Sanctuary for Heart Magic

THE EASE OF SELF-CONTENTMENT

Lasting fulfillment

It seems as though we are all striving. Striving to get somewhere, know something and to have more than what we currently do. There is an unrest and incompletion that lives within us that can’t settle or be satisfied enough to have lasting fulfillment. We might feel accomplished in one moment, only to feel beyond the eight ball the next. There is always someone or something we can compare ourselves to that will demonstrate to us that we are not meeting the expectations or goals we have set for ourselves or that we think we were made for. It seems there is not enough of something. Not enough time, money, resources, skills, connections or capacity. 

How do we feel content with ourselves while simultaneously continuing to grow and create? The answer is in where we come from inside of ourselves. When we come from lack there will be a push inside of us that can never be fulfilled. When we start from shortage we will end in shortage, even when we’ve accomplished what we have set out to do. It won’t be enough. However when we start from fullness we will end in fullness, even when we’ve haven’t accomplished what we’ve set out to do. It’s a paradox that can only be lived in order to understand.

For a moment imagine yourself completely fulfilled. 

See and feel yourself having done everything you need to do in this lifetime. Completion of your purpose and mission has been actualized and there is nothing left except for you to enjoy this moment and each one that follows. Notice what this feels like in your body even if it doesn’t feel totally true to you yet. Simply register that felt sense for a few breaths. Now imagine that you haven’t done what you need to do. Think of your lists, all of the activities, projects, appointments and big picture purposes that are waiting for your time and attention. See what other people around you have done and all the things they seem to be accomplishing that you aren’t. Incompletion surrounds you and there is an energy of frantic hopelessness deep at the core. How will you it get all done? What even needs to get done? There is confusion, uncertainty and a restless scramble to make it through each day.

As you feel the contrast of these two places from where you can come from within yourself, notice which one feels more easeful. It’s obvious, but just notice it in your body. Then notice the fears, concerns and worries that come up around being at ease. Perhaps the thoughts I won’t be successful, I won’t create the life I want, or I won’t have contributed to others in the ways I want to arise. Just notice the spin and acknowledge the thoughts that are present. Whether they are true or not is up for debate, even if they feel really true. 

How do you know you aren’t accomplishing, being or doing what you came here to do? What your life is actually about might be very different than what you think it’s supposed to be about. While we are busy living in our concepts about our life, we miss our lives completely. This is the true source of lack of contentment. We aren’t present where we are because we think we are supposed to be somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere with more. Some place we think we will feel more complete. This is a never ending game we play with ourselves, until we see that we are the one creating the rules, which are nothing other than the perceptions and concepts we’ve created about what our life is supposed to be.

MORE IS NOT THE ANSWER

Naturally giving your fullness

The more discontentment we feel the more likely we are to avoid doing what we want to be doing. We think the discontentment will motivate us, which is why we hold onto it, but in most cases it does the opposite. We get more and more hopeless, until eventually we just give up and spend our life checking out of ourselves as much as possible. We might have spurts of motivation, but they disappear as quickly as they arrive. We haven’t built the capacity to follow through, and by built the capacity what I mean is that we haven’t rested in our self-contentment fully. We might use the strategy of keeping ourselves very, very busy thinking that if we just keep ourselves occupied without a minute to rest we can delude ourselves into believing that we are fulfilled, but at the end of the day we still feel empty.

As if we didn’t have enough ways to compare ourselves to others before, now with the invention of social media it is easier than ever to feel inadequate. It seems everyone in the world is doing big things and so happy with all of their accomplishments. We get swayed into the next big movement and don’t want to miss our opportunity to be a part of them. But social media isn’t the only means we use to validate our inadequateness. We use our friends, family members, co-workers, people in our communities or social groups, and “big” names around the world. We think more is better. More followers, more attention, more money, more relationships, more people that like us, more food, bigger jobs or businesses, bigger families, larger houses, extended networks or communities, and on and on. There is a societal conditioning that “more-ness” is better and “less-ness” is worse. If we have less we feel we are less. If we have more we feel that we are more. This is one of the biggest fallacies in our psyche and it keeps us always outside of fulfillment.

One thing I’ve discovered is that why we are is much simpler than most of us think. 

What seems to create lasting fulfillment is being at ease within your own heart. From that place of comfort with your own presence everything you engage with becomes an extension of that peace. This is less challenging than you might think, but it does require that you rewrite some of your internal stories about who you are and what you think your life is about. Everyone wants to feel good, supported and safe, and beyond that to know that their presence matters and that they touch others peoples lives in a positive way. This is where we are all trying to “get to” and we think more of something will get us there, but it never does. It’s because we are starting from lack, primarily lack of self.

When you accept yourself fully as you are, along with everything you think is missing, you reclaim yourself. Through this reclamation the need to prove, validate, justify, be liked, be right or get anything to “fill yourself” ends. You become without agenda, and without agenda to get anything from anything or anyone, you are full. The beauty of this is that giving or contribution is then effortless. There is a flow or eminence that is simply natural and there nothing to figure out. No one has to receive, like or want you or anything you have to give. You give because you are full and you can’t not give yourself. 

It’s like the fully bloomed flower. It can’t not give what it is. Some people will walk right past it not noticing it all and others will fall in love with its beauty and surround themselves with it. The flower doesn’t care either way. It is just being itself. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, fully blossomed and complete. When we are rested within our own heart we are like the fully bloomed flower. We give and contribute without needing any kind of recognition and this frees us to just be ourselves. Being ourselves is being content. We will still grow from seed to bud to bloom, over and over and over again, all while internally recognizing our completion at each moment along the way.

Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, DC, MSA, L.Ac

Network Spinal Chiropractor & Somatic Healer at the Sanctuary for Heart Magic, a Mentor for Heart-Led Healers at Soul Luminaries & the Writer of The Everyday Divine.