This is what I'm learning about lately. Among... many other things. But we'll start here. I think I must have a very active solar plexus. Often when I talk to someone about deep things--someone that scares me, or deep things that scare me, about whom, or about which I feel passionately--I feel a very physical, inward shaking earthquake. It always begins in the region depicted here as the solar plexus, and emanates out from there to cause tension in my my neck and head, shaking in my limbs and extremities, and general discomfort.

From Wikipedia entry "Chakra": "Key issues governed by Manipura [solar plexus] are issues of personal power, fear, anxiety, opinion-formation, introversion, and transition from simple or base emotions to complex. Physically, Manipura governs digestion, mentally it governs personal power, emotionally it governs expansiveness, and spiritually, all matters of growth."

Fear--anxiety--simple to complex emotions. I feel this issue has something to do with me holding onto my own vulnerability. That shaking, tension, rigidity is my fear of letting go, opening up, my introversion fighting against the clear and present danger facing it: that my very deep-seated inwardness is about to experience a mighty change.

And so there are earthquakes. Which as we've recently seen can be destructive indeed. But I also believe some earthquakes are cleansing, provide new territory to discover, and if we are prepared, an opportunity for re-building, starting afresh...

The danger of earthquakes is when there are tall unstable structures with questionable foundations, in which we live our precious, vulnerable lives. I think my earthquakes are trying to topple those structures. I just hope that I am outside in the open sun when they do.