Most people who are familiar with chakras, are familiar with the seven major chakras that correspond to the human body… The root chakra, sacral chakra, solar plexus chakra, heart chakra, throat chakra, third eye chakra and the crown chakra. If you want to learn more about any of these, I have a video on each one.  But there are actually many, many more chakras and today, we’re going to talk about one of the chakras that is not part of the traditional seven chakra system… The eighth chakra.

The eighth chakra is the bridge chakra. It is often referred to as the soul star chakra or just the star chakra. The reason that it is called this is because its appearance is quite similar to a very small star or a sun. Even its color can be described as shining and flickering golden-white light. It corresponds to your etheric body and therefore your energy field rather than to your physical body. It is located about half a foot above the crown of your head. Rather than being an energy center or a place where energy is stored, the bridge chakra is truly a gateway or bridge between your physical and nonphysical self, the finite and infinite.

Many spiritual traditions consider the bridge chakra to be the ‘seat of your soul’ because it contains the information about your current incarnation… why your consciousness or soul stream chose to incarnate into the physical self that you call by your name in this life. The bridge chakra manifests in the fourth dimension and above. It is the bridge between information that is beyond space and time and your incarnation into this time-space reality. The bridge chakra governs the purpose of your incarnation, transcendence of the physical, the ability to travel out of body while still remaining incarnated, parallel realities, your life path potentials and your experience of time. The bridge chakra also governs temporal identification and disidentification. What I mean by this is that in order to manifest oneself as a specific separate physical person, you must first create an identity... an ego. And to transcend the limitations of this specific separate identity that you call by your name, you must reverse this process and dis-identify with it. This process of identification and disidentification, whether we are talking about the initial process of identification and disidentification that we call birth and death, or the intentional conscious practice of disidentification through any number of spiritual disciplines, involves the bridge chakra. 

The bridge chakra goes out of alignment when one’s connection and/or alignment to their non-physical self is disrupted in any way. Just a few examples of this are when a person forgets their reason for incarnating in this life; and so, they feel lost relative to their reason for being. When a person stops believing in or being aware of the bigger picture of life itself, which is why so many nihilists and atheists have a bridge chakra that is so out of alignment. When a person begins to think thoughts or make decisions or take actions that bring them away from their life purpose. When a person is just going through the motions of day-to-day life rather than choosing a life of meaning. When a person does not live and prioritize according to their own values. When a person is too identified with their temporal self and temporal life. when a person is in rejection of their temporal self and temporal life. When a person is suicidal. When a person is not consciously using their time and when a person is in a state of determinism rather than choice, just to name a few. 

It is a bit ironic that the bridge chakra looks so much like a star, because it can be considered to be a person’s own personal North Star. The North Star (also known as Polaris or the Pole Star) is famous for holding nearly still in the sky. It appears this way to us because it is located so close to the north celestial pole, which is the point around which the entire northern sky turns. The North Star, as its name suggests, marks the way due north and, as such, acts as a guiding light for many. Travelers have used its brightness and prominence in the sky as a navigational tool for centuries. So too, the alignment of your bridge chakra is your key to proper navigation through your temporal life. It is to align your physical life with your pre-birth intention. Your purpose for being. 

Our life experiences, most especially the way we think and act as a result of our life experiences, can cause any of our chakras to go out of alignment. And it must be said that the bridge chakra is the one that is in the most danger in our human society today. When sir Isaac Newton changed the way that people thought about the universe that we live in (orienting people more than ever towards the finite temporal world, and disconnecting them from the infinite, nonphysical world) humanity experienced a mass mal-alignment with their bridge chakras. At this more macrocosmic level, this is perhaps the greatest disservice that the collective swing in favor of science has done to humanity. Science has contributed so much good to humanity. It is a beautiful practice. However, it is also true that at this point in time, science has become the new human religion and it has disconnected many, many people from the spiritual. For the benefit of all life on earth, the science of the future must put people back in connection with what people call ‘the spiritual’.

We all know that parenting and socialization can either be what maintains the health of our chakra systems or what causes us to lose energetic health and equilibrium in this regard. The bridge chakra is also the chakra most under attack as a result of our current system of parenting and socialization. When a child incarnates into the physical, their bridge chakra is very much in alignment. The child naturally follows their own north star. They display preferences and orientations and aptitudes and interests and behavior and a physical embodiment that are in-alignment with their purpose for being. Their selfhood matches their pre-incarnation determined life purpose. But most of humanity does not see a child as something that belongs to the universe at large. They don’t see a child as a being that has incarnated with its own unique purpose and path. Instead, they see a child as a raw substance to form according to their own intentions for it. The sad result of this is that a parent, culture or society can interfere with and interrupt and mislead a child so that they abandon that internal north star. When this happens, a child becomes what the people around them want them to be. And their bridge chakra goes totally out of alignment. 

When your bridge chakra is in alignment, some of the things you will experience are: The ability to transcend the physical. Awakening. Out of body travel. Incredible inspiration. The feeling of ‘rightness and being on the path’ relative to your own personal life purpose. The drive and decision to make the most of your life and your time here and all the benefits that come with that. The ability to manipulate time. Awareness of your own life path potentials. The comprehension of cause and effect with regards to your own lifepaths. Awareness that goes beyond our limited reality. Comprehension of ‘the big picture’ relative to your life. Harmony between your physical and nonphysical self. Seemingly unlimited energy. Supercharged intuition. The ability to identify and disidentify. Alignment with the higher self. 

Now that you know that, here are some tips for achieving alignment with your bridge chakra.

1. Spiritual practice. Literally any discipline that causes you to expand your awareness to accommodate your non-physical existence, that which is beyond the temporal, that which is infinite and eternal will assist the alignment of your bridge chakra. This is why there are certain individuals from every spiritual path, be it Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim or Jewish or Shamanic or Christian or non-denominational or whatever that have super bright and in-alignment bridge chakras. Take on the perspective that you are a soul temporarily having a human body. Do things that cause you to remember the big picture of your life on earth so as to not get lost in the day to day of your life. And then, instead of using that as an escape, really integrate that awareness with what you are doing in your day-to-day life. When enlightenment is achieved, one does the same things as he or she does before… They chop wood and carry water and do dishes so to speak. But everything about their perspective while they are doing it has changed. It changes the entire quality of the experience of living.
2. Commit to authenticity and commit to honesty with yourself and with others. This means dedication to self-examination, self-exploration and self-discovery. The more awareness you develop, the more you will see that there is no contradiction between destiny and free will.  When you are in alignment with your joy and your talent and your inner calling, that is you being in alignment with your life purpose and how that life purpose fits into the bigger picture of the universe.  So, you must begin to really see and own up to and follow your own innate truths. To understand more about how to do this, watch my video titled: How to Be Authentic.
3. Commit to life.  Commit to your incarnation.  To commit to something you must put your energy and focus into that thing.  To understand more about this, watch my videos titled: How To Get Over The Fear Of Commitment and Find Your Subconscious Core Life Commitment. Can you see how you haven’t been committed to your life and your time here in this physical time space reality? For example, one person may be avoiding meditation because they aren’t really being committed to life. Another person might be meditating because they aren’t really committed to life and they are using it as an avoidance mechanism. Do not use spirituality as a means of transcending, escaping from, dissociating from, disowning the physical or anything associated with your physical existence.  Instead see your life as an opportunity for your soul to canvass itself physically. Fall in love with the physical instead. You are being called by your bridge chakra to stretch to hold both the truths of the temporal and the truths of the non-temporal.
4. Practice conscious dis-identification and conscious identification. There are many different disciplines that help a person to disidentify. Things like meditative practices and breathwork and questioning and altering your thoughts and shamanic medicines etc. to understand more about disidentification, you can watch my video titled: Disidentification (The Practice of Non-Attachment). To become consciously identified is to consciously decide what you will choose to identify with and to choose what you will not identify with. But to wear all identifications loosely, so that you can easily disidentify with them. This chakra is intensely influenced by meditation, especially meditation whose aim is to re-establish the bigger picture or objective perspective and whose aim is dis-identification.
5. Do Breath Work and breathing exercises. Breath work is particularly useful in that it is a bridge between the physical and non physical, it has as much capacity to bring a person stuck in the physical into the non physical as it does to bring a person who is dissociated from the physical (and identified with the non-physical) into the physical.
6. Use minerals that strengthen the connection with the non-physical, especially those that act as a bridge between physical and non-physical. In my opinion, the stones that effect the bridge chakra the most are:  Phenakite, Scapolite, Azeztulite, Apophyllite, Danburite, Indigo Kyanite, Okenite, Seraphinite, Glendonite and Lodolite (also known as shaman dream stone).
7. Stimulate yourself with sounds that cause this link between the physical and non physical to strengthen or use silence. You can find specific frequencies that are specifically designed for this chakra, but the sounds that will work the best will be different from person to person. For example, if a person’s life purpose is actualized by being a salsa dancer, salsa music will work better than new age spiritual mantras. For someone else, Tibetan chanting might. For someone else, silence may work the best. Play around with what sounds and music cause you to feel your physical incarnation within the context of the bigger picture and within the context of your sense of calling or purpose.
8. Use the plant kingdom to bring your bridge chakra into alignment. In my opinion, the ones that have the greatest effect on the bridge chakra are: Your own spirit plant. For more information on this, watch my video titled: Spirit Plants. La purga vine. Banisteriopsis caapi vine, Psychotria viridis shrub, Iboga, White Angelica, Bergamot, Arabian Jasmine, Datura, Neroli, Salvia, Roman Chamomile, Cypress, Star of Bethlehem, Magnolia Tree, Frankincense, Hyssop, the combination of sandal wood and red cedar wood and poppies, especially the white, grey and blue varietals. 

By intentionally doing things that enable your bridge chakra to come into alignment and to open, you will be stepping into your life purpose and by doing so, into alignment with divine purpose within the universe at large. You will become the integration of the temporal and non-temporal planes of existence and you will begin to develop one hell of a zest for life.