Sanctuary for Heart Magic

SOMATIC GATEWAYS TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS

Why we stay asleep

Studies suggest that only about 5% of our awareness is conscious.  This means that we are unaware of 95% of what is occurring in any given moment.  I feel that 5% seems generous and suspect that we are actually aware of less, perhaps only in the 1% range.  Either way this equates to the fact that we are not aware of much.  Add to this the absolute enormous amount of distraction and inability for most to focus for more then 3-5 seconds, and it is like we are sleep walking through life.  Our eyes are open, our bodies are moving, but who’s home?  We run on automatic pilot, not requiring conscious presence or the use of our awareness to navigate our day to day life.  Well it might be “easier” to not have to think, be present or consciously aware, there are also costs.  Costs such as feeling powerless, confused, not knowing who or what we are and being unmotivated.  The result is monotony, stagnation and the experience of just getting through each moment.  

You might wonder why this matters.  I mean who cares if we are living mostly asleep?  Most aren’t aware enough to care and don’t even know that they can be more awake.  We stay asleep and maintain the status quo of what we know.  The curiosity is why?  I believe it mostly has to do with energy dynamics.  It takes energy to growth, to move and to be more awake.  As a super basic analogy think about how much less energy it takes for you sleep at night then it does to go for a run or even to brush your teeth or take shower.  Sleep requires no energy at all.  Basic life activities, that are mostly run on automatic, take some energy.  Movement, that strenuously engages your body, takes more energy.  To learn something, grow and create takes a LOT of energy.  That level of energy makes us rise.  Arise, awaken, lift up and elevate.  Think about a seedling that pops out of the dark soil into the light of sun.  It takes a ton of energy for it sprout up.  If it never does because it doesn’t reach for the sun (it’s energy source) then it doesn’t produce or create anything through its form.  Rather it lives in the dark, not actualizing what it was made for.  

One might say that most humans are like seedlings, living in the dark and unable to see anything around them.  Many are not reaching towards the light, but instead keeping themselves seemingly safe inside of a very, very, very limited awareness.   How do we initiate the natural movement towards the sun and into conscious awareness?  We need to reconnect to our source of energy and let it lift us.  What is this source you ask?  Well it’s the heart of course.  We need to come into caring, feeling, investing energy in ourselves, in others, this planet, the universe and life itself.  We are collectively and personally out of touch with care.  This disconnection is the root of all suffering.  The result of it is the lack of energy we feel and the tolerance we’ve built up to staying asleep. 

THE BODY AS ENTRY 

Pain as the catalyst

Now that we understand the mechanisms at play, the question is how do we reconnect to care and to the heart of ourselves that lives so beautifully within the center our very own body.  Your body is a reservoir for the unconscious.  It operates nearly entirely without your conscious awareness.  This vessel contains a million tiny little gateways into the subconscious.  The subconscious isn’t in some distant land.  It’s right here, and your body is a portal.  How do you find and enter the portals?  Understand that your body is telling a story, its just that most don’t listen.  The story it tells speaks through sensations and if you open your mind you will find the doorways into awareness.  Each sensation gives you an opportunity to discover something that is currently unconscious to you.  Often when people attempt to make contact with their body they think they are supposed to already know what its saying, even before they start to listen.  They  have so many concepts and give up before they try.  The whole point in listening is because you don’t yet know, and knowing takes time, attunement, curiosity and well, care.  

I want to clarify one thing.  It’s not that the body is this solid thing that is holding a bunch of subconscious material and that by listening to it you fix the body.  That is a mechanistic perspective.  Rather it is more that the body is dynamic, fluid and brimming with life.  Life, which is a vital energy source that is organized to learn, blossom and actualize itself.  It is this aliveness that you connect to when you listen.  You awaken to its sound and integrate it into your conscious awareness.  When you aren’t listening you live disembodied, all while having a body to tend to and with.  You relate to the body as a nuisance rather than as a source of energy for your self-actualization.  Your body is not a problem to solve, it is a living, breathing mechanism of growth and expansion.  You have a physical body for a reason.  It is your soul’s current  organizational suit and the best form for it’s desired learning.

Most people have either a hate relationship with the physical body, or no relationship at all.  However when we connect our consciousness to the consciousness of this body we awaken ourselves in and through the physical.  If we don’t, then we live mostly asleep, unaware and not knowing how to actualize ourselves through physical form.  Pain, happens to be one of the best ways to get our attention.  So when we are sleep walking through our life, and our soul wants to wake up inside of this body, one of the swiftest ways to draw us towards our body and into wakefulness is physical pain.  It is by no means the only way, it is however an effective way.  We tend to pay attention to pain.  It gets us to tune in a little bit.  There are some that will override it still, but the soul is persistent.  It has a mission and a purpose.  It knows why it’s here, even when you don’t.  It does its best to help you remember.  Even in the dredges of darkness, in the deep unconscious, light can penetrate.  Think of pain as the light.  An attempt to illuminate that which you currently can’t see.  

Pain, in all of it’s manifestations, is not the enemy.  It’s here to show you something, to help you reconnect & find the center of yourself.  On the other side of pain is care.  Pain has the capacity to wear down our defenses, wake us up and split us open so that we can see and hear ourselves again.  While we are largely pain adversed and avoidant of discomfort, this is our biggest block in becoming more consciously awake.  The more we avoid pain and seek comfort the less energy we have to wake ourselves up.  With this the body breaks down and becomes uninhabitable for our soul.  When we move towards pain, eventually we move through it and this gives us access to an incredible amount of energy and vitality.  This energy elevates us, our consciousness rises, awakens & our soul becomes actualized through our physical form.

Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, Subtle Energetic Chiropractor utilizing Network Spinal & Integrative Somatic Healing, Sanctuary for Heart Magic, Boulder, Colorado