Group consciousness

INTENTION & FOCUS

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INTENTION & FOCUS 

A dash of magic

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

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

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

IMAGINATION & REALITY 

Increasing will

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

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

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

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

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

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

FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKING TO SPIRITUAL BEING

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FROM SPIRITUAL SEEKING TO  SPIRITUAL BEING

Misidentification with the objects of our awareness

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

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

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

SILENCE IS YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND 

Just Be 

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

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

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

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

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

WANTING WHAT IS

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WANTING WHAT IS 

Getting into alignment

Wanting is an inclusive energy.  Wanting invites, welcomes and moves towards.  Wants guide our actions, our choices and they are the fuel behind our motivations.  Wanting is an attractive force.  When we don’t want we tend to feel aimless, lethargic and like we are just trying to get the day (or our life) over with.  When we do want it brings more energy into our system to move in a particular direction.  Sometimes we will try to convince ourselves that we want something other than what is in our present moment, yet when we realize that what is, is what we want, the inner battle ends and we become available to life again.

I think it is frequently the case that people have the experience that whatever it is they are experiencing is not what they want.  We tend to call this having a bad day, feeling low energy, or being out of alignment.  When we look at life through the perspective of seeing it as something we don’t want then we are out of alignment.  We are out of alignment with the way life is expressing itself in that moment, or said another way, we are in disagreement with the universe.  It never feels good to be in disagreement with what is.  It’s heavy, we feel irritation or annoyance, and generally experience less vitality or zest for life.  This is why feeling bad is an indication of being out alignment.  Sometimes we can’t always pinpoint the “thing” that created the sense of out alignment for us, all we know is that we feel bad.  Whenever you notice that you feel bad it is an opportunity to stop, pause, and notice that you are in disagreement with what is.  You are not wanting what is to be what is, and yet it is what is.  This is also an opportunity to shift your perspective to wanting what is, which brings you back into alignment.

As casually as I write that it does not always seem so easy to get ourselves into agreement with what is.  When we perceive that what is, is not what we want, we will often fight tooth and nail to convince ourselves and the world that what is should be different.  Perhaps it’s that we should feel different about how we feel or what we are doing with our day or our  life.  Maybe we think we should have different sensations in our body than we currently do.  Perhaps we feel cheated by our experience or lack of experience and we want to insist that we were wronged.  Maybe we are trying to convince ourselves that we want something we don’t really actually want, but that we think we should want.  It can feel hard to let go of our story about what is and simply let what is be.  Yet this is exactly what must occur if we are to get into alignment with ourselves and feel the freedom of being present. 

OPENING THE HEART

Choosing what is

A beautiful thing happens when we change our mind, and rather than disagreeing with what is showing up we decide to want it instead; our heart re-opens.  It might be that 5, 10, 20 or 100 times a day your heart oscillates from being open to being closed.  The only difference in it being open or closed is whether or not you are in agreement with what is showing up inside of your experience.  Being in disagreement tends to shut us down.  We get opinionated, judgmental, righteous, disgruntled, peeved, angry, sad, scared and on and on, when we are in disagreement.  Reactions, agendas, fears and self-survival dominate and motivate our actions.  When we are in that state of being the heart is not open and not in free flowing acceptance and love of what is.  

It takes a hell of a commitment/devotion to being in an open hearted state in order to get ourselves to make the decision to shift our perspective, or to shift where we are coming from.  To turn towards wanting what is.  You are the one that must choose what you value.  In fact you are the only one that can choose.  If your value is open-heartedness and living from the perspective of love, than making the shift is a must.  It’s really not even a choice, it is simply the only possible way to go.  What will then be required of you is that you must turn towards and lean into what is.  You must want what is.  Even if what is, is the most undesirable thing that you can possibly imagine or feel.  If you feel heavy or tired, want that.  If you just got turned down by a potential partner, want that.  If your body weighs 10 more pounds now than it did last year, want that.  If the house is dirty or disorganized, want that.  If a big project you’ve been working on tanks, want that.  If you are scared or depressed, want that.  If your body hurts or expresses some other sensation or experience, want that.  See if you want it, you stay open.  You feel what you are trying to not feel and that lets you relax and let go.  Can you feel that?  If you don’t want it, you close down and keep fighting or resisting, and you don’t really get anywhere new.  

We must first accept what is before any change will show up inside of how we experience life, and acceptance of what we think we don’t want is one of the hardest things for us to do as humans.  Yet when you master this, you master life.  You master life because no longer does what is showing up inside of your experience dictate how you experience it.  You become the source, seer and chooser of the experience when you come into agreement with what is.  This is where true power lies, where miracles are the ordinary way things work, and love/bliss is how you feel and see even when sensations in your body or other various emotions are present.  You realize none of it matters, because you’re in charge and the experience/appearance is not.  

Wanting what is opens the heart.  When your heart is open you give everything the opportunity to be as it is, you include all, you recognize wholeness and perfection, and you give everyone around you the opportunity to open their heart as well.  This is what it is to be of service, to be living your purpose, to be in alignment.  Being of service, in purpose and in alignment are not about what you do, but instead who and how you choose to be and see.  Here is the invitation to be brave enough, devoted enough and committed enough to love, to choose what is and want what is.  Any fear you have around doing this will be resolved in the act of you doing it. This is true sovereignty, autonomy and power.  

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

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING

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YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO  ANYTHING

Fear of badness

So often we feel this pressure, pull or weight to do.  That we have to do against our will or desire to do.  There seems to be an ultimatum if we don’t do.  We fear that if we don’t do whatever it is that we think we have to do, then something bad will happen.  We don’t even typically know what will happen, we just think that it will be bad.  This fear of “badness” and of not wanting to feel it, keeps us locked into the feeling state of being trapped, and the thought that we must do even when we aren’t sure what to do or feel strong opposition to the doing we think that we must do.  

One of the pivotal things to accept is that as humans we are essentially blind.  Spiritually blind that is.  In many ways we are masked, muted and confused.  We can see the appearance or expression of life, but we can’t see the source of it.   We don’t know who we are or what’s really going on beyond what we’ve been taught by other beings who are similarly confused.  When you accept that you are, by nature of this human experience, highly confused and that its okay to be confused, its much easier to take the pressure off of yourself.  That pressure to do something because you fear badness is alleviated when you accept your own state of blindness.

When we accept that we mostly don’t know anything we can realize that even our projected fear of badness is inaccurate.  The truth is we don’t know if something bad will happen or not happen based on our doing or non-doing.  We may create elaborate stories based on ideas in our mind or on previous life experiences, and yet even so we don’t know what will truly happen, ever.  All of the doubt we feel in our decision making processes (i.e. the pressure we feel) is simply rooted in the perspective that one way is good and another is bad.  One way is right and another wrong.  That the result of one choice is preferable and the other un-preferable.  

Rather than forcing yourself to do, take some kind of action, or make a decision, first giving yourself the permission to not know and not act is key.  Even though it seems like there are deadlines and timelines remember that all of that is made up.  It’s true that if certain “timelines” don’t get met than certain things may not occur, but remember there is no badness in the occurrence or non-occurrence.  Only the perspective you take on all of it matters.  There are truly no missed opportunities.  There is only what happens.  That may be hard for you mind to accept and your acceptance of that is key to your peace.   

WANTING EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 

Doing from choice

Conjure up something in your mind that you think you have to do.  Maybe its your taxes, paying your bills, or a project for work or for hobby.  Perhaps its a conversation with someone, an email to write, a new diet or exercise to start, a relationship to end or a new job to start .  Make sure that whatever it is you bring into mind right now is something you think you have to do, rather than something you want to do or that you feel in neutral acceptance about doing.  Notice the pressure, heaviness, tension or perhaps scatter that occurs when you think about doing the thing.  Listen to the stories and thoughts that are occurring in your mind about having to do the thing.  Some of those stories that are flittering their way through your mind might have flavors of failure, dread, uncertainty and confusion.  Notice what ultimatums you are giving yourself if you don’t do the thing and how you might feel bad about yourself or about the outcome of doing or not doing.

Now feel what its like to give yourself the permission to not do the thing.  There might still be that initial dread or fear that something bad might happen, but let that story lift as well.  For just a few moments stop making all assumptions about what you think might happen and fully allow yourself to not know what the outcome might be or not be.  Be in the mystery.  Allow the not knowing to be present.  Give space for potentiality before making a concrete reality-assumption in your mind.  Now simply notice how you feel.  You should notice that you feel lighter.  That its easier to breathe.  That you are more present.  Continue to allow yourself to not have to make any decisions or take any actions in this moment and continue to notice your energy and feeling state.  

I recommend aiming for this more neutral and easeful state of being before taking any actions.  If you don’t you are simply reacting to illogical stories and disempowered patterning.  From your now current state of being check in and see if whatever it is you conjured up to do still feels relevant to do.  If it doesn’t then just let it go as its not serving you to keep entertaining it.  If it does still feel relevant than begin to see how it is something that you want to do rather than continuing the story that you have to do it.  In the shift to wanting to do it perhaps you notice that you feel like you don’t know how to do the thing, or maybe like you don’t have the resources (physical, emotional, mental or other) to do it.  Notice if this is the case.  These are the situations to seek support and advise from others.  Find the “how” so that your mind doesn’t put a stop to it or insist on keeping you victim to it.  In this way you begin to learn that there is nothing that you have to do.  There is only what you want to do or get to do.  When you have this as the relationship with everything in your life the pressure and tension is gone because you stop being in conflict with yourself.  When you are aligned with yourself there is still work and energy expenditure, but the tension of dread of what bad thing might happen is transformed into excitement for what you get to do instead.  You open more into the mystery and worry less of the outcome.  

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

WHAT DEFINES YOU?

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WHAT DEFINES YOU? 

The thoughts you think

We are what we think ourselves to be.  Our stories, ideas and thoughts about ourselves create the image of who and what we imagine ourselves to be.  We really are simply made up in our own minds.  Subtle waves of thought energy that we repeat over and over give the appearance of solidity and become the physical representation of what we know with our senses.  It’s hard to believe that something as etheric as thought could define us and even give shape to our sensory world, and yet it does.   

Most of us don’t really know what defines us because we aren’t that aware of the thoughts that we are choosing about ourselves.  Rather we live based on a bunch of unconscious assumptions about ourselves that seem random and given to us rather than self-chosen.  Most people think that its their interests, professions or roles that define who they are.  You might think, well I love to ski, so I am a skier, that’s who I am.  You might be a mother or father and take that role to be your identity.  Or you might be a coach, therapist or business person of sorts and therefore assume that your profession is who you are.  All of these examples are things you do or participate with, but none of them is who you are.  

We are so accustomed and conditioned to take our cues from our experiences rather than take our cues from ourselves that we seek to find our identity somewhere out there in our experience.  The thing is, that is not where our identity lives.  Our identity starts inside our very own mind and it resides solely there.  This is great news because it means that at anytime you can shift or change your identity.  You are not static or fixed.  Simply because you’ve had a repeating thought about yourself for 30, 40 or 50 years doesn’t mean that you have to keep repeating it.  The only thing required is that you wake up and realize the thought you are thinking.  When we realize our thoughts than we can stop making assumptions about ourselves and living on automatic pilot mode.  We can actively choose our thoughts about ourselves and redefine ourselves a hundred times a day if we so choose.  This may seem radical or too far fetched and yet it’s entirely possible.  The person you currently think you are could be completely changed by this afternoon if you so choose.   

RETHINKING  OURSELVES INTO BEING

Optimally design yourself

Most of us desire to live a joyful and fulfilling life where we create impact and have a good time along way.  This is what I would call epic living.  This possibility starts with who or what we think ourselves to be.  What happens though is that we often focus on the stuff.  We think the stuff of our lives needs to change in order to living epically.  So we get a new job, find a new relationship, move locations, start a new branch to our business, begin a new exercise program, and on and on.  We go about redefining the stuff, thinking that it will redefine us.  Yet most people continue with their current sense of identity never even giving it a second glance.  

I am not suggesting that its bad or wrong to change up the stuff of our life.  In fact many times when we rethink ourselves into being the stuff will change.  However most people only put energy and attention on the stuff and then they wonder why nothing seems to actually change inside of their experience of life despite the appearance of change.  They can’t figure out why they don’t seem to be making “progress” towards living a joyful and fulfilling life, or feeling more stability and ease inside of themselves even though so much stuff in their life is changing.  This is why.  The being doesn’t get addressed.  It’s not automatic that the being gets addressed when we change the stuff.  

Getting deliberate in your choosing of your identity is key.  The first step is unraveling the assumptions you are presently making about yourself.  Who do you currently think that you are?  Make a list.  Flesh it out.  See what labels, stories and ideas you have about yourself that define the experiences that you are drawing into your life.  What thoughts do you have about what you are or aren’t capable of?  Of who you think you are and aren’t?  And of what is or isn’t possible for you?  The dismantling of the labels that come with certain limitations will make your identity more malleable and flexible.  

What if you begin this new year rethinking yourself into being.  Consciously deciding who and what you are rather than focusing on what you want to do, create or accomplish.  Put at least as much energy and attention on who you be and what you be.  Cultivate a very deliberate being that you are.  Clearly know what and how you are defining yourself and see how that is working for you.  If it is not producing the experience of an epic life that is joyful and fulfilling than focus on redesigning yourself, not your life.  Your life will follow suite.  May you take on this challenge and see what it is that you create anew.  

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

MAGIC OF THE HEART

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MAGIC OF THE HEART 

Lived Remembrance 

The birthplace of all magic, mystery, fun and play lives within the heart.  Heart is not outside of you.  It lives and breathes you, and everything else in creation, into form.  Heart is that essence of which you are, of which we all are, yet remains unseen to the physical eye and unknown to the physical senses.  Heart is all pervasive and yet illusive to our ordinary reality and ordinary minds.  To reconnect and re-find our heart is to reconnect to the magic that lives inside of all things.  

The channel to heart is always open.  We must only tune ourselves to it in order to discover it.  The frequency of our unique soul essence is the gateway into the remembrance of what we are and the knowing, seeing, sensing of the love that simply is that primordial substratum, matrix, and information behind all things we perceive.  Even though sometimes heart seems distance and hard to find, in truth it is always here, present and ready for us to realize it.  Part of participating in this human experience is the forgetting of ourselves, of our essence, of love, and the unification of all in love.  We come to experience separation and forgetfulness and to find our way back into ourselves.  There is no right or wrong on this journey.  There is only the following of the breadcrumbs of excitement that guide your unique path.  

Tuning yourself to the frequency of your soul is the work.  It is the work of this incarnation if you choose remembrance as your intention for being here now.  For many this is relevant and desired.  There comes a time when one must stop talking about all things spiritual and instead live their essence.  Rather than think about what they want to be true or what they want to be their lived experience, they must simply live it.  This is the magic.  This is the alchemy.  Lived remembrance.

To live intentionally, devoted to why you are, is the only real tuning you need.  To run that pathway over and over and over again until it becomes the default program in your consciousness.  Until all you know and all you be is why you are.  This is the end of getting anywhere.  You’ve arrived.  There is simply the being and sharing of your arrival.  It is the air you breathe and the water you swim in.  No longer do you perceive separation of you and your purpose.  You are your purpose.  You are your intention for existing.  You know yourself.  Love is.  Love remains.  The channel is open and you have tuned to its frequency.   

YOUR HEART FREQUENCY 

Sound of Love

Heart could never not be yours.  You are not undeserving or unworthy of it.  You do not need to earn it or meditate your way into it.  You can’t be separate from it because it’s impossible for you to be separate from yourself, and heart is what you are.  Just try for a moment to be separate from yourself.  You can create content such as thoughts, feelings or sensations that seems to interfere or stand between you and heart, but there is not two of you.  You can’t exist over there and over here.  You can only exist, you can only be, there is just one.  Therefore its impossible for anything to be separate from anything else.  This is the teaching of the heart.  This is what the heart reveals when you tune yourself to why you are.  In that tuning you come into the knowing of the unity that is.  The one that expresses itself in a myriad of forms, some of which you have mistakenly identified yourself as.  

In the subtle, quiet stillness you can more clearly hear yourself.  You can hear the frequency of your heart, the sound of love.  Even when your thoughts, feelings and sensations appear to disrupt your frequency, in truth they really don’t.  While you are having the experience of disruption or interference, you still are, you still exist, and therefore love still is.  Untouched, unwavering and present.  It really is as simple as shifting your awareness to that knowing that love still is here now.  You can focus on the stuff, the thoughts, the story, the feelings, the sensations, the content of your experience, or you can focus on the fact that you are existing, being, and that love is what is present in being.  

Peace really is much closer than you think.  You can experience it in an instant.  That dropping of tension, of weight, of pressure, of constraint, is available just as soon as you stop focusing on the content of your experience.  Being is rested in love.  Love is, when you are.  This is when magic becomes your experience.  Rather than logic, linear awareness with cause and effect, black and white, and matter of fact thinking ruling your experience, you experience the dance, the flow, the rhythm and movement of intelligence at work, of love at work.  Synchronicity is the norm, life unfolds nonlinearly, and while the mind can’t make sense of it, the heart giggles in delight.

The frequency of heart is pure delight.  It naturally gives without doing.  It is so totally and completely energized.  It needs nothing from anything.  It knows how to move itself.  The body and mind obey the intelligence of the heart when you tune to the frequency of your soul.  Open into that channel of love over and over and over again, as much as you possibly can, each and every day.  Find whatever excuses, whatever reasons you can, to tune to your heart’s frequency.  Make it your number one priority no matter what experience is showing up, no matter what thoughts or feelings or sensations you are having.  Tune to love, to bliss, to God, until you remain rested there, until you no longer ever leave again.  This is the completion.  This is everything I know.

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

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

PLAYING PATTERNS

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PLAYING PATTERNS 

The matrix of creation

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

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

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

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

PURPOSE OF PATTERNS 

Understanding relevance & readiness to shift

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

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

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

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

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

THE GIFT OF YOURSELF

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THE GIFT OF YOURSELF 

You are the gift you give

For many people there is an innate drive to give to others.  To serve, help, and support others generally generates good feelings inside of us as long as our giving comes from a place of true desire rather than obligation or agenda.  We are taught early on that we must learn skills, trades or other tools and means in order to have something to give.  Those things become our contribution to others.  This is the whole idea of work, and of trading services and resources.  

While our skills, services and abilities can add value to people’s lives and create ease, flow or greater efficiency in the world, they are not the gift that we give.  Two different people can have similar skills, services or abilities and yet they give an entirely different gift.  Sure on the surface it may seem that two architects can write up similar plans for a building, and yet they produce very different feels or results with their plans.  You may wonder why this is so.  It is so, because it is the energy of you that brings the gift of what gets produced.  It is the heart, the core of who you are, that is the actual gift you give.

Now this may seem very obvious to you conceptually.  Of course you understand that it’s you and the not the thing, but also notice how much of your mental and physical energy you spend on searching for the next cool thing you are going to create, the next career you will have, the next relationship you will start, all the while thinking that it will be your new purpose, the new thing that will define you and give you some sense of contribution.  It is very easy to pin the thing, meaning it is very easy for us to say “oh there is this thing that I can do or give to others and that makes my existence worthwhile.”  To say to yourself “I created this product, shared this service with others or did this thing and it changed people’s life, it’s so amazing!”  It is innocent enough and perhaps even true that your skill or ability did change their life and yet it is still not the gift you give.  

See in order to recognize the gift, you must be able to recognize and see yourself.  We are quite blind and distorted in our perspectives of how we view our own self.  We are not very clear mirrors for our own reflection.  We tend to not view ourselves as very worthwhile in general and therefore it’s easier to project our goodness on things we do rather than on our own selves.  We project our worth onto things.  Then to top it off the world reinforces all of our do-gooding all the while also telling us that if we think too highly of ourselves we are selfish and arrogant. Oh the conundrum! 

BEING WORTH 

Self-gratitude

Unless you know your worth you can’t give, because your giving is giving you.  If you see nothing of value in and of yourself, naked and without skills, abilities and stuff, then nothing will radiate out of you.  Sure you will still do stuff, create stuff and function in the world, but you will grow tired because you are running on empty inside trying to generate worth through what you do.  Until you know how worthy you are you will always have agenda, because you will always be trying to get love rather than realizing you are it.

Your radiance is your gift.  How you shine is your gift. It is really, really simple.  You could never attain worth or get more worthy and valuable based on any skill or ability that you may have or acquire.  Again it doesn’t mean that your skills won’t help out the ease and flow of this human existence, but they are not your service.  You are your service independent of anything that is done.

Since it is impossible to increase our worth this begs the question of how do we elevate our sense of self-worth.  Our sense of self-worth and our actual self-worth are two very different things.  The journey is in how we bridge the seeming gap in between without it being based on things that we accomplish or do.  Since most of our confidence comes through feats of walking into the fire of our own fears and limitations it is based in accomplishment or doing.  

There is one fast and short easy way to elevate our sense of self-worth and that is gratitude.  Gratitude for ourselves just the way we are in any given moment.  Appreciating the quirks, oddities, subtleties, nuances, particularities, and the way that we are exactly as we are.  Ending the desire to change ourselves or make ourselves different in any way brings greater and greater self-acceptance.  

Anything other than total gratitude for self is self-absorption, self-denial, self-hatred and the true selfishness.  It’s the true selfishness because when we don’t feel amazing about ourselves then we focus on ourselves.  We focus on what’s wrong with us and how to be different or better.  When we are focused on ourselves our energy goes in rather than radiating out.  The result is that we feel depleted rather than energized.  Giving/being ourselves is energizing because it’s effortless.  It doesn’t need to be more or less.  It is complete in and off itself.  None of this means that we won’t grow or change, but instead simply that growth will come through acceptance of self rather than through non-acceptance.  

Develop a daily practice of self-gratitude, not for what you do, but for who you are.  Nothing added, nothing subtracted.  Just you as you are.  This will be your portal into a sense of stable, infinite self-worth where you will naturally radiate the gift that you are.   

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