When one arrives at the calmness, where duties and obligations have settled themselves, and the passing moment with its various gifts and blessings can be quietly enjoyed, one can easily wonder why one gets worked up over anything.  But it happens on a fairly regular basis, that crush of unexpected events and stormy emotions tumbling your raft into crazy rapids that make mere survival your primary objective.

     Putting a positive spin on this would be recognising that your first chakra, the one that triggers your fight or flight response, is getting a good work out, one that your placid bourgeois lifestyle had kept at bay for perhaps a little too long.  Developed very early on in this planetary game, it helped us survive against all odds, both animal and environmental, until we developed structures and strategies that helped keep us safe for a few years until sudden starvation or nameless plague took us down.  These days it helps to keep us earthed as our inner journeys, freed from religious and political restrictions, lead us to the crown chakra and beyond, delivering us, at least on occasion, into a cosmic consciousness that transcends the physical life and astral afterlife with ease.  Bobbing in that boundless sea of light where we are nothing and everything simultaneously, wearing that Buddha smile with ease, knowing both the power and emptiness of all manifestation.

     As we luxuriate in that blissful transcendence, wondering why we bothered to incarnate at all, that first chakra, god bless its cotton socks, can still push the panic button in an earthquake, tornado or car crash.  All the chakras have their functions, depending on (a) the needs of the soul in a body and (b) the pressures of the moment.  But on this occasion, as I sit comfortably on a patio in this pleasant autumn afternoon, contemplating the pleasures of the passing moment, these two chakras are making their presence felt.