alignment coach

Projections

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PROJECTIONS 

Giving & Receiving Projections

From the moment that we are born we are projected upon.  People tell us what we are.  Beautiful baby, happy baby, fussy child, wild toddler, shy girl, loud, quiet, kind, aggressive, daring, good girl, bad boy, doing it right, doing it wrong, withdrawn, social, not enough, achiever and on and on.  It really is nearly one nonstop lifelong projection.  One after the other.  Projection is so normal to us, both the giving and receiving of it, that we barely, if at all, notice it.  Even if you think you don’t experience projection, there is a good chance that you are simply oblivious to it because it is such an accepted way of being, living and experiencing life.  It’s literally unavoidable.  

Why is projection unavoidable?  Projection is a way that we learn.  We learn about our personality self and the world around us via projection.  There are both positive and negative effects to this.  For example if we receive projections from others that we are amazing and that we can do anything we want to in life, projection has a positive impact.  It moves us into our potential and empowers us in who we believe ourselves to be.  We feel seen and capable.  However if we receive projections from others that we are doing things wrong, we are too loud, shy, fussy, ugly or unlikeable, these projections move us further away from the truth of who we are.  This is why they feel so bad.  Anything that feels bad in terms of projection is something that is less true to who we actually are.  We miss being seen for our essence and rather receive information contrary to our natural state of being.  

In addition to receiving projections, we are also the source of it.  As our human nature would have it we are all full of agendas, assumptions and beliefs about what life is, who we are and how it all works.  We have ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, and a ginormous slew of other judgments to throw into the mix.  Even if you’ve done a lot of inner work on these things, still most of us have not cleared out assumptions and agendas completely.  This makes us projectors rather than clear mirrors for the people around us.  It’s important to take inventory of what it is you are projecting onto others and onto life in general.  One way to determine this is by noticing what emotions you feel most predominantly throughout your day.  Do you feel good, overjoyed, blissful, peaceful, or do you feel agitated, annoyed, impatient, worried, frustrated and ill at ease?  Whatever you project you also simultaneously experience.  Once you are more aware of what you project you can assess if that is what you want to be projecting.  Words have impact, but the vibrational quality from which we project is even more impactful.  

Whatever has been projected onto us throughout our life is what we tend to project onto others.  This is why you frequently see similar patterns or ways of being in family lines.  This is also why working with your lineage can generate healing and transform unhealthy projections so that they end with you.  Most of us don’t really know who we are, but rather think or believe the sum of the projections that we’ve received over the course of our life is who we are.  Particularly projections in our early life when we are more open, less discerning and more susceptible to environmental information; these tend to influence us the most.  You are none of the projections that you’ve ever received, even the good ones, but the ones that have felt good are closer to your essence.  

MIRRORING

Knowing who you actually are

Mirroring is really the only way we are truly seen in our essence, however in order to be a mirror, you must be without agenda or assumption.  You must also be able to remove all meanings and definitions that you’ve learned as your human self.  You could call this state of being as beyond ego, beyond self or beyond personality.  This is a pretty tall order, which is why it’s rare for us to ever meet or become a mirror.  Most find it challenging to empty out all of the meanings and definitions that they’ve spent a lifetime learning and creating.  The thing is though as soon as you define something, label it, give some kind of meaning to it, you no longer see the essence, but rather you only see your definition.  A bird isn’t a bird until you give it a label and make that label mean something.  A person isn’t good, bad, right, wrong, beautiful, ugly, loud, quiet, etc. until you’ve labelled them as such and then placed meaning on that quality.  

No quality can ever define you.  You are prior to all qualities.  You are the source from which all qualities arise.  You are the originator or origination of everything you experience and know.  However this is conceptual information for most people and not a direct knowing or experience.  The truth is that you’ve never experienced anything but this, meaning you’ve never experienced anything but essence.  It’s just that essence has been wrapped up, hidden, occluded, and veiled by all of your definitions and meanings that you’ve placed on top it.  All of the projections you’ve learned and taken on as your identity.  The definitions and meanings don’t ever change the essence, meaning they don’t change or touch the you that you actually are or anything else, but they do change how you see and what you experience.  This is tricky, but important to get.  

When you touch, taste or get a glimpse of pure essence it feels liberating, even if only for a split second.  You get to drop all of the false identities that have been projected on you over your entire life.  Identities such as not enough, loner, unlovable, mean/nice, aggressive/peaceful, good/bad, or happy/sad person, and for a moment you just are without any concept, idea or word defining you.  In that moment you know you.  The reason mirrors are helpful is because they know themselves as essence and as such can mirror that to others.  They can only mirror it because they know it.  Unless you are without your human filters, you will project through them and they will color what you see.  Those filters distort the image, not on purpose, but as an effect.  

If you put glasses on that have green colored lenses than everything you look at will be green, not because you are trying to make everything green, but as an effect of looking through those lenses.  You know everything is not green because you know that you have glasses on, and so it only appears that way.  This is how our beliefs, meanings, and definitions distort, color or interfere with us seeing what is actually there.  The only difference is that you likely don’t know what is filtering you, meaning you don’t know what glasses you have on.  You might have some ideas about your assumptions, judgments and meanings, but it’s not super clear.  The result of this is that rather than knowing that everything is not really green because you can see the glasses that you have on, you don’t know that what you are looking at isn’t what you think it is.  It doesn’t even dawn on you.  This is essentially being unconscious or not awake to ourselves, which most humans are not.  We don’t see our patterns, filters and beliefs and therefore don’t know reality from all of the delusions of meaning that we learned or made up.  Hence the need for doing the inner work to be more and more self-aware, more and more conscious, so that we can eventually see our filters, take them off and see ourselves.  This is the prime difference between a projector and a mirror.  A projector doesn’t yet know that he/she is wearing glasses and a mirror can see the glasses and take them off. 

The spiritual journey is the waking up of ourselves to ourselves so that we become transparent to all of our conditioning.  When we do we recognize ourselves as essence before any of the meanings and thus see that when we look out.  This is the end of projection and the birth of mirroring.  Some might say we finally see reality, our true self, love, or our primordial nature.  The name is not important.  The direct experience of it is.  

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

INTENTION & FOCUS

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INTENTION & FOCUS 

A dash of magic

Intention guides life.  Life follows focus.  To some degree we all know this yet most of us aren’t really utilizing the power of it in our day to day life.  Rather we are often unfocused, scattered and distracted.  We decide for a moment or maybe two, that we want to feel a certain way, walk in a particular direction, or take hold of our state of being, but in the next moment we forget it.  We then wonder why we can’t seem to have the healing, life or state of being that we desire.  Then, on top of it all, we have a long list of impossibility beliefs to add into the mix.  If we muster up our will and utilize our focus, then this or that impossibility belief rears its head.  Feeling overwhelmed by it all, we stop in our tracks and give up.  We return to distraction because we can’t seem to find a way through.  We find ourselves feeling stuck, like we (or things) will never change and we feel resigned to life the way it is.  

I think the prime difference between people who feel like they are living aligned and those that struggle to stay aligned is harnessing the power of intention and focus, along with not being afraid of a little magical thinking.  If you’ve ever spent any time around a baby you know that they see the world through the lens of magic.  Something appears in front of their visual field and they get absolutely ecstatic.  They have no idea how it arrived or even what it is.  They are simply enamored and in a state of bliss by whatever it is they see.  They attempt to interact with it however they can, having no idea at all what to do with it.  This is what we call playing.  Then due to the fact that they have no label, definition or meaning, all they experience is magic.  Magic being the essence of the thing and not the thing itself.  As soon as we give names to things we no longer see the magic, and rather see only what we’ve decided something is.  All other possibilities flatten.  

The other thing to notice is that when babies are playing they are totally focused.  They quite dislike it when you remove their “object of magic”, which they are entirely engrossed in.  Their attention might move from toy to toy, but they are just as present with the next non-labelled, no meaning magical thing that arrives into their sensory experience.  As we become toddlers and begin to develop our analytical thinking mind we want to know what everything is and what it all means.  We start to get lost in the world of concepts rather than in the pure potential of what is.  Our minds learn to multi-task and focus on facts, details and the like.  We lose connection to the essence of things and begin to focus on the things themselves.   We move out of present moment and into thought.  

IMAGINATION & REALITY 

Increasing will

And well who doesn’t love thinking?  To just let your mind wander from this thing to that thing.  To be lost in thought.  To contemplate.  To imagine.  It’s fun to imagine, yet for many it stops here.  You might think that imagination is just imagination, not reality.  You may even be very good at imagining, yet if you don’t have any intention or focus behind your imaginations they remain formless.  This is not a problem, again it’s great fun to imagine in our minds, it’s only that you will not have a different human world life experience.  You will be living in thought or concept.  There will be a disconnection between your imaginal world (you could also say your desired world) and what you actually experience.  We are at a stage of human development, in this space-time nexus, where there is massive disconnection between our desired realities and the ones we are living in.  It doesn’t need to be that way, however it does take a heap of intentional focus in order to bridge the seeming gap.

Intentional focus might not be as hard as it seems, but it may appear to come at some sacrifice.  See when we align ourselves with our intention and focus we have to let all of the other stuff go.  That other stuff consists of a lot.  It includes, but is not limited to all of our divergent or distracting thoughts, all of our tendencies to avoid what we think can or can’t be, our habits of comfort, our low demand energy states, our pictures or ideas of what our intention is supposed to look, be or feel like. We have so so so so many ideas, and while ideas are great for imagining possibilities, they can also get in the way of letting the picture of it all reveal itself to you.  Our desires or imaginations are like the seeds, our intention and focus the water, and the sprouting flower just sprouts as it does.  We don’t get to decide it’s appearance.  We can guide and set conditions for it, but we can determine its expression.  We can only nurture it’s becoming and then let it be what it will be. 

If we are too fixated in our analytical mind then we will overly focus on the form of what is.  We will perceive disappointment if the form doesn’t match our desire.  If we return to our infant pre-mind state, we can see only the essence, the magic, the seed, the desire and then accept the form, the picture, the image that is the result.  This acceptance is very different than resignation.  Acceptance sees the beauty in the appearance regardless, where resignation sees only what is doesn’t want in the appearance.  The distinction is the seer (ie. you).  From where do you see?  

Harnessing the power of intention and focus is learning to increase your will.  To be determined without attachment.  This is the dance of will and surrender.  Coming from and with everything you’ve got and then with full embrace letting it be as it is.  Giving or aligning your whole self to your intention in any given moment is magic.  Essence is seen and the forms naturally reconfigure in response.  This is not a forceful or manipulative will, but rather a sacrificial will of sorts.  A will that will give away all of its petty distractions, impossibility beliefs and preconceived ideas for its true desire or intention.  A will that aligns behinds itself and that is self-generative.  A will that takes all of you, but of which you can find absolutely nothing better to give yourself too.  A will that eventually becomes much bigger than you.

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

NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

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NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE 

Moving away from pain

Much of how we operate, move, behave, perceive, think, feel and sense is learned and habitual.  We develop strategies, patterns and ways of being through our experiences.  We learn to perceive and move about our world based on internal and external cues.  If we do the same thing over and over, or see something the same way over and over, we learn to create wiring or neurological patterning in our nervous system based on our perceptions or behaviors.  If we repeat the same thing enough times then the way we perceive something or how we move about becomes automatic or habitual.  This means that there is very little “registering” or conscious awareness that happens as we engage with life.  Life is simply a series of habits and reactions, that is unless we create novelty inside of our perceptions. 

If something hurts we instinctually move away from it and if it feels good we move towards it.  Hurt can be physical such as if we place our hand on a hot stove, or it can be emotional or mental such as feeling rejection or like we aren’t good enough.  Regardless of where the hurt hits us we learn early on how to protect ourselves from the pain of feeling it.  We might flee or run in order to move away from it.  We might fight back in order to push something away from us.  We also might freeze in place or go numb in attempt to avoid the hurt or pain.  On a neurological level there is a response to this avoidance of pain, which is commonly known as the stress response.  Most people are quite familiar with the terminology “stress response” yet most people don’t really get what it means for how they experience their life on a day to day basis.  

When we are in protection (i.e. avoidance) mode our nervous system wires and fires pathways that create various messages throughout the body.  These messages gear us up for fighting until we eventually burnout and the effect of this is what we call adrenal fatigue.  These messages also put us on alert, or in a hyper-vigilant state.  They get us to focus on what’s wrong or what might be out to harm us.  They create tension in the body so that we don’t feel the impact of harm or pain.  They effect our sleep cycles making it hard to feel rested or get good sleep.   They make it harder to digest our food, and they move energy out of self-healing and into self-protection.  This state of being is called neurological defense.  At any point in our life we can have experiences that don’t feel good to us and we activate these patterns of defense rather than feel the impact of pain or harm or potential pain/harm.  There is intelligence in these defensive patterns, however they greatly limit our experience of life.  We cannot move into healing and neurological openness unless we are willing to move towards that which we avoid feeling.   

NEUROLOGICAL OPENNESS   

Moving towards life

While there is intelligence to our defensive reactions and patterns in the body they also create great limitation in our experience of life.  They allow us to experience only a limited range of feelings, sensations, and thoughts.  They limit our behaviors, perceptions, and our relationships with self and others.  They cap the amount of energy we have access to receiving, giving and sharing.  They keep our bodies running in suboptimal energy conditions effecting our health and overall well-being.  They keep us from fully experiencing the range of our hearts and the hearts of others.  There is great cost to our avoidance of feeling pain.  

When we stop avoiding pain and allow ourselves to feel and be with it, some pretty amazing things happen.  First is that you can no longer be angry.  Feeling the pain we’ve experienced softens us.  Some people don’t even know just how angry they are because they’ve adopted other strategies of self-protection such as always being positive, people pleasing, or the more quiet version of anger which is self-hatred.  This can manifest very subtly as negative self-talk or simply not feeling yourself to be great.  If you don’t unequivocally know that you are fucking amazing then you probably have some work to do here.  Second is that your neurological, and thus physiological state, shifts.  All those messages that your nervous system sends out change in nature when you move towards life experiences.  Rather than messages gearing you up to fight, flight or freeze, it sends messages of relaxation and ease.  Food can then be digested, sleep happens naturally, and the self-healing mechanism occurs unimpeded.  Muscles relax, the posture becomes more upright and open, and your focus shifts onto what is here, what’s working, and on how life is supporting you.  Nothing is out to get you anymore.  You look for invitations and openings.  More opportunities seem to be available to you.  You feel more confident in yourself.  This is what I call neurological openness.

In neurological openness we participate more fully with life.  We perceive things that we didn’t perceive before, and we sense, feel and think differently because we are more open to life rather than in protection from it.  We become more awake or aware of our impact on life, others and ourselves.  We recognize more and more that we have choice.  This recognition of choice is the beginning place of novelty.  We start trying on new feelings, thoughts, behaviors and perceptions, which create and lay down new patterns in our neurology.  We become different and therefore experience life differently.  

The more we lay down the patterns of openness in our nervous system the more we move into the field of our heart.  The yummy bliss of yes.  Beyond participation with life we move into oneness with it.  We see that nothing in not us therefore there has never been anything to protect from.  This is the awakened stage of the healing journey.  From separation and self-protection into unification and love.  It is all available to you as you are ready for it.  

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

CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

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CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY 

Creating a new experience of life

It can often seem like we are not choosing who we are, but rather that we simply are who we are.  You might wonder what it even means to choose your identity.  To begin with your identity is made up.  It is composed of a slew of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions, many of which you might not even be aware of, which is why it seems that you are not choosing who you are.  However if you take just a little bit of time and come up with a handful of words or phrases that currently describe you, then you will start to get a clearer picture of how you see yourself.  This is important to do if you would like to see that your identity is in fact made up by you (consciously or not) and become more deliberate in the choosing of it for yourself.

Why is your identity so important anyways?  Your identity dictates what actions you will take or not take, what emotions you will have or not have, how much risk or safety you need, how you relate to other people and yourself, the information your body will receive or not receive, what you belief is possible or impossible, and how you view the world and all of its happenings.  I hope you can see that identity is a pretty big deal.  It influences your entire experience of life.  Good news is you are not stuck with the one you have!  Identity in indeed malleable, but you must first realize that it can be changed by you if you so desire.  

Just to be clear there is nothing wrong with any identity.  Choosing one identity over another identity is not better or worse, but rather only provides different experiences for you.  Ultimately you are not any of the identities that you conjure up.  You are that which is before all characteristics and qualities, but that is another conversation.  So make that list of qualities and characteristics that you currently feel like you possess.  What are the primary thoughts and emotions that you experience on a regular basis?  What beliefs do you have that inspire those thoughts and emotions?  How do you imagine other people see/view you?  What do you present to others or the world and how is that different than when you are by yourself?  Get as clear and concise of a picture of who you currently believe or know yourself to be.  Now ponder if there is any way in which you would like to experience something that you are currently experiencing differently.  Would you like to feel different, see yourself differently, relate to others differently, have different opportunities, feel different in your body, make more money, impact others more, etc.?  If the answer is yes then it all begins with a shift in identity.  We can’t experience anything differently until we first become different. 

A NEW YOU 

Bridging the non-real gap

Now that you have gotten clearer on who you currently are, you must also create what you would like your new identity to be.  If you came up with some ways in which you would like to experience life differently than you must ask yourself, “who would I need to be in order to have those experiences?”  What type of person would experience life in the ways that you want to experience it?  Write down whatever those characteristics, qualities, thoughts, and emotions are for someone who would experience what you desire to experience.  Then notice the gap between your current sense of self and the sense of self you need to have in order to experience life in these new ways.  That gap, which really isn’t a gap, but rather only a set of habits based on assumptions of who you are and who you aren’t, and a doing of yourself one way versus another way.  

To bridge the non-real gap we must do, feel and think ourselves like the version of ourselves that we now desire to experience.  We must break the habits of our previous self by laying down the habits of our next self.  This is where people often drop the ball because this takes work and effort.  It will take energy, determination and discipline in order to make the shift because your old way of doing yourself is effortless, routine and predicable.  It takes very little energy.  Building a new self is like a baby building its body.  It takes a ton of energy.  In a way you do become like a baby again.  You are learning and laying down patterns that you have not learned or laid down before.  There will be uncertainty or lack of clarity, a sense like you don’t know where you are going or how to get there.  That is all normal.  You don’t know yet because you haven’t traversed this terrain before.  If you already knew then it wouldn’t be a new version of you.

As always your desire is the guiding light.  The more clear you are in your desire of what you want to be now, the more clear the path will seem to you even if you don’t know what direction is up/down or right/left.  Turning the light up on your desire is also your source of energy.  Without desire we don’t feel much motivation to create or bring new things to light.  With desire we are lit up.  We are motivated, inspired, and take action in the direction of our new found dreams.  Along with creating new behaviors, habits, thoughts, feelings and emotions, there will be a letting go of the old ways of being.  It is like a sweet good-bye.  A good-bye that is done in gratitude for who you’ve been and everything you’ve created from this sense of you.  It’s kind of like selling a car you really love, but you know it’s time for an upgrade because the old one just can’t do all the things you need it to anymore.  You want to have new experiences so it’s time to upgrade, it’s time for a change.  

We are by our very nature creators.  We are the source of our creations.  How do you want to play with the toys in your sandbox today?  How do you want to experience life?  You are the source of it all.  Turn the light up on yourself, see who you are now and create who you need to be in order to experience life how you desire to now.  

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

FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKING TO SPIRITUAL BEING

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FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKING TO  SPIRITUAL BEING

Misidentification with the objects of our awareness

Conceptually most all of us know that we are spiritual beings.  We somehow recognize that there is something more to us than flesh, bones and the thoughts we think.  We theoretically understand this, but have difficultly coming from being.  Rather we come from mental concepts and physical sensations, using those as proof of our existence, without really investigating the source of our concepts and sensations.  If we did do a little bit of investigation we would come to see that we are what is aware of the thoughts and the body and everything in between.  We are the being, the awareness, that notices those things, therefore we can’t be them.  It’s kind of like looking at a table and identifying yourself as it.  However you know that you aren’t the table, but rather that you are aware of the table.  The same is true for everything that you are aware of, it’s simply that most of us have misidentified ourselves as the objects of our awareness rather than see ourselves as the being that knows the objects.  

This misidentification with the objects of our awareness is the reason that we spiritually seek.  We seek because we feel that there is something missing.  That something which feels like it’s missing only feels that way because we have placed our focus and sense of self onto things that are not our self.  This leaves a feeling of a void, an emptiness of sorts, or a longing for something that we know exists, but that we just can’t seem to figure out how to get, realize or know it.  We somehow feel separate from and that feeling of separateness comes from thinking that we are an object of our awareness.  So we seek to find and feel whole, because we have misidentified ourselves as a part.  This seeking for wholeness or oneness is the core of the healing or spiritual journey.  

It is not bad or wrong to seek.  In fact the seeking impulse can provide us with the experiences we need in order to remember what we are and the skills, knowledge, and awareness to realize what is already here.  When we realize what is already here spiritual seeking shifts into spiritual being.  There is however a bit of a dog chasing its tail scenario that can happen on the spiritual path if you are not clear in your intentions.  What I mean is that if you don’t have genuine desire to know yourself, you can get lost in all of the glitter and sparkle of the spiritual journey.  You can fall into chasing more objects of physical and metaphysical pleasure, rather than keeping your eye on the ball.  You get lost in the game and take detours on the path that bring you back to where you started rather than in the direction of spiritual being.  Purifying your desire to know yourself is the brightest light you can shine on your path.   

SILENCE IS YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND 

Just Be 

Somewhere some great master said that ‘silence is the greatest teacher.”   I couldn’t agree more.  To our busy mind with all of its thoughts this seems like a strange impossibility.  How could you ever learn anything from silence, after all there is nothing there?  Don’t you need content or information in order to learn?  This is how we are conditioned yes, but this conditioning has also brought us to the state of being we are currently experiencing as life.  One where we are constantly searching for more content, more answers, more reasons, which we think will provide us with the clarity of being we desire, but all they ever do is send us down more and more rabbit holes and leave us feeling overwhelmed.  Yet we continue to function in this way hoping that somewhere we will find the light at the end of hole.  

The light we are seeking lives in the silence of our own minds.  Getting ourselves to be innerly silent can be a mighty task, which we why we must have such a strong desire to know ourselves in the first place.  If we don’t then we will simply continue to allow ourselves to be distracted in and by thoughts, feelings, sensations and any other content we can find to latch our awareness onto.  The mind really, really loves content.  It is, its jam.  It’s bread and butter.  It’s life force.  Without content the mind feel useless, and because we are merged with the mind and its content as who we are, then we personally feel useless.  Other experiences that arise in silence are boredom, frustration or irritation, loneliness, restlessness, purposeless, and others.  

I have found that there are stages to the “getting innerly silent process.”  When you are first learning how to get silent by sitting or lying down and just beginning to let go of some of the content, taking a few breaths, you start feeling some sense of relaxation.  This typically feels good to us.  If however you go a bit deeper into the letting go process, sitting or lying longer, you will find lots of areas where you don’t want to let go.  You may notice this as tension in areas of the body, sensations getting louder, mental tension, thinking and being lost in the thoughts, scattered, restlessness, or feeling emotions.  Once you move through that stage, I often find the next stage to be an insightful stage.  This is where you still aren’t completely focused on being yet, but you are less fixated with the objects of your awareness.  There is now more space for you to see things from a larger perspective.  You might get insights, intuitions or be able to see your patterns or habits more clearly.  Once you move through that, I find the next stage to be simply noticing that you are, that you be.  There may still be thoughts, feelings or sensations, but you are no longer focused on them.  You are only focused on that you be.  This is often peaceful, restful and the tendency is to want to stay here, to be absorbed in simply being.  Sometimes this stage will come with feelings of bliss, energy or an increased alertness or wakefulness.  None of those things are required, but they can be present.  

The longer you allow yourself to be present to “that you be” the more you come to know yourself and less identified you are with the objects of your awareness.  I have this to be the most direct path to self-realization.  Try it out.  It takes desire, commitment and some discipline, but the rewards are epic.  It’s the end of spiritual seeking and the beginning of spiritual being.  

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

ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF

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ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF 

Your high self is here now

Entrainment is a process of two independent systems or frequencies coming into alignment or phase with one another.  We can see this in biology as our circadian rhythms (i.e. light/dark sleep cycles) come into alignment with the seasons or time changes.  We also see this in physical systems such as when two individual pendulum clocks that are sitting on the same surface become synchronized to each other in their movements.  Energy gets transferred between the two independent moving systems and eventually they get locked into phase or frequency together for the period of time that they are interacting.  

Our individual physiological, psychological and I’ll even say our spiritual frequencies or rhythms can respond and lock into phase with other frequencies or oscillating bodies.  This in fact how spinal entrainment works when you are laying on the table receiving Network Care.  One spinal segment or oscillator interacts with another spinal segment or oscillator and they entrain to each other, hence why we call the sessions entrainments.  Entrainment is happening all of the time though it’s mostly unconscious to us.  Individual cells in our body are entraining to rhythms or frequencies put out by master gland or organ systems.  If we are around one person a lot we will start mimicking some of their behaviors or even moving or sounding like them.  When we attend a retreat or healing program we will start entraining to the field that is created there with the intention that is set by those who are running the program.  This is why we might have access to different thoughts, emotions or spiritual frequencies that we don’t typically have access to when we are there.  

To me the process of entrainment clearly demonstrates that everything is vibrating/oscillating energy or frequency, and when we come into different environmental conditions, energies will vibrate or oscillate together.  In the process of entrainment, whatever energy or vibration is stronger or more coherent, that is the one that the two will come together and oscillate as.  If you have followed this so far then you could extrapolate that your higher self, which is that self that knows, understands, and sees from a much wider vantage point such as like the perspectives of an eagle to an ant, is also energy or frequency.  It’s simply vibrating at a different frequency than the one that your conscious mind is vibrating at right now.  Energy can never be created or destroyed which means that the frequency of your higher self is here now in existence.  Even if you don’t have conscious awareness of it, it is here among the frequencies of creation and is part of the cosmic environment.   

UTILIZING FOCUS 

Becoming in phase with your higher self

I often talk about focus and where we place it.  Our focus, meaning our awareness, will only notice what we choose to tune into.  For example if we are not at all interested in basketball we will probably never see a basketball game.  We know it exists, but we place no awareness or energy into noticing its existence.  If however you are incredibly interested in chocolate you will likely seek out chocolate wherever you go, meaning it will be inside of your experience a lot of the time.  Even though it seems like “spiritual” things are more elusive than say basketball or chocolate, using your focus or awareness works the same way.  If you have no interest in seeing angels you will likely never see one, however if you have an intense desire and love of angels you will more likely interact with them because your desire, focus and love brings them into your environment.  I see this the same as for your higher self.  

You might ask yourself how much energy, time or focus you give to your higher self?  Equally you may ask yourself how connected you feel to it?  You may even have to ask yourself if you believe in it.  If not that is totally ok, however you will likely need to shift that belief if you have desire to make contact with it, as our beliefs generate our experiences.  Imagine for a moment what it would be like to feel clear, confident, easeful, peaceful, rested, vital, aligned, fearless, abundant, blissful, wise, loving, compassionate, discerning and endlessly energized.  These are some of the frequencies that your higher self is constituted as.  What if connecting to these frequencies is the equivalent of entraining to your higher self?  What if as you use your focus to tune into these qualities of higher self you entrain or become more and more in phase with the frequency of your higher self?  It is after all just physics and biology at play in the realm beyond our ordinary visual sense awareness of what is.

Focus is one of those things that is not very natural for most.  Most of us can’t choose to one-pointedly focus on whatever we choose for as long we want.  We will get distracted nine hundred billion times by thoughts, feelings and sensations.  So if we want to use focus then we must train it just like we would train any other muscle.  In my humble opinion training your focus is probably the most worthwhile muscle to train because your ability to focus is your power.  Focus can activate every single super power that currently lays dormant in the infinite field of vast consciousness.  It is the attractive force of the universe.  It is what allows instant manifestation to occur.  Meditation is probably the best tool currently in existence to help you build your focus muscle.  

Entraining to the frequency of your higher self locks your current state of being into phase with your higher state of being, meaning your current state entrains to your higher state.  For as long as you maintain your focus on your higher self you will create the environmental conditions for entrainment to happen.  As soon as you lose focus, you fall out of the conditions required for entrainment and begin operating as a separate independent system again, entraining to your ordinary state of being and knowing.  Focus is the key, which is fueled by practice and your desire to live a more magical experience of existence.  

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

PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION

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PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION 

Going beyond the known

Many of you have had those experiences of pure bliss or ecstatic rapture.  Moments of profundity and transcendental insight.  Where you experienced or knew something beyond what your ordinary senses and mind experience on a day to day basis.  Something that left you feeling touched, moved, alive, open, integrated and whole.  Words often cannot describe these experiences.  In fact when we use words to explain them, the words tend to make the experiences seem more ordinary than they are.  Yet often we want to share something of these moments with others so we do our best to translate them into mental thoughts and ideas, even though they will never truly fit inside of them.  

Peak experiences are gateways for waking up our awareness to the fact that there is more than what we’ve been experiencing life to be.  They stretch us beyond our known world into something more expansive and inclusive.  They often show us that there is indeed something behind the appearance of solid matter and physicalness, and beyond the ordinary thoughts we think.  If we’ve never had a peak experience it’s hard to believe that there is anything more to existence than what we experience as our everyday reality.  We simply have to take it on faith that there is something more, that is until something pops us out of our ordinary experiencing.  Even if we had 1, 2, 10 or a 100 peak experiences it can still be easy to fall back into our normal, habituated way of seeing reality as a physical machine devoid of spirit or essence.  

Peak experiences can occur at any moment and don’t necessarily require anything on our behalf in order to “make” them happen.  There are however certain conditions that seem to make the probability of them occurring more likely.  One is an earnest and sincere desire to know one’s self or know the true nature of reality even if you don’t fully know what that means.  Our desire for this creates the internal conditions along with an attractive force that set the stage for extrasensory or beyond sensory peak type of experiences.  Any type of inner or somatic work that you do, which helps dismantle your physical and mental defenses, increases your receptiveness to these types of experiences as well.  Other activators can be near death experiences, traumatic experiences such as car accidents or other physical/emotional threats, consuming psychedelic substances, meditation, lucid dreaming, sweat lodges and other healing work, particularly when there is a group field effect in place that supports going beyond the known.   

FUNCTION OF PEAK EXPERIENCES 

Bring the extraordinary to life

The function of the peak experience seems to be to give us a new or wider perspective on what is, viewing life in a different light than how we’ve been seeing it.  They also tend to increase our hunger for truth, knowing more of what is, and bring us more into alignment with ourselves and the larger organizing principles of life.  We get to feel what it’s like to vibrate at a higher energetic state with more awareness, openness and inclusion.  I find that it’s fairly natural to desire more of these experiences once you begin to taste them, yet the peak experience without the integration of it, is simply chasing pleasure and in the longterm is not fulfilling.  It’s like sex without love.  It may feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t have any lasting ripples on your state of being or what you create as your day to day reality.  

For many the desire for these experiences is to help bridge the so called gap between what is experienced on the more ordinary levels of reality and what gets glimpsed, tasted and known as reality through them.  Our minds may not believe that the essence of those experiences can really become our day to day reality, and that is the very debris that we need to clear.  Sometimes peak experiences are not “pleasurable” in the ordinary way we think of pleasure, but rather they are uncomfortably revealing.  They reveal where we have thoughts and beliefs that don’t support a more alive, rich and expansive way of being.  It’s like interference in the system of naturalness or our natural state of being.  That interference is made of up of stories and perspectives that we’ve created about our experiences that are distorted or not in alignment with the truth of what is.  Even though we might be very convinced of our perspectives and feel that they are all very accurate, our conviction doesn’t make them true if they are not in alignment with how the larger organizing principle views life, which is always love and acceptance of all.  

The desire to hold anything separate decreases as we open into more and more.  As our rigidities soften, our dissociations land home, and our completeness is accepted by us there is less and less that we can even perceive as separate.  This is the perspective you taste during peak moments, and yes for the most part it feels good, or better stated it feels like unified ecstasy that is grounded and all pervasive, that knows without figuring anything out, that loves without thought, and that is without anything.  Integrating these experiences is work.  It’s the core reason why we do any of this inner work to begin with.  To live the truth of our being, which is free, boundless, unified, whole, in love and at peace, that’s why we do it.  

There is infinite oneness from which infinite possibilities are birthed and brought into expression.  The deeper you know this infinite oneness to be the truth of existence and the source of all, the more available and capable you are to bring these possibilities to life.  Beyond ordinary, non-ordinary and extraordinary is increasingly and increasingly more probable to be your lived experience as you commit to integrating and bringing your peak experiences to life.

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

CLEAR YOUR SH*T OUT

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CLEAR YOUR SH*T OUT 

Be a vessel for source

We all have shit.  Lots and lots of shit.  We are full of it.  Most are solely consumed in it and don’t even know it.  It is the source of our dissatisfaction, our disempowerment and our suffering.  So what is all of this shit and where does it come from?  It is all of the stories, beliefs, opinions, ideas, judgments, and everything we think we know about stuff and life.  Essentially it’s everything we make up about who we think we are, what life is and the rightness or wrongness of what’s happened or is currently happening to us or in the world.  The source of all of our shit is our own thoughts and beliefs about stuff and the societal conditioning and norms that we learn from others and take on as our own.  We are often extremely convicted in our shit.  It gives us a sense of personal individual identity.  To let go of it means that we have to admit defeat to the fact that we actually don’t know and accept that which often feels unacceptable to us.  For many this is a tall order and most would rather keep their experience of dissatisfaction, disempowerment and suffering than dismantle their personal ego.  

Outside of the obvious, and perhaps it’s all obvious, you may wonder why anyone would want to clear out their shit and give away everything they think they know about life.  Well besides knowing your power, feeling fulfilled and ending suffering for yourself, it is also the gateway to being a vessel for source and living joyfully in levity and service.  When we empty out all of the shit inside of us, our mind and body become a clear container for life to be as it and move through us in the most precise, gracious and graceful ways.  It is only from this state of emptiness of self that we can truly be of service to others and life without any personal agenda whatsoever.  It is a state of true allowance and a giving to, rather than attempting to get anything at all to happen or be any way other than it is.  To our minds this might feel or seem like lack of progress or forward momentum, but to all of our souls it’s a welcome home.  

All progress is to get to better or get to perfection, but when you accept that as the current state then all of the sudden there is no where to get.  You’ve instantly arrived where you have been trying to get.  Again most people’s minds will fight this tooth and nail because it means that whatever you’ve thought about something, some injustice you feel you’ve seen or experienced, something you’ve perceived as not right, must be forgiven and allowed to return to its natural state of wholeness within your mind.  Our minds experience this as failure and yet paradoxically we become more free and in connection with all of life when we stop fighting.  This is healing, and beyond that, this is healed.   

THE JOY OF BEING A VESSEL 

Surrendering self

There is tremendous joy in surrendering to what is and becoming an empty vessel of pure service.  To give your life over to that sourceful intelligence that created the entire universe, that put galaxies in place and planets into orbit, which sees and knows way beyond what the human mind does, relieves so much pressure on your system.  For some this might not seem all that exciting on initial thought.  To give away our agendas of all the things we think we want, that feel important to us, and simply be moved by the source of life itself can feel scary to the mind.  We may feel loss of control.  We might have thoughts that we will be purposeless if we don’t have a clear trajectory of what is next.  We often fear the quiet, the silence or non-activity because it seems to threaten our worth and sense of contribution, safety or survival.  Most people lack trust in the silence so they fill up the spaciousness of their mind with as many thoughts as possible about everything that has happened, is happening or might happen.  In this way we can’t hear in the silence, and feeling nothing is there, we busy ourselves as much as they can so that we don’t feel the uncomfortableness of the fertile spontaneous present arising of the mystery of silence.

Much to your surprise you might discover that on an appearance level your life doesn’t look that much different when you give away all the stuff inside of you that keeps you full of your own self.  You may live in the same place, have the same job, be engaged in the same relationships, yet even though things look the same on the outside, where you are coming from on the inside is completely different.  Coming from your current thoughts and beliefs about stuff versus coming from pure emptiness that remains when you give away all of that stuff, generates a completely different experience even it looks the same from the outside.  The level of presence, connection, ease, purity, depth of impact and non-attachment you feel is worlds different than what most people are experiencing inside of their minds in their day to day experience.  

There really is nothing greater that I’ve found than giving away the personal mind stuff and being open to whatever is present.  To be available in this way allows you to feel rested inside of every single moment.  There is no time or place where you need to leave this rest to go outside of yourself and meet something other than you.  All of you is included inside of the moment when you drop all of your ideas, thoughts and agendas about what’s happened or is happening.  Here you experience magic in action, because your mind doesn’t have it figured out yet, but somehow that which knows all moves through you.  What comes through is stuff you wouldn’t have even been able to figure out or make up.  You know, but don’t know how you know.  You do, but don’t really know what you are doing.  Yet eternal yumminess is all you ever experience no matter how things unfold and you realize your tiny little person mind could never take credit for it all.  This is mastery of the yourself to the point where you are willing to surrender yourself completely to all of you rather than just what you think you are.  This brings an indescribable peace to your experience because you no longer have any personal attachment to anything that happens, and paradoxically in giving yourself away you finally experience the freedom you’ve always innately longed for.

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

SELF-CENSORSHIP

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SELF-CENSORSHIP 

Being dishonest

There is often controversy around censorship, particularly about information getting hidden or concealed in or by the media.  It is a popular topic of conversation as many people feel like they aren’t getting the full story or all of the information that is going on behind the scenes, or behind the appearance of things.  There are narratives that people want to be seen or heard more than other narratives.  Each person or group does their best to be the loudest or have the most attention placed on what they want to be seen or heard.  This often lends to debates around violations of free speech or free expression.  For some people this is a very heated debate.  Ultimately this censorship leads to feelings of mistrust and that no one is being honest about what is really going because the full story isn’t being shared.  

As we see this all being played out before us, sort of like watching a movie on a big screen, we are getting a peak into the inner workings of our own collective and personal psyche.  The way I see it is is that everything is projection.  That which we have the most inner charge around we will work out in our outer environment, and it will become our experience or what we call fact or reality.  The outer experience of censorship and the unfairness or violation around it, is a mere reflection of the massive amounts of self-censorship we do on a day to day basis.  Many are frustrated by how un-fully expressed they feel and simultaneously they are constantly censoring themselves.  Why do we self-censor?  There are a multitude of reasons.  We don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, we don’t feel like who we are is valid or good enough to express, we don’t want to appear to come off as rude or insensitive, we think other people won’t accept us, like us or maybe will even leave us if we don’t censor ourselves.  

Another way to say self-censor would be to say that we aren’t being authentic or honest.  When we censor ourselves we become un-trustable.  People don’t know if we are being honest or not and this makes them not trust us.  How much do you trust someone who you know isn’t telling you the truth?  Probably not much, and rightfully so.  If we want to live authentically, and authentically relate with others, then we must be ourselves.  Now on the flip side of this, sometimes we might not really want to know the truth that someone is expressing to us, because it isn’t what we want to hear, see or know.  As a “recipient” of authenticity we must be willing to receive the information as it is.  When we don’t receive the information well, it breads more of an environment where censorship is the socially accepted way of engagement in our collective and personal relationships.   

BEING AUTHENTIC 

Facing your fears

Making the shift from inauthenticity to authenticity may feel tough.  It may bring up some of your biggest fears such as rejection, worthlessness, or being a bad person.  These fears run pretty deep through most all of us as human beings.  What it boils down to though is the type of experience you both want to have and create, which are the same thing.  Even though authenticity can feel super scary and threatening, being inauthentic feels miserable in other ways.  We usually feel disgruntled, frustrated, stuck, trapped, unaligned, disempowered, heavy, tired, irritated, annoyed and not at peace when we are choosing inauthenticity.  On a bigger level it can also feel like we aren’t living our purpose or engaging with life in the ways we desire too.  We each must personally evaluate the cost and decide if authenticity or inauthenticity makes more sense to us.  We may perceive that we get certain things like survival needs, love, attention, approval, validation, or respect if we engage inauthentically, or in ways we think other people want us too.  On the other hand being ourselves, having self-acceptance, feeling at peace and being aligned with our purpose may hold more weight.   

Now being authentic isn’t a permission slip to be mean or righteous, rather it’s only to be truthful.  If the receiver of your authentic expression can’t receive you, first know that it isn’t about you.  It’s about them not being able to accept what is being presented to them in the reflection of you.  Secondly you can consciously choose not to express an aspect of yourself in any situation or relationship that you find it relevant not to do so.  The key here is that you are deliberately choosing to withhold because you feel greater relevance in not expressing yourself.  When you are in the position of chooser there are no feelings of violation of self-expression, no frustration in not expressing yourself and you feel nothing is lost.  It can sometimes be a bit tricky to discern if you are avoiding authenticity or truly feeling it relevant not to express yourself.  The determining factor is often how much inner peace you have at the end of it all. 

There are overt ways that we self-censor that are often very obvious.  Examples would be not saying something we are feeling to someone, flat out lying to others, saying we will do things that we don’t want to do, shutting down completely and not speaking.  These things are obvious to just about anyone that is aware.  There are also subtle way that we self-censor that may not be as apparent.  Examples would be ways that we posture our body, being stiff or rigid, holding our breath, not making eye contact, smiling or nodding a lot, being agreeable, shyness, and not feeling.  In order to uncover these for yourself simply notice when you feel most yourself and contrast that with when you feel the most not yourself, and then pay attention to some of these subtleties.  

To live uncensored is simply to be yourself and to receive what life offers you.  It is to be trustable in self and of life.  It is to live aligned and feel inner peace.  Being authentic with others is being authentic with self.  

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

UTILIZING IMAGINATION

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UTILIZING IMAGINATION

Giving non-reality form

Our imagination is the most potent creative tool that we have.  It far surpasses any mechanical device or conceptual knowledge we have in regards to bringing forth our creations into this world.  Without utilizing our imagination we simply create the same things that are known to us over and over again.  We then wonder why things look, feel and behave the same way and/or why our own patterns seem to never change.  What we often fail to recognize is that everything that is created has been imagined by someone at some point in time.  Imagination is the birthplace of all creation and the seed to transformation of all existing forms.  Part of what caps our imagination is that we have beliefs that say only x, y or z is possible.  Anything outside of our current beliefs is deemed impossible by our mind, and if we stretch too far, it’s just called fantasy or “made up non-reality.”

But what if made up non-reality is just the future of what is to come into creation.  I’d imagine that the person who created the airplane, the first MRI, the cell phone, the computer and on and on, had a hell of an imagination.  They would have to because they brought into existence creations that previously where uncreated.  Whether we are tapping into the collective unconscious and connecting with information contained there, or if we are simply making it all up in our own minds, we are bringing forth novelty into form.  This is the power of imagination.  Now it doesn’t stop at imagination.  If you want to make physical your imagination then there is work to be done.  Without the work imagination is just wishful thinking.  Physical manifestation requires output.  It requires taking action on what you envision, desire and dream of. 

I find that people are often either wonderful imagineers, but lack follow through in bringing their creations to life, or people are great doers, but don’t feel like they have much creative potential.  It can be easy to fall into thinking about stuff incessantly without following through on it, and equally easy to constantly be doing stuff without any time given to imaging new possibilities.  However both of these qualities are necessary in order to bring imagination to life and new and exciting manifestations into form.  This is after all how we up level our human experience.  The most important and key ingredient here is that you have to believe what you imagine is possible.  You don’t have to know how to do it, you just have to believe that it can be done.  I find this to be the bridge between imagination and action.  

IMAGINATION & SELF-DEVELOPMENT 

Creating new patterns

One of the overlooked areas is how we can use our imagination for self-development.  The same principles from above apply, however we utilize them in a more internal way.  Rather than focusing on something we want to create in our outer environment the focus shifts to our inner environment.  What new aspects, patterns or ways of being do we want to bring to life?  We can develop and recreate ourselves over and over again.  It’s unlikely that you possess all of the same characteristics that you did when you were 6 or 16 or 26.  Perhaps some things feel the same, but much has been altered, added or upgraded.  How we most often change aspects of ourselves comes through experiences that we have.  We learn through experiences and overtime we develop different ways of thinking, seeing and behaving.  For most people it seems that this process “just happens.”  What I mean by this is that most people are not actively pursuing change just for the sake of it and because they see everything as already perfect in themselves and their existence.  Rather life seems to give us experiences and then we develop through those experiences.  One of the cool things about imagination is that comes prior to our experience, not after it.  Imagining ourselves in novel ways, and changing our identity and the ways we engage with life can come before we have an experience that kind of “forces” us to change.  We don’t have to wait for life to hand us experiences (ie. opportunities) in order to up level ourselves.  We can simply choose to do it through using our imagination.  Once again there will need to be follow up with actions, and the fundamental belief that we can change is the foundational block that allows the entire picture to be built.    

You might be wondering what does all of this look like?  Well it’s really not that complex.  It starts with imagination.  What do you desire, envision and dream of for yourself?  How would you like to feel?  How would you like to be perceived or seen?  How would you like to behave, act or be?  Some of us are very good at doing this and for others it feels more challenging.  The challenge comes because we often feel like the same person because we are generating the same thoughts and feelings about ourselves.  This gives us the illusion of sameness and/or solidity in our identity.  However nothing is solid and everything can reorganize the energy of its form, therefore your identity is malleable.  As you begin the process of envisioning your most optimal configuration of self see where your impossibility beliefs arise.  Maybe you come up with a few things that feel alterable, but some that seem unalterable.  Simply take note.  Go to the edge of what your mind will still accept as possible.  This is where you can play.  If you perceive it to be impossible then you will have nowhere to go and you won’t take action on it.  Therefore go the edge of possibility and then start taking actions in alignment with whatever it is you come up with.  For example maybe one of things you desire is to feel joy.  The obvious action to this would be to activate more joy daily in your life.  Perhaps you want to become more intuitive.  Take actions that align with you in ways that you feel would help you bring your intuition to life.  Maybe you want to be seen as powerful, take actions that align with you feeling powerful.  This might mean changing the way you dress, how you drive, the places you eat, where you shop, the tone of your voice, the things you have in your house, and on and on.  This is a process, but with imagination and action you can become anew over and over again.  You can recreate yourself and all of your patterns.  Nothing is solid or fixed no matter how long you’ve been operating that way.  Nothing is irreversibly engrained.  

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