amanda hessel

FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKING TO SPIRITUAL BEING

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

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

PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

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

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

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

STRETCHING OPEN

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

STRETCHING OPEN 

New ranges of motion

We tend to live in a pretty comfortable range of motion of ourselves.  This range is a container, box or bandwidth that includes who and what we know ourselves to be.  We often don’t even know that we are living our life inside of this range, it’s simply what we know.  There wouldn’t even be the thought to question or stretch it because we are merged as it.  However there comes a rhythm where we know we need to stretch.  We feel the confinement and don’t even really know what we are confined in.  We simply feel that the clothes we are wearing are too tight and a sense of restlessness and impeding uncomfortableness is on the horizon.  

When we hit the point where the way we have been living, operating and viewing ourselves from is too small or limited we must stretch.  That stretch occurs outside of the normal range of motion.  Due to the fact that it is beyond where we normally hang out, or perhaps have ever been, it feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar.  That uncomfortableness can deter people from stretching.  If the stretch is deferred then we will go back into our familiar range, inside our familiar box of self, but feel slightly miserable.  Often our tolerance for misery is high, some people even pride themselves in this.  Yet this high tolerance to low level misery is the enemy of stretching out of our current range of motion.

The pain of staying inside of our limited perspective, with it habits and ways of functioning, must become greater than the perceived pain of uncomfortableness, uncertainty and the potential lack of something we aren’t even really clear about, but which boils down to loss of love in some form or another.  If the pain doesn’t become greater, or our tolerance is exceptionally high for misery, then we will stay un-stretched and feel ourselves slowly wither away as we resist our own change and progress.  When we thwart ourselves in such a way we remain in a sea of our own frustration, often feeling like nothing works and like we will never be different than we are.  If instead we use the fuel of misery, and allow, feel and actively participate with the stretch, even though its uncomfortable and we don’t know what’s on the other side yet, we start the journey of going beyond the box of our current self.  The truth is that the range that we have been in has someway and somehow served us, perhaps even really, really well.  We must however be willing to un-attach to our ranges and release the aspects of our identity that are connected with those ranges, when the rhythm of stretch presents itself.   

EMBODYING YOUR STRETCH 

Inviting change

When the rhythm of stretch presents itself it is ultimately stretching us open into more of ourselves.  It is not stretching us into some bad or wrong place even though our mind might try to convince us in these ways.  Stretching does however imply change.  Change in experience, change in feeling, and change in sense of self.  When I have you stretch certain parts of your body on the table it is the activation of stretching your range of motion and thus range of self of sense.  You may find it hard to stretch certain areas and easier for other areas.  You may feel not entirely present during the stretch or find yourself mechanically moving your body without your awareness behind it.  You may find yourself meet some resistance to the stretch or you may go into automatic pilot mode having stretched that area before.  

It is important to notice your experience of stretching.  How does it feel to stretch?  Where do you go?  Are you present? Does it feel hard?  Does it feel too easy?  Do you want to give up in the middle of it?  Do you want it to be over?  Are you bored and not present?  Are you slow to move?  Are you fast to move?  Do you release into the stretch?  Do you resist the stretch and maintain your holding patterns?  You can use these questions as a way to see how you respond to stretch in your life.  How we respond to stretch in our bodies is how we will respond to it in our lives.  

On a physiologically level when you stretch your body in the spots that I am touching it activates certain receptors in the tissues in that area.  The activation of those receptors allows oscillation to occur at the tissue level in the area of stretch.  That oscillation can be felt as vibration or energy at the area.  In Network terms this is the development of the energetic portion of the spinal gateway.  Remember the spinal gateways are those areas that get touched during entrainments and which grow into little energetic vortices as you continue to stretch them open.  As you stretch they grow.  They grow into your subtle energetic body, first reaching into your emotional body and then beyond that into your mental bodies.  When the spinal gateways are in subtle layers of your mental bodies you are able to more clearly see the boxes, stories and limited containers of self that you are in.  Through this sight you gain more energy for transformation and greater fuel to be ready to relinquish those more limited ranges of self that come from your limited perspectives.  

The stretch is the beginning of something anew.  It’s the birthplace of a new range.  You must stretch in order to come out of the birth canal so that the new expressions of you can come into form.  Yes it’s uncomfortable.  Yes it’s uncertain as to what will come out exactly.  Yet we must move forward.  We must emerge and we must be fully in.  Along the way of our emergence all that no longer works and no longer serves must go.  There simply isn’t room for it.  Holding onto it weighs us down and interferes with what’s coming through now.  There is a sweet love and a sweet goodbye to who we were.  There is deep gratitude for how it served and shared.  Now there is this here, a new range, a new expression, a new experience, a new sense of self, a new way to participate, and a new contribution and sharing.  

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

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Ending the chase of what’s next

It is no secret that we live in a near constant state of trying to get somewhere.  We make goals, create plans, and think about what is next.  We measure our progress from start to finish and course correct along the way.  Without some degree of forward momentum, and the feeling that we are creating or accomplishing what we set out to do, we often feel stuck or stagnant.  This itch to be other than where we are creates a gap inside of our experience.  That gap is a self-created illusion where we believe that there is somewhere to get and somewhere we think we’d rather be.  When we place ourselves inside that gap we miss what’s here as we are ambitiously move towards what is next.  

Rarely do we rest into and love exactly where we are.  There are many reasons for this.  Many people believe that what is here is not enough so they constantly strive for more.  The moment they arrive anywhere is the same moment they jump back into the gap between here and what’s next.  That sense of not enoughness can be personal and express as always attempting to make themselves better (self-improvement can fall into this category), or it can be projected onto external circumstances by always finding a new thing or cause that needs to be improved.  This is not to say that things, causes or personality traits can’t be shifted to express in more coherent ways, they absolutely can, but when it comes from a place of scarcity in where you are rather than abundance in where you are, its rooted rejection rather than acceptance.  This leads to a constant chase in attempting to get, rather than devoted service to what you love.

Other reasons people don’t rest and love exactly where they are is because they don’t trust that what’s here is good and right.  They have a belief that something is wrong or bad with what is present and that they must somehow change it in order for it to be good and right.  They bypass the goodness and rightness that’s here for their belief that it lives somewhere else.  In my opinion this is the true spiritual bypass.  People also tend to believe that the conditions of their life are dependent on them being able to fully express and be themselves, but this is backwards.  You fully expressing and being yourself creates the conditions of your life.  Since people believe the other way around they will go about trying to make the conditions of their life match their mind’s idea of what it thinks it needs in order to be rested and in love here.  This chasing of conditions is tempting because it seems to go somewhere and things appear to be happening in a forward direction, however it leads only to continuing your postponement of loving where you are.  Some people postpone in such a way for their entire life. 

MAKING CHANGE IN LOVE 

How you source

We tend to believe that we can’t make change in love.  Historically we have needed to be fed up, dissatisfied and frustrated with what is in order to have the fuel to create change in ourselves or the world.  Can you even fathom what it would be like to love where you are and also create movement or change?  I believe this is how it is done in most portions of the universe, but here on planet Earth we haven’t quite learned this yet.  We still hold strong to states of pain, suffering and dissatisfaction being our primary fuel for change.  Be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact it is currently required, I’m simply inviting that there is another way.  

In this moment entertain, feel, channel or drop into a state of full love and acceptance.  Do so right now in this very moment.  As you do notice how much energy becomes available to you.  Notice how you naturally overflow and emanate lightness and joy.  Feel the levity and also the fullness that’s here.  This is always here, its simply that you haven’t practiced paying attention in this way.  Instead you’ve practiced paying attention to what doesn’t work or feel good and for lack of a better term, lower states of energy.  You’ve focused on what has to be done, what needs fixed or improved, and how something is better somewhere other than here now.  You’ve created distance, but understand that this distance isn’t real.  Its a concept, a thought in your mind, nothing else.  It has no separate existence outside of your thought of it.  Just as easily as you create that thought of something will be better in the distance, you can create a thought of amazingness of what’s here right now.  

Just through the simplicity of shifting your focus you dramatically shift your energy state.  The more energy you feel the more easily movement and change naturally flow through you.  You don’t need to dislike or feel frustrated about what is in order to find a source of energy to create change.  You can both love what is now and then love what is next when it becomes now.  You don’t have to choose to love one moment over the next moment, you get to love both, and the changes that need to occur will.  The only real requirements are to watch where your focus goes and be in charge of it.  Deliberately choose the focus of your desire and know that it will determine the energy level that is available to you and how change will move through you.

To love what is, is to dissolve your agenda for what must be.  In giving your life over to your mission, to your purpose, to why you are, over and over and over again, you will always find yourself perfectly positioned and therefore life will also appear perfectly positioned to you.  You can’t find anything out there because there is no out there.  Distance is made up by you.  Your sense of location is unreal.  You can never actually move, you can only be.  Choose your being wisely through how you focus.  Know that change will always happen, but how it happens is up to you.  How you source your change makes all the difference.  Change sourced through love breeds more love.  Its silly to think other and yet many do.  Where you start you will end.  Where you create from will determine the creation. 

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

LACK OF PERCEIVED SELF-WORTH

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

LACK OF PERCEIVED  SELF-WORTH

Self-absorption & taking from the field

Not valuing ourselves is a rather common disposition among humans.  It tends to be more socially acceptable to share feelings of lack of self-worth than it is to share expressions of worthiness.  If someone is confident they are often viewed as arrogant or conceded, and if someone lacks self-worth they are viewed as altruistic or humble.  Due to this social conditioning many who are confident don’t share themselves fully for concern of not wanting to “make” others feel bad about themselves or appear non-caring or un-empathetic.  Meanwhile those that don’t value themselves set the social bar for the level of self-love that it’s ok to share and express.  

Not valuing one’s self is the lowest energy state.  It literally takes energy from everything that it interacts with because it never feels like it’s enough.  Not only does it perceive itself as not enough, but it views everything else from the same lens that it views itself.  It can’t not.  It does not give to the field, but rather takes from it.  It is the most self-absorbed state.  Some people may find this paradoxical because what is perceived as confident or arrogant is most commonly associated with self-absorption.  However this is opposite to the energetic dynamics that get played out.  

Understand that to not care for yourself or see value in who/what you are is not humble or altruistic.  You viewing yourself as less than does not make you more kind, loving or selfless.  Rather it makes you more selfish and more wrapped up in your own self-created delusion of inadequacy and lack.  This sucks the life out of you, and out of everything and everyone around you.  Lack of self-worth is like a black hole that absorbs all the light of the world into it and yet remains empty because there isn’t enough light in the entire universe to illuminate it.  

The only thing that can shift this is if that which views itself changes its perspective of itself, meaning you change your perception of yourself.  If rather than seeing yourself as lack and valueless, you see yourself as you truly are, which is abundant, complete and full.  If that simple perception shift occurs, than no longer does one need to get from its environment or from other people in order to attempt to fill itself up.  Only then will you stop sucking energy out of the field and become a radiating stream that gives to the field by its very beingness.  Rather than being self-absorbing you become self-emitting, shining light wherever you go.  Many desire this, to be a light, and yet simultaneously don’t understand that their perception of themselves and their worth influences all of the energetic dynamics about them.   

FUELING YOUR BELIEF IN SELF

Prisoned disempowerment or free will

The larger truth is that its impossible to not be worthy.  You can only perceive yourself to be unworthy, and that perception creates the reality you experience, whether it’s true or not.  The only questions become, how do you want to participate with/play the game of life, and will you wake up to your choice?  See nothing in life happens to you unless you view it as such; unless you choose the victim position.  Most people unconsciously choose the victim position because the sea our consciousness swims in is filled with that programming.   The whole process and point of waking up is to consciously recognize that you are choosing and also then what you are choosing.  In this way you can consciously create your world rather than blindly accept the status quo.  Just because the large majority of people choose prisoned disempowerment as their story doesn’t mean that you must as well.   

The fuel of the reality of prisoned disempowerment is re-enforcing the belief of non-worth, non-value, and powerlessness.   In this reality some people have power and some don’t.  Some people matter and some don’t.  Some people are valuable and some aren’t.  You must ask yourself if that is the reality that you want to fuel, and also be willing to see how you do fuel it though the “innocent” interaction you have with how you see yourself as unworthy.   If you desire to create a different reality you will require a different fuel source.  The reality of free will is fueled by the belief of infinite value, inherent worth and powerfulness.  What is required for you to experience free will is the knowing of your worth.  Your power is your worth, your worth is your power.  In this reality all have power, all matter and all are valuable.

Its important to know what reality your energetic vote and perception of self, contribute to creating.  People tend not to know the power of their inner dialogue and the power of the lenses that they wear when they look at self or at the world.  How you view becomes your reality.  Even though your power could never be more or less than it is, which is synonymous with saying that your worth could never be more or less than it is, in this relative game we are playing there are two ways to increase power/worth/energy.  One way is to control others; the other way is to empower others.  If you control others you then gain/take their free will and it adds to your own.  You gain power.  If you empower others you give free will and it adds to the greater collective all of which you are included.  This is essentially your “how to” recipe: view yourself as valuable, help others view themselves as such through your capacity to view yourself as such, create a lived reality where free will is your direct experience.  

Understand that to view yourself as unworthy or not valuable is to disregard the beauty of God and it’s creation.  It’s to deny the perfection of the creator expressed through you.  It’s paradoxically the most self-absorbed perspective through its rejection of self.  Its the lowest energy state, which you then experience as your life.  Through viewing yourself as unworthy you create a disempowered reality and willingly give your free will, your energy and your power over to it.  When will you have had enough?  When will you decide you are more then you’ve been perceiving yourself to be?  What will it take for you to stop insisting that you aren’t worthy?  How much more suffering are you willing to create by holding onto your view of unworthiness?  

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

RESOLVING CHARGE

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

RESOLVING CHARGE

Depolarizing our perspectives

Most people are familiar with charge.  Charge is polarization or activation in a particular perspective or way of thinking about an experience.  People deal with charge in different ways.  Some people get reactive and justify or defend their perspective, while others withdraw, become apathetic or move away from their experience.  Whether or not a person chooses to react or withdrawal, the charge remains unresolved in their system.  Unresolved charge perpetuates tension, irritation, restlessness and disconnection.  

Charge occurs because we have certain beliefs, perspectives and preferences about our experiences.  When our preferences or perspectives of an experience don’t match with what is actually occurring, we build up charge or resistance.  Another way to say this is that when we don’t want to accept what is occurring, because we want something else other than what is revealing itself to be happening, we create resistance.  Resistance is our attempt to not fully feel what is actually happening because its doesn’t feel good to us and it doesn’t align with what it is we think we want.  

Charge creates the experience of disruption to our sense of stable, rested beingness.  This means that it creates disruption in our capacity to be present and be of service in a way that supports others and supports interconnectedness.  So frequently people say that their desire is to be centered, unswayed, and rested in themselves no matter what is occurring.  Yet most people allow themselves to get pulled out of center by their very own perspectives and preferences.  There is nothing wrong with this, it’s simple that it creates an experience of being caught up in one’s own thoughts, rather than present to what is.  

In general I find that most people aren’t really aware of themselves in such a way to notice how they are creating their own experience of loss of centeredness or stability in self.  They don’t see that how they perceive an experience is what creates resistance, not the actual experience itself.  They also don’t want to feel how what is showing up is undesired or undesirable.  This creates the postponement of change in one’s life because when we are unwilling to feel what is, and that it is undesirable, then we don’t have the fuel to move on from our perspective and create the changes we desire in our state of being.  This keeps us in mental loops, which come with the feeling that we are stuck or can’t move on.   

FINDING YOUR WAY THROUGH

Death of your dreams

In order to resolve the charge it typically means that you must die to something.  That something is usually an idea, hope or desire you had about how an experience in your life, or life in general, would go or turn out.  This is often experienced as the death of a dream(s).  It is also referenced in spiritual circles as ego death, which is death of the individual purpose driven life.  As unappealing as this may sound, and as contradictory as it may seem to the self-empowerment movement, it is the portal to peace.  It is how you come to resolution, and become once again available to what is rather than what you’d hope was.  

It makes total and complete sense that we don’t want to feel death.  Death tends to not feel good to most of us so we move away from the experience of it.  We are not so willing to just plunge into death, so instead resistance to what is, is created.  We may find ourselves trying to tell ourselves we are ok with whatever is, but underneath it all we really aren’t.  We know we aren’t because we don’t feel absolute, total peace and resolve.  Rather we feel tense, but don’t know why.  We feel disconnected, but can’t figure out it logically.  We try to move forward, but feel we don’t know how.  Life seems to not be opening up for us because we aren’t opening into the death that needs to occur before rebirth can find its way through.  

By going into the portal of death you come to experience true surrender.  Surrender of your insistences, surrender to seeing your preferences being played out in the world, surrender to trying so hard to make things happen in a particular way, and you find yourself in a state of openness.   Open receptivity is our natural state of being minus all of the personal preferences and desires we create along the way of this human journey.  You become available to and for life, rather than to and for your own agendas, and the sense of untethered-ness to your own preferences is liberating.  To the person that you believe yourself to be this seems stupid and devastating, and yet only once you go through the portal of death of your dreams can you discover the freedom that lives here.  The freedom to simply be present with what is here, to be an open vessel of energy and information to give to life, to others and to other aspects of creation.  This is the only true fulfillment.  All else is only temporary gratification.  

To resolve charge is to be at peace and to be stably rested in yourself no matter what is occurring.  As you die to what you think you want and open to what is, you become harmony.  Though becoming harmony you share that frequency with all that you interact with in this world.  All then gets the opportunity to see, feel and find harmony within itself.  This is 100% within your capacity and ability.  It takes only the willingness to move towards what actually is and let it crack you open in whatever ways it does.  The heart then finds its expression and is your lived experience.  

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

PLAYING PATTERNS

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

PLAYING PATTERNS 

The matrix of creation

We all have patterns that we play out.  Patterns are strategies and ways of being that we’ve learned throughout our life in order to function and survive as a human being.  Patterns are not bad or good, they are simply what we’ve learned.  I’d say the majority of the population is not even aware that they operate utilizing learned patterns, but rather they believe that they are their patterns.  The bigger gestalt of our patterns make up our personality, which is often how we view ourselves or how others view us.  Without any patterns we would simply be what we are, which is pure awareness or love-light without conditioning.  Love-light is the substratum for all patterns or conditions to arise up out of.  There can be an intuitive knowing of this or a felt sense of what we are, yet largely most of us are identified as our personalities, aka as our patterns.  

It is rare for someone to completely see through the patterns that are present in themselves or in another, and to recognize what might be called the true Self or the love-light that is the essence.   However when true Self is glimpsed or seen by self or by other self, the effect we experience is bliss, joy, rapture or an opening into love because that is our natural state.  This direct experience or knowing of the Self is what spiritual seekers often aim to achieve through meditation and through other various healing practices.  

Being without patterns allows us to taste, see, and remember ourselves, and to experience our boundless or free state.  This is why so many seekers aim to un-condition themselves from the learning they have learned, from the personality they’ve adopted and from the bound configurations of energy that seem to interfere with their knowing or seeing of themselves.  Again patterns are not good or bad, they simply are, and they provide or lay the template for the experiences we have of life and for the ways in which we perceive life to be.  

Ultimately what patterns do, is distort the light from its pure essence and allow it to configure into different expressions, which gives us the infinite myriad of forms and experiences throughout this universe.  Patterns are what we call creation.  You can see the organization of patterns inside of any form, which allow it to express as it does.  What is pivotal to know is that you are not the pattern (ie. the distortion that light takes on), but rather that you are the light.  You are a priori to the pattern, the “Patterner” itself.   

PURPOSE OF PATTERNS 

Understanding relevance & readiness to shift

All patterns serve a purpose.  They all have relevance, which is why they exist.  If they didn’t serve you or serve the creator (which is you), they would not be.  Patterns seem to have a developmental life span.  Some patterns will exist over the course of your entire human lifespan, or start previous to it or go beyond it, if the patterns are foundational to why it is you exist or the lessons you came here to learn/share.  Other patterns will run their course and you will stop finding benefit in them and thus extinguish them from your distortion/pattern make up.  

As people are on a their seeking journey they often desire to shift up some of their patterns because they don’t like the experiences that they offer.  Perhaps you have a pattern that you feel blocks you from something you want to experience, which has created a hunger in you to dismantle that patterning within your energetic matrix.  That hunger becomes the energy source for you to investigate, see through and to be ready to dismantle the pattern.  Sometimes we feel done with a pattern, but it isn’t done with us.  Meaning we want to resolve something inside of us, but their is still learning or relevance in us experiencing/sharing the effects of that pattern.  People frequently feel frustration around this process as they want their experience to be different than it is and yet it persists.  If a pattern persists it is because you continue to find benefit in it.  You may or may not be aware of what that benefit is, but it is a worthwhile inner investigation to find out.  There are also situations where there is a larger benefit of the pattern remaining, which you can’t currently see from the perspective from which you are viewing.  Sometimes you can zoom your awareness out to see from a larger perspective and at other times the veiling of knowing why the pattern continues to exist is part of the learning for you.  

As much as anything can be accelerated or slowed down, which are both aspects of the illusion we call time, there can be an amplification of readiness in the system to move through and beyond a pattern.  I find that frequently our readiness and the penetrating through of a pattern happens in layers that work up to a final resolution.  When we are in the layers, sometimes rather than seeing progress inside of them, we view failure that we haven’t reached complete resolution.  I mention this in case you find yourself feeling like you have worked a pattern “forever” and haven’t found resolution of it yet.  First of all this human lifespan is incredibly short so its unlikely that you have worked it “forever”, but only what maybe seems like forever to you.  Two, its ok if the patten isn’t resolved yet.  If you simply permission that for yourself, I can promise you that you will resolve the pattern with much more ease and grace than you perhaps knew possible.  

In summary know that you are playing out patterns, but that you are not the pattern itself.  Patterns serve a purpose and function, which is why they exist.  Patterns can absolutely be resolved by you and through you once their relevance for your life theme, experience, learning and sharing has ran its course.  Know that the interplay of light and form is the play of creator and creation expressing infinite expressions, and try not to take your experience too seriously.   

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

STABLE BEING

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

STABLE BEING 

Unaffected by the storm

Many of us desire stability in our state of being.  To feel good, relaxed, rested, while being attentive, present and aware.  To not get caught, pulled or hung up on the things of life.  It can seem at times that we are constantly getting drug down in one way or another by the stuff of life, all the doings, details and coming and goings.  It can feel like a mystery as to how to be stably rested despite all of the physical and mental activity that ensues.  

One of the prime awarenesses that we must develop of ourselves is how ahead of ourselves we get.  When our to do lists get long, our activity calendars get filled up, or life is a seeming crazy, chaotic mess we often get swept into the furry.  We are no longer the eye of the storm, but become part of the storm itself.  We leave our center behind us and focus on some illusionary future that has yet to come into existence outside of our thinking about it.  Our experience becomes one of unstable, frantic exhaustion as we are attempting to keep up the pace with what we think the pace should be.  

Most of the time when we are in the storm we don’t even realize that we’ve lost our center.  We only know that we feel tired, disconnected, not joyful or not as present as we would like to be.  We are on the treadmill of life trying to get to some destination, working up a ginormous sweat, but never actually going anywhere.  We also don’t realize, from the perspective of the storm, that we are choosing our experience.  Rather we feel that our experience is happening to us and that there is nothing that we can do about it.  We therefore spend a lot of time and energy not being at peace.  Constantly wanting things to be done, different, better, or somehow other than they are.  This underlying desire to arrive, for some semblance of organization, peace, rest or completion, propels us in this seeming forward aiming direction from beginning to end.  It is a tireless journey, particularly if our focus is on getting any part of it done and over.  

In order for us to find stability of being we must ultimately become unaffected by the storm.  The degree to which we are affected by the storm is the degree to which we will be unstable in our state of being.  Many people like to go on the ride, get charged up, take stances, fight causes, be right, not give up what we think we want, not feel defeat or disappointment, not feel un-resolve, and on and on.  The result is that we are often off center, not really present and feel like we are the wave that comes up and crashes down rather than realizing we are the water that makes up the wave.  If we realized we are the water, that we are the substance that makes up the wave to begin with, we would be at much peace and resolve.    

MAKING PEACE WITH EVERYTHING 

Not minding what happens

One of my favorite quotes comes from Jiddu Krishnamurti and it goes, “Here is my secret: I don’t mind what happens.”  If you really take this quote in, you will see just how far reaching it is.  You will also discover all of the places where you do mind what happens and hence all of the places that will take you out of your center, stable being.  See when we decide, think or insist that something be other than it is or be any particular way at all we suffer.  It is really that simple.  Suffering is a state of being, which most of us do not prefer.  In fact the preferred state of being for most is connectedness.  However due to the fact that most do not want to let go of what they think they want or desire, they by default choose to be unstable in their state of being.  They choose to be swayed, to be pulled, to be the wave rather than the water.  

What would your life and world experience be like if you made peace with everything right now?  I am not suggesting that you don’t feel what you feel, but rather that you make peace with whatever it is you feel.  I am not suggesting that you don’t have desires, but rather that you find peace with whatever your desires want to look like.  Without making peace with what is here now in this moment you will be hijacked by your thoughts and feelings that want it to be different.  

People think they want stable being.  In fact I’d say this is the crux of the spiritual journey, but what I’ve found that most really want is life to feel and look like what they want it too.  They want this rather than peace now, because they falsely believe that when life feels and looks like they want it to then they will be happy and experience a sense of perfect completeness.  I am pretty certain that as an experience this never arrives at some future place, but yet we are persistent in believing that it does.  We think it couldn’t possibly be found inside the mess we currently perceive things to be, but only in the perfect, clean clarity that lives elsewhere.  This is why we are all on this treadmill, going nowhere, but trying really hard to get somewhere.  

What would it take for you to make peace now?  What would be required?  This is important to ask yourself and to know what stands in between you and peace, or in between you and stable being.  Through asking yourself this question you will begin to see that you are in charge of your state of being.  It is not dependent on any circumstances or conditions.  It doesn’t matter what is going on in the world at large, in your relationships, in your inner world, in your body, on how much sleep you had, what food you ate or anything else.  Your state of being is dependent only on your choosing of it and your willingness to not mind what happens.  Here you will find stable state of being.  You will be unmoved by the stuff of life and will be responding only to your own inner alignment and choice for peace and presence now.  Your experience of life is then rested wakeful presence and attunement with this moment.  

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

LET YOUR WILD THROUGH

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

LET YOUR WILD THROUGH 

We all have wild in us

Let’s face it, most of us are living less than fully expressed.  We confine and conform ourselves to society’s standards, our friend’s and family’s exceptions, and our own thoughts about who we think we are and who we think we’re not.  There is such hunger for many to live expressed, to freely share themselves, to be their calling, which is simply just being themselves.  Yet despite this hunger that many have, the conforming, the placating others and the dimming down of ourselves wins the show.  Our fears of non-acceptance, non-love, and non-belonging outshine in our psyche and we bow down to the illusions of such realities.  

We all have wild in us.  That wild expresses differently, but we all have it.  If you have any doubts about this I give you full permission to erase them.  There is a fire that birthed us all and that spark never left us, it only got covered up.  Expressing yourself and letting your wild through doesn’t need to look any specific way.  You don’t need to run around looking crazy, or be seen by many, or save the world, though you can, all that is perfectly valid.  However what is required is that fear doesn’t run the show of your life.  That you choose your actions, your words, your expressions and your ways of being based on your own integrity and not what the world or even the thoughts in your own head tell you.  The only reference point that gets a say in living wild is your heart.  

The primary pitfalls that lead to a muted life are wanting approval by others, fearing we will hurt somebody by being ourselves and thinking that we are right from our current vantage point.  1: You will never be approved by all.  It just won’t happen.  It’s best to accept that one as quickly as possible.  Some will like you and some won’t.  Its ok to not be liked.  2: You being you is not going to hurt someone else or take anything away from them.  Each being is responsible for their own perspectives and it’s not your responsibility to navigate that for them.  It is their free will to believe and see as they do.  I am not saying don’t be kind, caring or attuned to others, but I am saying don’t allow someones else’s development or lack there of, decide who you are.  3: Being wild has nothing to do with being right.  The louder, more aggressive personality doesn’t win in wildness.  Rightness is still conforming, it’s conforming to your own perspective.  The only perspective I have ever had inside of wildness is love for all.  Not even my own mind’s ideas count or have credence.  There is an intelligence beyond your thoughts.  The gateway into is your heart.  Choosing love for every single expression lets you in. 

FINDING YOUR FULL EXPRESSION 

Being all of you

Now most of us have built up a lot of layers.  Layers of mental defense, layers of repressed feelings, and layers of bodily protective patterns.  It can sometimes seem like there is a lot in the way, and there is some truth to that.  Most people really don’t even know just how much is in the way of their wildness, or said another way, of their purely authentic being.   They only know that maybe they don’t have as much energy as they would like to have, or they don’t feel as good as they would like to feel in their body, or they can’t seem to find their purpose or drive in life.  These are the ever so frequent side effects of being covered up underneath a lot of layers.  

The good news is, is that the layers are not as solid as you think they are and the energy that configures them into their particular patterns can be reconfigured.  Nothing is permanent and nothing is broken.  Instead all is simply functioning and behaving/expressing itself based on the perspectives that keep it in place.  Yes everything seen and experienced is perspectives that have materialized.  There is no separate material independent from the perspective that holds it into place.  This again is good news because you are perceiver of your perspectives (conscious or not) and therefore, it is within your power and your free will to shift your perspectives at any moment you so choose.

Your wildness will always be more playful and less serious than your ordinary self.  Your wild one knows more than you do right now.  In fact to really let the wild one through at some point you must stop using thought as your primary means of knowing and open your mind into the space or dimension beyond thought.  Surrendering to not knowing is required to penetrate the layers of the mental defense.  I won’t lie, the wild one can seem crazy at times.  Crazy at least to our ordinary thinking mind and the way it sees life.  The intensity of love that our wild ones are can obliterate a thousand limited perspectives in a second.  It can tear apart your distorted ways of thinking and being in one breath.  It can consume you with overwhelming love in a heartbeat.  It can course through your physical form like a tsunami.  The wild one will bring you to your edge and it may even throw you off.  

See your wild one is not personal.  It doesn’t care much at all about your personal life.  The details of you as a separate individual, living a seemingly separate life don’t matter much to it.  It cares only about one thing, and that is that all knows itself and remembers itself as one love.  Perhaps the seeming de-personalization is off putting to you and that is totally great.  I can only share that from my experience it is so absolutely refreshing to be able to see that all of stuff and things I’ve placed so much worry, concern and thought into really don’t matter at all.  When you are there with your wild one, the levity and delight of seeing this feels nothing short of miraculously freeing.   

If it resonates I invite the wild one in you to come forth, out of the shells of conformity, flattening, and mundane reality.  Express yourself, be seen as different, unique, crazy, weird and wild.  Let what you are be known and shared.  The effects are more far reaching than you can imagine.  

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