Exploring The Crown Chakra: Liberation and Letting Go

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“I’m a tiny speck of nothing
And I’m the entire universe, writ large”

— ALL IN MY HEAD, blink 182

Seven months in and we have reached the top of the mountain. The initial inspiration for this journey was from Avatar: The Last Airbender, where the protagonist studies with a guru to unlock the flow of his chakras. He starts at the root and travels up the spine to the crown chakra. At the very end of this journey he balks at releasing the connection to his love interest in favor of universal oneness. It seems that liberation is not just a release, but also a letting go.

If the Root is grounded and physical, then the Crown is light and airy. In the month of July, I endeavored to lean into some of the more woo-woo hippie-dippie practices that I have traveled in and out of throughout my life. I would practice breathwork, attend kundalini activations, jazz up my meditation in a way that felt more like prayer, and overall just be open to different forms of spirituality.

I have a good friend who hosts kundalini activations—I’m sure she would have more to say about what that actually means, but to me it’s kind of like an intense sound bath. You lay down on your back and she BLASTS music, hopping between attendees, playing with the energy of the room. The first time I went, I wasn’t a fan. Sound baths are usually pretty chill. At best, it's aligning your vibrations and, at worst, it's a nap. I can deal with that. As I settled in thinking I might get some shut-eye, the bass hit me square in the chest and didn’t really stop throughout the experience. I left thinking that it wasn’t for me, but over the course of the next week things just felt more aligned. She had warned us that only about ten percent of the process would happen in the room and the rest would happen in the upcoming weeks. So even though I didn’t really know or understand what was going on, I leaned on faith and attended a couple more.

With my goal of liberation in July, I thought it was the perfect time to return to the practice. On a Tuesday night I rode my bike to downtown Santa Monica to a studio that would host the activation. I walked into a candlelit room with several mats laid on the floor and took my space next to another attendee. We said hello in that sheepish way that you greet people in such settings and then prepared for the experience. It kicked off with the regular opening of introductions, what to expect and what we all might be here for. My friend hosting explained everything beautifully and then we all settled into our spaces to begin the process.

The eye mask went on. The music kicked into high gear. The energy began to flow. I was in it.

I was allowing myself to be open and believe that something very deep and meaningful might be happening in this space. I wanted to let go of all my cynicism towards such a practice and just really allow myself to feel. And just when I thought that I’d be able to get there, the woman next to me, who had introduced herself as I entered, began to scream.

And not just an emotion letting out into the ether. These were blood curdling screams. They kept coming. I understand that people need spaces to release and really feel their emotions, but this was a wild thing to do in a group of people who had all just come together on a random Tuesday night. I immediately threw up walls to my right to keep whatever the hell was going on with her outside of my bubble. In doing that, I didn’t really allow myself to let go, but in order to really release and liberate you have to feel safe. Seems like she did, but with what was going on with her I certainly did not.

I took a moment to throw up the wall and make sure that it would hold, and then oddly enough, I felt a significant calling to adjust my positioning. The facilitator had mentioned that this might happen, but it never happens to me. I almost always stay super still during the whole experience, but here I felt a deep calling to cross my ankles and put my hands behind my head. Like I was Tom Sawyer sitting on the side of the creek, all I needed was a little willow reed sticking out my mouth. I relaxed into this position and couldn’t help but smile and quietly laugh to myself about what was going on around me. I don’t mean that as a shot at the woman to my right. She was obviously going through something. But I was struck with the thought of how lucky I was to not be going through that. How blessed I was that I did not need to take this experience in such a drastic direction.

Some people need ayahuasca and intensely emotional experiences to liberate themselves. Some people need to scream. At that moment I felt like all I needed was a little chuckle. I rode home in early dusk with the street lights on the bike path just coming on. That felt good.

Over the course of the next couple weeks I made a couple more alterations to my regular schedule in the quest for liberation. My morning meditations were now starting with an invigorating breathwork sequence, that was honestly working better than caffeine. I spent my days riding through my Los Angeles appointments considering what attachments I had and if I could (and should) break them. I spent a little bit of time in prayer. But mostly I just tried to let go. And ‘tried’ is not the correct word here. You can’t try to let go just like you can’t try to relax. It happens instantly in and of itself.

It’s like a big sigh that lowers your shoulders and erases the wrinkles in your forehead.

Do that right now.

Don’t try it.

Do it.

Take a deep breath in. Maybe hold it for a moment. And then just sigh it out.

That’s liberation. That’s your Crown chakra.

Sometimes we need to go through some shit to get there. Sometimes we need to be in a dark room with strangers and music blasting so loudly that we can’t help but scream bloody murder. But some of us just need to take a deep breath.

The cool thing about the Crown chakra is that when you get there, you realize that you are connected to everything in the entire universe. The weird thing is that this realization makes you feel incredibly small and sometimes insignificant. Our Western upbringing tells us that this is a bad thing. You only have this one precious life and there are only so many days in it and only so many hours in the day so you better get to making it worthwhile. That’s a lot of pressure. That thought should make you feel bad for wasting your time reading this article.

Now just take a moment to switch your thinking. Consider yourself like a leaf on the tree. No more or less important than any other leaf. No more or less important than a root or branch. The time will come for you to fall off the branch that you’re on and you will soon be replaced. It’s frightening at first. Then, if you give yourself the moment to really sit with the idea, it’s liberating. You are entirely free.

The question then becomes, what do you do with that freedom?

Sometime during the first few months of this chakra study, I looked at the calendar and saw that after I reached the Crown chakra, I’d still have almost half a year left. What could I possibly do with the remaining months? Well lucky (or unlucky) for you, dear reader, it turns out that the path of liberation is just one half of the chakra journey. The other exists in manifestation and it works its way down from Crown to Root. So now that we’ve realized that we are one with the universe, it’s time to take that knowledge and bring it back down the ladder into our everyday lives. So for the upcoming months I’ll be working back to the starting point. We’ll return to the Third Eye in August and by year’s end, be heading right back to a January in the Root chakra. The hope now is to take what I’ve learned in the more ethereal realm and somehow make it more useful in the here and the now.

Thanks for joining me on the way up. I hope you’ll continue with me along the ride down.

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