health

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

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

TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS

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TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS 

Good days and bad days

Most all of us desire a state of inner peace.  That sustainably stable center of being, that remains undisturbed regardless of situation or circumstance.  I really don’t know anyone who isn’t in someway looking or desiring this for themselves.  Often times we taste peace.  For example we might wake up in the morning after a great night’s sleep feeling rested and fantastic.  Then we start our day and tiny little peace disrupters attempt to find their way inside of our experiences.  Maybe our partner is grouchy and that affects our state of joy a little bit.  Perhaps we don’t have the food in our refrigerator that we want to eat for breakfast because our kids ate it last night.  Possibly you receive a phone call from your doctor telling you they didn’t like the look of some your routine blood work that you did last week for your annual check up.  Then you get in your car, start it up and it’s making some strange noise.  You arrive at your scheduled lunch meeting only to find out the person you are meeting is running 40 minutes late.  You get the idea.  The list could go on and on and on endlessly forever.  

It’s really no wonder that we feel stressed out most of time and not really as present and centered as we’d like to be.  It seems to be that there are a thousand tiny, little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters that happen in a give day.  You can find them in nearly every moment it seems.  Little ways that life does not appear to run smoothly, where things are less desirable than we want them to be, and where life just doesn’t feel like we want it to feel.  We worry about the outcome of all the things and if everything will turn out alright.  We dread the hassle of taking care of things that we aren’t sometimes even sure how to take care of.  We live in this state of a sort of powerlessness to life and its occurrences, and we hold our breath while we are in the uncertainty of it all.  I’d say that this is a pretty regular experience of life for most.  

Days that we call “good days” are typically days where we either perceive that less peace disrupters are present or where they are present but don’t seem to effect us.  In these situations it is often that something that we perceive as really good happened in a day so we are less easily affected by the other going ons of life.  It can also be that we have more distance from the occurrences of life on a given day (i.e. less attachment to the outcome of things and more acceptance of what is) so the little things seem to grab us less.  Some things are easier for us to accept, others not as much.  The more we resistance we create, the less resourced and energized we are and the more those tiny little peace disrupters run the show. 

STABLE INNER CENTER 

Playing the game of challenge

All of those tiny little peace disrupters are really just little challengers in the game of life.  They are opportunities for you to learn greater and greater inner stability.  One of the things I hear most frequently from people whom I work with is that they want to have stability in feeling good, energized, joyful and in their center or truth.  They want to less taken by the circumstance of life and be in more choice about what and how they are feeling on a day to day basis.  So often people don’t feel in choice about how they are feeling and that is actually what feels bad, that is not being in choice and not necessarily the bad feeling itself.

One of the fundamental perspectives to take on this whole matter is that everything that happens is happening for you not to you.  If you make that shift in perspective than you can easily see that all of those tiny little peace disrupters (and even the big ones) are simply coming into your experience to help you learn how to have a stable inner center.  See we ask to have a stable inner center and yet when we are given a thousand opportunities a day to practice it we fail to see that we are being given exactly that which we need to learn exactly that which we desire to learn.  It’s tricky because when we see through the perspective that life is happening to us we feel powerless to circumstance and feel that we have no choice in the matter of how we feel about what is happening to us.  However if we pick up and put on a different pair of glasses for the day, glasses that see that every single occurrence inside of our experience is happening for us then we are much more readily available to learn from life rather than feel victim to it.  We can also more clearly see things as opportunities to learn and not as permanent, never ending states of being of which we will never escape.

Most people don’t realize how powerful they are.  In fact most don’t realize that they have any power at all.  Some level of denial, confusion and lack of awareness seems to be present for most people when it comes to knowing themselves as the all powerful creators that they are.  Yet the evidence is everywhere.  How you perceive everything that you perceive is evidence of your power.  How you perceive is how you will experience life.  What is more powerful than that?  How you perceive is how you create and thus how you will experience life.  At any moment your free will to perceive is intact.  Free will the first expression of creation.  It is what you are.  Free will itself.  You are free to perceive however it is you would like to, and you will thus create an experience of life based on your perception.  Perception is creation.  If you see things as bad or wrong, you will experience bad, wrong or the threat of bad/wrong.  If you see things as good, you will experience good and that life is working for you.  

It is really that simple folks.  You might like to insist that you don’t have any power, and that you can’t change how you perceive, but you’re the only one that can.  No one can give you a stable inner center.  Tools, techniques and programs can guide you towards it, but ultimately you must learn it through the opportunity of tiny little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters.  The gift of them is the re-remembering your power and your never ending free will to perceive/create as you’d like.

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

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

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DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE 

Plunging into the subconscious 

Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down the rabbit hole, like Alice in Wonderland, is synonymous to diving into your subconscious. The subconscious mind is that aspect of mind that is accessible in dream time, during altered states of consciousness and in meditative states.  Our subconscious holds information about our current life, and information from other places and points on our timeline. Simply because our subconscious mind isn’t in the forefront of our everyday awareness doesn’t mean that we can’t learn how to readily access it and integrate the information that it stores. In fact accessing our subconscious mind regularly is what allows us to become more fully aware of ourselves and live more awake to all that we are.

Found within the subconscious mind is a storehouse of beliefs that we live our waking lives by.  These beliefs create the reality we perceive and experiences that we have.  In tumbling down the rabbit hole of our subconscious minds we often stop at various spots along the way.  When we stop in a particular location we get an opportunity to see some aspect of ourselves at that place.  This means that we get to explore a belief we have, or a way that we see the world that we couldn’t see in our more ordinary state of being.  Once we see the belief, the opportunity to change it becomes available.  Other things that stop our tumble are when our higher self wants to show us things that will support our current journey that were previously illusive to us. Such things might be a particular truth or knowing, a vision or skill/ability that we have but forget we had, or other knowings that support our level of participation in our earthly life and experience. Lastly at times we stop our tumble in a particular location in order to integrate experiences that we’ve had during or before this life that we haven’t been able to fully process.  

The journey of tumbling down into our subconscious mind is vital to the process of “waking” up, of becoming more aware, more illuminated.  To bring the light of our awareness to these un-illuminated aspects of self is the spiritual journey.  Without deliberating taking on this journey your growth as a soul is supported by the field of the collective that does take on this journey, but the self-generated momentum is not present.  This means that relative forward soul progression (ie. waking up) will occur, but only secondary to the pace of the larger collective field.  Your deliberate, conscious choosing of the tumble down the rabbit hole will accelerate and create a self-generated fuel source within your own field.  This will contribute to your individuated soul/field consciousness and also the larger body that aligns with the intention of illuminating human consciousness.  

HOW FAR DOES THE HOLE GO? 

Keep tumbling down

Just how far down does the hole of our subconscious go?  As far as I know, it’s infinite. It has no end.  Sometimes we plunge down the hole and we think that it ends somewhere. We think we will find a bottom and at that bottom we will have “arrived”. Arrived where exactly is a question one should investigate if they find themselves stopped somewhere.  Some assume that they will arrive at enlightenment or eternal peace and joy.  I will say that there are locations along the way, of the plunge into the rabbit hole, that are ecstatic, blissful, and feel deeply free.  Places of pure clarity, knowing and seeing.  Yet if we find ourselves stopped at a location experiencing these states, we have only arrived in a location that has different knowings, beliefs and allowances then the location we currently spend the vast majority of our consciousness.  We haven’t arrived “at the end” of anything. As far as I can tell there is no end, so to assume an end is to end artificially.  To stop your tumble and believe that, that is it, no matter how blissful, is to cap your expansion as a soul. 

The key is to keep tumbling.  To only stop where there is relevance.  To not get distracted by thoughts, sensations and other experiences along the way that halt your further deepening.  To not grab onto anything or attempt to stop the tumble in order to figure things out.  To instead stay in free fall.  The tendency of our minds is to want to grab onto something familiar or something shinny.  The free fall feels, well free, and that is often too much for our constrained, contained and controlled mind.  So we grab to find some ground of stability and familiarity inside of our experience rather then staying in free fall, rather than staying in the mystery of what is.

Our perceived need of certainty, to know or understand what is happening, interferes with our fall and thus our freedom.  Many doubt that they can live in the mystery of not knowing. They believe that they can’t make decisions, get things done or feel safe if they don’t know what to expect or do.  Essentially they don’t trust, they don’t have faith. This lack of faith leads to us feeling like we have to rely on our own mind’s knowing or our own self.  While most live their entire life in this manner, it is exhausting, depleting and clouded from the knowing of self, of Light, of God.

If one desires to know self and live reality rather than mind created illusion, than one must be willing to continue tumbling. If you haven’t started the fall into your subconscious, begin there. Take your first step into the hole and see what’s there.  If you’ve visited several times now see how far you’re willing to fall without getting distracted or grabbing on. If you find yourself stopped, look for learning or relevance there.  Stay until it feels complete.  Then continue to tumble.   Notice how you can live in this ordinary reality in total innocence, in the mystery, allowing the moment to reveal itself through you.  Don’t mind what things look like and don’t mind what happens. Grasp not to any idea, thought or sensation.  In this way your being becomes a vessel filled with God, with infinite energy and intelligence.  That is all that is and all that matters.  Empty of personal agenda and motivation your body-mind is moved as God.  All that is, is.  Everything is here now.  One will.  One God.  One being.  

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

UNWINDING TENSION

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UNWINDING TENSION 

Physical, emotional & mental pain

We’ve all experienced tension.  Tension can live in our muscles, bones, ligaments, organs, glands, cells, or any tissue or part of our physical body.  Tension can also live in our subtler (visually unseen) bodies such as our emotional, mental or soul bodies. We can be either conscious or unconscious of our tension.  For example we might be aware of tension in our neck muscles, but unaware of tension say in our kidneys or bladder.  Or we might be aware of tension in our belly, but unaware of tension in our spine.  There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to where tension shows up and whether or not we are aware of it.

Why is tension created?  Tension is a mechanism created, ultimately by us, to protect us from feeling pain or other uncomfortable sensations, feelings or thoughts.  For example say you are in a car accident.  You will most likely create some physical muscle guarding (tension) in order to protect underlying organ structures and also to not feel such intensity of physical pain.  This is the most obvious of expressions and easiest to be conscious of.  The more awareness you develop of yourself the more you can tune into subtler and subtler levels of tension that exist in your less dense bodies such as your emotional and mental bodies. Say for example you are in a relationship and your partner does something that triggers you in some way.  If you slow yourself down you will be able to track the tension in your emotional body that may or may not have a physical manifestation or expression.  If you do this you will be able to notice what emotional pain you are attempting to avoid or lessen through creating tension.  Same is true if you have a particular thought or thought pattern that is out of alignment with the truth.  That thought will create tension in your mental body that again may or may not have an emotional or physical expression, but if you slow yourself down enough you will be able to track what mental pain you are attempting to decrease through creating tension.

When we create tension we essentially block or dampen part of our experience.  This can be helpful in extreme physical or emotional situations where we don’t have the resources or awareness to integrate and process the experience that is happening as it is happening.  What will often happen then is that we will develop a certain tension/holding pattern in our system that stays in place until we feel safe and/or ready to allow the experience to be felt.  Sometimes unwinding happens naturally and organically once we are out of the intense situation.  However other times it doesn’t happen naturally as we aren’t quite ready to feel or have the resources to process what occurred.  So we stay in a more bound or closed state, also known as a tension/holding pattern, which again we may or may not be aware of.   

TRANSCENDING LIMITATION

Walking towards pain

Let’s face it, having a human experience is intense.  Whether or not you’ve had some particularly intense experiences or you’ve lived more of a “normal” life, it is pretty much guaranteed that you have some degree of tension/holding patterns in your system just by the nature of having this human incarnation.  Tension is not bad or wrong, it’s simply an effect of not desiring to feel something that doesn’t feel good.  You could also term this resistance.  Resistance is often not intentional, nor is the avoidance of pain necessarily evident to most.  Many people are unaware of how much they avoid discomfort of any kind, in fact most create their lives specifically to avoid pain.  Again none of this is fundamentally bad or wrong, instead it simply points to why we have the experiences, life and awareness that we have, which are frequently sprinkled or riddled with a sense of disconnection, limitation or blockage.    

Tension creates an arbitrary sense of separation and inherent sense of limitation.  Whether that separation or limitation is experienced physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually depends on the individual and what lessons they gave themselves to learn.  You are of course unlimited, eternal beingness that has no edges, limits, or incapabilities, but telling that to someone who is having a human experience is kind of like telling a kid that play isn’t real.  It just simply doesn’t compute. So while we are here in these bodies we must learn the lessons of separation/limitation in order to transcend our current perspectives of it. One of the ways to learn the lessons of limitation is through increasing your awareness of your tension patterns in both your physical & subtle bodies and walking towards pain rather away from it.  What we avoid we can’t experience and therefore can’t unwind.  If we can’t unwind the tension that was created than we stay stuck in a particular holding pattern in our physical and/or subtler bodies.  This then gives us the perpetual experience of limitation or lack of full self-expression because how we hold ourselves relates to how we see the world and therefore the experiences that we have.  

Say for example you really desire to experience blissful, ecstatic oneness with the the divine, yet simultaneously you have mental tension patterns (thoughts & beliefs) that tell you how unworthy you are.  You can’t know yourself as infinite worth if you are constantly avoiding the thought/belief of unworthiness or if you don’t even know its there.  The thought/belief unworthiness will create a tension pattern in your mental body that will feel like it blocks you from knowing yourself as infinite worth.  That must be moved towards and unwound through feeling that which is untrue (i.e. unworthiness and the pain associated with that thought).  For another example say you really want to be full self-expressed, but feel emotionally triggered for a good part of your days.  Being emotionally triggered is another way of saying that you are avoiding feeling emotional pain, and you can’t be fully self-expressed if you are simultaneously avoiding a part of yourself and your experience.  That would be a contradiction. 

The key to sustainably unwinding the tension patterns in your system is through walking towards what’s been avoided, which is often uncomfortable and the last place we want to go.  However freedom is through and not around those experiences.  The other option is to know unequivocally that you are love and remove all self-doubt of this truth instantly.  This is entirely possible, however not as probable as doing the work to increase awareness of yourself, your tensions, your avoidances and resistances, and then navigate right into them.  Not to stay there for eternity, but to walk right on through them, fully experiencing what they have to offer, and coming out as free, open love on the other side. 

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

GIVE, GIVE, GIVE

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GIVE, GIVE, GIVE 

Stop withholding love

The most sustainably reliable way of being that produces fulfillment and happiness is giving.  Giving to others, giving to life, giving, giving, giving without any agenda or expectation of return.  Yet most of our energy and attention goes to what we will get from life.  We have been brainwashed into believing that getting is what brings us fulfillment, joy and happiness and that giving depletes our already scarce resources of time and energy.  Getting the relationship, the job, the family, the business, the vacation, the house, the attention, the perfect body, the healthy body, and on and on provides only the delusion of happiness in attainment   We even often only give in order to get, meaning we give ourselves to people or things in order get a result or something in return.

What does pure, without agenda or expectation giving, even look like?  To make it really simple it means that you would have to not want or need anything from anything or anyone.  This includes things like wanting love, attention, desire, recognition, acknowledgment, and praise, as well as survival needs such as financial or living support.  I get that that can seem like a really tall order and many people aren’t ready for that level selflessness. However until you arrive at that level of purity you will suffer and attempt to get things from life and others that seem to have the promise of joy and happiness inside of them, but which instead postpone true fulfillment.

Any time you suffer it’s because you don’t get, see or experience what you want or because what you give isn’t received by others in the way that you want it to be, which again is not experiencing what you want and hence your agenda in giving.  When we don’t freely give we withhold and distort love and it feels really, really bad.  What this typically manifests as is us feeling bad, being in a bad mood, feeling frustration or stuck-ness, not having clarity, being confused, and feeling powerless or not seeing choice in the matter at hand.  These feelings and experiences are life telling you that you are withholding love, which is also withholding yourself because love is what you are. When you try to hold onto something, get something, or keep something you think you want you will distort the love that you are.  The result is impure motives, drives and lack of any true lasting fulfillment. 

LOVING IS GIVING 

Opening the heart

Loving is giving and giving is loving. They are the same.  It is not hard to give.  In fact giving is more natural than anything because it is your nature.  You don’t have to have some special skill set or come up with some fancy thing to give to others or life.  Your being is giving, and when you have purity and agenda-less-ness, giving is the natural result.  For a moment think about the times when you thought about saying something nice to someone or doing a kind act that you felt naturally inclined to do, but then you didn’t do it.  Maybe you weren’t sure how they would take it, or you didn’t want to seem like too much, or you doubted yourself and made your giving silly or stupid.  In this example what happened is that you become more concerned with yourself than you did about giving.  You made it about you, as you cared more how it was received and how you would be seen.  This withholding seems innocent enough and yet its laden with self-centeredness.  

Keep in mind is that giving is organic. Sometimes people will over-give in order to feel right, worthy, or validated.  This too is a distortion of love as they seek for ok-ness, approval, value and worth.  There will be energy expenditure and energy transfer that may create feelings of tiredness to your physical, emotional or mental bodies, but there should not be depletion of your being.  If you are feeling depleted it is an indication that you are out of balance and need to reassess what really serves.  Are you doing too much because you are focused or attached to an outcome and are therefore over-extending yourself?  Are you doing too little, withholding, not giving to others and therefore not bringing energy into your system through giving and thus feeling depleted?  You having a fuel tank of gas and taking care of your self-care is absolutely essential if you are going to be of service in giving to others.  The intention remains though that taking care of you is to give to others, not an end in of itself.  

In order to naturally give, to be giving in and of yourself, your heart must be open and available.  Giving is a lot of work, draining and effortful if your heart is not online.  Opening your heart is both the first and last step.  When tension or resistance is suspended or resolved you radiate, emanate and overflow.  The easiest and quickest path to resolution is forgiveness.  For-give-ness.  For in forgiveness you give again, you choose to open your heart, you choose to let go of what you think you want or need, how you were done wrong or did wrong, and all agenda for getting or being received in any particular way.  Energy can now freely exchange in and out of your system.  You hold onto nothing and hold back nothing.  There is nothing to lose and only the gift of being and sharing remains.  

The gift is the giving of your being just as you are.  When your heart is open it includes all inside of it, all beings, all others.  Care is inherent.  As you increase your dial on what you can give to others all of your needs, wants and desires will be taken care of.  That which is in alignment with you will be your experience.  There is no lack when we give, but rather natural overflowing abundance of giving and being.  

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

SERIOUSLY PLAYING

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SERIOUSLY PLAYING 

End of trying to get things done

Most people desire to enjoy life and have fun, yet most people are not enjoying life or having fun.  Yes perhaps people occasionally permission themselves to play on the weekends or to take a vacation, but few people play all day long.  Rather people are quite serious and methodical in their day to day operations and routines.  Where did we learn this methodically serious attitude about life?  Even more importantly how are you operating inside certain boxes, containers and ideas that keep you from enjoying your life fully?

The human mind is funny.  It thinks it wants certain things and so it gets you to work seriously hard in order to get or achieve those things.  When I say things I am not only talking about material things, but including all relational and spiritual aspirations as well.  There is often a general undercurrent in our psyche that runs the program that we must get things done or that we need to get something or get somewhere so that we can be happy, relax and enjoy ourselves.  This mindset keeps us somewhat constricted, limited and inside of a box of what we think we want our lives to look like in order for us to be really joyful.  There is also often some fear that if we enjoy ourselves now before we get the thing or arrive at the place that we desire that we won’t get the thing or arrive where we think we want too.  So we postpone the joy until we achieve or arrive.  This is incredibly common and I would bet most of you do this several times in any given day.  

The place where we learned that seriousness goes along with getting things done is an interesting place indeed.  We tend to think the more serious we take something means the more we care about it, and therefore the higher likelihood that we will achieve the outcome of our desire.  It probably rarely, if ever, crosses your mind to ask yourself the question, how could I play harder in order to achieve the outcome that I desire.  This question contradicts everything we have ever learned about accomplishment and achievement.  

The first thing to really understand is that its not ever ever ever the outcome that brings us the joy, happiness, rest or the resolution we think it will bring us. Instead it is us that brings the joy to the outcome.  So why not have the joy now, bring the joy now to what it is you are engaged in and with rather than waiting on the outcome to come into fruition.  It can be a long wait.  Sometimes you will wait your entire life.  Would you want to wait your entire life in order to experience the joy and happiness that you desire now?  Many people do because they don’t see any other choice.  They don’t see that than can create, permission and generate what they desire to feel right here, right now regardless of what is here inside of their experience.   

WHY PLAY? 

You radiate & serve in play

Some people rather enjoy being serious, which is perfect.  If there is enjoyment in the seriousness than there is play even if it looks serious.  However what I see more often than not is that seriousness is part of people’s personas and who they think they need to be rather than what they naturally desire to be or are.  Let’s take the one who is on a healing path or a spiritual seeker for example.  Often people are very serious about their healing journey and their path to self-realization or enlightenment.  They take all the courses, go to all the workshops, do all the programs and journeys, and see all of their practitioners and healers, yet they continue to month after month, year after year, not enjoy themselves or their life.  They feel like the have to keep working hard and that they are never going to arrive fully healed or self-realized.  They keep trying to get somewhere and keep coming up short.  They see failure and feel like the path has no end in sight so they get more serious about it, thinking that will be the ticket.

You might wonder, why isn’t that the ticket?  I mean doesn’t that mean I care and am committed because I keep showing up.  To some degree yes it does show desire and care, but the attitude or disposition from where you come from inside your seeking is of prime importance.  It makes all the difference in the world.  If your attitude is one of trying to get it over or figure it out than you’ve already lost.  There is no where to get and so you won’t ever arrive.  You can’t “arrive” until you realize that there is no where to get.  Get that.  The journey is the destination.  There isn’t an actual destination different from it.  Even if you get what you want, accomplish or achieve your goals, become healed or self-realized, get the relationship or thing that you want, that doesn’t mean you have arrived at any destination.  It simply means your mind has a check box that it can check off, that’s it.  

Why play then?  Play brings with it lightness, levity, and joy.  When you play, even if there is work and effort, its fun.  You are not attached when you play.  You create and dismantle without so much as a thought.  There is no thinking of when the moment will be over and done, instead you are present.  When you play you abundantly radiate and naturally overflow.  This abundant, radiating, overflowing yumminess is service.  You serve by being joyfully.  You can’t not help it.  It is a natural side effect.  You don’t have to figure out what to do, how to serve or what your purpose is because you are being your purpose.  

Since this is what most people actually desire you must ask yourself the question as to what you are waiting for and be willing to stop waiting.  Realize that it is not in the arriving or getting that you experience the joy of being.  You are the source of joyful being.  You are the chooser of your state of being.  You choose joy or not joy.  You therefore choose to serve through sharing your natural radiating self or to not serve.  You get to decide if you want to feel good now or if you want to postpone it until you get something you think you want or check a box off of your to do list.  Joy can sometimes feel like worlds away, but its not.  Its right here.  You simply need to choose it.  

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

ALIGNMENT IN SELF

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ALIGNMENT IN SELF 

Generator of inner & outer worlds

There are many lenses to look through when it comes to your alignment.  Some people view alignment as an external phenomenon, meaning when things are lined up in either their body or life they feel innerly aligned.  Others view alignment as an internal compass, a place that they come from, their center from which everything external responds.  Whether you view your alignment as external or internal doesn’t truly matter as long as you recognize that either way you are the source of your alignment.  Self (you) generates both the inner and outer worlds that you experience and they are mere reflections of each other.  One visible in form through the senses and the other directly experienced or known without form or senses.  

To recognize yourself as the generator of your inner and outer worlds places you in the prime position of self-responsibility.  Responsibility to and for your own alignment.  You might wonder what is self and how do I align to it?  Self is you.  It is simply the knowing and direct experience that you exists.  That you are.  That you be.  It is so obvious and yet so overlooked.  That you be, is that you are, is that you exists, is what you are.  That you are is what you are.  This knowing is pivotal because everything arises out of it.  All experience is generated from the source of being.  From impulse or desire to know itself beingness shapes itself and this is what we call form.  The impulse or desire is important.  You could call that desire or impulse, that with which you align with in order to share a unique expression or flavor of being that you’ve taken on the responsibility to express.  

The next question you may have is how to know what that desire or impulse is, which is unique for you.  Said another way what unique flavor did you agree, volunteer and eagerly want to share with the rest of creation?  People often struggle over this, thinking that it has something to do with what they do.  They try to find their purpose rather than be their purpose.  They put their purpose “out there” rather than recognizing that they are their purpose.  I’m here to tell you that your purpose, your desire for being here now, has absolutely nothing to do with what you do.  The doing is simply an emanation of the being and of the desire to share an aspect of the creator through your being.   

DISCOVERING THE IMPULSE 

Being yourself

Discovering the desire or impulse that created your current configuration, location and experience is way easier than you think.  The easiest way to discover it is to feel what lights you up the most.  You can explore this by reflecting on a peak experience that you may have had, or simply just noticing what you enjoy feeling the most.  It may also help to see what you enjoy seeing others experience.  This exploration gives you the knowingness of what you are here to express and also help others experience through your being.  

When we try to do our purpose, no matter how well intentioned we are, we are not in our alignment.  Doing, that is disconnected from the flavor of beingness that we are, is just hard work.  While we might be accomplishing stuff it is never truly fulfilling.  It is more fulfilling to do nothing and be ourselves, than it is to accomplish and create a bunch of stuff while being outside of our alignment.  When you prioritize your alignment with the desire that created you than you can’t help not create that world.  The world of your alignment is what is.  Regardless of what you do or don’t do, that world gets generated through and by you being what you are.  This is not to say that you won’t also create cool stuff, but its really only truly epic and serving to all if it comes from you being you.

It only seems complex to be aligned with you because people have made it complex with all their thinking, reasoning, and analyzing.  When you instead just allow the feeling state of what you desire most to overtake your entire existence (i.e. become you) you realize just how easy it really is.  Then the only “demons” (also known as stories and attachments) you face are the ones inside your own thinking mind that tell you that you should feel or be different than you are.  The work is for you to turn everything you experience into the flavor of your unique expression of the creator that you be.  

Sometimes we are pretty insistence that something we experience is outside of our own alignment.  This can be tricky as we are constantly generating experience from our alignment.  However due to our insistence that the experience we are having is outside of our alignment we forget our alignment.  When this happens we feel victim to circumstance and become what we’ve been conditioned to think about the thing or experience rather than be what we are.  We thus fall out of service, out of alignment and into trying to get through it, which comes with survival, scarcity, and wrongness mode.  When we be our alignment rather than what we’ve been told to believe about something than we only know abundance, we only know ourselves.  There is nothing that feels safer, more perfect and more right than that.  In this way nothing pulls you out of your self and your beliefs and stories lose their grip on you.  Again none of this hard.  Its does take inner reflection and awareness of self and patterns.  It does take self-investigation, self-responsibility and self-commitment to be who you are no matter what appears to your senses.  It takes creating new habits and it takes some time in this relative world in order live fully as you are.  But none of this is impossible and the path leads to only more and more life being itself, knowing itself and serving all of creation.  

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

LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T

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LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T 

No moment is better than another

We are all over conditioned to do.  Something must be done, we must accomplish and finish, get it done, check it off, do, do, do.  If we aren’t doing we tend to feel purposeless.  Doing provides the meaning for our existence.  Each day we wake up and think about what we must do that day.  Our day revolves around our doing.  We do our morning workout, yoga or mediation, we eat our breakfast, we work, we run errands, we make dinner, we do our hobbies and then we “relax”.  So often we are trying to get to this place where we can just relax, but we have to finish all of our doing first.  This is the pretty typical day to day human existence, thinking there is somewhere to go, something to get and some place to arrive.

Doing is so close to us that we often don’t see that we are in a state of constant doing.  We might not even think to think that there is another way of living other than doing.  Pause for a moment and ask yourself what would happen if you stopped putting any focus at all on doing, accomplishing or getting things finished or done.  The most common answer is that nothing would get done.  However do you know this to be fact?  Have you ever stopped focusing on getting something done while engaged in doing and noticed what happens?  The experience tends to be what people call a flow state, which is one of the most desired states for many.  

Why do we get so trapped in doing?  The primary reason that I’ve discovered is that people tend to perceive that one moment or experience is better than another moment or experience.  It is easy to fall into flow and joy while hanging out with friends, being on vacation, playing your favorite sport or eating a decadent meal, but less easy to fall into flow while exercising, working or running errands.  These are aspects of experience that many try to get over and done.  When you stop trying to get an experience over than there is nothing left but to be in the experience that you are in.  

The judgment, preference or bias for one thing or experience over another thing or experience puts us into doing mode as we attempt to get where we more desire to be, which is frequently other than where we are.  Doing mode takes us out of presence and is mechanical in nature.  Mechanical because it is work that is disconnected from aliveness.  It takes effort and is hard.  Its focus is only on something physically shifting or changing and does everything from a physical perspective to shift a physical thing.  It gives the appearance of getting somewhere or something happening when there is no where to get and nothing to happen.  If you were to instantly realize that you can never get somewhere other than where you are and nothing can happen other than what is, you would see how preposterous all of the doing really is.   

FOCUS ON LOVING 

Work through giving & receiving

What if rather than focusing on doing, getting it done or accomplishing something, you instead focused on loving?  What if you stopped all the incessant brain activity and brought your awareness into your heart and just left it there?  How different would your life be?  How different would you feel?  How much more would you overflow with radiance and serve?  From my experience doing doesn’t really work.  Its tiring, its hard and oddly at the end of the day I don’t feel like I did anything except make myself really tired.  Maybe actions occurred that gave the appearance that stuff happened, but nothing really changed.  The only thing that occurred was movement from place to place to place or moment to moment to moment, and while movement happened there was nothing there doing the movement, no real conscious one home inside.  This is quite honestly the state of most of humanity.  It is not bad, it just asleep, disconnected, and not aware.  

If we are to live more awake then we must realize that we are in this perpetual doing mode and wake ourselves up out of it.  This requires being more attentive to self and to your patterns of doing.  Learning to refocus your focus from the linear projected course we all believe that we are on into the present moment heart.  The heart equally gives and receives.  It is through receiving that it gives and through giving that it receives.  This is how doing or work gets done.  Work by and through radiation and invitation.  Actions still occur when you are loving, it’s simply that you are not focused on the actions themselves or trying to make anything different.  Instead your focus is on loving and that is it.  Change effortlessly and instantly occurs.  This is because that natural state of love is recognized and seen by you and through you.  

The change that occurs through loving is an opening into more.  It is through opening into more that our perspectives widen.  How we see changes what we see, not because the actual object, person or thing changes, but because we see it differently.  This is how you begin to really get that trying to shift or change an object by physical means from a physical perspective is really hard and actually maybe even impossible.  Instead loving melts, molds, and reshapes everything into its original forgotten nature. 

Doing is an elementary step in the evolution of remembering what we are.  You realize at some point along the journey that the doing mode is optional.  The more you bring into focus loving and drop into your heart the more you increase your awareness of yourself and your energy becomes more coherent.  Magic occurs, and its not even really magic, its just the way it is when you live loving rather than doing, but it seems like magic to the ordinary mind.  As always please don’t just take my word for it.  Try it out.  Experiment.  Try only focusing on loving all day long no matter what actions you are engaged in or what experiences present themselves.  Stop trying to get anything done and just love and see how you experience life.  

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