1. Sahasrara Chakra - Lessons 7 to 10

'Chakra' means wheel, something circular that rotates, which is how our centers look to those who can perceive them.

The chakras lie along a central line that runs up our spine from the tailbone to the crown of the head. This central conduit for energy is called Sushumna. Entwined around it on the left and right sides of the spine are two other energy lines, the Ida and the Pingala, which carry feminine and masculine energy respectively. Ida and Pingala run from the tailbone to the nostrils, weaving back and forth around Sushumna. Wherever they meet and cross lies a chakra.

Chakras are the subtle energy hubs of our body. The seven major chakras are:

Sahasrara Ajna Vishuddhi Anahata Manipuraka Swadishthana Muladhara

Though they have no physical location, these energy centers are present along the length of the body.

Chakras roughly correspond to, and influence the activity of, the important glands of the body. The chakras deeply impact our physical and mental health. Chakras are, in turn, affected by our thoughts and emotions. The chakras are direct channels to the boundless energy of the Cosmos.

Immoderate lifestyles, stress and negative emotions can 'lock' the chakras, or cause them to malfunction.

Without even being aware of it, we are continuously blocking off these important sources of energy.

That's why almost all physical and mental illness can be partly or wholly cured, simply by cleansing and energizing the corresponding chakra.

These chakras were discovered a long time ago during the Vedic age. In fact, in many of the spiritual chants, you will find referen Today science has proved that there is a gland located near each of these chakras that is related to that particular chakra. These seven chakras supply energy to the glands.

These seven major chakras deeply influence our physical, emotional and mental activities.

Chakras are energy centers and if they are kept in a cleansed and energized condition, they can cause us to live an ecstatic and healthy life.

Dis-ease is only an imbalance in any one of these chakras, because our body and mind are rooted in our inner consciousness. Keeping these chakras in a healthy state, we can see a transformation happening in us at the mental and physical levels

After World War I, a biplane was abandoned near a remote tribal settlement in Asia. The tribal people had never seen an aircraft in all their lives. There was a lot of excitement and commotion about it and a big crowd gathered around it. They wondered what it might be and each one started giving some suggestion about it.

They finally concluded that since it had wheels, it must be a bullock cart! News spread in the village about the new bullock cart. There was a lot of celebration in the village and the biplane was taken around the settlement yoked to bullocks, and it served as a bullock cart.

Some weeks later, a young tribal boy who had returned from the city where he was studying, saw the biplane. He got into it and looked around. He saw all the gears and mechanisms in it. He fiddled with the switches and levers.

Suddenly, the engine came to life!

He managed to taxi the plane on the ground for a short distance and the villagers were shocked at what they saw. The boy had seen tractors being used and declared to the people that the biplane was not a bullock cart but some kind of tractor.

There was great celebration once again and the biplane started being used as a tractor!

Six months passed by and a retired army officer came to the village. He saw the biplane being used as a tractor and was shocked! He told the villagers that it was not a tractor and that the plane could actually fly. They refused to believe him because the only things they had ever seen flying were birds! The army officer got into the aircraft, flew it for a short while and landed.

The villagers were wonderstruck. Then they understood its true potential.

Understand: man is a wonderful mechanism meant to fly. But we don't know our true potentiality.

We have a very limited view of ourselves. Most of us operate only as a bullock cart, at the instinct level, surrendering to our emotions.

Just like this, there are mechanisms or gears inside us, called the chakras, which are boundless energy centers. Each of them is associated with a particular emotion within us. If we understand how to handle the emotion properly, we can function as an aircraft.

Each chakra is connected to a different endocrine gland in the physical body. The endocrine glands govern our hormones and therefore also our emotions.

Any positive or negative experiences we have had relating to the emotion of a specific chakra is stored inside that chakra.

The second chakra, lying between the navel and the pubic bone, governs fear. If we have had a deep fright at some point in our lives, the feeling of it is stored in that chakra. It determines how we react to future situations that remind us of our fear. It may block us from achieving our goals in life by interfering

whenever we need courage to face our situations. The existence and location.

It has been proven that when a person is locked with a particular negative emotion, the chakra associated with that emotion shrinks to the size of a coat button. It becomes that small.

But when the same person experiences the associated positive emotion, the chakra expands to the size of a cartwheel! This is the effect that our emotions have on these energy centers, our chakras.

Our energy flow in these chakras is blocked by our negative emotions and activated by our positive emotons and we are totally unaware of it!

Sahasrara chakra also known as the crown chakra is placed on the top of the head. This chakra opens by gratitude. When you live with gratitude, when you feel that you have showered enough by the existence, God has given you more than your qualification, when you feel the deep satisfaction, and gratitude, this chakra opens.

The key to true happiness in today 's world, any action needs a reason. When there is utility there is action, or else justifying the action becomes difficult. Real gratitude can never have a reason. It happens as a causeless flowering within you. Does the flower bloom for a reason? No! It blooms because it is its very nature.

Gratitude is our real nature. Layers of conditioning from society have covered it. Society doesn't know the language of gratitude. It knows only the language of utility. It straightaway instills greed and fear in us, so that we will give it the needed results.

Society doesn't know there is a path of gratitude that will give much better results than the paths of fear and greed. That is the problem. There are endless reasons to feel gratitude. This life itself is a gift that we have received. To be born with human consciousness is the first blessing we have received. Our gratitude should start right from there. Just for being we should feel grateful.

Understand, if ever you feel life is dull, that it is not as juicy as it should be, it is because gratitude has not happened in you. Gratitude is the energy that makes your life intense and exciting every moment. When you carry causeless gratitude in you, life will be sweet all the time irrespective of external circumstances

When you miss gratitude, very often you will be gripped with the feeling that life is sour, but you won't know the real reason for that feeling. Receive every small thing in life as a gift. When you take your plate to eat, see the plate as a gift. When you serve food on the plate, see the food as a gift. When you sit down on the chair to eat, see the chair as a gift. When you wash your hands after eating, see your fingers as a gift.

Every morning as soon as you wake up, before getting out of bed, just try to feel deep gratitude for just being, for just living as a human being in this wonderful Existence. Similarly, every night before you go to sleep, bring in deep gratitude for just being. Feel it in your whole body and mind. Put all judgements aside and feel gratitude.

When we start feeling grateful for small things, our whole sensitivity will increase. When sensitivity happens, every moment will pass in deep awe of the happenings in Existence.

Gratitude gets you more and more blessings and boons. It showers you with health gratitude even physically it alters the structure of your brain, not just physiological, psychological transformation.

Gratitude makes you manifest the best things of Paramashiva.

All your life, you use the words Thank You. Right from childhood, you are taught to say Thank You. By the time we grow into adults, it has become a part of us. We use the words mechanically, in a business like way.

The words Thank You rarely carry the emotion that they are supposed to: gratitude. In fact, we base our whole life on the opposite emotion: expectation. In our relationships, we demand love. In society, we demand attention. From ourselves, we demand better and better performance. And from God, we demand everything that no one else can give us!

We keep on asking, demanding – without giving thanks for what we already have. Gratitude is not some kind of morality that is imposed upon you. It is a basic principle for your own happiness! As long as you keep wanting, you are under the control of external events. When you live in gratitude, no one or nothing else can touch your happiness

Gratitude is not some kind of morality that is imposed upon you. It is a basic principle for your own happiness! As long as you keep wanting, you are under the control of external events. When you live in gratitude, no one or nothing else can touch your happiness. When you are loving, flowing, filled with gratitude, you will always feel the tremendous energy of Existence flow through you. Don't say thank you, be a thank you! Don't pay gratitude, become gratitude!

This is Truth – accepting whatever life gives you with reverence and gratitude. Gratitude is the most effortless path to lifelong happiness.

When we work with expectation all the time, we will carry a subtle violence in our body language. It is not deliberate violence, but inherent violence. If we become a little sensitive to our body language, we will be able to catch this.

With gratitude, your entire body language changes. When you start experiencing deep gratitude, your responses to situations change. You start resonating with Existence. Your body will flow with that resonance, with a cool grace and softness. All your actions will arise out of this grace. There will be no violence.Only joy will be flowing. Then everything you do will only make life sweeter.

When you start experiencing deep gratitude, your responses to situations change. You start resonating with Existence

Understand, whenever the one simple quality of gratitude, if it starts, gratitude is like a small fire which can burn all your karmas. What is Karma? It is an unfulfilled action on your part that pulls you again and again to fulfill it.

In order to fulfill and exhaust all such karmas that we have accumulated, we take birth again and again on this planet. Just by being with the energy of gratitude, these karmas get burnt! All the karmas, anything which you carry on; which you brought, which you are accumulating, anything can be burnt.

A simple remembrance of gratitude; not only to the Master, to every being, to everything, it brings so much of sensitivity. It brings so much of love and so much of settled feeling, so much of connected feeling. It can burn away all your karmas. Such is the power of gratitude.

Emotion: Gratitude

Chakra: Sahasrara Chakra

Location: In Sanskrit, sahasrara means 'thousand petaled' , from the mystical experience referring to a thousand petalled lotus blooming on the crown, when this chakra is activated. This chakra is closed by discontentment and the attitude of taking life for granted and it can be made to flower by overflowing gratitude and contentment

Meditation Technique to flower in deep gratitude: Sahasrara Dyana

INTRODUCTION: Teach the children that everything is wondrous.

When you are able to look at things with a wonder-filled attitude, with awe, it fills you with such gratitude and fulfillment

Just by being in gratitude all the time, every so-called mundane thing in life can become sacred and wonderful!

You think that life has become mundane only because of your attitude of taking things for granted. Life is not mundane as you think. Every small thing is beautiful. Your mind is what is mundane; your mind does not allow you to penetrate and see the beautiful way in which Existence is flowing. Your mind has become a dead pattern that is constantly repeating , ' what next'.

When you are able to look at things with a wonder filled attitude, with awe, it fills you with such gratitude and fulfillment because you are not questioning at that point it time. You are not allowing your mind to play at all. You are simple resonating with your heart.

It is then than you become a child, and when you become a child, nothing is mundane; everything is wondrous!

• ¤ When does everything in life become sacred and wonderful?
• ¤ Which is mundane?
• ¤ What is not allowing you to penetrate and see the beautiful way?
• ¤ When will you resonate in your heart?
• ¤ When is everything wonderous

Evaluate how well they understand the topic by asking multiple questions.

• 1. Chart
• 2. Coloring items
• 3. Color paper
• 4. Glue

Encourage each child to make a friendship card using their creativity and gift it to their friends. Ask each child to appreciate and thank their friends for the gift

When you are able to look at things with wonder filled attitude, it fills you with such gratitude and fulfillment because you are not questioning at that point in time.

Part 2: Sahasrara Chakra

Players form a circle, the leaders hands out objects that make a unique noise. One player is chosen and is brought to the middle of the circle and are blindfolded. They are spun around. The leader points at someone and they start to make a noise with their object. The blindfolded player has to move towards the noise. Once they have done this successfully they move back to the middle. They are spun around again and once they are finished all the players have to make a nice at once. The blindfolded player has to locate the first noise they heard over the others and move to where it's coming from.

Conclude the topic by reiterating the important details

Teach the children that desire and gratitude can never co-exist.

GOALS: To make the children understand how to live with their own desires..

What more do you want.

An important thing we need to understand is that desire and gratitude can never co-exist. When you feel one desire after another, it means that you are not living with gratitude, When you live with gratitude, you can never have any desires.

When you live with gratitude, whatever is given to you will simply fulfill whatever you need at that moment, that's all. Even before you ask, you will be given, so there will be no question of asking! Things are always perfect when you function with gratitude. Otherwise, things are always lacking and ugly.

Whether you want to base your life on asking, or on gratitude, is entirely up to you. Gratitude is not some kind of morality that can be imposed on you from outside. It is an attitude that has to flower within out of deep understanding of existence and its ways. When real gratitude happens, it can transform your whole perception of life and bring lasting peace and joy for you.

The only way to have a live connection with reality, with existence, is by dropping your conditioning, your ego and breaking the wall you have built around yourself; then you will be able to see that the connection was always there! You don't have to to do anything special; you simply have to drop what is not, that is all.

When you are loving and flowing with gratitude you will always feel the tremendous energy of existence flowing through you and you will always be with a sense of fulfillment, not because of any gains but because it has become your very being! This fulfillment is the ultimate fulfillment that every man is seeking, although he is not aware of it. He searches for it again and again through in all material things and keeps missing it.

• ¤ Can desire and gratitude co exist?
• ¤ When are you not living with gratitude?
• ¤ When can you not have any desires?
• ¤ When things are perfect? Is gratitude a morality?

• Paper
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Coloring items.

Encourage each child to draw and color their desires.

Desire and gratitude can never co-exist, when you live with gratitude, you can never have any desire.

Have a discussion on why we keep running behind " what's next".

One player is blindfolded and stands somewhere in the play area. Some or all of the other players then have to creep past them. The blindfolded player has to try to guess how many players crept past. If they are right another player takes their turn. Otherwise the players creep past again. The blindfolded player has three chances to try to guess the number who crept past him.

Conclude the topic by reiterating on the "topic of the day "

Introduce the children to the topic of existence and how it is beyond logic.

To make the children have faith in existence.

We are simply not ready to place our trust in existence.

Whether you accept it or not existence is taking care of you. All you need to do is place your faith in it and do your duty with gratitude. You will then be showered upon by existence. We are simply not ready to place our trust on Existence!

The very quality of trusting the universe in your being will make you live like God on Earth! You are missing out on this wonderful opportunity due to your own ignorance and ego.

If we consciously feel a sense of continued gratitude towards the cosmic energy, we will be able to feel ourselves being taken care of in its very lap. We will feel ourselves being cradled by this energy, like a child is by the mother and whether you accept it or not, this the truth.

• ¤ When you will be showered upon by existence?
• ¤ When can we live like god on earth?
• ¤ Are we ready to trust existence?
• ¤ What we are now because of our ignorance and ego?
• ¤ Does existence take care of everybody

Evaluate how well they understand the topic by asking multiple questions.

• Paper
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Coloring items

Encourage each child to draw nice scenery and color it beautifully.

The very quality and testing of the universe in your being will make you live like god on earth.

Share the incidents, where you have expressed gratitude with existence.

First ask everyone not to talk. Then blindfold half off them and have each blindfolded person sit next to an empty chair. Those who are not blindfolded sit in the empty chairs. Starting with the first pair, have the person who is not blindfolded sing a short song in a disguised voice. The blindfolded person needs to guess who the person is that sung that song. If they are correct they can remove their blindfold. Then the next couple goes. After each couple has had their turn the ones who have not been blindfolded and identified move and exchange seats. The last one who is not blindfolded at the end wins.

Conclude the topic by reiterating the important details

To make the children understand that the best way to have gratitude is to have joy without reason.

Gratitude happens from the heart..

You have to just become gratitude! The best way to become gratitude is to learn to enjoy without a reason. Enjoy everything that you see, everything that you hear, and everything that you do, with the supreme confidence that existence is taking care.

Life will then simply transform in front of your eyes and you will be overflowing all the time because you are always enjoying it. The problem is, we are always trying to read God through our heads. You can never read God through your head. If you simply drop your head, you can automatically function through your heart and discover that you don't even need to reach out of him; He is already there in you!.

• ¤ Can we reach god through our head?
• ¤ How we have to reach god?
• ¤ Where is god?
• ¤ Is gratitude a virtue?
• ¤ When existence will be shown to you in magical splendor?

Evaluate how well they understand the topic by asking multiple questions.

• Two of the same pictures
• Glue
• Cotton
• Stone pictures.

Give each child two copies of the same picture. Encourage each child to stick cotton on one picture and stone pieces on the other picture. Ask the child to compare the weight of both the collages.

Discontentment will pull you down, making you heavy and miserable. Gratitude will do the opposite making you light and blissful.

Discuss about gratitude Vs discontentment

A player is blindfolded and sits on a chair, another player picks up an object from the room. They then walk up to the blindfolded player and give a description of the object without giving clues that will give away what it is. The blindfolded player then has to guess what the object is, if they can't guess another person chooses an object and the game continues. When the blindfolded player guesses an object correctly the two players swap places.

Conclude the topic by reiterating the important details