Soul II Soul and Sparrows
The blue collage in the Sparrow’s Descent series is all about the throat chakra, or Vishuddha for you Sanskrit readers. This roughly pertains to all things having to do with the way we communicate and express ourselves in the world. When Sparrow finds herself here all telepathy has disappeared, but luckily, all the blue birds around her are fabulous communicators. In spite of this lack of telepathy she can understand what everyone wants and needs because they won’t shut up about it! While telepathy is harder to bring into our current heavy earthly existence, we could all do with more communication. This doesn’t have to be just about expressing needs and wants either, but could be more subtle.
We also use our voice when we create. In this sense the sacral and throat chakras work well together (orange and blue, one of my favorite color combinations!) but we’ll get to that in a later post. There is a lot to be said about Vishuddha and the creation of the universe, and by extension our abilities to manifest as microcosms of God. Sanskrit is a sacred language wherein each sound was used to bring forth fundamental elements of the universe and our world. These sounds have retained their power, which is why the Vishuddha chakra is also considered to be the gateway to gaining occult powers on one’s path to ultimate liberation. Here’s a great article on that, and make sure you read to the end and find the long list of other informative links.
The term Vishuddha means purity, and the associated color of blue links the concept to one of my favorite Hindu tales: the churning of the ocean. In short all the gods and demons wanted a certain nectar of immortality, called amrita, that was all mixed up with the water in the ocean. They worked together for once toward the goal of separating the amrita from the water using Mount Meru to churn the ocean. Of course there was other stuff mingled with the water as well, one of those things was a poison deadly enough to kill all of humanity. Shiva swallowed this poison to save humankind, but in the process his throat turned blue. This is one reason why the throat chakra is blue in this particular tradition, remember there are other chakra traditions as well.
The apple in the blue collage is yellow, which is the color of the navel chakra, or Manipura, the seat of our confidence, power, and will. The throat and navel chakra need to work together too, so we can express our will. Sparrow here already has a lot of personal drive as she is on an important quest. In the blue world she learns that from here on out she will need to find her voice and use it physically in order to seek help and guidance from the other birds around her. Luckily she’s a sparrow, so song and great quantities of chirping come quite naturally to her.
Let’s talk about the golden crowned sparrow song here for a second. For me it’s one of the most distinctive of all bird songs. I think of it as the opening triad of that 1989 Soul II Soul song Back to Life, Back to Reality but backwards. This adds another layer of symbolism to my story about the golden crowned sparrow, and part of why I chose her to be the main character of this narrative in the first place. These sparrows seem to be saying they want to escape from this earthly realm, the opposite of Life and Reality. We humans love to anthropomorphize animals, so I realize that’s what I’m doing here, but it made me wonder if the sparrows sing literally a different tune before they incarnate here on earth. Maybe in the spirit world they sing Back to Life, Back to Reality the right way. I don’t know why anyone would want to incarnate here on earth really, but that’s why I wrote this book - to explain at least one potential reason.
Another interesting fact: apparently Back to Life was written about the singer’s own near death experience where she went to an amazing spiritual place and had to literally come back to life. She was mad about it too! However, she realized there had to be a reason she was called back. Many of us feel there’s a reason we incarnated on earth, and that reason must be of vital importance if we left the amazing world of love and peace in spirit. What’s yours and how will you use your voice today in the service of your mission?