OPEN TO RECEIVE 

Re-finding our natural state

Most humans are living as a closed unit or entity, perceiving themselves to be separate and distinct from others and life.  This closed-off-ness is elusive to most, but that doesn’t make its existence any less present.  Closed-off-ness is akin to protection.  A way to keep things, people, pain, pleasure or support out or away.  When our system is closed our ability to take things in or receive is impaired.  Even if all the love in the world showed up on our doorstep we aren’t able to perceive or receive if our system is closed. 

A closed system leads to a experience of disconnection.  That disconnection can be felt as disconnection from ourselves, from others, from support, from guidance, from spirit or God, from abundance, from partnership, from love, from anything and everything we desire.  We might wonder why we don’t have or experience the things that we want and yet can’t see how we aren’t open to receive them.  Closed-off-ness is hard, tough and pushes away, while receiving requires softness, invitation and welcoming in.  

It isn’t hard to be open and receive, in fact openness is our natural state.  The investigation or work is in discovering where we are pushing out or away rather than including and inviting in.  There are many reasons why we don’t receive or why we close our system off.  At some point we might have felt pain or hurt that our tender heart didn’t want to feel so it turned in or cold, and never or only selectively reopened.  We may feel we don’t deserve or aren’t worthy to receive because we learned somewhere that we have to earn everything and nothing can simply be given to us.  We might feel that it is selfish to receive.  We may have had experiences of people not showing up or being there for us so we learned that we had to do everything ourselves and became doers rather than receivers.  

You can see that breaches of trust, no one being there, disappointment, reaching without return, and not having our inherent worth reflected to us all create situations where we make a decision (conscious or not) to close ourselves off to others, ourselves and the very life force that keeps alive.  We then struggle with a sense of darkness, disconnect, and powerlessness.  This state of being is so “normal” to us that we actually think it to be normal when it’s not.   

UNSELECTIVE RECEIVING 

It’s worth it

In order to have an open system we must receive all things fully and equally.  Selective receiving, while a step, still lends to only a partially open system.  If we desire to dissolve our bubble of illusionary separation and distinction, and participate with the one field, the one being that we are, then partiality won’t cut it.  This means we have to receive the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, the attuned and the mis-attuned, the hard and the soft.  This is the real work.  This is the opening of your heart to all it.

How do you open your heart this wide?  The truth is your heart is already infinitely wide and includes everything inside of it.  There is nothing you need to “do” to open it wider.  Instead you only need to accept, allow and feel everything that is already contained inside of it.  Your unwillingness to feel and accept what is contained, held and living inside of your own heart will keep you from experiencing loving in your every day moment to moment existence.  There is nothing else that will keep you out of the experience of love except your own unwillingness to receive everything equally.  

I invite you to investigate your relationship to receiving.  Notice where you are willing to receive and where you are not willing to receive.  Notice where you push away and where you allow in.  Notice where you feel in the dark or disconnected and where you feel illuminated and connected.  Notice where you do and where you be.  You must develop awareness of where you are not open in order to be able to recognize where/what you are not willing to receive. 

Receiving is a gift.  When you receive others you receive the gift of them.  When you receive yourself you recognize the precious treasure that you are and your worth can never be questioned again.  When you receive support and guidance you learn through others learning.   When you receive yourself you teach others what you know yourself to be.  You come to recognize that there is nothing you need to protect yourself from because everything is you.  The only protection needed is to love, to receive what is exactly as it is.

To be open is to be in communication with all.  While there are times where doors are to be closed, or communication is to be lost, at some point all must come back into communication along the journey.  Nothing is or could ever truly be disconnected, no matter how dark or distorted it seems.  To recognize, to see, to receive the essence of what is allows and invites it back home into its remembrance.  In time everything and everyone remembers what it is, that it never left home and was never apart.  The journey of peeling back your layers of closed-off-ness and seeming separation is worth it.  Even if the journey seems long, treacherous, never ending and impossible at times, it is worth it.  To return to your natural open state of total and complete union with all is worth it.

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