Chapter 17 Life Meditation Part Two- Opening the Portal of the Solar Plexus

 

The practice of life meditation centered on the solar plexus has been a deeply absorbing journey for me, extending over many years. Now, reflecting on this process some forty years after the original channeling from the fellowship of the River which I have written about before, I find myself drawn again to the River’s foundational instructions. This renewed focus continues to inspire me, inviting a return to the solar plexus as a core point of meditation. The solar plexus, as the River described, a place of a vast vortex inwards, but also outwards into connection with others.

Through this meditation, I am transported into a state of peace—my mind becomes open, acutely aware, and attuned to a higher vibrational level of existence. I experience a profound sense of power rooted in this center. It is not a power exercised over the environment, objects, resources, or other people, but rather a profound connection to Source. This connection manifests as vitality and a sense of emptiness that is neither defined by questions nor answers, yet is radiant and filled with light.

When to Practice the Meditation

I recommend engaging in the life meditation on the solar plexus, particularly during moments when you feel powerless, hopeless, or unable to act—those times when you sense a loss of direction or purpose, which I refer to as "losing the thread." This meditation is excellent for those who have depression, anhedonia and anxiety. It will ground you, into yourself and into a vaster sense of your consciousness which is a feeling of safety, and coming home.

Meditation Preparation and Process

Begin the meditation by sitting quietly, following any personal ritual you use to become grounded and present. As you settle in, start with deep, conscious breaths. Visualize life energy entering through the root of your spine, rising upward until it reaches the solar plexus.

Once the energy arrives at your solar plexus, pause for several breaths. At this point, sense or imagine energy radiating outward in a circular, clockwise motion. If you are left-handed, visualize the energy spiraling in an anticlockwise direction. Remain with this vivid image of energy flowing outward from the solar plexus—the very core of your being, the "waist" that divides and connects the lower, earthly chakras and the higher, more spiritual and emotional centers. It is important for all chakras to be connected and balanced, as this integration supports joy, good health, and meaningful connections with oneself, others, and the world.

Integrating the Imagery

After holding this image for at least seventeen seconds, gently release it. Maintaining the visualization for this duration helps transfer the body experience into long-term memory, allowing this state of being to become a habitual part of your life rather than a fleeting or rare experience.

There are many meditations which take us to the heart area. However I invite you to focus on the solar plexus instead. This is a more powerful place to focus because the solar plexus is a gateway, a portal between the lower earthy elements of our being and the higher more emotional, more spiritual aspects of our being. And at this junction there is an opening into All That Is. Focusing on this area during meditation can lead to profound changes and deeper self-awareness.

Therapeutic Applications

In therapeutic settings, clients often identify the solar plexus as the place where difficult emotions such as grief, loss, and anger are held. Encouraging individuals to focus on this area, rather than the heart, can be lead to insights that a heart meditation will not allow. The heart can become overwhelmed with emotion unless those feelings are processed through the solar plexus first. This approach supports a more balanced and manageable experience.

Benefits for Emotional Well-being

Solar plexus meditation is particularly effective for addressing anxiety, depression, and feelings of victimization. By setting aside the narrative of distressing thoughts and focusing on the center of being—connected to Source and vast energy—you can cultivate vitality and renewed strength.

Exploring Decision-Making

Deeper inquiry into the solar plexus will reveal this is the area where decisions are made, the store house for will, determination and resilience. Once  recognized as a path forward that is your authenic soul path, then decisions will become effortless. Gazing into its center, you can witness all things arising, yet it remains mysterious and unfathomable.

With this practice, I offer gratitude for the wisdom handed down by those who came before, revealing the shared nature of our journeys across generations.

Here is the original transcript from the channeling delivered in September 1985, Session 18. This session followed the instructions to focus the life meditation on my knees.

River: We suggest now focusing on the solar plexus.

Julia: I have been drawn to focusing on the waist lately.

River: That is a good area, however, your focus needs to be moved upward a distance. For it is here, in the solar plexus, which is the real waist, waist meaning “division between one place and another”, a joining between dark and light, between male and female, death and life, whatever opposites, it is here within this area that being and non-being, your life and what is not your life, all memories of the past are held. On a personal basis, it is also the division between body and mind /spirit.

Focusing here then, is a much more difficult task, for you must go through the layers, layers, and more layers, to find the emptiness that you found within the internal, moving parts of your knee.

In the solar plexus, you will not be moving through movement, but accumulated layers of wants and memories, anf between mind and the mind that has not been chosen, but is there for you as the fertile place for all beings. In other words, within the solar plexus is locked all of time, all possibilities of being the Self.

Sinking down through the solar plexus will then be like sinking down through myriads and myriads of flashing life journeys. Until finally the vast Otherness of the All is reached. For what you are finding within the silence of the solar plexus is the All. It is the same All that you will find in the stone, in the tree, in water, air, in the earth itself. If there is a God, it is centred there in the solar plexus.

In a very real sense, the mind is a mere mechanism of the solar plexus. This may come as a shock to you, to all humans who staunchly worship and support holiness of the mind and its functions as being the governor of all that is, and does the feeling and thinking. However, on some levels, this is a great fallacy. For in the solar plexus is the deeper governor, the deeper master.

For it is from this area that threads emerge outwards into time and space, personal and non personal, and join you with all things. It is not the mind. Therefore, we would ask you as a practice this next week, to bring life into the solar plexus. In this way, doing the usual clearing procedures, excluding the environment that you are sitting in, the day, and the worries that surround you. Clear chakras from the first to the last, from the bottom up to the solar plexus. Then keeping the thinking part of you alert and vibrant, move into this area as if moving into a strange land, as if exploring a new planet. You are the sitter, who's awakening into a strange land. Move with your mind through the solar plexus, through, and through and through, through the great vastness, until you come to an uprising pool of light. There feel aliveness and vibrancy. Then rest there, be there, as a beacon of light. Coming out of the meditation set up a circular pattern of energy, so you draw in this vastness, this ground of all things, up to you, and radiating out from you, to fill the whole body, in concentric outward circles into the room, your home, community, and finally the whole world.

Julia: how should I see this circular movement as I go into meditation-as a circle or as a sphere?

River: We would suggest that you see it as a sphere, see it as a movement that goes out in all directions, but the flow is clockwise. It is spreading out from you, do not think of the solar plexus as being in front of the body but in the deep centre of your body.

We are asking you to go into the deeper part of yourself, that is deeper than the mind, and has potential and intent to be all things, and to be in turn, the All. It is the spiritual centre, in many ways, of all of your lives. It is a wonderous thing, it is your personal function, and it is also the meeting place of time and space, sentience an nonsentience. Beings are all connected at this place.

That is why it is such an easy place to accumulate negative energy, negative thought forms, pain, emotional pain and harm. Are there questions?

Julia: Why is pain so easily accumulated there?

River: It is as if an empty form is held there, empty blueprints of form. From the empty forms,  comes great power to create power, and it is from the emptiness that great power originates. It is the well of the thought form, taking form. With anger, with sadness, with despair, as a thought form, it is immediately manifested at as reality within this area.

The solar plexus does not have as it were, a way of judging, or a way of critically analysis. It does not differentiate between what is real and what is not real. In many ways it obeys your being. If your centre is alive, then it responds with accumulated obedience and being. Many individuals develop almost separate entities of self from their solar plexus. When one begins to meditate, you become aware of these accumulated memories of pain, desires and needs, uncomfortableness. It is here that meditation gradually releases them, and releases and releases.

We are talking about long-term cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. So closely linked that there is no time between, there is no place that one can say- it began here, it ended here. Life after life is not begin, end, begin, end... There is no place where one could put a finger between one life and the next. No place between this thought and the next-and it is here that the thought and the intent become manifest.

You ask, “Why is it here?”. It is from cause and effect, cause and effect. The great beauty of the net is cause and effect, cause and effect, no beginning, no end, constant movement of action, action, becoming.

For some, the healing relation of cause and effect within the Great Net is an upward striving towards wholeness, towards knowing the Self. As the individual becomes more willing, needing to evolve, there is before the actual search begins, often great crisis, both in health, emotionally and physically. Or the individual is born in areas that have great difficulties which push the individual towards growth. It is with their agreement, of course, to continue the search. We are speaking of “The Search”, this search of being of the Self.

Therefore, individuals who experience or accumulate more in the solar plexus, although it is uncomfortable in manifesting in a physical life style way, are on the steps before becoming aware. They year to bcome more tahn a life lived from A to B, becoming more aware of the interconnectedness of all beings, that they are not alone, they are not creatures separate from all others.

It is as if these challenges are a holy sign that they are now opening the door, stepping into the light. In this way it is not right to say, pity those in great pain, those in great physical distress or great emotional distress. It is their journey and their way of forcing themselves to be more. Is this understood?

Julia: is this why we were born in these times? To force ourselves to grow?I

River:One of the reasons. You, personally  had no experience in that kind of extreme crise. It does acquire many lifetimes to accumulate the slow effects of pressure. However, you have experienced emotional turmoil that has required you to face the Self, to begin the journey. And now it does not seem like a series of crisis, does it?

Julia: A series?

River: Each time the mind is uncomfortable it places the body in a crisis

Julia: Can you explain more.

River: We are merely saying that at this point in your journey, looking back, the crises will not look like accidental crises, but as a much a willed, joyfully jumped into set of circumstances created by the Self.

Julia: It looks like that now?

River: It looks like that now.

Julia: Yes, but at the time it didn't make sense.

River: Exactly, and that is the joy of the Self not knowing this Self. There is some accumulation required to reach that point, and that is the work!

It is also the work of the Self to be alert and aware. Willy nilly, the mind and body squiggles away from being alert and aware and alive. Is your next work clear?

Julia yes: I will focus on my solar plexus for the next week during my life meditations and report back to you. Thank you.

River: Greetings joy in the journey.

 

After transcribing these teachings, I returned to the difficult idea that the crises in my life were, at some level, chosen by my higher self for learning and growth. Holding this perspective does not negate right or wrong. Many events in my past were genuinely harmful, caused by the irresponsible actions of others. While I can now forgive and understand the broader contexts in which they occurred, it remains essential to first acknowledge their impact, discern harm from right action, and fully feel the emotional truth of those experiences. Only then can they be integrated through a non‑dualist understanding.

For example, my first husband abandoned me and our six‑month‑old son, leaving us without support. Forgiveness came only after recognizing the deep harm this caused, including years of hardship and humiliation. Over time, I came to see how this crisis shaped me—strengthening my independence, compassion, and resolve. I vowed never to treat others as I had been treated and to support those, especially parents with children, who face abandonment through emotional irresponsibility, violence, war, or deprivation.

These crises became the foundation of my life purpose. Through meditation on the solar plexus, I experience a deep inner power—a kind of north star of consciousness—that draws me toward greater unfolding of Self. The intellect circles this power, while intuition naturally listens.