Seven Precepts Born of the Chakras toward Living a Full and Spirited Life

If the following seven chakras and the seven principles have anything to teach us, it is that we humans have, as Hildegard of Bingen put it, “everything we need within us already.” 

Instead of commandments of “Thou Shalt Not,” we can learn positive lessons of living well on this planet. The chakras and the seven principles of Creation Spirituality teach how to direct the love energy we all possess. They constitute a path that can draw humanity together rather than apart. 

I have drawn these precepts from my study on Evil where I compare the gifts of seven healthy chakras to their opposite or “misdirected love” (Aquinas). That definition parallels the Jewish word for sin which means “missing the mark.”

They name what a graced life, a life of the Spirit, consists of and enumerate the magic that happens when Blessings of the Spirit and Blessings of the Flesh come together.

1.    Live with the wonders of cosmology (a relation to the whole) and live grounded to the earth and ecology. Its opposite is acedia, which guarantees arrogance and laziness.

2.    Live with passion (better lustful than listless), which derives from our yearning for union.

3.    Live with moral outrage and stand up to injustice.

4.    Live with compassion and resist fear.

5.    Live with telling your truth and resist being gagged by consumerism and its sellers.

6.    Live with giving birth and develop all of your creative powers of intellect and imagination.

7.    Live for the building of community among all light beings, resisting competitive and envious relations with others.

These seven lessons of living positively in the Spirit that correspond to the seven chakras and to the seven principles of Creation Spirituality turn the tables on the capital sins, those misdirected loves that diminish us. 

These precepts guide and direct the spiritual powers we all harbor within us. To work from these common precepts and to gather all our work and citizenship, relations and efforts around these actions irrespective of national or religious differences might herald a new era for our species. 

It would demonstrate that we have, after all, learned something from the sins of our fathers (and mothers). Future generations would thank us for this. We would be more grateful for living and therefore would live more simply and more joyfully on this blessed earth-flesh we call home.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 378f.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE

Banner Image: Dancing With Dandelions, wire sculpture by Robin Wight. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

How do these seven precepts, based on the seven chakras and in contrast to the seven “capital sins” strike you? Are they useful for our struggles today?

Recommended Reading

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics