Self-Purification

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SELF-PURIFICATION  

Saving Ourselves

We are often looking for someone or something to save us.  Maybe it’s the government that will fix all of the things that are wrong with the world.  Perhaps it is our parents or the next generation of children that will bail us all out of trouble.  Maybe it’s the doctors that know, or the wise teachers and spiritual gurus that have the answers.  Perhaps God will just fix everything.  All of these scenarios are tempting to lean into.  They lure us in with the hope that they contain the solutions to the problems we perceive ail us.  It’s so enticing to deny, reject or ignore our own knowing and power and give it over to something or someone that seems to know better.  It appears easier and takes less energy because it allows us to not feel the growing pains of taking responsibility and self-purifying.  Resting our wishful hope that something or someone other than us will fix all of the stuff that isn’t working in ourselves or in this life, provides a great opportunity to leave us feeling powerless, helpless and needing saving.   

None of this implies that we don’t need other people or other things.  We very much do.  There are also some scenarios where we do need to be saved.  These include situations or dynamics where there is a power imbalance and harm is being inflicted.  That power imbalance could be physical, meaning someone is harming another using their physicalness or by physical means.  It could also be a mental-emotional power imbalance where someone uses emotions, or knows information/details not known by the other, and uses that as a strategy for manipulation and to gain power.   We also sometimes need to be saved from our own limiting or negative thoughts that may result in self-injurious behavior, which is often a means to feel some power or control.  Outside of these types of scenarios we don’t need to be saved, but rather need to step into our lives.  

Ultimately what we want to be saved from are the feelings we have about the things in life that we don’t like.  This could be sensations in our body, our inner self-dialogue, how someone talks to or interacts with us, the dynamics of something happening at work or in our business, the structure of our schools or healthcare systems, and on and on.  When we have a feeling that we don’t like about something we are experiencing and we perceive a sense of powerlessness, lethargy, apathy or complacency with it, this is a recipe for deflected power.  This is a hopelessly hoping that our feelings about whatever the thing is will change without feeling like we have any ability to change it.   

YOU ARE THE SOLUTION 

Life happens with you

We all get the spiritual concept that all of life is interconnected, yet we often don’t really understand that life is happening with us.  Rather we tend to interact with life as if it is just happening, either on its own accord, randomly, or to us.  For example we hear some piece of news, develop a sensation in our body, or have an unpleasant interaction with someone, and it seems to just be happening.  We aren’t even really sure how we arrived in this moment, inside of whatever experience is showing up.  It just seems to be here now.  Sometimes our logical mind can induce and reason as to why things are the way they are.  For example maybe you ate some bad fish and now the sensations in your belly are telling you about it, or perhaps you made a snarky comment to your partner hence the unpleasant interaction.  But making the connections as to how life is happening with us isn’t always as clear.  

Just because we don’t always make the connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one to be made.  It’s simply that we are not aware of it.  This is where self-purification comes into play.  In order to increase our awareness, make connections and see how life is happening with us, we need to be a clear channel.  If we are full of stuff (ie. the content of our lives) then we don’t have the bandwidth available to pay attention.  It is sort of like you are watching a show on channel 4 that is full of drama, action, relationships, and a story line that really has you hooked.  You keep watching episode after episode of this program because you just can’t seem to turn it off.  It has your full attention.  You’ve heard through the grapevine that there is a really good program on channel 1, but it’s more chill over there so it has felt a little less exciting to you.  You’ve changed the channel a few times to go and check it out, but there is just a lot of peace and quiet on the channel.  You get kind of bored and switch back to channel 4, where you can be on the edge of whatever twist or turn comes next, maybe a gas station will explode, a bank robbery will take place or a relationship saga will unfold.  That’s better, much more exciting, but gosh you still can’t figure out why your knee hurts, or why your boss was mean to you today, or why our school system sucks so badly.  We tend to think “I guess somebody will figure it out or it will figure itself out.”  This is our often disempowered, disconnected stance.  

From this place we have a tendency to think that the answers we seek will come through more and more outer stuff, but it’s the opposite.  We distract ourselves from the quiet of our inner knowing because it just seems like nothing is there.  However the more inwardly still we become and the clearer we are of stuff, the more aware we are of everything.  With more awareness it is easier to see and make connections.  When we make connections we feel more empowered, look less for someone or something else to fix this life, and see more what we can contribute to it all.  We also see that how we are experiencing life is directly correlated with how we are.  How we feel and what we do determines how this life is created.  It is not a passive, random process that is just happening, despite how it may currently seem to you.  You are not a character in the show you are watching, you are the creator of it.  Nothing is happening to you, but rather you are the source of it.  It only requires some stillness from constant content in your mind to see what’s actually going on.  

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

Navigating the Space Between

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NAVIGATING THE SPACE BETWEEN 

Allowing un-resolve

Life is constant flux.  Always moving from one thing to the next.  Projects, relationships, activities and even healing, constantly starting, going, ending and then arising again.  Seems to be that most of us have energy in the beginnings of things.  We also tend to like the completion or sense of resolution that comes at the end of things.  But what about the space in between?  The time after the initial excitement to get something going or make something happen, and before the completion of whatever the activity, project or thing is.  The space of unknown, of navigating the process, of ups and downs, certainties and uncertainties.  How do we navigate inside the middle?  

The truth is that this is the space where most of life happens, and it’s the space that we tend to dislike the most because it is unfinished.  This is where all of our protective mechanisms reside and our triggers live, where we just want to get out or get it over with, whatever it is.  The space between often feels chaotic, overwhelming, like we don’t know how we can make it all work out.  Sometimes it even feels boring.  The harder we try the more frustrated or hopeless we feel.  Our head spins, we feel restless, we get bogged down, our energy state is lower, and our excitement or drive wanes.  We can begin to feel like we aren’t making progress, not moving forward and we get depressed, angry, irritated or restless trying to find a way into completion already.

The most direct way to work with the space in between is to stop trying to get to the end of things while allowing things to be unorganized, unresolved or unknown.  This is a beast for many of us.  We like order, clarity, and knowing what to expect.  When these elements are not present we get unhinged.  Our emotions rise up and begin to take charge of our behaviors and state of being.  We become not “ourselves” and react from our charged emotional state.  This is fun for no one.  Along with allowing things to be undone it is equally important to actively accept the fact that life is a big mess.  One mess after another.  While you are busy cleaning up the messes, don’t forget to learn something through them.  The purpose of the mess is not to clean it up, but rather to learn through the experience of it.  When you understand this, you will experience how life cleans up its own messes once you’ve learn whatever you need to learn through them.

LIFE IS LEARNING 

Learning is the destination

Life is not supposed to be already done.  Life is supposed to be lived and created.  Creation is learning.  If you are a parent you get this.  You’ve created a child and now you are learning to be a parent.  You don’t know how to be a parent before you become one.  It’s learned as you go.  Sure you can read books and take courses to prepare, but you don’t learn until you do it.  While some of it is smooth sailing, likely most of it is a rocky adventure on uneven terrain.  Ups and downs, highs and lows, certainties and uncertainties.  However most people don’t quit along the way because they feel a social and moral responsibility to care for and tend to what they have created even when it get real, real hard.  It’s one of our creations that we generally commit to more than others, and therefore is incredibly growthful.

While we might have expectations to be a perfect parent, we soon discover that we aren’t.  We come to accept that we are learning.  If we don’t then we will have a  challenging time attempting to live up to ridiculous ideals.  With time and some experience under our belt we start to understand that the most magic and intimacy is experienced when we are on uneven terrain.  Without the rocks the journey is flat, and quite honestly a bit boring because there is very little learning.  Learning equates to feeling a sense of progress and eventual accomplishment, but the reward is in the learning itself rather than in your attempt to get the experience over with so you can feel resolve.  

It’s really like this with all of the space between.  When we create a business, start a project, get into a relationship, build a house, reform our body, or embark on healing, we are committing to create.  To bring something new into our experience.  There is a beginning, a space between, and an end to all of these.  The space of most learning is the space between.  When you reframe that life is about learning, rather than about accomplishing, finishing or getting things done, you can rest more in the space between.  Even if there is restlessness, uncertainty, mess, boredom and the like, you can rest into the larger perspective of learning.  There will still be uncomfortableness or sometimes numbness, because that is a part of learning.  You can’t get away from it regardless of how hard you try.  It will follow you into your next creation, and your next creation, and the next.  

There is no where to get, really.  Yes there will be things you will accomplish and complete, but then you will create more things.  We are creators.  I don’t think that creating is ever complete.  It’s simply that we need to interact with the space between differently.  Rather than it being a burden, a problem, or something we need to get out of or endure, we need to see it as learning and growth.  Recognize that the learning and growth is the actual destination, even before we reach completion or resolve of whatever we set out to create.  This is how you become present in the space between.  This is how you move into life rather than trying to get out of it.  

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

Trusting Soul

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TRUSTING SOUL

Beyond the mind

Despite the fact that most of us like to think that we trust life and desire to go with the flow, the truth is that we mostly don’t.  We would rather be stressed, anxious and fearful than trust our soul, pretty much any day of the week.  Recognizing where you don’t choose trust may be a bit elusive to you.  You may think of yourself as a very trusting person and might even spout off to your friends how you are choosing to “surrender to life” and go with the flow.  Yet there is often a disconnect between what we think or say and how we feel and experience life.  The sensations in our body are more than willing to reveal the disconnect to us even if we can’t intellectually see it.  Trouble sleeping, difficulty digesting, tension, nervousness, fogginess and the like can be cues that we may be out of trust with life even if we don’t know that we are.

You may wonder why wouldn’t you trust?  There is a misconception that trusting feels good.  While it’s true that ultimately it does and that your body will relax in response to you trusting, getting to trusting and relaxing can be super uncomfortable.  Yes that’s right, relaxation can be incredibly uncomfortable to our mind.  When we choose trust we put the mind out of commission.  It’s vigilant job to avoid potential danger and threat around every corner gets temporarily laid to rest.  While the constant control mechanism that we call our mind is taking a nap, we get to experience the uncomfortableness of being open, relaxed and exposed to life.  In the middle of our ordinary daily life most people can only take this in, in short bursts, if at all.  

Our controller (i.e. our mind) is persistent and it’s strong.  After all its job is avoidance of pain whenever possible and survival in all the ways.  Physical, emotional, and social survival are its perceived responsibilities.  That’s a big job, bigger than the mind, but the mind only knows itself.  By definition the mind is egocentric.  It doesn’t recognize that there is anything beyond it or bigger than it, that it can rest into, so it goes about doing life in ignorance to the soul.  Rather it thinks it is the sole source of everything.  Yet somehow it knows it can’t manage everything, but that doesn’t stop it from trying at all costs.  It is kind of like a fish swimming in water.  It has no idea that it is fully submerged in the perfect environment needed for the survival of its body, yet it is.  The mind has no idea that it’s resting inside the soul that is the container for everything it needs.   

RELAXING INTO MORE 

Knowing all is well

What we don’t yet know we take on faith.  If we don’t choose faith then we are left only with our fears and uncertainties about what will be.  We regurgitate our anxieties around in our minds over and over until we can’t take it anymore, until our bodies start to breakdown, or until we can find a distraction or way to take the edge off.  This is the path of nagging misery.  A path that doesn’t really go anywhere even if we feel periodic relief from time to time.  There is dragon after dragon to slay on this path.  They never stop coming.  We hope that they will, but they don’t.  We are nearly always freezing, fighting, or fleeing from something, hoping to get out of this and arrive somewhere better.  While better does arrive, and we try our best to hold onto better when it’s here, it is soon followed by another sneaky little dragon. 

Faith ends this cycle.  Faith is the path to knowing.  It is also the prime learning or lesson of the human experience.  That which is unknown or un-perceivable to us in this moment, can become known and perceivable, but it takes faith.  It takes not knowing in order to know.  You can’t see more from the place you currently see.  You have to suspend what it is you currently think you see or know, to see beyond where you do now.  A fish can only see the water once he is no longer submerged in it.  The fish has to pop out and above the water in order to see it and likely the fish won’t initially know what it is seeing.  With more and more jumps above the water the fish will begin to recognize the life sustaining fluid it swims in all of the time.  Just like the fish we have to rise above our current perspectives in order to see beyond them and to begin to recognize the soul, which always exists and is tending to all of the needs of our life even when we don’t see it.  

It takes courage and faith to rise above the water, because for a moment it feels like you won’t be able to breathe.  You are in a new, uncharted environment where nothing is familiar to you and you have no idea what you are seeing.  This is the uncomfortableness of being open and in the unfamiliar.  Moving forward in faith, in the unknown, so that what is there can be revealed to you, can become known to you.  You want to relax, but can you trust it?  Can you trust that which you don’t yet know, so that you can come to know it?  Riding this edge is your growth and it is the soul’s journey into remembrance of itself.  

By now you get that is takes a ginormous dose of humility and a whole lot of courage to trust soul.  Oscillating in and out of being able to relax into more.  Popping out and seeing above and then landing back into the experience of your life.  Seems we must do this many times over until we finally accept what we see and come to know from above.  From here we no longer need to seek relief or find distraction from the dragons of life, because we become rested in the entire gamut of our experience.  There are no more dragons, but rather life all working seamlessly together.  We know all is taken care of because we know soul.  We see and know the water that we swim in.  No longer do we need to have faith or trust.  Faith and trust are just the path to knowing.  We need them only until we know.  To know soul is to know the divine order and perfect orchestration of every movement of life.  It is to know, without even the suspicion of doubt, that all is well.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractic & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

Revealing Spirit

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REVEALING SPIRIT 

Spirit is here

Whether we are attuned to or aware of it, spirit always is.  Spirit does not come and go.  It does not decide to be here in one moment and leave the next.  There are no conditions in which spirit does not exist.  Spirit is unconditional in its presence and in its beingness.  What does come and go is our focus on it.  Maybe you’ve had the experience where one day you feel completely connected to spirit and then the next day not so much.  You might wonder why does this happen?  Why does it seem that you can’t stay in connection with spirit all of the time?  The first thing to recognize is that you can.  It is entirely possible to live in a state of conscious awareness and connection with spirit at all times.  The second thing to know is that it’s going to take some work, focus and commitment to do so.  It’s likely not just going to happen.  While we might have insights, epiphanies and awakenings along the way, to live fully connected is not instantaneous for most people.  

What is spirit?  Spirit has a lot of words to describe it, yet it isn’t defined by any of the words.  The words simply help give the mind context.  Spirit is what enlivens all forms.  You could call that breath, energy, awareness, being, presence, aliveness, love, light or heart to name a few.  It is that which is before any thought, feeling or sensation arises and it is what every thought, feeling and sensation rests in.  It is what every form is born out of and that which penetrates every form.  It is the root of all wakefulness.  It is the stillness that guides all movement and motion.  It is the source of all things.  When you make contact with spirit you make contact with that one source that makes you, me and everything come alive.  

While the workings of Spirit are mysterious, its presence is not.  It is as close as your breath.  It’s as obvious as the fact that you are aware.  Often that which is the closest and most obvious is overlooked.  Our mind thinks that it is supposed to be something else.  Something more complex or occluded.  Something harder to see or know.  Something more “special”.  But that fact that you are aware that you exist is evidence enough.  Making spirit less mysterious and more obvious will help dissolve the apparent disconnect you sometimes feel.  Rather than thinking you need to find some magical or prescribed way back to spirit, really you can just notice the fact that you exist.  Notice your beingness and it will bring you back into conscious connection with Spirit.   

DEVOTION, COMMITMENT & PRACTICE

Noticing Spirit

Now that you are clear on the non-mysterious nature of the presence of Spirit that always is, we come to the practical piece of devotion, commitment and practice.  If we don’t practice noticing Spirit than we won’t notice it.  Obvious, right?  It is, yet most of us don’t get this.  We wonder why we feel disconnected when we haven’t really made an every day practice of noticing Spirit, or noticing that we exist.  I know this seems so simple, and it is, maybe too simple that your mind gets bored and starts focusing on the things of life that are moving all about.  Before you know it you are totally absorbed in your activities, your to do list, your thoughts, and all the things you need to figure out in order to heal.  While you are busy being focused on all the stuff, you are not paying attention to the fact that you exist, that Spirit is.  

Be honest, what percentage of the day do you simply pay attention to the fact that you be, that you are, that you are aware of being? 10% (1.5 hours of a waking day), 5% (45 minutes), 0%?  It’s no wonder we feel largely disconnected from Spirit and kind of a miracle that we ever feel connected at all, as little of our attention that we give to it.  As you are evaluating yourself here you may be surprised how little attention you give to noticing Spirit despite how many spiritual activities you do in a given day or week.  Oddly enough doing spiritual activities doesn’t always bring us back into conscious connection with Spirit.  Often we are just doing the activity such as meditation, yoga, prayer, etc., just to do it, but without really being devoted to reconnecting.  Being devoted or committed takes energy.  It requires that we elevate our state of being even when we feel low.  It also requires that we know what to pay attention too.  It’s one thing to be mindful or aware of things, it’s entirely another beast to mindful of pure being minus the things.  

Again while your mind might at first be bored by paying attention to Spirit or just being, there is a magic that reveals itself the more that you do.  Spirit is anything but boring, however to our overstimulated, instantly gratified mind, that thinks it can get to Spirit by thinking or doing something, we might just perceive Spirit as a vast boring beingness that is devoid of all things.  We might wonder when we can get up and just do something already so that we can get somewhere or figure something out.  How can anything come out of this nothingness?  You might think, “can’t I just try to get to somewhere else instead?”  Can’t I find a way to get to Spirit rather realize that I be Spirit? The human mind is so impatient, demanding, confused, and arrogant.

The more you absorb your attention and awareness onto Spirit the greater conscious connection you create.  You begin to lay down pathways to stably know and rest in connection with Spirit.  Remember Spirit always is.  It’s only you and the use of your will, devotion and commitment that shifts.  Nothing else does.  Regardless of what appears on the screen of your life you can learn to be consciously connected in Spirit at all times if you so choose.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Chiropractic & Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado

Being Accountable to Your Perfection

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BEING ACCOUNTABLE TO YOUR PERFECTION 

Your perfection has never been touched

It is a tall order and a high ask to be accountable to your own perfection.  To take ownership of what you innately are, and stand behind it no matter what you or others think, can feel like an impossible feat.  At times we are filled with contrary and conflicting thoughts, which seem like hard proof or evidence, that we are indeed imperfect.  To go against our hard pressed belief in the imperfection of ourselves, and the projection of that belief onto things, circumstances and other people, is a journey only for the brave at heart.  The paradox of this all is that claiming the truth of what we are requires that we allow ourselves to be wrong in how we’ve been viewing ourselves and life.  Since the fundamental wounding in denying our own and other’s perfection comes with a ferrous will to never be seen or viewed as wrong, we perpetuate our belief in imperfection through avoiding it.  

You may feel confused as to how allowing imperfection leads you closer to perfection.  You may perceive that to be the opposite direction.  I assure you it’s not.  Simply because we avoid or deny something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.  What is exists regardless.  The distorted ways in which you perceive what is simply are, even if you attempt to not see them, or you want to fix or change them.  Just because something or someone, or better stated a perspective, is confused in the way it perceives, doesn’t make it any less or more perfect.  In fact the perfection of the person, thing or perspective is never touched, tainted or influenced at all by how it is seen.  You many wonder how can this be?  Surely you’ve felt impacted by how you’ve been viewed by others, or by thoughts you’ve had about yourself.  The key here is that you’ve felt impacted, but you’ve never been impacted.  Your innate perfection has never, even for a moment, been anything but perfect regardless of how you’ve felt about it.

All this to point to how allowing imperfection never touches the perfection of what you are.  In fact if you are a hard core believer in imperfection, and thus attempt to create perfection inside and all around you, then allowing more and more imperfection will move you into the realization of the absolute perfection in everything.  You are allowed to feel, see and perceive imperfection all about you.   You are also allowed to feel exactly how you feel about it.  Sad, mad, frustrated, irritated, confused, hopeless, powerless, etc.  Allowing what you feel will help pop you up and out of your current perspective and into a wider view of things.  

Light of Perfection  

Beyond being liked

By now I hope you see that feeling imperfection is perfect and it never touches the perfection that you are.  Now onto what is to be accountable to your perfection.  First things first.  You are not here inside this human experience to be liked and approved of by others, or even yourself.  If you choose being liked or approved of as your priority, than you will likely be side-railed in being accountable to your perfection.  It’s like this.  If you are really honest with yourself, you always know when you are in alignment and when you are out it.  You know when you feel pulled by something, but it doesn’t feel quite right.  That something could be a behavior you do, an action you take or don’t take, words you say or don’t say, or things you think.  We all have an inner guidance system that let’s us know.  Now sometimes we don’t want to listen to that guidance or follow through on it.  We don’t want to because we fear we might lose something if we do.  That something might be connection, love, respect, an opportunity or thing we really want, and so on.  Rather than listen to what we know, we choose contrary and go out of alignment with ourselves.  The primary reason we do this is because we don’t have faith in ourselves and life, but rather let fear run the show. 

Being accountable to your perfection means that you act in accordance with the knowing of it, even though at times it may feel scary, uncomfortable, and stretch you outside of your normal character structures.  In knowing your perfection you may at times feel or be perceived as arrogant, fierce, unkind, non-caring, disregarding, judgmental, mean and many more.  I’m not saying that you are any of those things, but rather that you may be perceived, either by yourself or by others as such.  In general most people try to avoid being any of those characteristics, hence why we will go out of alignment with what we know, and choose to be liked by others rather than stand in truth with them.  You may wonder why you might be perceived in these ways just by standing in your perfection.  The answer is because there is strong opposition to the belief in perfection.  When you challenge people’s, or your own imperfection belief, by standing in the knowingness of perfection, you can expect that it will not always be received in an open and glowing fashion, even though it has the purest and most loving intentions of all.

Being a light of perfection in a collective consciousness that does its best to find wrongness in everything will make a warrior out of you.  To pierce through and be a clear transmission of the truth of what you are, of what we all are, takes courage and full accountability.  Whether or not people agree with you or not, doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you stop being afraid of what you know.   That you have the courage to claim what you already are.  That you walk with the knowing of the perfection of all, including all of your perspectives of imperfection.  Only then can you see through the confused perceptions and beliefs that exist inside of you and others, and become a beacon of light.  A light which points back into the direction of home, of truth, of remembrance of the most fundamental nature of all.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado

Your Impact on the Field

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YOUR IMPACT ON THE FIELD 

Tuning your awareness

We tend to think that the world inside of our heads lives only there. What we internally focus on or pay attention to in our minds, we think affects only ourselves, if even that.  We don’t really realize the impact of our awareness on the field, space or environment all around.  Often our experience is that our thoughts are simply random passing flickers and we really don’t get the power that we have in how and what we pay attention too.  Due to this, many of us are not disciplined in utilizing the power of our minds and therefore we don’t feel that we are very powerful.  The thing is that regardless if you are aware of the power of your mind or not, you still have one, and you are consciously or unconsciously using it to focus in certain ways.  The way in which you focus is affecting you, the field you perceive around you, and arguably the expanse of the entire universe.  

The field is the interconnected web of which you cannot not be a part of, even if you don’t want to be.  Many might think of it as the empty space in between things, but it is much more than that.  Even though you can’t see the field with your physical eyes, it is densely packed with energy and information.  The energy and information that the field contains is made up of awareness or consciousness.  What that means is that the source of energy and information that makes up the field is you, as you are awareness.  You are the awareness that is aware of your body and of all the things you perceive in your environment.  You are not the objects or forms, but rather the awareness of the objects and forms.  Having this basic understanding of the field can help you see how you have direct impact on the field, as your awareness makes up the field.  

Why is this important?  It’s important for many reasons.  One of those reasons is that in recognizing that you impact the field you can begin to be more conscious of that impact and even utilize it.  The result of this is that you create an experience of life that is more in alignment with your desires and you feel more powerful in your ability to work with life.  You perceive the happenings of life to be less random and become more intentional and participatory with manifestation.  When I say manifestation I simply mean the physical, tangible world of experience.  One of the reasons that physical manifestation sometimes seems to not match our inner state of preference or desire is because we lack coherence with the whole.  Another reason is that we are not consciously aware of where we are manifesting from, meaning we are unconscious and undisciplined in the power of using our minds.   

BECOMING MORE AWAKE 

Bringing more magic to life

The more you realize your impact on the field, the more self-responsible you must become to your own state of being and how you use your focus.  This is the process of becoming more awake.  Being more awake doesn’t mean that you are more aware of spiritual concepts than your neighbors, family members or the average joe.  Or that you attend more spiritual workshops, read more books, or do more ceremonies than other people.  Rather being more awake means you are more accountable to your inner state and your impact on the field.  It’s a bit more practical and a little less woo then some people might prefer.  It’s not about someone or something saving you from your experience, but rather you bringing to your experience what you want it to be.  

The waking up process can be perceived as perhaps less magical and require more work than we would like it too.  After all being accountable to our state of being is not something we are really taught early on.  Rather we learn that our state of being is dependent on our life looking, feeling or being a certain way.   This is why we keep recreating the same experiences over and over and why it sometimes feels like nothing is changing and we aren’t growing, both individually or collectively.  When we don’t deliberately choose our state of being and focus, then life just seems to be happening on it’s own, and in a way it is.  We aren’t awake or conscious enough of ourselves to run the show, so the show just runs.  If we want to watch a new program, or have a different experience of life, then we must get up and change the station.  Getting up and changing the station is the equivalent to shifting what or how you use your focus.

Often as spiritual seekers we are attempting to bring some kind of levity, light, bliss, joy and ease into our experience and the world.   Yet we often fail to see how we aren’t bringing that.  We are caught in our feelings and sensations of heaviness, darkness, confusion and hard work, and genuinely don’t know why we aren’t experiencing butterflies and sunshine everyday.  This isn’t about denying or spiritually bypassing what we are feeling, but rather feeling what we are feeling, accepting it, and then choosing what we truly desire.  This is often hard to do.  It requires energy.  It requires changing our mind’s focus.  It requires that we care about ourselves and our experience of life.  

Your impact on the field is a real thing.  How you show up, what you choose to focus on, and where you place your awareness will determine your experience.  Beyond that it will also either enliven or drain the field, it will either add life or take life out it.  You can move mountains if you learn to discipline your focus.  You can do things that appear to be magic.  You can bring actual magic into your everyday experience for yourself and others in a very real and practical way.  You stop creating separation between your spiritually preferred reality and the ordinary reality that we seem to be living in.  There is no difference.  The forms of our ordinary reality will shift and change in response to the information they receive from the field, from you, from your awareness.  Learning to discipline your attention and focus might possibly be the most important thing you can do for yourself and others. 

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

Living Fear Free

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LIVING FEAR FREE 

A life without threat

Consider fear for a moment.  Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a “fearful” person.  Maybe you feel that you only experience fear occasionally in moments when it’s called for or justified.  Fear is a sneaky little gremlin.  It is disguised as anxiousness, avoidance, tension, being non-confrontational, or trying to fix situations, yourself or other people’s experience of life.  It can manifest as sensations in the body such as digestive upset, headaches, muscular aches and pains, jaw clenching, gripping, inflexibility, tightness, trouble sleeping, difficulty relaxing and more.  Fear is the basic response we have to feeling a sense of powerlessness or like things are out of our control.  When fear is present our lower brain centers are activated and our higher, more conscious brain areas are not being utilized.  Self-survival and preservation is the name of the game.  We can only think about how we will get through the next few moments or minutes, and have little capacity to zoom out and see the big picture.

I would venture to say the fear is somewhere in the background of our experience most of the time even if we aren’t aware of its presence.  It can easily be called up into the forefront when we perceive a threatening situation, thought, emotion or sensation.  Evaluate for a moment the contrasting experience.  What percentage of the time, while you are awake, do you feel completely at peace with nothing to fix, nowhere to go, nothing to get done, no urgency, no tension in your body or mind, and non-reactive without a single disruptive thought?  All without utilizing any substances to be in this state.  

Because a peaceful inner state of being is desirable for most people, and because most people don’t experience that, we often turn to substances, foods or medications to numb out the fearful feelings and sensations, so that for a few moments of our day we can feel relaxed.  Due to our reliance on things that we ingest to shift our state of being, we might not even know what we are feeling.  This is true for many.  We are so disconnected from our fearful feeling state of being because we do our best to numb it down as much as possible.  While this is an ok short-term strategy, this is not a way to live.  Yet this is the way that most are living.  Kind numb, kind of checked out and just going through the motions of life and getting all the things done.  We think life is “ok”, but deep inside we know its really not that great and we aren’t sure how to be any other way.   

WANTING PEACE 

Fantasy or reality

Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to never feel or perceive threat again.  To be invincible in the yourself and in the knowing that nothing can harm or hurt you.  That nothing at all is out to get you.  That absolutely everything is working for you.  That every sensation, feeling and thought is there to support you somehow.  To be absolutely empowered.  This is a far stretch for most.  In fact many people likely think that this is an improbable state of being and living.  Yet what if it is our next evolutionary step?  The next rung on the ladder of our development.  To be completely fear free and live openly and invitingly with all of our experience of life.  It may seem like fantastical thinking, yet to me it feels more like waking up from the nightmare that our mind has created about our experience, and experiencing more of the actual reality that is.

How do we get there?  It’s simpler than you might think.  It requires only a few things.  First is the overarching desire to live in a peaceful state of being no matter what.  This desire must be strong.  I mean really, really strong.  If you don’t have an unshakeable desire for peace than you will be easily disturbed, because let’s face it life and most of our current perspectives about life, give us a lot to be disturbed by.  Your desire is the hope you have in overcoming your environment, the stories you currently have about your environment, and the fuel you need to make the changes in your life for inner peace.  The second thing required is the willingness to feel all the “bad”, uncomfortable or non-peaceful things you attempt to avoid feeling by numbing, controlling, tensing up, people pleasing and the like.  If you aren’t willing to face your underlying feelings than you will forever be running from them and paradoxically then they will run you.  Whatever we avoid rules and chooses for us.  We are not in charge when we are not feeling all of our feelings head on.

You can see it’s really not complicated.  It does however mean that you will need to do some things differently.  You are going to have to change some of your habits, preferences or addictions to certain substances or activities that check you out from feeling.  You may need to slow yourself down so that you can be more subtle in your awareness of yourself and pay attention to what you are feeling.  If you are someone who is always with other people you may need to prioritize some alone time so you can self-reflect.  None of these things are hard, but they require change.  When we don’t really want to change something, then it feels hard to change, but when our desire for something is strong, the change is easy.  That’s why I said that your desire must be strong or else the journey will feel treacherous to you and you will perceive obstacles that seem impossible for you to overcome.

It is possible, and even probable if you so desire, to live fear free.  To be an open channel of peace, love and presence.  To be a rested, still, stable presence in a world of nonstop activity.  This is not an impossible feat.  In fact I believe it is our next collective developmental step in consciousness.  To come back to wholeness and to heal, is to unify with all that is.  If we perceive threat we will keep some parts separate, which keeps us separate.  To drop our guards and be brave enough to feel all the things, will return us into remembrance of the one unified whole of which we are. 

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

Effortless Stream of Giving

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EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING 

Giving to life

Giving often feels like effort.  In fact most of us feel like we are giving all day long and find ourselves completely drained by the days end.  Giving can come with activity, busyness and action, and there is no doubt that activity without periods of rest can deplete our systems.  Yet there is a giving to life that happens even before action or activity occurs.  A state of being of giving that is prior to anything that we physically or mentally do.  In fact I’d suffice to say that much of our tiredness and depletion comes not from the activities themselves, but rather from not being in a state of giving while we go about doing our activities.  Again it’s not to deny that we need both periods of activity and rest, however the place from which we come from makes all the difference.

So how do we find this effortless stream of giving?  The good news is that we don’t have to go anywhere to find it because it lives right inside of us.  We only need to tap into it so to speak.  You’ve probably tapped into it before, but you likely didn’t know exactly what you were touching.  You might have related the experience of tapping into the effortless stream of giving as feeling defeat.  In fact the feeling of defeat is an entry point into the effortless stream of giving.  Yet most people get lost in their story about what is happening and keep trying to make their experience match their desire rather than feel defeat.  They keep banging away at attempting to make the appearance different rather than admitting defeat to the appearance.  Hence why they get so damn tired.  Hence why we are all so damn tired.  

When you stop trying to make the operations and happenings of life be different, there is no other choice but to let them be.  When you let them be as they are and participate with them as such, you stop forcing anything.  When forcing stops, so does resistance, tiredness and efforting.  If you’re constantly fighting the stream you are going to be expending a lot more energy and it’s going to feel like a lot more work than if you just went with it.  However going with the stream will at times feel like defeat and you must be willing to feel this defeat.  The beautiful thing about this, if you really get this, is that when you accept defeat you naturally open into giving.  You can’t not give to your experience when you are no longer fighting it.  When you allow what is to be how and what it is, you become the stream of giving organically.  There is nothing extra that you need to do.  It’s simply how it is when you are with life rather than at odds with it.  You may still not like your experience, but you won’t be as tired and the need to check yourself out of life so that you can rest and recover will be less.  You will start to find and feel rest inside of your experience, and here is where you are actually present, maybe for the first time ever. 

STOP WISHING INTENSITY AWAY 

Opportunities for being present

Sometimes life has to kind of beat us up a little bit before we are willing to accept defeat, so that we ultimately learn to live presently in full participation with the unfolding of life.  When we are experiencing this “beating up” of sorts we often label it under the disguise of the word “intensity.”  You’ve probably heard someone or maybe even yourself say, “wow things are really intense right now.”  It’s a very popular spiritual thing to say.  I hear that phrase many times a week.  When people say this often they are wanting that experience of intensity to go away,.  They are internally waiting, though they might not know they are waiting, until appearances and circumstances change so that they can feel lighter, better or less intensity.  The energy of this inner dynamic feels like wanting whatever is happening to just be over with already, because once it’s over you think you feel better.  Once the intensity is gone then you think you will be able to relax.

This is a trap.  It’s a trap because life is full of intensity and if you are waiting or trying to force the situations of intensity to go away, you will find yourself doing this until the day your body dies, and maybe even beyond, who knows.  Besides for it being a trap, when you wish your intensities to go away you rob yourself of incredibly potent opportunities for learning, which I call catalyst.  This catalyst, or these moments of extra intensity, bring the gift of breaking us down.  Why do we need to be broken down you ask?  Bluntly stated because most of us are living in arrogant, self-centered ways and seeing through limited perspectives that have nothing to do with what is actually occurring.  Most of these perspectives harm us or others rather than being helpful, yet they can be very convincing that they are trying to help.  These sneaky arrogant, self-centered ways along with their limited perspectives need to be dismantled so that we can stop acting in opposition to the unfolding of life and rather move with it.

The little bit tricky thing about all of this is that we typically greatly identify with these parts and perspectives that need to be dismantled, so we tend to not let them go out without a fight.  Hence the way of effort, force, resistance, which eventually results in tiredness and depletion that we may then lead to sickness, illness or adrenal fatigue.  This then brings us to the dire need for intensity in our lives, because often intensity is our only hope in dismantling these ways of being and limited perspectives once and for all.  Stopping wishing your intensities away.  See them rather as an opportunity to open into the effortless stream of giving.  

Breaking isn’t bad.  What’s breaking is energetic architecture that isn’t serving us living fully present.  Those structures need to break.  If they don’t we stay trapped and wonder why our experience of life doesn’t change for the better.  Even though many of us try to not feel the break of anything, breaking is natural.  The journey of growth is deconstruction and reconstruction.  If you aren’t regularly destructing then you probably aren’t growing much either.  Don’t try to always make things “good”, let things be “bad” or intense at times.  Even celebrate intensity if you can because within it is immense opportunity for something great to be born. 

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

Life Beyond Consumption

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LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION 

Our love of consuming

Being a consumer of life is the natural way of living for most people.  We love shopping and get excited when we have a package waiting for us at our front door.  We look forward to going to our favorite restaurants in order to eat and drink all of things that we enjoy.  We can’t wait to watch or read that new movie or book we’ve been waiting for to come out.  Scrolling our preferred social media apps to see what’s going on with our friends or in the world around us in one of our most preferred activities.  We are nearly constantly taking something in.  Whether that something is food, information, or tangible objects, we tend to like the feeling of things coming in.  In fact for many people this is how they relax.  In contrast, when it seems like life wants or demands something from us, even if we are the one creating that want or demand, we feel tense, vigilant or like we need to perform or show up in some extra alert way.  Sometimes just thinking about what we will have to give makes us tired.  

In a lot of ways consuming is easier.  We just sit back and let life in.  It doesn’t require any real effort on our part, except for perhaps deciding if we want to buy the shoes we like in brown or black, or choosing if we want to go with the fish or steak dinner at our favorite restaurant.  It’s low demand, not that complicated and in the end we feel some kind of satiation.  Our new outfit arrives, we get loaded up on information from our new book, or we get the latest news about our “friends” on social media, and we feel full.  Why does getting full feel so good?  It feels good because most people operate from a belief in scarcity and therefore any attempt to give feels like fuller depletion.  At least when they get they can momentarily not feel lack.  

Yes there is the obvious fact that we need to food to survive, albeit much less than most of us would like to think we need.  We also need clothes, but probably not near as many as we buy.  Information is helpful to make informed decisions about things we don’t know about it, but many of us are addicted to consuming information without taking any real action on the things we learn.  Social media can provide us with some sense of connection with others, but most people are just mindlessly scrolling to see if they are missing out on anything.  While most people probably wouldn’t fully admit it, they just want life to happen to them without them having to do much work.  This means that rather than creating we would prefer it be given to or have things done for us.  An example of this would be if someone gave you the option to either work your way to $1 million dollars or be given $1 million dollars, nearly everyone would opt for the later.   Case in point, most of us would prefer to receive support and care rather than give it. 

WORKING, CREATING & GIVING 

Stopping the consumption cycle

Giving is work.  It does require something from us, namely our time, energy, and focus, which are, our most precious of resources.  Because they are our most precious resources, we tend to want to conserve them, not use them up or give them away too readily less we run out of them.  But what are we really saving them for?  Do we think that if we don’t use them then we can store them up?  Are we afraid if we give our attention to one thing then we won’t have the energy, time or focus to give to another thing?  Perhaps you are ambivalent about what we want to give too.  Maybe you have difficulty making a decision about what is important to you.  Perhaps you just feel like you don’t have enough time, energy or focus and are living in scarcity about your state of inner resourcefulness.  We are always plotting in our mind what we think we have the inner resources for and therefore how willing we are to show up to life.  I am not denying that rest is important, it is, however most of us are way underestimating and underutilizing our capacities.  Why?  Because we think our inner resources are going to run out.  

I could tell you that there is no such thing as time, that it is simply a made up construct, but it’s likely that you will keep operating as if there is time.  I could tell you that you are the source of energy itself, but you will probably continue to feel like you don’t have enough of it.  I could tell you that you’ve got nothing but focus, yet you will claim that you get easily distracted.  These ways of thinking and believing are just habit.  In some ways you know that timelessness, infinite energy and inexhaustible focus are true, yet they aren’t true for your experience of life, at least not yet.  If you really embodied that there is a surplus of energy, no time and that you could focus on whatever you wanted to for however long you wanted too, what wouldn’t you do?  I imagine that your relationship to work, giving and creating would be mighty different.  I would think you would stop living by the clock in your head, your stories of limited energy and your distractible focus. 

Consuming is not the only way to live.  It’s not negative to consume.  We all need to consume some.  We need food, rest, nourishment, information, education, and social connection.  However when we are coming from scarcity of our inner resources of time, energy, and focus, with the fear that they might run out, then our consumption levels increase.  Sometimes to the point where we never feel satiated no matter how much we take in.  To remedy this we need to clearly know when we are full and stop consuming.  At that point rather than taking in more we need to switch to giving through work or creation.  That is the natural cycle of giving and receiving.  

Some people might say that they don’t know when they are full because they have overridden their fullness levels for so long.  If that is you I recommend this, when it stops feeling good and begins to feel bad, or like an addiction or obsession, or you find yourself becoming less present or more checked out, you know you’ve reached the fullness point.  So rather than watching another movie, reading another book, eating another piece of chocolate, having another drink or scrolling another social media app, stop in that moment and find a way to give, work or create instead.  This is when you move beyond a life of consumption.  The secret is that this is where energy, focus and timelessness live.  Never again will you fear them running out because you are living inside of them.

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

Ending Urgency

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ENDING URGENCY 

There is nowhere better to get

Everyone in the world seems to be in a mad dash to get things done or be somewhere other than where they are.  We drive fast, think fast, move fast, send text messages fast, eat fast… fast, fast, fast.  Always onto the next thing and never being inside of what is now.  We have some kind of belief that somewhere else is better, more fun, more exciting, more relaxing, or more peaceful than where we are now.  If we could just get to those moments or times when everything looks and feels better and lock them in for eternity, then we could stop with all the urgency and just be.  Yet even when those transitory moments of peace or better come, we can’t seem to stop, slow down and enjoy the moment.  We only recognize that this moment will change and be gone soon enough.  

How do we ever live relaxed and in a state of “be”ing with the near constant change, activity and movement of life?  How do we stop trying to get somewhere and rather be where we are in each and every moment?  One of the most fundamental beliefs that we must work with in ourselves is the one that says that something is better than now.  How many times throughout your day do you find yourself engaged in an activity just hoping to get is over and done with?  Perhaps you feel this way during your morning workout, or when you are at work and things don’t seem to going as you want them too.  Maybe you can’t get something to work right on the computer, or you have a class at school you don’t enjoy, or an annoying neighbor, roommate or some other person you have to deal with.  When we find ourselves in these types of situations we mostly just want to be out.  For it to be done and over with because we do not feel pleasant, relaxed or at peace.  We think once this activity, task, conversation or situation is over then we can relax and be.  

The thing is life is loaded with movement, and might I even say what seems to feel like chaos, stickiness or mess.  There is simply a lot of stuff going on that never seems to stop and things are rarely perfectly packaged and placed as we would like them to be.  So what’s the answer here?  How do we bring what we want to experience to every situation that we find ourselves in?  Attempting to manipulate each and every experience, circumstance and/or person in our life (including ourselves) is exhausting, and quite frankly impossible, even though this is what most people try to do.  The answer rather is that we must pause our sense of urgency, of wanting to get out of our experience of “ick” or overwhelm, and drop into it rather than try to get out of it.  By moving into our experience the possibility to transform ourselves inside of it becomes available.  When we transform ourselves we transform our experience of whatever it is we are experiencing.   

LIFE’S PACING 

Surrendering beyond ourselves

Have you ever noticed that life seems to have its own pacing?  It operates at a speed or rhythm that sometimes aligns with our own and at other times not so much.  Sometimes the pace of life feels too fast and at other times too slow.  We may find ourselves feeling urgent in either scenario.  If the pace of life feels like it’s moving too fast then we try to speed ourselves us to meet that pace and the demands of all of the movement of life.  If the pace of life is too slow for us then again we try to speed ourselves up hoping that life will respond to us and speed up as well.  Either way we are gearing ourselves up for the race to somewhere else.  

Life’s pacing is largely out of our control.  There is a bigger orchestration at play to which we are mostly unaware.  Sure there might be things that you can do such as putting more or less activities into your day to day schedule, which you may actually need to do, but the bigger message here is in how you walk with life and it’s pace.  Not getting ahead of it or behind it, but rather being right with it as it unfolds.  What this requires is a surrender to the rhythm that is present rather than the rhythm we would prefer to be present.  While this might seem bold to say here it is: our preferences matter, but not that much.  While we are the kings and queens of our own world inside of our own heads, when it comes to the larger orchestration of life, we are part of the whole.  Often we don’t see from the whole, but only from the part we play.   In this way we are egocentric, not in a negative way, as it’s mostly innocent on our part.  Rather in a way in which we just simply don’t see the bigger picture.  We are not inside the heads of every single being in this universe seeing from the perspective of universal consciousness, therefore our scope and sight is limited to our own.  This creates immense confusion and frustration for us as we often don’t understand the what’s and why’s to the pacing and timing of things.  

Accepting confusion is one of the best ways to come back into rhythm with life’s pacing.  Understanding is not required for us to have acceptance.  In fact this is one of the great lessons of having this human experience.  Not necessarily an easy lesson, yet it does the job of eventually getting us into a state of surrender.  Surrendering to what is rather than what we prefer to be.  Only once we move into acceptance and surrender can we begin to see beyond ourselves and our egocentric human point of view.  We are in the unknown of what the moment is, contains and could be, rather than in our ideas, preferences or insistences about what is occurring.  

There is so much about the happenings that we don’t get to decide, even the happenings of our own bodies.  What we do get to decide is how we be, and whether or not we try to get out or be in rhythm with the moment.  When you feel urgency arise inside of you begin the practice of pausing.  Take a breath and let go of whatever you are energetically holding onto or trying to get done, and allow the state of “be”ing to be present inside of your experience.  Recognize that you can both be and engage in activity.  There is nothing to get over with, as there will always be more things.  Rather see the moment that you desire is now.  What you wish to experience is now.  Bring that to your experience and watch the magic reveal itself to you.  

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