center for heart magic

Heart Magic

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HEART MAGIC

Dying to the self

There is no doubt, the energy of the heart is magic.  Those who have tasted, felt or touched their heart know its power, its bliss and its vastness.  It is the most advanced intelligence, and I would even say technology or tool, that we have access to inside of this human experience.  When we find our heart we realize that everything that our mind or body has created or tries to create, pales in comparison to what and how the heart creates.  Resting into the heart reveals a way of being, seeing and relating that includes everything and everyone inside of it.  Nothing is left out and everything is loved.  With this knowingness everything is possible.

If the heart is so powerful how come more of us don’t access and use it?  Well my friends that is a good question.  Why don’t we?  The easiest answer I can give is because it means death of our ego.  This means death of thinking that our minds know best, death of what we think we want, death of our life lived for own pleasures and preferences.  Death, death, death.  My friends we don’t like death.  In fact as a society we pretend that death doesn’t exist.  If we do acknowledge its existence our perspective of it is grim, depressing and full of sadness.  Something that is so obvious and undeniably evident and yet we deny it, try to postpone it, hold on for dear life, that is until we simply can’t anymore.  If we learned to allow things to die, if we gave everything it’s rights back to it’s natural course, including our wants, desires, dreams, ideas, perspectives, and so on, we would more easily find our heart.  We would naturally find ourselves open to whatever is and in the field of infinite possibilities rather than finite completion.  We would instantly reconnect to the magic.

Why death you ask?  It is death of the individualistic, of the egocentric, of the self-centric focus, of which none of us escape.  We are born innocent, without a self and in connection with our essence.  Then we develop an ego in order to survive our world.  The more our personality and identity develops the more we forget our original self.  It is the natural course of human development.  Without our ego mind we would have a very hard time adapting to or being part of this world.  But the journey doesn’t stop there.  There is development of our being which is beyond the mind, it’s simply that we have to give the reigns over and let something else be in charge.  From the perspective of our human identity this feels like death.  To our soul however it feels like coming home.  It is a birth, yet to our mind’s ideas about what life is or should be, it feels like misery.  We can either involuntarily collapse into suffering and feel victimized by the happenings of life, or we can voluntarily die to our stories, ideas, hopes and dreams and open into a world of wonder beyond where our mind’s imaginations lie.   

WORLD OF WONDER 

Voluntary relinquishment

The voluntary choice to relinquish ourselves is what is called surrender.  People like to think that surrender is easy and they use the term casually, but to truly surrender means that you will likely feel the pain of death.  It means you are willingly opening into that pain which you’ve done your ultimate best to avoid acknowledging or feeling, and you are choosing to let die that which is ready to die.  

So you’ve gone through the death portal, now what?  Now you are open, available and you just are.  Your heart is free.  You are at peace.  You’ve let the resentments, angers, insistences, pushes and pulls all go.  You are simply available for exactly what is in front of you.  You are no longer wishing that something else was.  The longing for something different dies and you arrive into the present moment of what is here now.  You feel humble and available.  You don’t know any grand knowledge.  You’ve just let the things go.  They’re gone.  Now life can move through you unimpeded.  This is the beginning of the field of heart magic and the world of wonder and awe.  

The more times you go through the death portal, the more you rest into this field.  As you let things be as they are, more and more this field of wonder opens up to you.  You might not be overtly aware of it at first.  It may be more subtle and just beyond your ordinary resting awareness.  You might notice an increase in synchronicities or being more telepathic, such as knowing when someone is going to call you or manifesting the best parking spot.  You might feel less tense.  Your breath might be easier and you feel less agitated or anxious in a general sense.  Things seem to take a bit less effort and you feel less depleted.  As you rest more and more into the field of the heart its presence is more obvious to you, and you begin to see and know the interconnectedness and inseparability of everything.  More and more you see everything as one all pervasive, intelligent and sovereign love.   

The field of heart magic is a collective or unified field.  When you are rested in the heart, then other hearts will feel this and respond to it.  They might not even know why they respond, they just do because all are connected at this level of the field.  Even if people knowingly or unknowingly respond to it, they may still have doubts, insecurities, feel separate, and choose their mind’s ideas over this all loving love.  Again giving up on our picture of life does not come easy.  We typically need to experience some life disruption, pain or suffering to get us to even entertain surrender.  If our life is too easy or comfortable there is nothing to push us into the next stage of development.  We need some kind of catalyst.  All of the catalyst you experience, the disruption, the pain, the suffering, the confusion is all to get you to your edge, to where you will willingly surrender, so that you can find your way into the heart.  Next time you are experiencing some kind of distress, something that you don’t want to be feeling or experiencing, remember this is exactly what you need in order to help you open into the field of heart magic.  Rather than turning away, face forward and move into whatever is presenting itself to you.  Even if it doesn’t feel like it, it is a gift.  Given to you by you, to help you remember your very nature, your most essential self, and your complete heart.

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

Say Bye-Bye to Worry

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SAY BYE-BYE👋 TO WORRY 

Your most intimate friend

Most of us are familiar with worry.  In fact worry might be your most intimate friend.  We tend to spend more time with worry than we do our partner, family members, kids or friends.  Worry is often so intimate that it’s present inside of all of the activities that we do.  It’s there when we shower, while we exercise, as we’re working, and while we are getting groceries or pumping gas.  Subtly, or not so subtly, in the background is the thought, “will things work out” or “will things be ok”?  It’s like we are deathly afraid of how all the details of life will orchestrate themselves and we can’t seem to let it be.  Our best attempt to not feel totally helpless or powerless is to worry.  Somehow we think if we worry about whatever it is we are worried about then we can control how it all happens.  However because we know we can’t really control it, we stay in a perpetual state of worry, which you could also call stress or overwhelm.

In order to let go of worry we also have to let go of whatever outcome we are attempting to control.  Whatever thing we want to happen or not happen, the timing of something, and the flow of the details in between, we have to let it all have its own will.  We must give away our hope, agenda, insistence, and demand for the thing to happen in any particular way, or at all.  This is where it feels tricky to us because we perceive potential loss or lack.  If things don’t happen how we desire in our minds for them to happen, at the bare minimum we perceive inconvenience, and beyond that, that something might be lost.  That loss could be of anything.  A new possibility coming to birth, a relationship, how someone views or sees us, money, time or other resources, objects of our desire, a job, a project, our health, other’s health, and on and on.  We will do whatever we can not to experience loss of what we desire because loss feels like death, failure and can lead us into hopelessness, depression or despair.  So rather than facing the potential of all of that, instead we choose worry, because worry feels easier to feel compared to feeling the death of our dreams and desires.

The thing about worry though is that it hijacks the shit out of us.  We fall out of presence and into thinking about all of the things.  We are not available for what actually matters to us, who it is that we want to be and our chosen state of being.  We lose touch with the magic of life and ourselves.  On a physiologically level our body gets to experience the chemical cascade of worry, which looks like the inability to digest our food, sleep well, or feel energized, and we experience pain and tension in the body.  Then we get fixated on trying to fix all of these bodily expressions without addressing the core essence which creates their arising, which is worry.  While moving towards feeling loss, lack, or death of our dreams feels like a less desirable choice, you must ask yourself if it’s really worth the cost to keep avoiding your sense of feeling lack of control over all of the happenings of your life.   

THE OTHER SIDE OF WORRY 

Mystery revealing itself

We tend not to think too much about what is on the other side of worry.  Mostly we either wait in anxious anticipation, or we take massive action because we can’t sit still, and then we hope for the best.  The “best” being whatever our chosen preference is for the desired outcome.  The funny thing about being human is that we have such a small perspective on things, and despite our tiny viewpoint we think we know what’s best to happen.  It is a form of self-deceit that is mostly unconscious, because the majority of us have good intentions for what we desire.  However those good intentions, and our ideas of what those intentions look like when they are manifested at the physical level, interferes with our seeing.  It distorts and filters our perceptions.  We then create judgments or assumptions about what we are seeing rather than simply seeing it.  Those judgments and assumptions always feel bad because they are coming from our tiny little vantage point that thinks it knows what it’s looking at, all the while it’s missing 99.99% of the picture.  

Big picture here is that we have no idea what, the details or the timing of how things are supposed to occur.  We have ideas of how we would like it to all happen, but our knowledge of the actual reality of it stops there.  If we don’t recognize the limitation of our vantage point, of our filters and the distorted picture we have based on our preferences, then we will fall or push our way into control.  We will feel anxious.  We will experience overwhelm.  We will complain about being stressed.  All as avoidance to feel how much control we don’t have over things.  

Not having control over things does not mean that you are without power.  In fact it means the opposite.  Surrender is the ultimate power.  This is what you discover on the other side of worry.  When you stop avoiding feeling potential loss, a sense of powerlessness, or inconvenience you arrive into a state of presence and openness for life to reveal itself to you.  Presence in the ever present moment of revelation, meaning you come to know what it’s like to be in the unfolding rather than trying to managing the unfolding.  When you are no longer trying to control something it frees things up to respond and move, and what I really mean by that is that it frees you up to respond and move.  You become less rigid and fixated and more able to be a part of the unfolding.  This is also where the power of intention shines.  You can still intend for whatever it is you desire to intend, but rather than forcing the flow of it, you are in the flow with it.  It’s not two opposing forces, but one force moving and responding to itself.  You are not separate from what you desire, you are one with it, but as soon as you place what you desire out there onto a happening, object, event or person, you relate to it as separate from you and you have to figure out how to control or manipulate it in order for your preference to be experienced or expressed.  

The other side of worry is acceptance and peace.  It is a relinquishment of thinking that you know and a becoming present to what actually wants to happen, rather than what you think you want to happen.  You let things breathe, which ironically also means you breathe.  You experience life force returning to its unimpeded flow.  The intelligence that is life organizes itself with you included.  It still doesn’t mean that you will get what you want or that your desired preference will occur in the timing you desire, or even at all.  It does however mean that you breathe, you are at peace and in acceptance, your body receives easeful chemical cascades that allow it to function well and you get to be in the dance of the unfolding of the mystery revealing itself.

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

LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

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LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

Opening the heart

Each of our hearts speaks a language.  The essence of that language is love, which gets shared and expressed in different ways.  Some hearts speak through vibration using words, tones or other sounds either written or spoken.  Some hearts express through art, movement and touch, and still others through just still being.  The heart does not need words, but it might use words to express itself.  It does not need to draw, mold, move or touch, but it might do so in order to share itself with others.  While the language of the heart can be interpreted by placing words, labels, definitions and meanings upon it, it is beyond all ideas and concepts.  The language of the heart tends to evoke feeling in us.  A felt sense that touches us in some way or brings with it a sense of connection, depth and beyondness.  

In order to both express and receive the language of the heart your heart must be open.   You might wonder what it means exactly to have an open heart.  Simply put having an open heart means that you are without personal agenda, not attempting to protect your personal identity from others, but rather that you have a desire to share, express or serve others in some way through being yourself.  It means not being guarded from potential threats or loses to your personal sense of self (i.e. ego mind).  It means being available to and for life rather than closed off from it.  An open heart listens rather than insists.  It shares without force or manipulation.  It feels whatever is present without judgment or story of any kind.  It’s inclusive and discerning.  It cares about the essence of you and others.  It can be strong and even passionately ferrous at times, while rooted in being of service to love.  It doesn’t tolerate b.s. and yet loves all nonetheless.  It recognizes or knows that while life includes you it’s not about you.  

The language of the heart also has a different vibrational quality than what our thoughts, emotions or physical body have.  If you think of it in terms of wavelength, our physical bodies have the longest wavelength.  This is why they appear more solid, gross or dense.  Our emotions have a slightly shorter wavelength than our physical bodies, but a longer wavelength than our thoughts.  This is why you often have to slow yourself down in order to recognize what you are feeling and also why when you do feel something you move at a slower pace than if you are thinking.  Thoughts have a shorter wavelength than our emotions or our physical body.  This is why if you spend a lot of time thinking you might feel ungrounded or find yourself in a fast pace.  The frequency of the heart or soul body is an even shorter wavelength.  It is the subtlest of the bodies described here. Just like you can change the channel of the radio and tune into a different frequency, you can change the tone/tension in your nervous system and tune into these different frequencies of you.  No frequency/body is better than the other.  The key is to have them all energized and accessible to you.  Network entrainments help you shift the tonal patterns of your nervous system so that you can do this very thing.   

HEART VIBRATIONS 

Clearing the channels

The language and frequencies of the heart open us into a more multidimensional nature of reality.  While the mind tends to keep us in a linear, logical and 3D view of life, the heart breaks and bends all of those supposed rules.  This is why attempting to interpret or put meanings onto the expressions of the heart never really works.  We can do it, but really we just end up with a whole bunch of projections and the essence of the thing is covered up underneath all of our ideas and meanings about it.  Yet this is what the human mind likes to do.  It flattens the heart frequency out to its frequency so that the world seems safe, ordinary and consistent.  It’s boring, yet it’s what we tend to do so that we can make “sense” of it all, so that our minds feel like they understand something and can accept it.  While this isn’t bad it does postpone or dampen our access to our heart.  Even though the language of the heart’s expressions are varied and infinite their core message is the same.  Unification and oneness is the beat of their drum.  Knowing this can ease the mind’s endless search for meaning.  All meanings will eventually cease to be relevant in this realization.  

When we are ready and available the language of our heart simply expresses through us.  It’s not something we have to figure out how to do.  Your mind will really dislike that, yet it’s the way it is.  You can’t figure out your heart.  I mean you can try, but good luck.  Now there may be skill sets you need to learn or worldly knowledge that you need to acquire in order to give form to your heart’s frequency, but the form is not the essence of your heart.  Rather only the means to share it.  Don’t get too lost in perfecting forms and rather focus on the heart frequency that you are.  If more people did this we would have a lot less boring or mind numbing jobs that people are just trying to get through.  It’s not about the thing you do, but who you be inside of what you do.

While you can’t figure out your heart, you can prepare for its arrival and clear out the vessel of you for its expression.  Preparation for its arrival is doing the clean up work of all of your personal agendas.  This means doing the inner and outer work of dismantling the need to protect your personal separate self, as if there really even is one.  Remember this is what it takes to open the heart.  When the heart is open, expression is natural.  Just like when the bladder is open you naturally pee.  There’s nothing to figure out, it’s mechanics.   However if there is a bunch of stones in your bladder it makes it harder for the pee to come out.  That’s the clean up work you need to do.  Clear out the stones that interfere with you heart’s natural flow.  

There is nothing too non-ordinary for the heart.  In fact you can kind of think of the language of heart as non-ordinary.  If you are still self-conscious about looking weird, not being accepted by others, being judged or failing, then you know where to begin your clean up work.  When you are in your heart’s frequency you honestly don’t really care about that stuff anymore.  It’s just a non issue.  Your only intention is to be of service in the ways that your heart desires to express.  Your mind frequently won’t know what any of it means or what will come of it, but again you care less and less about needing to know.  You will find freedom in being you.

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

INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

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INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

Convincing ourselves other

We always know what is and isn’t in alignment for us.  Even if we don’t know certain facts, details, or the specifics of things, we know what feels on and what feels off.  All children know this.  In fact it’s even easier as children because there aren’t as many inner stories or rules to interfere.  We are naturally intuitive.  Where we run into trouble with ourselves is when we stop listening, ignore or take action in the opposite direction of what feels energizing to us.  When we choose the less energizing choice we feel the agony of inner conflict.  A conflict that is often reinforced by a sense of obligation, feeling like you have to do it a certain way or like you don’t know what else to do.  When doubt, fear and obligation rear their heads we can find ourselves sliding into what we know and what is familiar to us rather than what is actually aligned.

Convincing ourselves to take unaligned actions even when we know we will feel less energized by doing so, sometimes feels like the only way.  Why is this?  It’s because we don’t want to feel the uncertainty of not knowing what’s next.  We let our avoidance of uncertainty of outer things override our knowing of inner things.  We start to accommodate to the appearance of outer things rather than stay centered in our inner knowing.  Sometimes it feels just so tempting to do so.  We feel lost because the outer world isn’t giving us facts, details and certainty.  Our inner world, while feeling good in its alignment, gets swayed by the seeming lack of things showing themselves to us.  Alas we get swayed by that part of us that feels like it has to know what will happen and needs some solid evidence of it.

We know we’ve been swayed when we start to feel heavy.  Our energy feels drained and it takes a lot of work to do little things.  It feels hard to make things happen.  Nothing seems to work and we feel unclear.  We become impatient and demanding.  We lose touch with gratitude.  We don’t see the magic in life and typically we complain a bit.  We work harder to make something, anything, happen.  We don’t even know what we specifically feel anymore, only that whatever it is we don’t like it and we want some information, details, facts and certainty to show up already.  We’ve all experienced this a time or two.  You wouldn’t be human if you hadn’t.  This is what it feels like to be disconnected.  Disconnected from yourself and therefore being or choosing differently than what is actually in alignment for you and where you would like to come from.   

CHOOSING THE ENERGIZING WAY 

Building the alignment muscle

Surprisingly choosing what feels more aligned or more energized might freak you out a little bit.  Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it will require that you allow yourself to feel the mystery of not knowing.  However if you can handle the heat you will develop the muscle of following your alignment, and that is a muscle worth developing.  Some people might call this faith or trust, and in addition to that there is a huge heap of courage needed to listen and follow what it is you already know inside.  To break this down a little further, uncertainty can manifest as someone not responding favorably to a choice you make.  It might also look like not having a back up plan.  It can be taking an action towards something that feels exciting without any clue what the results with be.  It can be pausing or waiting when no answers or options are presenting themselves.  There is perceived risk in these things.  Risk to our sense of identity, to our relationships, to our feelings of safety and sense of progress.

Yet if we desire to feel energized, to feel alive and vital, then we must learn to follow our inner knowing.  Call it intuition, inner knowing or alignment, it’s all the same.  When we choose the choice, the way or the path that energizes us, whether that means taking no action or taking massive action, we always feel better.  It always feels better to choose our alignment even if it feels scary, threatening or uncertain, and even if it means we have to let something go.  Letting something go could be letting go of a way of being, thinking or seeing that is very familiar to us.  It might be letting go of a relationship configuration so that it can reconfigure.  It might be shifting physical locations or letting go of objects.  It might be letting go of ideas that aren’t really exciting to us, but that we’ve convinced ourselves we need or want.  When we let go we create space for life to show us what is really in alignment and what the appearance of our true alignment looks like.

We all have the capacity to take actions in alignment.  It is of course our free will to choose whether or not we will.  It is more exciting and unnerving to follow our inner knower all of the time.  Our inner knower is our compass, our guide, and our friend in this lifetime.  It is constantly informing us even when we aren’t listening.  However if you choose to listen and have the courage to take action in response to its messages, you will always feel like you are on purpose even when you don’t know what the heck you’re doing or what heck is going on.  You can simultaneously be in the total mystery and complete alignment at the same time.  Having your mind know something based on the appearance of what is showing up in your life pales in comparison to living an aligned life in complete mystery.  Again courage is required and with more and more aligned action you will come to understand the basic mechanisms of how life works.  Life will show you what your alignment looks like when you come from being aligned.  You can forget about what you think life should look like from your ideas of alignment and instead watch the movie be revealed to you before your very eyes.  It’s exciting, and it’s a mystery. 

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

GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

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GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

Reversing directions

Nearly all of us, in some way or other, are focused on what we want.   We’ve created our vision boards, completed our intention setting, prayed our manifestation prayers, did our ceremonies and rituals, recited the mantras and affirmations, all to bring about what it is we want.  Always it seems we are asking the inner question “how will I get what I want today” or a more sophisticated version of that is “how will the world and my experiences be how I want them too?”  When we ask these questions, either deliberately or automatically, what happens is that we align our actions around that sole quest.  The quest of what we want.  What frequently comes with the quest of following our desires is an idea or picture of what our desires look like to us when they are fulfilled.  The most tangible example of this would be to say that we want something physical like a house, car or any other physical object.  We typically have a pretty clear idea of what it is we want or don’t want.  An image forms in our mind and we move towards that image.  We may “sacrifice” on some of details, but other things are non-negotiable.  If we really want a convertible car we are unlikely to buy a truck, as it’s too far off from our desires.  

What arises however when what we want isn’t available or not present inside of our immediate experience?  We want a convertible, but there are none available.  The house we want isn’t for sale.  The latest iPhone we want is out of stock.  We could also extrapolate this to less “physical” objects such as relationships, opportunities, health, safety, security, stability or particular emotional states.  When there are no suitable partners, the trip we want to go on is sold out, we don’t feel secure or stable in our life, or we feel sick, angry, frustrated or sad, it seems that what we want is not available.  Where does our focus go?  Our focus is on what isn’t inside of our experience.  We actually lose touch with our true desire because we are so focused on what isn’t here.  Then we have some version of a freak out and we feel anxious or depressed, because that is really the only way to feel when we are focused on what isn’t.  

We internally stir, attempting to figure out how we will get what we want.  We do more to get the things.  Work harder, manifest longer, say our affirmations more frequently.  We can’t seem to figure out why with everything we are doing we still don’t have what we want.  We wonder why isn’t life working for us or with us.  What we want seems outside of us, like it’s something over there, somewhere inside of an object or some other person or place, and if we could just figure out how to get it.   The secret is that our desire is not outside of us.  We are it.  However when we merge our desire with the objects we think possess our desire, we feel helpless, frustrated and confused.   

BE YOUR DESIRE

Shifting focus

Desire steers the ship of this life, but life is not about us getting our desires.  Rather life is about being our desires.  This can seem very confusing to our mind that projects everything onto our experience rather than seeing ourselves as the source of our experience.  This projection is why it seems that what we want is inside of something or someplace else, and why we get anxious or depressed when our experience of life, or the appearance of things, is not how we want it to be.  What appears (ie. our experience) is a reflection of us, and when we feel something is lacking or missing (scarcity mindset) it ultimately seems that something is lacking or missing in us, hence the epidemic of feeling not enough that runs through the human experience.  

This brings me to the most important point, which is to give what you want.  I will repeat again what I wrote above, life is not about you getting what you want, but rather about being it, being your desire.  The only way to experience what you want is to give it, which is the same thing as being it.  Now your mind will want to come in and insist that this is impossible.  How can you give what you perceive to be missing or not present?  How can you give what you want life to give you?  Let’s say that you want to be loved by another person in a relationship, your mind will say that the only way you can fulfill that desire is to be loved by another person. How can you give that, doesn’t that come from someone else?  But does it really?  Is it not you that feels loved inside of you?  Say you want safety or security from another person.  How do you give that too?  Let’s go to the more physical examples.  You might argue that a house, car or any other physical object doesn’t live inside of you.  You are correct, they don’t physically live inside of you, but your desire for them does.  We never want the thing, we only want the feeling that we think the thing will bring us.  Maybe your desire for a house is because you want a feeling of stability.  Again how can you be or give stability rather get stability?  

Simply notice whenever you feel that life is not working out for you or not what you want.  You will always be focused on what isn’t rather than on what you desire.  You must train yourself to find what is it you really want and when you connect with your actual desire you will begin to feel good again.  If you start to focus too much on the forms, appearance or happenings of your experience rather than your desire, you will likely suffer again.  Sometimes the appearance of life will be as we want it to be and sometimes it won’t be.  As far as I can tell this is constant inside of this human experience.  This may feel like a bold statement, but the appearance doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you give to life what you desire too.  That you be what you want to be.  That you are an expression your heart’s desires.  Unlike the mind’s complexity the heart is simple.  It desires only love, connection and bliss.  You must recognize when you stop choosing that, when you stop focusing on that, when you stop desiring that, and instead get lost in what doesn’t seem to be here that you think will give you the experience of love, connection and bliss.  As soon as you recognize that you’ve lost your focus on what matters, you must do everything within your capacity to shift your focus back onto giving that which you desire to be.  Herein lies fulfillment beyond any getting that you can ever get.

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

GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

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GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

What do you tolerate? 

It’s easy to get lazy.  As humans we are creatures of habit.  After we do something a time or two or three, and the novelty of it wears off, we go into automatic pilot mode.  We assume that what is will always be the way it is because now we are used to it being that way.  We create the illusion of solid and fixed, and with this we stop being fully present.  Our experience of what was once novel and exciting now become more ordinary and with that we slip into a habituated state of being, which you could also call your “usual” state of awareness.  But who really wants usual and ordinary?  None of us do and yet it’s easier to maintain the lower frequency of usual than it is the higher frequency of excitement.  

In order to get beyond the habit of our usual state of being we need to literally stretch our bandwidth or increase our capacity for what we can maintain.  For most people stretching is a bit uncomfortable because it comes with a sense of effort and work.  It takes more energy to get out of our normal habituated ways of being then is does to continue with our automatic thoughts, behaviors and perceptions.  This energy expenditure is exactly what is required to increase our capacity and maintain a higher frequency, yet many chose the way of utilizing as little effort and energy as possible.  You could also equate this to not having enough desire or momentum to create change.  You might think you want something to be different in your life, but you don’t really want to put in the energy to make it different.  

We all have different tolerance levels.  Some people might tolerate being 10 pounds overweight while another person won’t tolerate being more than 2 pounds over.  Some people tolerate being out of alignment or distracted 50% of their day, while others won’t tolerate more than 10%.  There is no right or wrong here in regards to where you are at, it’s simply important to take note of it.  Take inventory of what your tolerance levels are in all the important areas of your life.  Then honestly ask yourself if you are ready to shift your level.  If you aren’t ready, what would it take for you to be ready?  In this way you get clarity around where you are and even if you aren’t ready to shift anything at least you can accept it and do the preparatory work required in order to be ready.  

Our vibrational state is up to us and only us.  No one can or will shift it for us.  Your level of desire and willingness to participate is key.  To move from your normal baseline to your next level is your work and responsibility.  You can use things or people as permission slips to feel certain ways, but ultimately you must become the source of your frequency in order for it to sustainable. 

FREQUENCY OF EXCITEMENT 

Becoming more childlike 

As much as we all like to feel excitement, most people aren’t feeling it much.  Our focus tends to be on all the things that need to get done, rather than on feeling amazing and following what feels good.  Many of our automatic patterns of behavior help us be efficient doers, which can at times be helpful, but they can also make us robotic.  We are going through the motions of life and doing all the things, but for what?  To get everything done so that we can do everything again tomorrow?  Where exactly do we think we will get to once all the doing is finished?  From what I can tell the activity of life, of this infinite creation, never stops.  We could constantly find ourselves doing something.  The goal is not the cessation of doing or activity, but rather to be present right now.  To find and feel our excitement in this moment and not when something is finished or done.

The frequency of excitement is high.  Think of a small child and how excited they get, and how much energy they have.  It’s off the charts.  They are pure examples of living excitement.  Yet we often feel tired by that level of excitement.  We don’t have the energy to keep up.  Where does energy come from anyways?  Why does it feel limited to us, but infinite in a small child?  Energy comes from excitement.  You generate energy through excitement.  Now I am not saying that rest is not beneficial.  Rest is necessary for these bodies.  What I am taking about is all the rest of the time when you are not resting.  You may also find that you require less rest the more you are able to maintain a higher frequency of energy in your day to day life. 

Like I mentioned earlier there is a stretching phase.  A phase when it feels like it takes a lot of energy to elevate yourself.  It’s true, it does.  Stretching is not effortless.  It requires work.  Work that will then require rest.  However at some point you will maintain at a new higher level of vibration that feels lighter, freer, and more childlike.  A child may swing on the same swing 50 times at the park and it will not be normal or ordinary to them.  They will find a way to feel excited about it each time, and then when some other object at the park strikes their fancy they will run over to it and play on it.  They continue to generate and follow their excitement.  

Giving yourself permission to live life in a more joyfully free and excited way is a permission slip worth giving yourself.  Trust the rhythms of life more.  The comings and the goings.  The ebbs and flows.  The natural pacing and rhythms.  Trust yourself more.  Your feelings and intuitions.  Your joy and excitement.  Follow them.  Do your best not to let your rational mind make things ordinary and normal.  Find novelty in swinging on the same swing 50 times.  Life is not flat or mundane on its own.  It requires our perspective of it to be flat or mundane.  Through what perspective do you see life?  If it’s not what you desire, are you ready to shift it?  Be willing to do the work required to raise yourself up and to get to the next vibrational level of yourself.  

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

CHOOSING OPENNESS

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CHOOSING OPENNESS 

Why we choose closed 

It’s easy to be closed.  It isn’t as overt as you might think it is.  In fact most people are closed and don’t even know it.  It tends to be what we think of as our natural state of being.  Comfortable and familiar to us, being closed keeps us contained and in our own little bubble of existing and feeling like we know what’s going to happen.  In contrast, openness feels more spacious, vulnerable and mysterious.  When we are open we can feel ourselves and others.  Often people have a negative relationship with feeling, especially if the feeling that’s present isn’t a “good” one.  This is why we close, and sometimes stay closed for most of our entire life.  

When we are closed we can avoid feeling the fullness of “bad” things or feelings.  While on the surface this might seem advantageous to you (which is why so many do this), but when viewing from the bigger picture of your life it’s quite disadvantageous.  The first reason it is disadvantageous is that when you are closed, and are unable to be feel, you lose connection with your guidance system and therefore yourself.  Feeling is guidance.  It’s your beeline to your higher self.  Emotions tell us how to proceed forward on our path and which choices to take.  What to say yes to and what to say no to.  When you can’t feel you will often have the experience of being lost, confused or stuck.  You can call this disconnection, and a sense of not knowing how to move forward or what actions to take in your life.  The second reason being closed is disadvantageous is that when you are closed you can’t feel the bad or the good, so your experience of life flattens.  It’s like being kind of numb.  You might sort of feel things, but your range of feeling is limited. Most days and experiences feel ordinary (aka non-magical).  You go through the motions of life, feeling human and like a separate person from other people.  Again you might not even know that things could be, or are, different than this.  It’s just your normal known state of existing or being in the world.  You don’t feel particularly bad, but you also don’t feel particularly good.  

Being closed feels protective.  It is a defense mechanism that we learn in order to not experience impact.  This is important when we don’t have the inner resources or awareness to be with that impact, and when we’ve either lost touch with ourselves or don’t yet know ourselves.  Examples of this are when we are infants, toddlers or young children and we had experiences that were too painful, scary or confusing to feel.  This is when we develop protective mechanisms.  Nearly all people are still functioning in their day to day life using these strategies.  This is why there is so much disconnect from self, others, animals, the planet, and the universe at large.  It’s why we feel separate and why people are often oblivious to their impact on self or others, or exceptionally vigilant to it.  It’s because we aren’t feeling or are afraid of feeling “bad” things.  It is not wrong.  It’s simply the stage of the game we are personally and collectively at; that is until we choose different. 

FEELING 

Good, bad and everything in between

It really isn’t as bad as you might think it is to feel things that don’t feel good.  In fact it’s rather freeing and liberating, but we aren’t there quite yet.  From where we are now it might seem scary to feel because you don’t know what will happen if you do.  Some people create stories that they will never stop feeling bad once they start.  That they will enter a bottomless pit of despair and suffering with no way out.  Others fear attracting more bad feelings to themselves.  Still others know that if they feel what they are feeling then something will need to change and they aren’t ready for that change yet.  Then there are those people that simply don’t even recognize that they are feeling.  All they know is that they don’t feel on par.  Maybe they have pain in their body, or things aren’t going how they would like them to be going in their life.  Maybe they feel irritated or they don’t sleep well.  Perhaps they have digestive issues or skin problems.  What we are feeling will manifest into our physical experience if we don’t feel it in our emotional bodies.  Feeling will do whatever it can to get our attention and find its expression, because remember feeling is nothing more than guidance, and our higher self wants nothing more earnestly than to guide us on this journey.  

Bad feelings have really gotten a bad rap.  There is an important distinction here between having a negative disposition on life and feeling bad feelings.  Bad feelings don’t equal having a negative outlook, that is unless you don’t feel them.  See many people that are angry, anxious or depressed, are so because they aren’t feeling, not because they are.  This is opposite to what most people believe.  Most people think that the people that seem generally negative on life must be feeling bad things all of the time, but what’s actually happening is that they are avoiding feeling bad things.  That is why they are angry, anxious and depressed.  When we feel bad feelings we liberate energy, and this feels good.  We get less angry, anxious and depressed rather than more.  We open rather than stay closed, and because openness is our true natural state of being, it feels good.  We feel connected even if we are feeling something bad.  

People that you view as having a generally positive disposition on life are regularly feeling bad things.  This is how they can stay positive.  It would otherwise be very challenging to do so because so much energy would be bound up in their system.  Bound energy is closed, looped, tight and distorted.  To have the courage to feel is to be honest with what’s present.  It’s to be authentic with what is.  It’s the opposite of spiritual bypassing, which is to have a kind of “false” positive disposition.  It’s to say everything is great when you aren’t actually experiencing great.  There is an incongruence there, it’s inauthentic, and it’s ok.  It’s simply another protective mechanism to not feel bad feelings, because for some reason you view them as less spiritual.  

To be open is to allow all.  Nothing needs fixed or changed.  All is allowed and all is ok.  It’s not hard to feel bad things when they arise, but it does take a practice of slowing down and paying attention to yourself.  When you are in the doing mode of life, you are often not focused on your feeling body.  This is when you don’t even know that you are feeling, or you notice that something is off, but don’t want to take the time to stop and feel it.  Feeling might feel foreign to you at first, but I promise with a little attention to it, it’s not as mysterious as it might seem.  The reward in it, is you being connected to yourself again.  It’s to have more guidance and clarity.  It’s to be able to feel life, yourself, others, and to have connection to all of existence on this planet and inside this universe.  It’s to have passion for life and to act in alignment and integrity with yourself, your path and your calling. 

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

THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER

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THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER 

Where’s your focus?

Receiving.  Most people have difficulty receiving.  As much as we all want to manifest and create we don’t give much attention or space to receiving.  Rather we work hard, and then harder, to create what we want and then wonder why we are so tired and still don’t have the life we desire.  While it seems that receiving would be the simplest of things, we defect it, avoid it or feel like there is never enough of what we need because we can’t receive what’s in front of us.  To receive is to be open, to be receptive, and most people spend their existence being closed off, shut down, narrow minded, and in judgement rather than in open receptivity.  We then wonder why life doesn’t look or feel like we desire.

We are quite wired to see what isn’t.  We focus on where we’re going and what we think we are going to get when we get there, and rarely see what’s here.  This is because we tend to live in a lack mindset.  We view whatever is here now as if it is missing something.  Something that we need to work to find or get into our lives.  We might perceive that we don’t have relationships that we want, money that we want, opportunities that we want, skills that we want, the inner state that we want, the outer environment that we want, feelings that we want, and on and on.  It really seems that life isn’t quite here yet, but will be here once something arrives inside of our experience so that we can give ourselves the permission to temporarily stop seeing through our lack glasses.  Our focus on lack is intense.  It pretty much takes up our entire bandwidth whether we are conscious or it or not.  This is why we feel bad so frequently.  

The thing is that in order to receive you have to see what is here rather than focus on what’s not here.  Since this is a mostly rare way for us humans to focus we are always feeling depleted.  Depleted because our focus is constantly on what isn’t in our experience, or what is in our experience that we don’t like.  When there is something we don’t like or doesn’t feel good, we attempt to get into our experience whatever we perceive is missing, which we believe will make us feel better.  At the core of this game of lack that we are playing out in our physical reality, is a sense of inner lack.  A sense that something about us is missing or incomplete.  A feeling that we somehow need to be different or more than we are.  So we reject ourselves.  We work really hard to prove ourselves.  We over stretch to attempt to meet what we think the people of the world want from us.  All the while not really realizing that we aren’t receiving our own selves.  Again we wonder why our life isn’t as we desire it to be.  Why aren’t we manifesting or creating what we want.  As long as we continue to come from lack, to come from the perspective that something is missing, that is all we will ever create.   

GRATITUDE 

The “how”

You might say that our “inability” or difficulty with receiving, stems back to the fact that nearly all of us feels a sense of inner lack.  You could call this the “not enough”  or “not good enough” perspective or wound.  It’s like an article of clothing that we all get when we are first born into this world.  Most of us have been wearing this piece of clothing for so long that it’s kind of become like a part of us. We’ve identified with it and let it become who or what we think we are.  It colors everything we see.  Other people, or reflections in our environment, have mirrored this not enoughness back to us and we’ve come to believe that lack must indeed be a very real thing.  After all we experience it and see it, don’t we?  

We experience what we see and what we see depends on the glasses (or clothes) we are looking through.  Said another way, we experience what we believe and not necessarily what is.  The good news is that all articles of clothing can be taken off even if they are really, really tight; even if they appear to be fused to our skin and inseparable from the tissues underneath, they can still be removed.  Essentially what I am saying is that every belief that you have can be changed or a new one can be chosen.  It may not be as hard as you think it is.  How might it be easy you ask?  All that is required is a quadruple shot of gratitude taken several times a day.  It is the instant cure for your lack mindset.

In general we tend to be incredibly ungrateful.  This is why the lack mindset is so strong and pervasive on this planet still.  It is why human consciousness doesn’t evolve.  It’s why people continue to be asleep, disconnected and working hard to prove themselves or get what they think will make them happy.  Every time you don’t receive yourself you are ungrateful.  For many people that is their constant state of being.  They know nothing else.  For others it’s more intermittent or dispersed, but nonetheless still present.  The level of self-rejection is high among humans and this makes it nearly impossible to receive, and ultimately therefore create, as creating is receiving.  When you have a belief that you are not worthy, that belief is incompatible with receiving.  It’s incompatible with being open to life or others.  It’s incompatible with manifesting your desired reality and seeing the abundant world that you want for yourself and others.

Many people don’t know that they aren’t receiving.  We are so used to pushing our energy in the outward, doing direction that the receiving, inward direction is quite foreign for most.  If you are very innerly or outerly busy this is key sign that you aren’t receiving.  Do your thoughts never stop?  Do you talk incessantly?  Do you listen or receive others without thinking about what you are going to say or do next?  Do you constantly need to be doing stuff for yourself or for others?  Is it hard to tune into yourself for more than few moments?  Do you feel tired a lot?  Are you “doing” your meditation rather than actually meditating?  These are all signs that you aren’t receiving.  In order to receive you must be worthy and know that nothing is missing from you.  That you are complete and whole as you are.  To bridge the gap from incomplete to complete you must only find, feel and radiate gratitude.  Gratitude for yourself, gratitude for what is in your experience now and gratitude for all future experiences.  At any moment you can tune yourself to become a stream of infinite, unconditional gratitude.  It is always here and available for your choosing.  

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

KNOW WHY YOU ARE

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KNOW WHY YOU ARE 

You do not exist to do

There really is nothing more pivotal, more important and more fundamental to your existence then knowing why you are.  Why you are is who you are.  Why you are is your existence.  It is the only function, the only purpose, the only intention that your existence serves.  So many people feel lost.  So many feel that they don’t know the very foundation of their being or why they exist at all.  It seems as though nothing makes sense and life feels hard as they attempt to try to make things happen from a state of disconnection from themselves.  When we don’t know why we are we feel helpless, like a circumstance to life, like a product of our environment of which we are powerless too.  It seems life can give and take things from us.  It seems like we have no control over it all.  

When we know why we are and we align our entire self with that knowing, we live without any agenda and nothing can interfere with what we know ourselves to be.  What we be, we are, and we give.  Our need to manipulate or control life to our desired appearance or picture ends.  All we care about is who we are, why we are and being that.  The outcome of anything ceases to matter at all.  This is freedom.  This is the full exercise and expression of our free will.  This is living power and the recognition that nothing can take that from you.  No person, no decision, no structure outside of yourself, and no inner thought, story, sensation or feeling can take away why you are.  

Why you are is not what you do.  What you do is informed by why you are when you know why you are, but what you do is not why you are.  You did not come here to be a doer.  You do not exist to do.  Doing is rather an extension or means of sharing why you are, but it is only a means to share and not the reason you exist.  So often we confuse why we are with what we do.  When we are more identified with our body, our personality and the things of our life, then we are with why we are, we feel at threat, unstable and we attempt to control all the parts and pieces of life.  When we are rested in why we are, the endless stream of thoughts about past and future pause.  You stop focusing on what you are doing and rather focus on why you are doing.  The ‘what’ seems almost trivial as you recognize that it is not the purpose or intention, but only a way to express the intention.  At first this can be a bit much to really look at as we gain so much of our identity, value and worth through what we do.  We may not want to let go of the doer/doing as our identity.  Yet as you reorient to why you are you will find freedom through letting go of the what, even if you worked really hard at creating it.   

THE WHOLE PICTURE 

Why you are is who you are

The picture of why you are is different than the picture of what you think you want.  The picture of why you are comes with what you want others to experience and know through your presence.  This is way, way, way more simple than most people think.  See because we don’t exist to do and make shit happen, because that is not who we are, we must look a little bit past the surface appearance of ourselves to see why we fundamentally exist in the first place.  You may be wondering how to discover this for yourself.  Start by locating a profound moment in your life.  Perhaps a moment or some moments where you felt fulfilled or in a peak state of being.  Notice what you felt.  What was the essence that made up those experiences?  What did you know or feel in those moments?  See if you can find repeating patterns between moments.  Is there a core theme?  If that seems elusive to you then another way to discover ‘why you are’ is ask yourself: what do you want to leave the people of the world knowing?  If you were to transition out of your body tomorrow what would you want people to know, feel or experience?  Whatever words you can find to describe that feeling state of being or knowing is the reason why you are.  It’s not more complex than that.

But boy do we love complexity.  The more complex, complicated, and involved we can make it the better.  The mind just loves to be lost in its own creation of conceptual confusion, meanwhile creating postponement for us in thinking about our purpose rather than living it or being it.  The mind always thinks it needs more of something first before you can live or know your purpose.  It needs more information, more learning, more money, more connections, more resources, more clarity, more self-worth, more love, more, more, more.  It really is endless.  Meanwhile while you’re busy feeling lost and confused, attempting to get more more more in order to be better, so you can know why you are and be of service, you could have just been being your calling.  

Again your calling, purpose, intention, or why you are is not something you need to figure out.  It is who you are.  It is natural.  It is present when you feel great and when you feel crappy.  It is there when you are clear and when you feel confused.  It’s available when you’re energized and when you’re tired.  It exists no matter what actions, projects, activities or creations are being done or not.  Why you are is not contingent on anything.  When you deliberately use your awareness/focus and place it on why you exist, rather than on what you are doing, you turn the light up on your calling.  You feel it more.  You feel yourself become it more.  You feel more aligned.  Things flow differently for you because your focus is on why you are rather than what you’re doing or creating.  Life responds to that.  People respond to that.  The truth is life and people are always responding to how you are being you, and when you deliberately align your focus with why you are, you have the experience of mountains moving without you having to physically move the mountain.  What you want people to get they get.  You are fulfilling your own mission for existing.  You could even say your mission is complete and you are just dancing in the experience of it playing itself out.  So for whatever reason you exist, whatever the intention for your being is, whatever you want to give the world or want the world to get by your presence, it’s here now.  Always in the background and patiently waiting for you to use your focus and bring it to the foreground.  To do so is live fulfilled.  

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

THOUGHT INDUCED COMA

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THOUGHT INDUCED COMA

Snapping yourself out of it

Sometimes we feel stuck, bored and tired.  We want to feel purposeful, excited and productive, but rather we are looped in our habitual ways of being and doing.  The mundane quality of everyday life is taking up the front and center space of our awareness.  We search for a way out of our misery of the ordinary, hoping to find some shiny object, thing or person that will re-inspire life in us.  Only to experience the fleetingness of the shiny object, or coming up empty handed altogether.  It seems as though all we can do is let these feelings of lack of inspiration pass in their own timing and rhythm.  It seems as though our only choice is to keep feeling stuck, bored, tired and kind of miserable.  

What is really happening in these moments or rhythms of our life?  What it boils down to is that we are out of alignment with ourselves.  This could be said lots of ways.  We are not present, we are not in gratitude, we are seeing through the perspective of lack, we are disconnected, we are checked out, we are focused on appearance rather than essence, and on and on.  You get the point.  When this is our general disposition then nothing is exciting and we’d rather be somewhere other than where we are.  In this state of being we tend think/believe that happiness is somewhere else.  That joy, love and peace is somewhere else.  That what we want is somewhere else.  This mysterious, magical, fantastical somewhere else lives nowhere other than in the thoughts of our minds.  While it’s lovely to fantasize, it keeps us in our head and does little to bring us into now.  Now is the only place that anything is happening.  Now is the place where we feel alive.  Now is the place of lived reality-fantasy instead of thought fantasy.  Again while thinking about things is nice, it doesn’t lead to presence, it only leads to more thoughts.  

We need to snap ourselves out of our thought induced comas and come back to what is happening now.  We must ask ourselves why we are choosing to be asleep during our day?  Why are we attempting to get certain things over or finished?  Maybe it’s that we don’t like certain activities. Why is that?  How can you make them more enjoyable if you are not enjoying them? Maybe certain things feel like they aren’t working or responding to you as you would like them too.  Where is your focus in that moment?  Is it on getting something or trying to make something happen, which by the way are the same thing.  Can you reorient to giving rather than getting?  I mean really giving which has absolutely nothing to do with what you will get in return. Do you need to make changes in your life to make it work better, but you refuse to change and therefore choose to be stuck, bored and tired instead?  Do you fail to see and therefore have gratitude for what is in front of your eyes because you desire the picture to be different?   

SERVE WHAT’S HERE 

Becoming present

In general our lives are pretty good.  Probably most people reading this article are neither starving or homeless.  Your basic needs are met and you are even likely doing some things in the world that feel like they are contributing to something beyond your own personal selves.  Most here also have some level of self-awareness, impact on others, and personal and spiritual development.  This puts us in a prime position to really hone our alignment and be of service no matter what is occurring.  I’ve said this before, but I will say it again, being of service is not about martyrdom or self-denial.  It is about being yourself and having the desire to give to others.  Once all of your basic bodily human needs are met and your personal and social connection needs are met, there really isn’t much left to do but be of service in some way.  If you aren’t then you tend to feel stagnant, bored and slightly miserable.  

Now you might find yourself perseverating on a few things you want, but still don’t have.  If you perseverate long enough then that focus might overwhelm your desire to serve because service is not about getting anything.  Not even the things you think you really want badly or the things you think you need in order to be of service.  There is never anything you need to be of service except the desire to serve.  One thing I can promise is that being of service is 1,000 times more fulfilling than getting those last few things you think you really want like a partner, a house or having the next big project or breakthrough happen.  Also being of service has nothing to do with your job or work, but rather it’s about what you give to everything you do.  

Next time you find yourself bored, tired, stuck, or slightly miserable, wishing you were somewhere else or in some other moment in time where things were different or you felt differently, I invite you to do this one thing.  Internally ask yourself the question, “how can I serve this?” or “how can I be of service here?”  It’s simple, like most things I recommend, but incredibly effective at getting you to shift out of your habitual, asleep, mundane reality and into the present moment.  Even though you might not feel completely shifted, you are beginning to shift.  You are shifting out of seeing what your mind thinks it’s seeing from its past experiences and memory banks, into the actual aliveness of what is always the present moment.  Understand nothing is ever mundane or the same as it was yesterday or even 5 minutes ago.  It’s only your thoughts recreating the same images, thoughts and ideas, which gives the appearance of sameness.  

To be of service you must be present.  It is the only way you can attune or be in rhythm with the unfolding dance of life.  Rather than believing that you must get somewhere else first before you can serve, recognize and serve what is already here.  After all there is nothing else.  Even if what’s here is not your preference, find your way into the state of being of service.  If you do you will snap yourself out of your thought coma and find aliveness.  You will start participating with life rather than thinking about it.  You will quit caring so much about all the things and experiences you think you want.  You will feel more love and gratitude as your ever present state of being.  

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