Tag: fire

Ambition Orange/Red

From my book, Aura Colour Therapy:

This vibrant, hot aura colour can vary in shade from red-orange to orange-red. Small quantities of red-tinged Ambition Orange can give us the drive and single minded determination to accomplish incredible feats, overcome great odds and transform tragedy into triumph. We all need a warm fire in the belly when going after goals, but Ambition Orange can get a little too hot, making us feverish with the desire to possess something or someone.

Obsession can make us pushy, giving us tunnel vision and warping our values. We may know what we want, but we can’t always have it. Sometimes we need to compose ourselves gracefully and accept the need to let go and move in a different direction. Have a good think about what you would really be prepared to give up in order to acquire your desires. Not all prices are worth paying. Are you setting your sights too intently on one goal without keeping balance and sanity in your life?

Like a burning hot coal, Ambition Orange can burn emptiness into the aura, giving us an insatiable hunger. These auric black holes are childhood wounds that constantly consume energy without ever becoming satisfied. I sometimes call them ‘black hole drivers’ because they shape our behaviour, subconsciously driving us to seek outside ourselves for whatever it was we didn’t get in childhood. And like black holes, no matter how much we fill them, they stay hungry.

For example, you might constantly strive for success because you never received praise from one or both parents during childhood. This initial lack inspires you to attain great heights you might not otherwise have aimed for and this is wonderful, so long as you are not selling your soul in the process. A really deep wound will drive you to constantly achieve more and more, but you will never truly feel successful and you may even sabotage yourself because you don’t really believe in yourself.

Ambition Orange can also represent addictive biochemical and neurological states stimulated by external substances, people and situations. People, praise, sex, jobs, drugs, food, games, money, success and status are all examples of externally sourced keys we use to unlock or access our favourite internal states. We need to learn how to access these feel-good internal states of mind naturally, without becoming dependent upon ever greater quantities of external stimuli.

What it is you are being hungry, intense, possessive or obsessive about? What need are you trying to get met? Can you find a healthier way to meet this need? The deeper essence of whatever it is you are chasing out there in the world, is something you already have within you and around you, so ‘cool it’. Relax and take time to smell the roses. Life is right here, right now, just waiting for you to realise it has been with you all along, waiting for your engagement and offering you simple treasures with genuine depth of value.

Using creative visualisation, imagine finding a safe way to lift some of those hot coals out of your inner fire and cool them off in the water. Let them melt away. Keep doing this until your inner fire calms down! Cooling colours like Patience Green, Generosity Green, Authenticity Green, Healing Green, Watchful Blue, Freedom Blue and Mother Blue can be very soothing for excess fire. You can heal empty black holes with colours like Abundance Green, Soul Retrieval Blue, Clarity Yellow, Happiness Yellow, Gold and Silver. Ambition Orange itself is generally too strong to use therapeutically. If you want to be decisive and active, use Strength Red. If you want to recover your passion, use Creative Red. If you want to set and achieve goals, work with Manifestation Orange.

 

Red Colours in your Aura

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPerceiving aura colours with psychic perception is a inner experience, like seeing an image in your mind, or feelings in your body. When I ‘see’ a red frequency like Strength Red I feel strong and powerful in my body, my base chakra tingles, my legs feel strong and I feel warm, energised, relaxed and confident. I might have visual images flash through my mind that accompany these feelings, but even if I don’t, I’m still going to know this is Strength Red, because I recognise the feeling. With empathy (clairsentience) as my primary psychic strength, I ‘see’ aura colours with my feelings and my body.

Strength Red is but one of many red colours I might see/feel while reading and healing the aura, and each different shade tells me a story about how a person feels, how they think, their habitual or current emotional state, their physical health and the things they might be experiencing in their lives. As a healer and spiritual counsellor, I’m teaching my clients how to recognise imbalances in their colours (chakras) and how to restore and maintain balance.

Even without psychic perception, it’s possible to recognise when a particular chakra or aura colour can become unbalanced. (note: I will occasionally refer to red energy as ‘fire energy’ or fire throughout this blog!)

TOO MUCH RED

When there is too much red in the aura, this can be because the base chakra is overdeveloped at the expense of other chakras and ‘hogging all the light’ so to speak. In a way, you could say the person is over-focused on base chakra issues, or base chakra issues are consuming their attention.For example, you might be overly fixated on winning and being competitive at that expensive of other values like friendship, or you might be so concerned about material wealth and image that you are neglecting or betraying other parts of yourself, such as your creativity or spirituality. Fixations of being right or having more and more power, sex, and independence are other examples of red in overdrive. Hyperactivity is another. Treatment can be a combination of learning how to be still and content with what you have (e.g. meditation, minimalism), nourishing and tending to other parts of you (e.g. heart, spirit) and learning how to focus and channel all that fire and passion into constructive projects that enhance your life and the lives of those around you in beautiful ways.

Excess red can also occur when we are having trouble processing, storing, expressing and /or discharging red energy, feelings, thoughts and experiences. For example, you might have trouble coping with anger within yourself and other people, tending to shy away from conflict and honest expression of feelings and opinions. You might have mixed feelings about sex, or perhaps you have trouble owning and expressing your personal power because you don’t feel to attract attention and come across as a threat to others. Just because the red energy isn’t being expressed doesn’t mean it isn’t there. When red energy isn’t expressed, discharged or stored in healthy ways, it can build up, creating tension, frustration and stress. In these instances, the red energy might leak out (e.g. passive anger), explode (sudden temper tantrums), or congeal like clotted blood (resentment). Learning how to be comfortable with fire energy by befriending it instead of making it bad/wrong can help. Martial arts is an example of a therapy that can teach you safe discharge and storage techniques (eh gathering chi and storing it in power centres), while assertiveness and/or conflict resolution classes can teach effective ways to process and express our fire in balanced ways.

NOT ENOUGH RED

If you repress your red energy for long enough, it can diminish. Like a fire that has been smothered, your inner flames die out and you are left with grey ashes. Grey is the main colour I often find in the aura when there is a lack of red. A lack of red energy can also be indicated when there is an excess of cool colours in the aura like greens and blues, but these usually represent a less extreme deadening of our inner fire. Grey in the aura gives us a classic insight into a lack of red energy, and the feeling of being oppressed, depressed, trapped, uninspired, bored, hopeless, powerless, and so on. With no red energy igniting our chakra system from below, like a flame of fuel snaking its way upwards from our base chakra, we lack drive, passion, direction and determination. To reignite our inner fire we may need to grieve our losses, acknowledging where, when and how we gave our power away, and work on reclaiming it. We might need to actively get more physical, heal our sexual selves, learn how to speak up or be real with ourselves about what we really want.

Some people have personalities that are naturally a little quieter and more reserved, and these people may have less fire and passion, less red energy, but this usually only becomes a problem if the imbalance becomes extreme. We all have unique aura’s and personalities after all! Some of us are naturally more red and simply need to find health ways to engage and channel this energy, while others can be perfectly content and balanced with the odd sparkle or flash of red passion and fire, here and there, from time to time. It helps to accept and honour who you are while also looking for opportunities to stretch yourself out of comfort zones and grow, and in the case of red energy, this might simply mean taking the odd risk here and there, being more physically active or asking yourself what you passions are and pursuing them more actively.

 

 

 

Anger – Neuroscience and the Aura

I love exploring emotions from both a neurological perspective and a philosophical one. Here’s some fantastic writing from Newberg and Waldman (How God Changes your Brain), about anger:

“Anger makes people indiscriminately punitive, blameful, pessimistic and unilaterally careless in their logic and reasoning skills. Furthermore, anger encourages your brain to defend your beliefs- be they right or wrong- and when this happens, you’ll be more likely to feel prejudice towards others. You’ll inaccurately perceive anger in other people’s faces, and this will increase your own distrust and fear. It’s an insidious process that feeds on itself, and it can influence your behaviour for very long periods of time, Eventually, it will even damage important structures in our brain.

Nor is it good for your heart. Regardless of your age, gender or ethnicity – anger, cynicism, hostility, and defensiveness will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular problems. What makes anger particularly dangerous is that it blinds you to the fact that you are even angry; thus it gives you a false sense of certainty, confidence and optimism,”

This inspires so many thoughts for me!

The last point in particular, about anger making us feel certain, confident and optimistic might sound strange, but I have noticed that people use anger to protect themselves from depression, sadness and feelings of disempowerment. As a therapist, I’m often working towards helping people lift up their anger and take a look underneath, because it’s usually an offensive defence used to shield feelings of vulnerability.  Continue reading “Anger – Neuroscience and the Aura”

Firedancer Red

Firedancer Red is a vibrant crimson.

Troubleshooting for people with Aura Cards

If you have a deck of Aura Cards and you find this colour a challenge to read, this section is for you!

This generally isn’t an easy colour to talk about with most people. Generally, if I sense a client is unable to explore sexual issues and/or power issues with me, I simply glide over the top of it and don’t delve too deep. There’s no point in pushing up against boundaries that won’t budge, or offending someone, and I have great respect for the privacy of others.

If a client is comfortable talking about their sex lives, this card can be a fantastic ice-breaker to get the conversation rolling. If not, (or if you have drawn this card for yourself and you can’t relate to the sexual side of it) you might like to explore the following:

*Kundalini energy: We have a potent sleeping energy at the base of our spine that awakens and rises up the spine, through the chakras, as we awaken and grow spiritually. Research, discuss, explore…. what is kundalini energy, and what does it mean to you? Visualise a red fire of light rising gently and slowly from your base chakra, winding its way upwards along your spine and slowly, carefully, gently awakening each energy centre as it rises. “I am balanced in the expression of my fire” is a useful mantra to use with this visualisation.

*Breaking rules and not being a people pleaser anymore. Explore issues to do with rules, breaking rules, individuality, approval from others, rebellion, and so on

*Teenagers, issues from your teenage years and your inner teenager. The card itself can represent any of these three.

*Taking risks. This colour will generally encourage us to take pretty crazy risks. If you tend to play it overly safe and stay in your comfort zones, this could be a good thing! But it’s worth exploring any tendency to leap before you look.

*Short-term gratification. This colour stimulates our desire for short-term gratification and dampens down our ability to honour our long term, deeper values. Are you compromising your deeper values for a quick fix or a brief flash of pleasure? What might you be risking?

*Frustration. In many people, this colour is blocked, or being held back. Think of it as primal, base-chaklra passion. It wants power and pleasure and uninhibited self-expression. We usually hold back on that because it isn’t socially acceptable to express, or because we have conflicting values….. consider what the costs are when it comes to self-control and ask yourself if their is a safe/safer way to acknowledge your fire and get your base needs met without hurting anyone or violating your deeper values.  Continue reading “Firedancer Red”