Yes. It is the withdrawal from the emotions; you are no longer identical with them. If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the Self; you begin to individuate.- Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Carl Jung Depth Psychology)
So in anahata individuation begins. But here again you are likely to get an inflation. Individuation is not that you become an ego – you would then become an individualist. You know, an individualist is a man who did not succeed in individuating; he is a philosophically distilled egotist.
Individuation is becoming that thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange. Therefore nobody understands what the Self is, because the Self is just the thing which you are not, which is not the ego. The ego discovers itself as being a mere appendix of the Self in a sort of loose connection. For the ego is always far down in muladhara and suddenly becomes aware of something up above in the fourth story, in anahata, and that is the Self.
Now, if anybody makes the mistake of thinking that he lives at the same time in the basement and on the fourth story, that he is the purusha himself, he is crazy. He is what the German very aptly call verrückt, carried off his feet up to somewhere else. He just sits up there and spins. We are allowed to behold only the purusha, to behold his feet up there. But we are not the purusha; that is a symbol that expresses the impersonal process.
The Self is something exceedingly impersonal, exceedingly objective. If you function in your Self you are not yourself – that is what you feel. You have to do it as if you were a stranger: you will buy as if you did not buy; you will sell as if you did not sell. Or, as St. Paul expresses it, “But it is not I that lives, it is Christ that liveth in me,” meaning that his life had become an objective life, not his own life but the life of a greater one, the purusha.
Anahata or heart chakra is the fourth primary chakra... In Sanskrit, anahata means "unhurt, unstruck, and unbeaten". Anahata Nad refers to the Vedic concept of unstruck sound (the sound of the celestial realm). Anahata is associated with balance, calmness, and serenity.- Anahata (Wikipedia)
In Sanskrit Anahata means "sound produced without touching two parts" and at the same time it means "pure" or "clean, stainless". The name of this chakra signifies the state of freshness that appears when we are able to become detached and to look at the different and apparently contradictory experiences of life with a state of openness (expansion). Normally we are not used to the effect produced by the confrontation of the two opposite forces. At the level of Anahata chakra appears the possibility to integrate the two opposite forces and obtain the effect, without the two forces being confronted. This energy is specific to cooperation and integration, which brings peace and a new perspective in a world which, up to this level was made only of a more or less conscious confrontation between opposite forces.
Just throwing this out there because it's very useful. One of the most impactful practices I ever developed was learning how to deal with emotions, to step back from them, and observe them and myself from a distance. We think we have our emotions but our emotions really have us; when in the grip of a passion our egos become eclipsed, possessed. It's not easy to get yourself unpossessed - I still often fail - but without space between your feelings and yourself you can't begin to discriminate "ego" from "not ego."
Years ago I developed the following practice: When I feel something painful, instead of trying to escape I lean into it. I envision the emotion as crashing waves that I move into. Each crash then becomes smaller and smaller, until they eventually die out. All passions, no matter how intense, will die out, but only if you let them have space in your mind and in your heart. Otherwise, they become a festering wound that becomes untouchable. Before teaching myself this, I would be overwhelmed with the emotion. I couldn't let myself feel and process anything because it was so overwhelming and painful; it felt like annihilation. The idea that I could actually endure the pain, and survive it, was a revelatory, an epiphany.
Marie-Louise von Franz once wrote (I forget where and I can't find it!) that the dragon - one's pain and suffering - has to burn itself out. The cure for the dragon's fire is it's own fire; you just have to let the flames cook you. But this suffering is really a true and caring friend who brings us precious gifts that allow us to grow.
There is a secret love hiding in each problem.- James Hillman
The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love.
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