channeling

EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING

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EFFORTLESS STREAM OF GIVING 

Giving to life

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

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

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

STOP WISHING INTENSITY AWAY 

Opportunities for being present

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

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

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

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

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

CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

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CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY 

Creating a new experience of life

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

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

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

A NEW YOU 

Bridging the non-real gap

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

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

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

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

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

CONDUIT OF LOVE

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CONDUIT OF LOVE 

Being a channel for love

We are all receiving & broadcasting something.  These bodies are conduits, in which information and energy flows into and out.  You can think of that flow of energy or information coming down through the top of your head, continuing by flowing down your spine and then transmitting out through your body via the words you speak, sounds you make, actions you take, and your presence.  While most people tend to think of themselves as an individually contained body-mind unit that is separate from everything else, generating its own thoughts, you are more like a receptacle that exchanges information and energy from subtler realms into a seemingly more dense or physical ones.  In this way we are all channels.

Some people might believe that “channeling” is only for psychic people and that it is metaphysically oriented.  However the way I see it is that everyone is channeling thoughts and emotions all of the time, which by the way are subtler forms of energy even if you tend to think of them as more dense because they are more familiar to your experience.  There are different frequencies that can be tuned into and channeled as your system opens and unwinds.  As we become less fixated and rigid we can tune into increasingly subtler and subtler energy and information.  When I use the word subtle all I mean is lighter in frequency, not necessarily harder to hear or find.  To someone who’s system is more open, subtle energy is as obvious as the physical hand would be anyone who has a physical body.  I say that to reiterate that subtle does not mean harder to find, only lighter in frequency and requiring a more refined awareness of self.

In order to tune into lighter frequencies our focus on denser frequencies must lessen so that these channels become quieter in our awareness.  Due to the fact that most people are focused on and merged with thoughts, emotions and sensations for most their waking day, those frequencies tend to dominate our bandwidth.  There are however other frequencies to tune into and channel.  I will break this down into 2 basic domains.  One is to channel what may be thought as the more traditional sense of channeling.  This would be tuning into frequencies of beings not incarnated in human bodies or having human constitutions.  Commonly know examples of this type of channeling would be people like Paul Selig, Bashar, Abraham Hicks or Edgar Cayce.  This is not everyone’s path, journey or gift to share, but it is a possible expression for some.  The second domain is to channel more of “yourself”.  What I mean by this is that rather than channeling the familiar thoughts & emotions, you channel your soul frequency.  Your soul is the next subtler body beyond thought energy.  It has a different expression than thoughts and emotions, but there are similarities in experience across beings.   

CHANNELING YOUR SOUL 

From thoughts to souls

To begin to channel your soul, is like a toddler beginning to have thoughts. There is a development, refinement and sophistication over time.  The most essential, common and basic, if you will, experience of channeling your soul is a feeling sense of love.  Love that is not attached to any object or person, but simply a state of being.  It has a vibratory feeling of excitement and it feels joyful, even ecstatic.  The amount of energy that that comes from channeling your soul is quite different than thought or emotion.  There is a higher frequency to it and greater intensity.  Some people may describe this as more coherent energy or a richer energy experience.  There is a tendency to feel more present and at ease while simultaneous alert and aware.  You know how to move, act and behave without deferring to thought.  An intelligent energy seems to move your body-mind rather than you (or your thinking) moving your body-mind.  There is also a feeling sense of less inhibition and more freedom to simply express as you are not thinking about what you are doing, what it looks like or how others might judge you.  

The soul frequency has its own unique expression.  Here is where presence really arrives.  This is where you can feel someone and what they are transmitting without them doing anything.  They may just be sitting in a room or give you a look, but you can feel it resonate or move your entire being even if you don’t entirely know what you are feeling.  When someone is channeling soul frequencies it will also begin to activate that channel in you to whatever degree you are ready to open to it and your development is primed for it.  This often happens in the group entrainment room and is one of the primary reasons that I work in a group setting or field.  It is to give your system a greater and more concentrated experience of soul frequencies.  You may begin to feel some subtle shifts even if you aren’t sure what is happening exactly.  It’s kind of like the equivalent of a baby hearing spoken words.  Even though they don’t understand it fully when they are babies, with more and more exposure, readiness, and development, they begin to learn and understand it.  

The primary expression of thought is words.  Though words can carry different frequencies other than thoughts, humans tend to channel thought frequency through the words they speak.  The primary expression of soul is different.  Soul expression is presence.  While this might seem intangible to you in this moment, it is an entire world of interconnected, aliveness that is ever present and always here.  It’s simply that it is not always being tuned into or channeled by us.  Soul can also be expressed though utilizing sounds, movements and words.  Some of those sounds, movements or words may seem very strange or unique to your thinking mind, however to your soul they are as ordinary or normal as thoughts are to your mind.  Emotions, thoughts and souls all transmit different frequencies.  All serve purposes.  All you must ask is what purpose would you like to serve and what is needed in a moment?  Channeling soul frequencies is the next developmental step for humans.  It really is simply a matter of developmental progression.  It’s not a question of if, but rather when.  Just like a toddler develops its mind by learning sounds, letters, words and then sentences, learning to develop your soul is similar.  This is how you become an effortless conduit of love and a channel for those frequencies to be present here.  

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

NOTHING IS LACKING

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NOTHING IS LACKING 

Key to perceiving all as is

We have an almost incessant persistence to view from the perspective of lack.  It appears to us that things are missing, out of place, or somehow not present.  We attempt to create that which we view as not from seeing it as not, which often comes with feelings of frustration and fruitlessness as we work really hard to get nowhere.  We create definitions and meanings about what is not that further reinforce our perspective of not-ness and frustration about what isn’t.  What if not-ness is not?  What if our perspective of lack is actually the presence of something?  Perhaps our focus on what we view as not, blocks our view of what is.  

Where does our desire to create come from?  What is the fuel source of our desires?  Are you motivated to create because you perceive something to be lacking or because it’s simply your joy to create whatever it is you are?  When you create are you creating from the perspective of seeing what you are creating as not, or do you see it as already present?  These are not trick question, nor are they law of attraction, spiritual, new age hogwash.  There is more than semantics happening here.  The truth is most people create because they perceive something to be lacking.  We then take that perspective of lack and attempt to create that which we see not present.  One of the key indicators that you might be doing this is that you are secretly miserable in your creation attempts of whatever it is you are wanting to create, despite the fact that you present good face to your friends, family and social media.  Even if whatever you are attempting to create is altruistic and service oriented, meaning it’s goal is to support others in some way, if you come from the perspective that whatever it is you are wanting to create is lacking, and that the world really needs it because its not present, you will only create more lack rather than than the thing you really want to create.  

The key to know here is that we create with our perspective not with our hands.  That is not to say that we won’t need to use our hands to do things and move stuff around in this material reality, but actual creation comes from how we view.  The perspective of seeing something as lacking creates more of that lacking.  The perspective of seeing what is as already here, actually seeing it here, creates it.  Seeing creates what we see.  Seems obvious, but we often don’t recognize the source of our seeing and rather focus only on what we see.  The source of what we see is the seer, or the perceiver, or you.  It now becomes obvious that you are the creator, and what has been unconscious is the how of how you create and how you’ve been creating this entire time.   

BEYOND DISBELIEF

Getting things to reveal themselves

We are riddled in disbelief.  We use our disbelief to validate our perspectives in order to be right about whatever it is we are insisting on, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in our own foot.  Our “healthy” skepticism keeps the ordinary magic of our everyday reality just out of our reach so that we can keep experiencing our reality in the same rote, lacking, and scarce ways we always have.  As much as we might “believe” that it’s hard to change our beliefs, it’s actually not.  It’s easy as pie.  What’s challenging is letting go of our sense of rightness, or that we know.  The blatant truth is that none of us know shit, even though we really like to think we do.  Pretty much everything is cloaked in mystery, yet that amount of magic (aka present moment spontaneously arising aliveness) is often too much for us to take.  So we find a way to generate certainty for ourselves by creating “facts” of reality, which are really just beliefs that we’ve come fully believe in as law, the truth, or the way things are.  The good news is that we can actually make this work for us rather than against us.

Our “hardcore” belief in lack is really just our insistence, one of the prime ones, of how reality is.  We accept this belief so blindly, meaning most don’t even think to question it.  Reflect on the following example: you look out in front of you and see that there is not a zebra in the room with you.  Let’s say that you take the perspective, based on this tiny little viewpoint of you in a room, that a zebra is lacking in existence because it’s not here in this room with you.  Rather than zooming out (ie. in this example zooming out would be doing something like turning on the African nature channel) you conclude that you must create a zebra because it is lacking.  This becomes very important to you because you view zebras as pivotal creatures to this planet.  You do your best to find all the parts of a zebra in order to create it from scratch, but you find that it’s super hard work, pretty much impossible to create, but none-the-less you persist and devote your entire life to creating zebras.  

Even though this is an absolutely ridiculous example it makes an important point.  What if rather than looking at the situation and concluding that a zebra is lacking because it’s not in the room with you, you set out to find its existence, because you believed, or somehow intuitively knew, that it already exists.  How far would you have to go to discover it?  Would discovering the zebra be more fun than creating it from random pieces and parts that don’t really fit together?  Believing, or choosing to know, that what we want to create already exists takes a tremendous burden off of us, a burden that nearly all of us carry around.  Rather than us having to figure out a bunch of stuff that we don’t know how to figure out, and do the seemingly impossible, we simply get to be in the curiosity of how to find the thing or how to get it to express itself.  We tempt and tease it into existence like a strategic game of hide and seek.  When we realize/believe that it already is, that nothing at all is lacking, it really just becomes a game of discovering how to get things to reveal themselves.  We may midwife them into form, but we are not responsible for the form.  The only thing we are responsible for is that we have fun while we curiously tease life to express itself.

You can exchange the word zebra with any of the following words: partner, business, project, finances, house, car, baby, healthy planet, healthy body, and on and on.  You can see how this becomes relevant for you now.  Just because any one of these things aren’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  If you go about attempting to create them from the perspective of lack, it will be not be very much fun.  You will probably suffer, struggle and cry a lot.  That’s what it’s like to create from lack.  However rather than taking on the burden of creating from lack (which is actually impossible) you choose to see them as already existing, then you get to play the game of revelation.  It is absolutely imperative, critical, crucial and necessary that you have fun playing the game and not get too focused on what the revelations that reveal themselves look like, meaning what form the forms decide to take.  The zebra may be striped purple and black rather than white and black, but it’s ok.  The form is less important than the play of creating from existence rather than lack.  When things are allowed to be themselves they naturally reveal themselves, they naturally express.  The better you are at allowing what is to be as it is, seeing what is as whole and complete, it will show you that, and the more proficient and easeful creator you will be.

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

HEALING FROM WHOLENESS

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HEALING FROM WHOLENESS 

What is, is

Wholeness is the natural state that exists in each and every moment, yet most all of us are trying to get to it in some way or another.  We conceptually know the complete perfection that is and yet we don’t live from this knowing.  Rather we live from the belief that there is somewhere to get and when we arrive there then completion will be achieved.  Most don’t really know where this place of completion is, but have many ideas that it is in either the attainment or absence of something.  When attainment or absence of the “something” is achieved they think they’ve arrived.  Yet soon the realization of fleeting temporariness of their illusion of completion is revealed and they find themselves back on the search for completion again.

Some people may initially think that if wholeness, completion and perfection already is, then what is there to live for or do.  If you aren’t striving to get somewhere than what?  The thing is that most people ask this question from the place of scarcity or from the perspective of lack of wholeness.  No one asks that question from wholeness because it would be clear to them how to move, where to act, where to be still and how to focus their energy and awareness.  The doubt that they feel about life would be alleviated because they would already know all is well no matter what is done or not done.  

How do we play the game of life knowing that it doesn’t actually matter what happens?  How are we passionate and committed to play and yet simultaneously detached from any occurrence occurring?  How do we heal coming from or knowing that we are already whole?  The definition of healing is remembering or realizing our/the already whole state.  Despite people often believing that healing has something to do with absence or presence of certain sensations or feelings, it does not.  This is again rooted in the idea that there is somewhere else to get or arrive that would indicate completion.  The first thing to really understand is that no matter what the sensation or feeling is that is currently present in your experience, nothing is wrong or un-whole.  Nothing is out of place.  Everything is perfectly aligned including the sensation/feeling experience.  You liking or not liking, preferring or not preferring your experience is not an indication of lack of wholeness.  Yet this is how we base our judgments.  If we like our experience we say all is well and everything is perfect.  If we don’t like our experience we say something is off, we are unwell or things are out of place.  From our view we decide what is, yet what is doesn’t really care about our view.  What is, is, regardless of how we view it.  Is-ness is inherently neutral and complete.  

LEARNING TO PLAY THE GAME

Oh Santa Claus

When you already know wholeness is what is, yet you live in a world environment that still largely perceives that things are wrong, then you must learn to play the game of “wrongness”.  I call it playing a game because once you fully know/believe that nothing can be other than perfect, you see that all you can really do is play the game, because it is no longer real to you that wrong could be.  Let me use believing in Santa Claus when you are kid as an analogy.  As long as your parents played along with the story when you were a kid, then you really believed in Santa Claus.  You put out cookies, you waited for Santa to come and then you opened all the presents he left in the morning.  Nothing seemed unreal about it when you were a kid, that is until you were told the truth.  Once you were told the truth than you couldn’t go back to believing in Santa Claus.  You could only play the game that Santa exists.  You might dress up for the younger kids, help them make cookies and clear the chimney for Santa to come, but to you its just a fun game and there is  nothing serious about it.  There are still things to do, actions to take and ways to play, but you know it’s just for play and that it doesn’t really matter what does or doesn’t get done. All is well.

This is truly what its like to stop believing in un-healedness or wrongness.  What remains is simply the truth of perfection.  You can’t go back to seeing things as wrong, you can only play the game for others that still believe in it.  You take actions, you do things, you change and move things around, yet you know that it truly doesn’t matter because wholeness already is, no matter what you do or don’t do.  You may find that you enjoy certain activities or doing particular stuff so you choose those activities as your play.  Those activities may be doctor, lawyer, coach, therapist, healer, business person, CEO, mom, etc.  This is akin to choosing the activities of dressing up as Santa, versus baking the cookies or going to the store to get milk.  Pick what you prefer or enjoy more.

Similar to the way we wait for kids to grow up a little bit before telling them the truth about Santa, in a way there is also a waiting for people to grow up beyond the belief of imperfection.  There is a time on everyone’s timeline where they will outgrow it.  They can only be told when they are ready to hear it.  If you tell them too soon they might not believe you.  Attempting to get a child’s thoughts, feelings or sensations to change about Santa before they are ready is arduous and nonsensical.  That’s why we play the game instead.  Its fun, there’s joy, and even though it’s ultimately untrue there is still play and activity involved.  As with the belief in wrongness or lack of wholeness, you can attempt to change yours or another’s sensations, feelings and thoughts around it, but if you/they aren’t ready to hear that all is whole and complete, then play the game of imperfection.  Make sure to make it as fun and as ridiculously silly as possible.  Choose to take on doing activities you like doing.  Be free from knowing anything needs to happen or not happen, because after all, all is well, perfect and complete now.  There is no future and no destination where this will be more or less true. Its true now.  This is healing from wholeness, from the destination not towards a destination.  Its playing the game of healing while knowing everything is already whole.

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

BELIEFS, BELIEFS, BELIEFS

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BELIEFS BELIEFS BELIEFS 

Disowning our power

We all conceptually know the power of beliefs, yet most live in lack of true recognition of the power of their beliefs.  Even beyond that, most people are not aware of what they believe and they think that life somehow operates outside of what they believe about it.  Beliefs are like the lenses we wear on our eyes, they determine what we see and what we don’t see.  They determine what we feel and what we don’t feel, and also how we behave and function in our environments.  Beliefs create our experiences.  Whatever it is we experience and attract is based on our beliefs.  Our beliefs literally create the world we perceive.

Beliefs are fundamental to every aspect of our lives and yet we give them little credence.  We ignore and devalue the impact they have and most of the time aren’t even aware of what it is we are believing.  We insist that some other forces are at play other than our beliefs, and that those forces are more powerful, more based in reality or more true.  Understand that, that is also a belief.  It’s simply one that disowns and projects its power outside of it’s seeming self and creates separation between self and stuff.  When we participate in such a manner, where we disown our beliefs and project them on the stuff of life, we give the stuff of life our power.  The stuff of life has no independent power, it has only the power you’ve given to it.  In essence it seems that the picture, the experiences, the interactions, the people, our body, etc. is what has the power, but it does not.  It only has the power you’ve given it.  

This can seem confusing for the mind to grok.  This is because most people have some heavy duty beliefs in there that believe that things have independent power.  They only appear to if you believe that to be so.  The world you will perceive will be one of independent objects, where things will feel other to you and there will be some sense of separation or disconnection.  This is how the majority of humans operate.  As a species we come from a level of awareness that developmentally doesn’t know its power yet.  It’s like how a baby doesn’t know how to speak until it hears words and speaking is modeled to it.  As adults we don’t know our power until it is shown to us.  Then once we see it we can’t unsee it.  Our power comes through knowing and choosing what we believe; deliberately, precisely and consciously.  It’s taking responsibility for  ourselves in such a way that we know what we believe and take full accountability to the creations we manifest based on those beliefs.  

CHANGING BELIEFS 

Utilizing our power

Some of our beliefs are tricky to see because they are so close to our faces.  They are kind of like a contact lens.  If you are an avid contact lens wearer you don’t really know the lens is there until you, or someone else, tries to take it off of your eye.  Once it’s removed, meaning once you are no longer looking through the lens of that belief, only then can you actually see it.  If it remains on your eye without your awareness of it, it will simply be how you see the world.  No other perspective would even be apparent to you.  Often when the metaphorically contact lens is removed we recognize our belief(s) and clarity about how we experience life is revealed to us.  It is as if all the sudden we can see what we couldn’t see before.  

Perhaps some of you are at this stage where you can see a belief or a handful of beliefs, yet you feel that you struggle in changing or shifting them.  This is the juncture where you get to utilize and learn fluency with and in your power.  It’s like pulling out your sword, magic wand, wizard’s staff, or any other empowerment symbol that resonates with you.  Be clear that the symbol is inert by itself, however you get to learn to utilize your power through it.  It’s you that makes life come alive, not the other way around.  The key ingredient is conviction in choice.  If you are either not sure that you get to choose or you don’t have conviction (meaning true belief) in what you actually desire to believe, than it will feel hard to change a belief.  

The honest to god truth is that it is very easy to change a belief.  You just do it.  You are after all the only one in charge of your life.  There is no one else inside of your head choosing for you.  Its just you in there.  All of the struggle or seeming hardness is simply your desire to hold onto your current belief.  For some reason you think that whatever belief you are choosing to keep serves you more.  There is no wrongness in that.  Only the recognition of what you are choosing so that you can be clear about how you are creating the world you experience and take full accountability for it.  

Once you get this and start truly applying it you will begin to deconstruct how you’ve thought the world works.  It will be the end of the powerless, hopeless perspective.  You’re in charge.  You’ve always been.  You just didn’t know it.  This is the next stage of development for human consciousness.  To become aware of itself in such a way that it recognizes that it’s had the power all along.  Its the end of subject-object separation.  There is no more you and other, no more you and your body, no more you and your emotions, no more you and the stuff of life.  You recognize you as subject, as the central operating force or principle.  All responds to you, not the other way around.  It starts and ends with you and your beliefs.  Know what you are choosing and choose in accordance with the experience of life that you desire.  Nothing is impossible.  What you decide is real is real.  What you decide is hard is hard.  What you decide is easy is easy.  Even though it may seem that two people experience the world the same, they don’t.  Things are not as solid as they seem.  Play a little.  Take a chance.  Believe something radical and fully believe it.  Your conviction is your doorway into new experience and novel creations.  

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

STABLE BEING

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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

NO WHERE TO NOW HERE

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NO WHERE TO NOW HERE 

Stop trying to go somewhere

It’s curious where we are all trying to get.  Seems like there is always somewhere to go, some other destination to arrive at and some other experience to be gotten to already.  We live in this forward trajectory of next and next and next, while never realizing that we are living our former next now and that the nexts will keep coming indefinitely.  To pause our focus on what’s next and be where we are now seems trivial, mundane or as if its lacking something that we must get.  

One must wonder what fuels this quest to get something or somewhere other than where we are.  If we really just cut to the chase here, all trying to get somewhere other than where we are (which is impossible by the way) is rooted, fueled and motivated by a perception we have of lack.  We believe that something is not in our experience that should be or that we want to be in our experience.  So we attempt to fulfill that seeming void that we perceive.  That lack could be of anything.  Perhaps it’s lack of happiness, lack of feeling good, lack of freedom, lack of movement, lack of connection, lack of resources, lack of money, lack of love, lack of purpose and on and on.  

I promise you that however tempting and true it may seem that what you are looking for exists somewhere else, it does not.  There is nothing that exists “over there” that doesn’t also exist here now.  If we take it a step further there isn’t even really an “over there” or anything other than now.  Try to find proof that something outside of now exists.  To find proof you would somehow have to prove that you could be other than existence, essentially that you could not exist.  Try to not exist, to not be, to not is, to not be here and let me know how it goes and if you find success.  

There is only now happening and now is all that ever happens.  To live this is to be in eternal peace.  This is the end of resistance and of all getting, striving, attaining, moving towards, and progress.  To not fight with where you are, which is now and to not fight what is, relaxes everything inside of you and therefore your experience relaxes as well.  When now is recognized and received you work inside the moment, with creation, with the unfolding, rather than as a separate object that is trying to get somewhere else or to the next thing.  Experiences and appearances continue to move and change, but there is no more trying to get things to change.  You are, all is, and this moment which is all moments, can be nothing other than fully perfect and complete.  No lack.  Nothing missing.  No where to go or get.  All remembers and sees what it is and that nothing ever left itself.   

LETTING EVERYTHING GO 

Release all wanting of things to be different

Let everything go.  Let everything be.  Want nothing from anything.  This is the way to know freedom.  This is the way to be at peace forever.  This is the way to have everything you truly desire, which is everlasting presence.  To want something or someone to show up differently, act differently, be differently than they are, is to attempt to control life or control others and not allow them to be themselves.  When we hope, pray, or plea that things will be different than they are, we lose our center and act in ways that are not in alignment or integrity with who we are in order to get what we think we want.  We then doubt, question, over-analyze, lash out, withdraw, react and endlessly stir in the thoughts of our mind.  The result of this is that we feel stuck, trapped, lost, powerless and at the mercy of others or to our experience of life.  

Our attachments to our ideas of what we want and the forms that those ideas take, steer the boat of our life if we let them.  In fact most people spend their life trying to get all of their desires to manifest so that they can give themselves the permission slip to relax and feel good.  Our desires are the guiding light, the spark that fuels the choices we make and the directions we choose, however when we attach to the outcome of our desires in order to get a perceived need or want met that we feel is missing, we have a recipe for suffering.  

In letting everything go we are open to receive everything as it is.  We allow our desires to take on whatever forms and shapes that they want to take on rather than the ones we think they should take on.  In this way we let the mystery of what will be reveal itself to us here now rather than fixating on how it will turn out, which puts us in the “next” mode.  This frees us from having to control life or others.  For most of us controlling isn’t our most natural state so it feels bad to us yet we continue to do it because we perceive lack.  Letting everything go means letting go of our control, letting go of our insistences, letting go of our rights, wrongs and and injustices, and letting go of our ideas and perceptions of lack.

To let go is to live love.  It is to be love, to be your natural state, to receive everything as it is.  It is to be here now, to be present and experience the bliss that is presence.  It doesn’t mean that you will never have painful sensations, intense emotions, unpleasant thoughts or challenges.  It doesn’t mean that you will never experience discomfort or dis-ease.  It doesn’t mean that all of your dreams and desires will be made manifest.  It only means that you will be present, you will be awake, you will be here.  You will stop trying to get anywhere and you will be where you are.  You will learn-share everything you are meant to learn-share.  You will stop missing out on your life because you realize you can’t miss out.  You will stop resisting, pushing away or forcing anything.  Instead you let whatever comes to you come.

The thing about now here is that it never leaves.  There is no situation, circumstance, event, activity, or experience that is separate from here now.  This means that presence is all pervasive.  There is no anything that needs to push you into next mode.  Full permission to be here, just as it is and find peace inside of now.  

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

LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU

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LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU

Serving others, serving life

One of the most sure fire ways to have a disappointing, unfulfilling and neutral/boring life experience is to make your life about you.  As soon as we develop awareness of self we begin to claim me, me, me.  It is all about our needs, wants and preferences and we have little awareness of others.  We see this in young children.  As part of our developmental journey we must learn to recognize and include others and see that life is not about getting what we want, however many people have been stunted along this developmental progression.  Many people, actually I’d venture to say most people, have as the focus of their life getting everything they want.  While not all have emotional outbursts about not getting what they want, the general aim of their life is about achieving their desires for themselves even if its masked underneath the appearance of serving others.  

As a caveat I will say that as adults it is fundamental that you have all your basic security, health and well-being needs met.  This is a baseline must.  Without this baseline stability in yourself of knowing your capacity to be well and take care or yourself, your survival mechanism will take precedence and your life will be about keeping this physical vehicle alive and well.  This baseline is likely a lot less extensive then you may initially think.  We really need very little in order to have all of our basic needs met.  Making sure this is in check for you is not making your life about you, but rather ensuring that you have the physical ability to make life not about you.  

One of the most important self-inquiry explorations you can do for yourself is to see where you are attempting to get something from others.  Whether its love, affection, attention, money, security, safety, approval, kindness, words of affirmation, someone “getting” you, being there for you or meeting you, its all about you.  Also notice where you might be giving to others in order to get these things.  That can be a sneaky way where it looks like we are serving, but really we are wanting to make sure we are safe, seen and supported.  Seeing these areas in yourself is the fertile ground for where you need to go to work on yourself.  As long as you are attempting to get anything from anyone you cannot be of service to them because you have agenda.  Even if your agenda feels innocent, justified or something you need because you are “human”, it is still agenda and distorts the purity of what is to be of true service, which is giving to life rather than taking from it.   

DEDICATING YOUR LIFE TO SERVING OTHERS 

Generating flow & energy

You may ask why you would want to dedicate your life to serving others and giving to life.  At some point, in this lifetime or one of your next ones, you will realize that there is nothing to gain in the getting.  It is a dead end.  The energy gets absorbed by you and stops.  There is a near constant replenishment that you must always be focused on in order to sustain you.  While there are temporary highs there is no sustainability in your presence, your energy or your state of being.  This is what its like for your life to be about you.  

In contrast when we give to life, when we serve life and others, we generate flow and energy.  Energy exchange is the name of the game of life.  You cannot develop past a certain point until you get this fundamental working of the universe.  Giving is receiving and receiving is giving, but not until you stop trying to get through either your giving or receiving.  What I find that most people truly desire is to simply be themselves.  When we are being just as we are without agenda, we radiate, we give naturally.  Sometimes people have the perception that to serve or give to life or others is exhausting and depleting.  That they have to go outside themselves to give “over there” endlessly.  This is not the case.  If you are depleting yourself in your giving you are out of balance, which indicates that there is still some agenda in your giving.  When your giving is pure it should be energizing for you.  

The reward if you will, of dedicating your life to serving, is the constant influx and flow of energy.  It’s not that serving others makes you a better person or that it is the right thing to do.  Please don’t “do it” for that reason.  Instead it is a way of honoring, energizing, including, evolving and giving to all of life.  Only choose service to others if you really want to and if it resonates for you.  Going back to our early development again, when we are just developing self-awareness our world is small with just ourselves and our few primary caretakers.  However the world is much larger than our nuclear family and the way to include more of it inside of our own developmental process is by serving others.  

Serving others stretches the boxes and containers of our zone of impact and increases the power that we have to create in and through love.  It opens our hearts into more as we begin to see beyond ourselves and our individual needs, wants and preferences.  We can let go of not getting what we want and instead focus on giving what we want.  We start to see one family rather than multiple, separate, individual families.  Other begins to seem more and more like self.  All of these realizations are aspects that wake you up more and more to the true unified nature.  

I invite you to start each and every day this week with the simple questions of asking yourself, who is it that I want to be today?  How do I want to show up?  How do I want to serve?  How do I want to give to others and life?  You don’t have to have the answers, just ask the questions and let it be revealed to you.  Allow the intention to guide your each and every thought and action.  

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

LIVING INTENTIONALLY

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LIVING INTENTIONALLY 

Beyond hopefulness

How often do you set an intention?  If you are like most people I’d imagine you do so relatively regularly particularly around New Years, birthdays or other significant events and time landmarks.  Setting intentions is a very common practice and even so most people do not live very intentionally.  There is a tremendous difference between setting intentions and living intentionally.  Typically when we set an intention it is for something that we want to show up in our physical reality.  Perhaps it’s setting the intention to purchase a house, find a relationship, read more books, eat healthy, exercise more, or start a new business.  If you are really ambitious you might intend things like world peace, the end of hunger or the awakening of humanity.  While there is nothing wrong with setting intentions, in fact I recommend that people do, it does not equate to living intentionally.  

See as humans we tend to be quite lazy.  Even if we “do a lot of stuff” we can still be incredibly lazy.  In fact I believe that some of the least lazy people might not do much at all.  Strange paradox right?  What I mean by lazy is that we tend to lack mental discipline, focus and the harnessing of our own will power.  We tend to just let life happen and hope for the best even if we keep ourselves busy with a lot of stuff.  Often all of that stuff is a distraction from living intentionally.  If we are more spiritually oriented, rather than just hope it all works out for the best we might say that we leave it all up to divine orchestration and intervention.  While that is not entirely inaccurate many people use it as a cop out to not show up or discipline themselves, and they fail to recognize that THEY ARE the divine orchestration and intervention.  The divine is not something other than them, it is them, and the use of their own personal will is their divine power.  

Being “hopeful” is pretty strong indicator that you are not aware of your divine power and you are expecting/waiting for something to save you or the other humans on this planet.  Its empty and lacks power (aka lacks you).  See true intentional living has less to do with what is happening in the manifest world and more to do with where you are coming from.  What I mean by that is knowing why you exist, what convictions you hold to be truth and allowing that to be the guiding light for all that you do.  Ask yourself are you just doing on automatic pilot and routine, or is each breath and action deliberate.  You might sense some heaviness or impossibility around making every action deliberate because it may feel like a lot, and you are right it is a lot, and it is what is required if you truly want to live in an awake and empowered physical manifest reality.  Living intentional means you take no action from a sleepy, unconscious, or automatic state.  Instead you are constantly attuning to where it is you are coming from.   

WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM 

Why you exist

Do you know where you are coming from?  This is the first step.  Most people do not know what internally motivates them, what is actually important to them, what they are convicted in or why they even exist at all.  Where you are coming from and why you exist are synonymous.  You must decide this for yourself if you are to choose the path of intentional living.  No one will do this for you and it will not just magically reveal itself.  It must be a deliberate chosen knowing.  As tempting as it is to reduce ourselves to things, objects, roles, jobs, businesses, physical creations and the like, none of these things are why you exist.  Not to say that certain of these things won’t be ways that you choose to express the why of why you exist, none of them define the why.  We are so accustom to externalizing our power that it may be challenging for you to get what I am saying here, but its worth getting.

If you don’t know why you exist then you will follow the societal standards that have been laid out and think that a successful life means that you accomplished them all and an unsuccessful life means you didn’t.  This is akin to being a robot as it is void of any real life.  If you have enough awareness, at some point you realize that getting and doing (or not getting and doing) all the stuff, matters not at all.   Not at all.  All of the getting and doing will keep coming and going, its ceaseless, it will never stop.  If you arrive at a place where you think its all done, you will soon realize its not, it keeps going.  If you don’t ever realize that it is where you are coming that matters, then you will eventually find yourself stressed, exhausted, depleted, and waiting for a “vacation” or for physical life to end so you can have some peace.  Even death is not an escape.  

So how do decide why you exist? Well you just do.  We all know it for ourselves because it is who we are, its simply that most do not ever self-inquire.  People are so busy in the doing and thinking of life that their actual being is extremely neglected.  In fact most have never even made contact with their being, believe it or not.  One thing that often arises when we begin to self-inquire as to why we exist is that we often don’t feel worthy of what we are.  If for example we say we exist to “be love” and thus where we choose to come from is love, we may feel some shyness or inhibition in claiming this for ourselves.  We might also reject it by saying to ourselves that being love is not enough and fall back into our reliance on what we are doing rather than where we are coming from in order to feel a sense of worth.   

To live intentionally you must fully claim where you are coming from 100% of the time.  It must be in the forefront of everything that you think or do.  In this way you stop being lazy and filling your life with stuff that you think you’re supposed to be doing.  You become more aware, more actively participating even if you are not doing anything in particular.  You harness your power of will, which again is your divine power.  Life stops just happening.  You stop being hopeful.  You stop caring so much about what things look or feel like.  Your desire or need to control anything lessens and your vigilance to your own self, to your own state of where you are coming from increases.  You become the intention you set and therefore realize it matters not if it actually physically manifests.  The security and stability in your being dominates and you become unmovable and unshakable by any change of appearance.   

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