Our story of complexity 

How we avoid creating and expressing

For a moment feel into something that you’ve been desiring to create or share in this world.  Find something specifically that feels like you haven’t quite arrived there yet in your ultimate creation or expression of it.  Something that you’ve been pursuing or waiting to have happen fully.  Maybe its a particular skill, something to do with your purpose/business, or maybe its full health or healing, or having a certain kind of relationship or even enlightenment.  

Ok now that you have something in mind notice how you feel about it.  Does it feel simple or hard?  My guess is that something about it feels hard to you or else you would have probably manifested or created it by now.  Notice what feels hard about it.  Does it seem impossible?  Really complex?  Like you don’t know how?  

There is this gap that occurs between things, skills, relationships, or states of being that we really desire and simultaneously don’t have yet.  In that gap lives our stories about why we can’t have or create what it is we desire.  This gap is often a mystery to us.  Most of us don’t even really know what’s in the gap, we just know that what we desire isn’t showing up, and over time we get frustrated and even resigned to it ever occurring.  

So take a moment again now, pause and notice what your relationship is to that thing that you desire.  What feels hard or complex about it?  What is it exactly that you don’t know?  Get really clear about what you feel like you don’t know.  Most of the time we don’t take the time to get really specific about what we think we don’t know.  Instead we hang out in this place of complete uncertainty or overwhelm about what we think we don’t know and we are not even being clear with ourselves about what we think we don’t know.  We live underneath this assumption that we don’t know how to create what we desire and therefore we can’t do it, even though we haven’t investigated what is so complex or hard about it.   Through investigation we can discover our unique story of complexity and see how it interferes or runs contrary to what we desire to create.    

The story continues…

Coming from not having what you need

One of the reasons that we go to complexity is that the mind values complexity more than simplicity.  Complexity seems to have more significance than simplicity.  If its simple than its boring and our stimulation seeking mind wants more activity and drama.  Its like only if its really hard/complex and we overcome that hardness, then its all worth doing.  There is nothing wrong with this, just realize that it creates a gap.  There is also nothing wrong with the gap, its really more about how we show up within the gap.  Do we shut down, go unconscious and assume we simply can’t create what we want?  Or, through investigation, do we see what is our own made up story and also what it is we actually don’t know, getting clear about both, and then seek out support for those things we truly don’t know?  This is the value of diving into the gap.

One other very prevalent thing that lives in the gap is the story that we don’t have what we need to create or do what we want.  We could have done all the schooling and training in the world, or have all the financial resources, or be the most fit/beautiful person and still feel like we don’t have what we need.  We come from a place of lack within ourselves.  When we come from lack inside of ourselves we will always give power to things or other people.  The new shiny object has the power, or the person over there has the power, or the new technique, tool, diet, fad, etc. has the power.  The power never is inside of you.   

A strategy that many people use to not feel this inner sense of lack is that they will tense up, numb or always look to the future for something to happen rather than seeing it right now.  This is one of the primary reasons that our desires do not more instantaneously manifest, because we are always putting them in the future sometime.  Our stories go something like this, “I’ll heal once I get this” or “This will be accomplished once get this one thing” or “It will happen later or next time”.  If we instead allowed ourselves to feel the threat that what we desire might not manifest, that lack of self in someway may exist and be revealed, we would be able to drop the tension that lack produces, be present and bring what we desire into the moment rather than as a future destination.  

Inside the gap lives the stories of complexity and lack.  What if instead you now approach your desires knowing their simplicity and knowing you have everything you need inside of you to create them?  How does that change how you feel and how does it change your relationship with your desires?  Go forth and play!

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado