The chakras are usually drawn as seven coloured circles along the spine, and five minutes later you know which colour sits where and still have no idea why you have been turning over the same conversation for three days, why you cannot make a decision, or why you feel worn out by a life that looks perfectly decent from the outside.
I find them far easier to understand as seven different questions we pass through again and again. Am I safe? What do I want? Do I have the strength to do it? Am I loved? Am I saying my truth? Can I trust what I sense? And then comes the most uncomfortable one of all: what does any of this mean for me?
Once you know which of those questions is strongest in your life right now, a great many other things fall into place. You understand why one piece of advice helps and another makes you look at the person in front of you with that particular expression reserved for “just think positive” when your problem is entirely real.
Picture two people. One wakes up wondering whether the money will last to the end of the month. The other has work, a home, an income, and a life that looks settled from outside, yet in the evening asks why they are doing any of it. Both can be equally tired and equally lost. The first is looking for ground under their feet; the second is looking for meaning. Swap their advice and one gets meditation instead of a solution for the bills, while the other gets a spreadsheet for a question that does not live in spreadsheets.
For me the chakras are seven different areas that life keeps returning us to. Life is very fond of sending us back to the beginning precisely when we have decided we understand everything. You can work with your intuition for years and then find yourself back in the theme of safety, because you have lost a job, a home or some important support. You can have a settled life and then love opens a question you thought was closed. The levels change, they braid together and they come back, because we change too.
Muladhara is the root. Here life narrows down to very concrete questions: do I have a home, do I have enough, am I safe, can I rely on myself, is there anything solid under my feet. While that foundation holds, we rarely think about it. The floor does not get much attention either, until it starts to shift.
When the theme of safety switches on, every other question steps back for a while. It is hard to think about a calling while you are counting the bills. It is hard to follow a large dream when you do not know where you will be living next month. The body takes part in this conversation too. Exhaustion, the loss of rhythm, the sense that you must stay on guard and be ready for the next problem, often travel with the first level.
If over the past weeks you have mostly been asking yourself “Will I manage?”, “Will it be enough?”, “What happens if I lose this?” or “Who can I actually rely on?”, then it is safety that wants your attention.
Svadhisthana is the place of desire, pleasure, emotion, the body and the capacity for joy. It is the “I want” that comes before the list of obligations, before “I should”, before reason begins explaining why now is not the time.
This theme goes missing very easily in people who are good at looking after everyone else. They know who wants what, who needs help, what has to be finished by Friday and what has to be bought for the house — but ask them “And what do you want?” and a long pause follows. In others, desire works at the opposite extreme: everything attracts them, everything appeals, each new thing looks more exciting than the last, and the joy scatters before it has had time to be felt.
If you have started asking “What brings me pleasure?”, “Why does nothing delight me the way it used to?”, “What do I actually want?” or “Why am I drawn to the same kind of person again?”, Svadhisthana is probably one of your active themes.
Manipura is personal power. Here the next question is added to “What do I want?”: “What am I prepared to do about it?” This is where decisions live, and boundaries, and self-respect, and the ability to say yes when you mean it and no when that is the truth.
When this theme is weakened, a person often knows perfectly well what needs doing and waits anyway. Waits for the right moment, for someone else's approval, for a sign, a convenient opening, a better mood. The universe has probably sent three signs and one invoice already, and the decision is still waiting for the person. When Manipura is pushed too hard, every situation starts to look like a fight. Then you defend boundaries nobody attacked, prove your strength when what you need is closeness, and wear yourself out on your own readiness to battle.
If your questions are “Why do I know what I want and still not do it?”, “Why do I agree to things that drain me?”, “Where is my line?” or “What happens if I finally choose myself?”, Manipura has the floor.
Anahata is the middle of the system, and an enormous part of human life passes through it. Love, attachment, forgiveness, trust, loneliness, loss, closeness — all themes capable of making the most reasonable person surprisingly unreasonable.
With love we mix up different needs very easily. “I want to be loved” can mean a wish for closeness. It can also hide a fear of being left. It can be the longing for someone to finally see the person behind the strong front. It can be an attempt to get through another the security we do not yet feel on our own. So one and the same word — love — leads to entirely different inner stories.
When Anahata is strongly active, the question is rarely just “Will I have a relationship?” Deeper down others appear: “Can I love without losing myself?”, “Why do I allow the same kind of relationship again?”, “Can I forgive this?”, “How do I open up again after what I went through?” Those are the questions that reach the heart of the matter.
Vishuddha is the voice. It is bound up with the way you name your truth, with the words you speak, and with the ones you hold so long that you begin to wonder whether you still have the right to say them.
Silence does not always mean a shortage of words. Often it means far too many words circling around one single sentence. You can explain a situation to a friend for hours and still never arrive at “I am hurt”, “I am afraid”, “I do not want this any more” or “I want you to stay”. Those short sentences are usually the ones that cost the most effort.
When Vishuddha is active, life starts asking whether your words match what you feel. “How do I tell him?”, “Why am I silent?”, “What am I holding back for fear of losing this person?”, “Which truth do I already know and have not yet spoken?” are questions from this level. And yes, the conversation may be unpleasant. Silence has a price too, and we usually pay it for longer.
Ajna has to do with that particular sense that arrives ahead of the arguments. You know something and cannot yet explain how. Then the mind switches on, convenes a meeting, invites every fear, gathers other people's opinions, reviews five scenarios, and in the end you conclude that the first sense was probably the most accurate.
The difficulty with intuition is that it mixes easily with fear, hope and strong wanting. If you badly want someone to come back, every coincidence starts to look like a sign. If you are badly afraid of failing, every hesitation sounds like a warning. So the work at this level is about telling them apart: what comes quietly and clearly from within, and what is an echo of fear or of wanting.
If you often say “I knew it from the start”, “Why didn't I trust myself?”, “Is this intuition or fear?” or “Why am I looking for more confirmation when I already sense the answer?”, you are in conversation with Ajna.
Sahasrara has to do with meaning, and with the moment when the usual goals stop being enough. A person can have work, family, a home, plans, even success, and suddenly the question appears: “All right, and what does all of this mean for me?”
This conversation often comes after a large change, a loss, the end of a long chapter, or after something long dreamed of has actually happened. The odd part is that success can open the empty space too. You get what you wanted, you enjoy it, and then along comes a rather impertinent “And now where?”
At Sahasrara a person begins asking how they want to live, what they want to leave behind, what holds real value and which goals have grown too narrow. The questions sound like “Why am I in this period?”, “What has meaning for me?”, “What do I want to remain after me?” and “Where is my life taking me if I carry on like this?”
Look at the question that keeps returning. The one that shows up in the morning, walks into your head during work, sits down beside you in the evening and decides to call precisely before sleep, as though the day had not offered enough opportunities.
Go back over the last two or three weeks and finish one sentence: “What I ask myself most often is…” Write down the first thing that comes. No fine words, no spiritual editing, no attempt to sound wiser than you feel at that moment. Important questions rarely arrive with good style.
Then see which theme your sentence belongs to. If the thought is about home, money, the body and safety, the conversation is close to Muladhara. If you are circling around choice, action and boundaries, Manipura is probably strong. If your heart is leading the whole inner dialogue, Anahata has already switched on. If the question is about meaning, direction and the sense that your old life has grown too narrow, the conversation has moved to the upper levels.
A person rarely lives in only one theme. Two or three can be working at once. One shouts, the other whispers. And very often it is the quiet theme that explains why the loud one has become so insistent.
If you have read the seven levels and still are not sure which is yours, the test comes at it from the other side. It does not ask what you lack; it asks where your energy goes — because it drains away in the same place every time, and that place points to the level.
It works with images rather than questions. You choose one of seven: a letter, a tree with deep roots, two paths, water and fruit, an open door, two armchairs, a gate. Whichever pulls at you first is usually the right one — an image goes around the explanations we are used to answering with.
Each image leads to one of the seven levels. The letter is Vishuddha and the unsaid. The tree is Muladhara and safety. The two paths are Ajna and doubting your own sense. Water and fruit are Svadhisthana and postponed desires. The open door is Sahasrara and a direction that has grown too narrow. The two armchairs are Anahata and relationships taking up too much room. The gate is Manipura and the decisions you have not yet made.
The answer is long and practical: it explains why the energy drains precisely there, what is missing in this period, and leaves you seven to nine practices — writing, a voice diary, seven days of more precise words, returning to the body, the seed mantra of that level and a sound meditation. The article describes the seven conversations; the test tells you which one is leading yours.
Spiritual advice likes to sound universal. “Follow your intuition”, “trust the process”, “live in the present”. It sounds excellent right up until the person opposite you is wondering how to pay the rent in ten days. When the question is about safety, there has to be ground first. Philosophy can come after that.
The same holds in the other direction. If someone has a well-ordered life, a steady income and every visible thing in its place, yet feels empty inside, another list of tasks will not settle it. By then the theme is meaning, inner truth or direction.
That is why I begin with the level. Before we look for an answer, it is worth understanding what the question actually is. A great deal of the confusion comes from exactly this: we try to treat one theme with a remedy from another.
In the Game of the Soul the spiral holds sixty-four fields spread across seven levels — one for each chakra. You do not choose the level in advance. The field arrives according to your movement through the game and places your question in a particular layer.
If you land in Anahata, the conversation naturally turns towards relationships, closeness, forgiveness and the heart. Manipura will take the question towards will, decision, personal power and boundaries. Ajna will refract it through intuition and through what you already sense while your mind still wants proof. So one and the same question can receive a different reading at a different moment. What changes is the place you are asking from, and with it what matters for you to hear.
Every field also carries a thread — earthly, soul, or a crossing. The earthly one deals with visible life: the body, money, relationships, work, decisions, concrete events. The soul thread goes into the deeper layer — karma, memory, repeating patterns, bonds and sensations that carry a history. The crossing is where the two meet. That is often where you understand why one entirely concrete event carries such strong feeling, and why some stories refuse to stay mere incidents.
At the first level, start from the ground. Sleep, food, movement, order, money, home, a concrete plan, a conversation that restores the sense of support. Many people go looking for a complicated spiritual answer while their body has been asking for eight hours of sleep and dinner on time for three weeks. It is a good deal more practical than we are.
At the second level, ask yourself what brings you joy and when you last did something you wanted without turning it into a task. The body, creativity, music, water, dancing, food, closeness and pleasure can bring movement back where everything has become duty.
At the third level, choose one action. One decision, one boundary, one no, one phone call, one application, one step you keep postponing. Manipura understands actions far better than long inner speeches.
At the fourth level, look at your relationships and ask where there is love and where there is fear of loss. The two can resemble each other closely, especially when we are strongly attached. Writing a letter you will not even send can bring out far more truth than ten conversations held inside your head.
At the fifth level, find one sentence you keep postponing. Say it to the person, if the conversation is possible. If you are not ready yet, say it to yourself first and write it down. Words have a habit of growing less frightening once they finally take shape.
At the sixth level, turn down the noise. Write down your first sense before you ask friends, before you read signs, and before you start proving to yourself why you are wrong. Come back to what you wrote later. That is the easiest way to see when your inner voice was accurate and when fear was speaking louder.
At the seventh level, let the question stay large. There is no need to shrink it into a task for tomorrow. Write down what has meaning for you, how you want your life to look in a few years, what has already ended inside you and what is still waiting to begin. Meaning rarely arrives as a thunderclap of revelation. More often it gathers from small truths we have long been putting off.
The Body is the natural continuation at the first level, when you feel the body speaking louder than words and want to understand what lies behind the tiredness, the tension or the sensation that keeps returning.
Money suits the first and third levels, when the theme is security, income, work, direction, decision or personal power in financial matters.
Love carries on the Anahata conversation, when the question is about feelings, closeness, repeating relationships, fear of loss or the wish for a new love.
The Lineage is for the stories where you begin to notice that the same pattern lived before you. Repeating choices, relationships, fears and roles often have a longer biography than we would like.
Karma enters the soul thread, when a bond, an event or a repeating situation carries the sense of an old story and you want to look deeper into the cause.
The Celestial Teacher is the natural continuation at the sixth and seventh levels, when you want to see the period through the astrological picture and understand which larger themes are switching on in your life.
The most widespread modern model speaks of seven main chakras arranged along the axis of the body — from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. There are traditions with more energy centres, but the seven are the system most people know and use.
I would start from the theme that repeats. If you constantly think about safety, home, money and support, the attention is around the first level. If the question is about action, boundaries and strength, the third level is more active. If everything circles an unspoken conversation, the fifth has something to say. The word “blocked” can sound alarming, so I prefer to think of a chakra that is asking for more attention right now.
Yes. Life rarely sends only one theme at a time. You may have a question about money, a difficult boundary in love and a sense of having lost your direction, all together. Usually one theme leads and the others weave around it.
Every level has its own work. Meaning is not worth much if the body is exhausted and there is no ground to stand on. Safety is not the final goal either, if life has grown empty inside. In different periods we need different levels, and we return to them more than once.
The work depends on the theme. The lower levels like concrete action: sleep, movement, order, a financial plan, a boundary, a decision. The middle levels want an honest conversation, closeness and words. The upper levels are heard better through writing, silence, meditation and time away from other people's opinions. The best guide is the question you are actually living.
They can be used together as symbolic systems. In the Game of the Soul each of the sixty-four fields belongs to one of the seven levels, and the card is read through the theme of that level. So one and the same symbol can open a different conversation depending on where you have landed.
You can take them simply as seven areas of human life: safety, desire, will, love, voice, intuition and meaning. Even as that kind of map the system is useful, because it helps you name more precisely what is actually occupying you.
Begin with one sentence: “What I ask myself most often is…” Finish it exactly as it comes. No editing, no lovely words, no attempt to make the question more spiritual or more sensible. If the truth is “Will the money be enough?”, write precisely that. If it is “Why am I still thinking about him?”, that is enough too. If it is “What am I even doing with my life?”, better still — at least the question is honest.
Then see which of the seven levels it belongs to. This will not solve your life in five minutes, but it will give you something very valuable: the right place to start from.
Very often the answer is already close and the question has landed at the wrong level. Once you understand where it comes from, half the fog lifts. The other half can then be explored.
And if you want to see where exactly your question sits in the spiral of the Game of the Soul, come in and let the field open the next layer.
A test: where do you lose the most energy?Seven images and seven answers. Choose one and see where your energy drains away, which chakra stands behind it and which practices bring it back.
FILE 22:17 — The Case of the Missing AnswerA message at 22:17, deleted at 22:19. A torn photograph, a key with no door and two initials. Work the case and see how you look for the truth when someone refuses to give it.
Tarot spread “The File”Six files on the table and eleven positions in each. What is really happening, who knows more than they are saying, what is pulling you the wrong way and how the case ends.
Tarot spread “The Road to the Sacred”Six images and seven positions of five cards each. Where the pull towards a faraway place comes from, the real reason behind it, what you carry with you and who comes back.