiar; so innately programmed; we can become addicted to them. When that happens, we move into the shadow side of survival – and our heart closes down. That’s because when we’re in survival, it’s not a time to open our hearts or create. It’s not a time to trust or be vulnerable.

So, when we talk about transmuting the energy in those first three centers to work through doubt, we’re not judging the centers themselves as “lesser than” – or “bad.” We’re simply talking about bringing them back into balance.

We’re working on ascending their tremendous power and energy to our heart – the center of creativity – and then working with that transformed energy to explore new possibilities in the unknown. And that’s what happens when each center is aligned – that energy can naturally move more easily into the heart.

As I’ve said before, we can think of those first three centers as the human self. The divine self begins in the heart. And so, if we’re able to move that energy into a more expansive level of consciousness (remember, recognizing our level of consciousness is the first step in working with doubt), we can move into a state of being where new doors open up to us. We stop trying to force and control; we stop resisting; we stop working within the realm of known, limited, predictable outcomes.

It's a way to get “unstuck” – to evolve from a state of survival, where that energy is trapped in those first three centers, to a place of creation.

Balancing these centers for our greatest good was my inspiration for creating the Blessing of the Energy Centers meditations. In Part II, we’ll talk about how we can apply that practice to access and work with the unique, essential information contained in each one – to create resonant order within.

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Discover the Blessing of the Energy Centers Collection here. This week, we made Blessings From the Heart – the tenth meditation in the collection – available to all students, with a special bonus track from Inspire, Volume 2. And stay tuned for the release of “Blessings From the Brain” – the eleventh Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation – coming later this month.

For further study of the energy centers in the body, please refer to Chapter 4 in Dr Joe’s book, Becoming Supernatural.