GETTING TO PERFECT  

Attempting to create perfection

There is a constant stride in the direction of perfection.  We are always looking towards betterment, progress and more pleasant or pleasurable feelings and sensations so we can experience that flow of perfection.  Perfection being that state of being we experience when nothing seems to be out of alignment and all is going better than we planned.  When we perceive that we aren’t making progress, or we don’t feel as we’d like too, or life doesn’t appear to be working as we want, we try to find our way back into perfection by changing our environment or ourselves.  We attempt to get to perfect or somehow create it, rather than seeing perfect in what is appearing.  

The difference between attempting to create perfection rather than seeing the perfection in what is already here, is the difference between striving to get somewhere and being present now.  While this difference might seem slight to you, or it may only seem like semantics, I assure you that the two are quite different experiences of life.  While striving to get to perfection can feel rewarding, and even provide a sense of purpose, meaning and worth for you, it ends only in the continual chase to the next and next and next thing that we attempt to make perfect or right.  When we view through the lens of perceiving perfection to be lacking from any moment, we do not see what is already here.  Rather we view lack and project that onto our “reality” or life experience.  

So what does lack projected onto life experience look like?  Well it probably looks and feels a lot like your life.  It’s the feeling of wanting something, even if it’s small, to be different than it is.  This includes wanting yourself to be different in some way., including where you are on your “spiritual” journey.  It’s feeling slightly or overtly restless, and like you just can’t fully relax.  It’s hoping something will change and fear that it won’t.  It’s the feeling that circumstances decide how you feel about life, rather than you deciding how you feel about it.  It’s worrying about the state of anything including your own internal state of feeling, sensing or being.  It’s feeling doubtful.  Probably 1,000 times a day we have subtle flavors of these aspects creep into our mind.  Rarely do we freely accept every single thing that is in our experience.  Rather we let things grab us.  We don’t like what is so we resist it.  We then feel like life is not working, when really it’s simply our perspective and relationship to life which isn’t working for us, or at least it isn’t producing the experience we desire, which is typically freedom, presence and peace. 

RESTING INTO VS.  RESISTING LIFE

Gnawing fear of things undone

The heart of most people’s desire is to rest into life.  What we have however is more frequently an experience of sometimes resting and sometimes resisting.  There can be confusion about what resting into life means or is.  Often there is some fear that it means inaction, or even deeper to the root, that it means purposelessnesss, lack of personal value or that we won’t get what we want.  Being rested into life does not mean action or inaction, rather it is a way we be while engaged with activity or when non-engaged.  When we are rested into life we are simply being ourselves while doing and seeing that whatever is appearing is exactly perfect just as it is in this moment.  Rather than trying to achieve something, or get somewhere with our doing, we are more focused on our state of being while we do the doing or while activity is occurring.

This is a radical shift for most people.  We swim in the field of achievement, making progress, and getting somewhere other than where we are.  We also tend to live with the background gnawing fear that things will be left undone.  Most people like for things to feel resolved rather than in process.  We like the stuff of life to feel organized, in its place and complete.  When we don’t feel those things we attempt to create those feelings through the doing of stuff.  We try to get it all done so that we can rest, rather than come from rest and then get things done.  See when we come from rest we are present to the moment.  We may be doing some activity, but we are not attached to the activity going anywhere because we are simply present to it.  This allows us to experience freedom.  Freedom that is always there, but which is covered up underneath our sense that we need to get something done or finished.  

From this perspective you can see that it really isn’t about the activity or what happens or doesn’t happen.  You can also see that things will happen and get done regardless of how you be inside of them.  You must only ask yourself the question of how do you want to be in life?  How we be determines our experience of life.  Two people can experience the exact same circumstances, yet have completely different experiences of them.  The only difference is how they be.  Do you rest into life or do you resist it.  You get to decide for you.  Life, activity, movement and creation will keep happening endlessly and persistently regardless of how you feel about it.  The beautiful thing is that you get to choose how you feel about it.  That is freedom.  That is your free will.  In fact this sense of freedom is often where you are trying to get to with all of your doing.  You are attempting to get to that feeling of freedom, of liberated joy, of fully embracing what is, so why not just start there.  Then go about with all of your doing.  It’s logical.  It makes sense, way more sense than the way we tend to operate.  

Perfection is here now.  There is no where to get.  Movement, activity and life will continue.  Appearances, sensations, feelings, structures, bodies, and all things will change forms.  Despite, and with, all the changing forms you can choose to rest into what is.  It will open you into now and into the experience of aliveness and yum even when you don’t like or prefer what is appearing.  

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