How Understanding the Third Eye Chakra Can Improve Your Writing

 

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

We’ve all heard how important it is to listen to and trust our intuition. But what about our characters? How do we know what they intuit? When we spend time truly getting to know our characters, our people, no matter our genre of choice, we can start to hear their intuitive thoughts. This is the Third Eye Chakra. These intuitive thoughts may be thoughts that pass through the minds before they speak, and use the power of the Throat Chakra. Or they may be thoughts that remain locked inside the confines of their minds.

 

For fiction, consider the thought that crosses your protagonist’s mind that he disregards right before making the choice we know will create more strife for him.

 

For memoir, consider your own life trajectory and make note of all the times you disregarded your intuition – those times you said, after the fact, “I knew I should have…” Think of your overarching desire, in the context of the time in your life you want to explore, and all the ways you were detoured from that desire.

 

For a non-fiction, self-help/how-to book, think about what your Ideal Reader must know deep down about herself to want to learn about your method, process, or program and change her life.

 

One of the best ways to understand a character’s intuition is to listen to her thoughts. Write an interior monologue piece of the thoughts that pass through your protagonist’s or Ideal Reader’s mind, the thoughts she doesn’t want anyone else to know about. Write it as a stream-of-consciousness piece. Then write it as a more controlled expression of your protagonist’s thoughts.

 


Please leave a comment below. I’d love to know what you discover.

How understanding the third eye chakra will improve your writing

Getting inside our characters’ heads can feel second-nature to us writers, and oftentimes, we gravitate to stream-of-consciousness or interior monologues. This can work – as William Faulkner showed us with The Sound and the Fury (although the novel’s success was delayed… and I found it unreadable, but I digress). However, we need to ask ourselves what we want to accomplish with this kind of invasion to our characters’ minds.

Showing our readers all the troubled, angry, tired, sad, fragile, and destructive thoughts in our characters’ minds is most definitely a way to connect them with and help them empathize with characters. And the way we do that can mean success or failure.

After we’ve gotten clear with our characters’ voices – as discussed with the Throat Chakra – we can explore their Third Eye Chakra, which is the seat of intuition. What do they know, without a doubt? (We typically think of this as a “gut-level” response to life; however, it starts here, in the Third Eye Chakra, a somewhat ethereal part of us that defies “rational” human thought.)

Whether our characters trust their intuition or not is one thing, and the way we portray that intuition is another. We run interior monologues all the time. This is how we sort out life. We run through a multitude of scenarios, trying on all the “what-ifs” for each one.

What our characters think, HOW they think (stream of consciousness, more understandable broken thoughts, or pretend conversations), and what they do with those thoughts informs not just our readers about how to interpret their stories, but us, the writers of those stories, as well.

How do your characters’ thoughts align – or not – with their desires and motivations, and what does this tell you about their ability to make decisions?

How understanding the Third Eye Chakra can help your writing

So far, we’ve looked at how understanding the Root, Sacral, Power, Heart and Throat chakras can help with our writing. This week, we’re looking at the Third Eye Chakra.

The Third Eye Chakra is about our intuition and being able to express our higher nature, so ultimately, it’s about understanding our purpose in life and pursuing it.

image credit: thirdeyeindigo.wordpress.com

image credit: thirdeyeindigo.wordpress.com

As with previous weeks, we first have to begin with a framework of some kind, and as I’ve mentioned before, I find it’s usually easiest to begin with gender and age.

This week, let’s work with a 58-year-old male. We can begin to think about what this chakra governs and what this character might have missed in that developmental stage.

From a generative stance, then, if we draw on one of the primary fears or negative manifestations of this chakra, we can begin to create a foundation for a story. Let’s use the inability to make sound judgments based on the reality of a situation. Let’s imagine that, in this case, it comes in the form of the following scenario: This character has lived in the same town all his life and plateaued at his career years ago. He’s allowed himself to stay stuck due to a fear of leaving because he’s never been able to make the decision to go. Now, he’s been offered a stellar job in another state, but he’s terrified of taking it. The reason: he has a domineering mother who guilt trips him every time he thinks of doing anything that could further his career path. She’s a paraplegic and never misses an opportunity to remind him of this. (He doesn’t fully see how she manipulates him, though. He has taken on the belief that it’s his duty to be near his mother.) From this, then, we can see that he has not developed a healthy sense of self or purpose in life. If he had, he would have moved on years before. Instead, he has let himself be manipulated by guilt. We could begin this with a conversation between him and his mother wherein he’s attempting to break the news to her. What will transpire? Will he finally make his break, or will the story end up with him making the decision to stay put?

From a corrective standpoint, if we’re already working with a 58-year-old male who is having issues with his guilt-tripping mother, we can begin to ask ourselves questions.

  1.  How intuitive is this character?
  2.  How imaginative is he?
  3.  Does he think “outside the box” or is his idea of reality based on what he sees directly in front of him?
  4.  Would you describe him as wise or fearless? If so, how?
  5.  Would you describe him as practical? If so, how?
  6.  How able is he to make decisions?

Where does this take you?

 

Sixth Chakra – Third Eye Chakra – Mind Power

Yesterday, I wrote about the Throat Chakra and how it relates to our surrendering to a higher power of some sort, whether it be God, angels, Universe, our own inner strength, or a personal higher form of knowing, which comes from our higher selves, and how it bridges the gap between our heart and our mind.

Today, I’m writing about the Sixth, or Third Eye Chakra, which is located in the lower forehead, just above and between the eyes. This is where our intuition comes from. We oftentimes think of our intuition as a gut-level response, but in reality, our intuitive inclinations are generated here, in the Third Eye Chakra, then travel to our Personal Power Chakra to be carried out in the form of some kind of action. The Third Eye Chakra gives us all the wisdom we need to move ourselves to express our higher nature.

One way to know that our Third Eye Chakra is open and flowing is when we can make decisions for ourselves without feeling the need to check in with others for advice or validation.

Below is a brief explanation of the Third Eye Chakra and some ways we might integrate its attributes into our writing.

 

Sixth Chakra – Third Eye ChakraIndigo Sphere1

Location
Lower forehead, just above and between the eyes

Primary strengths
Intellectual abilities and skills, receiving inspiration, intuition, psychic abilities, emotional intelligence, integration of conscious and unconscious insights

Primary fears
One’s shadow side, looking within to discover ones truth, sound judgment based on the reality of a situation, relying on discipline

Positive manifestations
Mental flexibility, which allows for the acquisition of physical and spiritual knowledge that can be translated into understanding, strong connection to inner voice and trust in intuition to make decisions

Negative manifestations: Unwillingness to see and purge one’s fears

Lesson
Discerning the difference between truth and illusion

Aspects we might consider for our characters or ourselves
Intellectual abilities and skills, intuition and psychic abilities, fears around one’s shadow side and purging one’s fears


Feel free to post it below this post, or email me at:  johnnie@johnniemazzocco.com.

Meditation
Close your eyes and do a short visualization of the Third Eye Chakra: An indigo, pulsating orb in your throat, in the hollow of the collarbone. Imagine it expanding and contracting and spreading out to the sides of your head and around the back. Sit with this pulsating, intuitive and all-knowing energy for as long as you can, breathing deeply, for 5-10 breaths. Count to ten slowly on both the inhale and the exhale for each one. When you’re ready, let the energy begin to recede and return to its original size. Maintain its presence in your body as you open your eyes and begin the following writing exercise.

Writing Exercise
Fiction Writers
Use the same two characters you’ve been working with, or create two new ones. Add a third character. Create a situation for these three characters in which they are interacting over an issue wherein the two initial characters have a goal that’s being thwarted by the third character. Think about whether or not all the characters are vocal throughout the exchange. If there is dialogue, is it direct or indirect? Work on using interior monologue – or thoughts – of one or more of the characters. Let your potential reader in on more than the characters are disclosing to each other. Consider the following: How easily do these characters make decisions? How intuitive are these characters? Is one or more of them able to discern a reality that isn’t being openly expressed? Does one character have the upper hand in the situation? See if you can get their individual levels of awareness to play against each other.

Creative Non-fiction Writers / Memoirists
Think about your decision making process.

How intuitive are you? How do you engage your imagination?
Can you make decisions?
Are you wise, fearless, practical? How do these qualities show up (or not) in your life?
Are you able to view your life in impersonal terms? That is, when people behave in ways that you find hurtful or disrespectful, are you able to disconnect and let it “roll off your back?” If not, what would it mean, for your life, to be able to do this?
Are you living a conscious life? If so, how does this show up? If not, are you frightened of changes that may come from doing so?

 

Sending you mad writing mojo…

Johnnie
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