EXCRUCIATING RHYTHMS 

Root of real happiness

We all have times when we want our lives to look, feel or be different than they are.  Where what is showing up is undesirable and not our preferred reality.  These sometimes excruciating moments and rhythms feel like they throw us under the bus.  Heaviness, ungrounded, sadness, anger and frustration is the state of being we experience.  Sometimes a sense of hopelessness or powerlessness ensues.  Our insight feels limited and we are low on appreciation because all we can see and feel is what we don’t want.  

When we find ourselves here often our number one agenda is to attempt to get out of these rhythms as quickly as possible.  We try to make the situation different, change it, get it over with, run from it, create something around it or somehow resolve it.  We hate the discomfort, difficulty and sense of doom we feel when we are here.  By in large we are pain avoiders and pleasure seekers.  When we feel pleasure (gain) we like our experience and when we feel pain (loss) we try to escape our experience.  The issue here is that we become chasers of all the feel good stuff and think that our happiness lives inside of these experiences.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  When we try to increase these pleasurable/preferable experiences and minimize the un-preferable ones there is a level of constant underlying management of life and we are never really present.  This mode of operation provides temporary/illusionary happiness that is circumstantial and always leave us disappointed and unfilled.  

The truth is that happiness lives inside of us not inside of our experiences.  This may be tricky for you to really get.  You may wonder how you could possibly experience joy while everything in your life (or the world) is not going according to your desires.  While you feel pain or have disease, while others suffer, while things look messy or are unsettled, while you don’t have the possessions, relationships, or money that you want, while things appear to limit your freedoms, while your friends or family members lose it, while personal and world crises persist.  See the thing is that we tend to blame circumstances for our state of being.  When circumstances are nice then “I choose to feel good”.  When circumstances not nice than “I choose to feel bad”.  Most people don’t realize that they are choosing in this way even though it is so apparently and undeniable clear.  When you give your power (aka your state of being) over to circumstances the result is feelings of disempowerment, randomness, and hope for something better that will shift the situation so that you feel like you can shift your own self.  Your power is in the appearance of life rather than being rested in you.  This will always lead to unhappiness because the only true happiness is when we are rested in our own power.   

ACCEPTING THE UNDESIRABLE 

Ending the pain/pleasure cycle

As much as this might come as a surprise to you, your wants, preferences or desires are not always what’s right or meant to happen.  People aren’t always supposed to be nice to you, consider you, like you or appreciate you.  Things aren’t always meant to run smoothly.  You are not always meant to get what you want.  It’s simply the way that it is.  In the new age spiritual culture where we are often so focused on “living our dreams” and “manifesting our reality” it may seem contradictory for me to say that maybe your dreams or preferences aren’t always what is the most important.  However when we get so wrapped up in the story of ourselves and the importance of what we think is important we miss the boat and aren’t connected to the larger rhythms of life.  We start to try to control the narrative (i.e. control our life) and simultaneously suck the energy out of it.  We can get easily lost inside of our own agendas and begin to attach to outcome.  No matter how well intended, pure or altruistic our ambitions are they still may not be what is meant to be.  This can be incredibly hard to accept.  

Accepting the undesirable is not something we readily do.  Again we are not big fans of feeling pain, particularly of the emotional nature.  However when we take a moment to pause and feel the underlying hurt, pain, loss or frustration of life, people and circumstance not being how we want them to be we allow the energy to express.  Rather than binding that energy in the form of resistance, tension, holding our breath, and bracing our bodies, the energy gets to move and we get to feel rather than be stuck in our resistance to feeling.  When we feel we instantly become clearer and more present.  It doesn’t mean that the situation has changed, but it does mean that we have changed.  We have allowed where we previously were resisting.  

In allowing that which doesn’t feel good we end the cycle of chasing pleasure and avoiding pain.  We come to experience what its like to be present no matter what is occurring.  We realize that pain and pleasure, preferable and non-preferable, desired and not desired are all simply transient.  They come and go.  They will always come and go.  We can’t speed it up or slow it down.  We can only allow ourselves to drop into whatever rhythm is present, excruciating or exuberant.  

We will like some things and dislike other things.  This will mostly likely continue for the rest of your incarnation.  Accepting the entire range of experience rather than attempting to control the experiences allows you to develop a depth of presence and stability of beingness.  That stability becomes the container for everything to simply have its experience.  Its the end of fixing or controlling anything.  No agenda.  Just pure, unadulterated freedom and true love.  There is nothing more powerful than this because everything is included just as it is.  Nothing pushed out, pushed away or gotten rid of.  You are with it all, inviting of it all, whether or not it is your preference.  Even though sensations, feelings or things may still be present that you don’t like or wish were different, you no longer resist their presence.  They are allowed to be as they are and as such you are free.

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