If you ask someone to draw a sketch of an Indian Girl, most probably they will draw any girly face and then draw a Bindi (sort of a red dot), on her forehead. 😀 In reality, if you go to any Indian city, you will be disappointed to see, that not every girl, wears this red dot on her forehead. 🙂

I couldn’t find out, who started this tradition of wearing Bindi? But, I do found out why it started, and what is it’s actual significance?

Now a days, mostly north Indians women wear Bindi as a symbol of their marital status. A Red Bindi is mostly worn by married women on their forehead. Widowed and unmarried women don’t wear Bindi. Even if they do, they wear a Black Bindi or Sandalwood Bindi. But, these customs are not followed religiously everywhere, and I think it’s for the best, because Bindi is not supposed to show your marital status or your fashion statement, but rather your spiritual self.

Before we go about exploring Bindi, lets first see the importance of place where we apply it. Bindi is applied at the center of the forehead just between the eyebrows. Why this place is important?

The position directly behind the center of forehead is of Ajna Chakra, the Sixth Chakra. This is also known as the position for the Third eye. Sixth Chakra is the highest chakra in our physical body. If you remember my several posts on Chakras, the highest Chakra, Seventh Chakra is rather placed in our outer body, also called as our spiritual body, just above our head. Thus our Sixth Chakra, Ajna Chakra, is the highest center of Spirituality in our physical body.

Sixth Chakra is for command, intuition, intelligence, as it represents mind, knowledge, and also connection between our physical self to spiritual self. Sometimes it is also referred as the gateway to attaining spiritual energy and Moksha.

In earlier times, when people used to pray, they used to awaken this Ajna Chakra, through their Kundalini Shakti. In a very simple term, during praying or more specifically Meditation, this place being the gateway for energy, becomes active, and as Kundalini passes through it, it becomes hot. Focusing on your Sixth Chakra also create headaches for some time. To calm this effect, and cool it, people started putting Kumkum and Sandalwood on their forehead, in the form of a Bindi or Tilak. Both of these have a cooling effect.

Now a days, it would be very rare if anyone has this capability to awaken their Kundalini Shakti to such a level as to took it to Ajna Chakra. But this practice of putting Kumkum and sandalwood Bindi, just before praying started based on this basic notion. Also, to show importance of this super dynamic place filled with heightened spirituality, we place a mark of respect and devotion. It is also a representation for the Third eye.

So more than Bindi, it’s the place where we apply Bindi, is of utmost importance. More power to our Ajna Chakra.

 

Keep watching this space because soon we will talk about significance of color in Bindi. Till then Happy Reading, Happy Learning. 🙂

 

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