live your calling

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

NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

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NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE 

Moving away from pain

Much of how we operate, move, behave, perceive, think, feel and sense is learned and habitual.  We develop strategies, patterns and ways of being through our experiences.  We learn to perceive and move about our world based on internal and external cues.  If we do the same thing over and over, or see something the same way over and over, we learn to create wiring or neurological patterning in our nervous system based on our perceptions or behaviors.  If we repeat the same thing enough times then the way we perceive something or how we move about becomes automatic or habitual.  This means that there is very little “registering” or conscious awareness that happens as we engage with life.  Life is simply a series of habits and reactions, that is unless we create novelty inside of our perceptions. 

If something hurts we instinctually move away from it and if it feels good we move towards it.  Hurt can be physical such as if we place our hand on a hot stove, or it can be emotional or mental such as feeling rejection or like we aren’t good enough.  Regardless of where the hurt hits us we learn early on how to protect ourselves from the pain of feeling it.  We might flee or run in order to move away from it.  We might fight back in order to push something away from us.  We also might freeze in place or go numb in attempt to avoid the hurt or pain.  On a neurological level there is a response to this avoidance of pain, which is commonly known as the stress response.  Most people are quite familiar with the terminology “stress response” yet most people don’t really get what it means for how they experience their life on a day to day basis.  

When we are in protection (i.e. avoidance) mode our nervous system wires and fires pathways that create various messages throughout the body.  These messages gear us up for fighting until we eventually burnout and the effect of this is what we call adrenal fatigue.  These messages also put us on alert, or in a hyper-vigilant state.  They get us to focus on what’s wrong or what might be out to harm us.  They create tension in the body so that we don’t feel the impact of harm or pain.  They effect our sleep cycles making it hard to feel rested or get good sleep.   They make it harder to digest our food, and they move energy out of self-healing and into self-protection.  This state of being is called neurological defense.  At any point in our life we can have experiences that don’t feel good to us and we activate these patterns of defense rather than feel the impact of pain or harm or potential pain/harm.  There is intelligence in these defensive patterns, however they greatly limit our experience of life.  We cannot move into healing and neurological openness unless we are willing to move towards that which we avoid feeling.   

NEUROLOGICAL OPENNESS   

Moving towards life

While there is intelligence to our defensive reactions and patterns in the body they also create great limitation in our experience of life.  They allow us to experience only a limited range of feelings, sensations, and thoughts.  They limit our behaviors, perceptions, and our relationships with self and others.  They cap the amount of energy we have access to receiving, giving and sharing.  They keep our bodies running in suboptimal energy conditions effecting our health and overall well-being.  They keep us from fully experiencing the range of our hearts and the hearts of others.  There is great cost to our avoidance of feeling pain.  

When we stop avoiding pain and allow ourselves to feel and be with it, some pretty amazing things happen.  First is that you can no longer be angry.  Feeling the pain we’ve experienced softens us.  Some people don’t even know just how angry they are because they’ve adopted other strategies of self-protection such as always being positive, people pleasing, or the more quiet version of anger which is self-hatred.  This can manifest very subtly as negative self-talk or simply not feeling yourself to be great.  If you don’t unequivocally know that you are fucking amazing then you probably have some work to do here.  Second is that your neurological, and thus physiological state, shifts.  All those messages that your nervous system sends out change in nature when you move towards life experiences.  Rather than messages gearing you up to fight, flight or freeze, it sends messages of relaxation and ease.  Food can then be digested, sleep happens naturally, and the self-healing mechanism occurs unimpeded.  Muscles relax, the posture becomes more upright and open, and your focus shifts onto what is here, what’s working, and on how life is supporting you.  Nothing is out to get you anymore.  You look for invitations and openings.  More opportunities seem to be available to you.  You feel more confident in yourself.  This is what I call neurological openness.

In neurological openness we participate more fully with life.  We perceive things that we didn’t perceive before, and we sense, feel and think differently because we are more open to life rather than in protection from it.  We become more awake or aware of our impact on life, others and ourselves.  We recognize more and more that we have choice.  This recognition of choice is the beginning place of novelty.  We start trying on new feelings, thoughts, behaviors and perceptions, which create and lay down new patterns in our neurology.  We become different and therefore experience life differently.  

The more we lay down the patterns of openness in our nervous system the more we move into the field of our heart.  The yummy bliss of yes.  Beyond participation with life we move into oneness with it.  We see that nothing in not us therefore there has never been anything to protect from.  This is the awakened stage of the healing journey.  From separation and self-protection into unification and love.  It is all available to you as you are ready for it.  

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

CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

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CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY 

Creating a new experience of life

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

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

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

A NEW YOU 

Bridging the non-real gap

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

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

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

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

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

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

ACCEPTING THE MISSION

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ACCEPTING THE MISSION 

Get aligned with the call

Somewhere and at sometime we all accepted the mission for our unique spec of consciousness (aka our soul) to incarnate and have a human experience.  Most all of us have forgotten that we accepted such a mission, but the evidence is in the fact that we are currently human.  Some might question or argue as to whether it was a choice to come on this mission or if we just somehow ended up here, if it’s even a mission at all, or if we are even human!  These are some good questions to ask yourself.  All I can say is that to me it feels like a mission.  I remember being 6 or 7 years old and having a crystal clear knowing that I came to this human experience on a very specific mission and I was set to focus only on that.  That sense of being on a mission has never left me.  That’s not to say that I knew what I was going to “do” while I was here.  The activities, roles and jobs were not apparent at the time, but rather I simply knew that I was here to be some sort of light and force of love on this planet.  

From that very young age something felt very vibrationally “off” here on this planet to me.  It was like the people of this planet were missing something, some awareness of something, like they didn’t recognize themselves, even though I didn’t have those words to describe it at the time.  I just knew that I felt a sense of what I would now call a vibrational misalignment.  Some people experience this as a feeling of not fitting in here, others experience it as being extra sensitive or chronically sick or in pain, some feel massive confusion and like they just can’t make sense of it all.  This kind of vibrational misalignment can be quite intense for people, even making some people completely nonfunctional.  How I have come to understand it now is that there are a large group of souls that have incarnated into this human experience from other vibratory frequencies.  These beings came here, and continue to come here, to support and assist the native people of this planetary frequency in some specific way that is needed or has been requested.  Essentially these beings answered a call.  The thing is as soon as they incarnate into this human experience they forget where they came from, who they are and they have the full on experience of being human just like everyone else on this planet.  They often forget that they were called here and what their mission here is.  This all seems like an unfair party trick, yet these seem to be the current rules of the game.  

For many of these beings the incongruence is so strong that they feel resistance, irritation or a general non-acceptance of this human experience, and they might not even know why they feel this way.  Some don’t want to live or they count the moments until they can transition out of this experience.  I have found that a fundamental first step in remembering your calling, that which brought you here in the first place, is accepting that you are currently having this human experience.  You are not required to like it, but the less you avoid it and the more accepting you become of it, the more you remember why you are here.   

REMEMBERING THE MISSION 

Be who you are

You may never be totally clear on the what’s and how’s of your mission, but you can get clearer and clearer on the why.  I find that the how’s and the what’s tend to change and evolve, but the why tends to stay fairly stable, shifting only to be brighter or more coherent as you get clearer on it.  That’s because the why is not a thing, but rather a vibrational state of being.  It is the frequency of home, of you, of where you rest and what you know beyond and/or before this human incarnational experience.  It is the essence of the what’s and the how’s.  The thing is that if you are in resistance to this human life than everything is murkier.  It’s already hard to remember, but when you add on layers of resistance, it’s nearly impossible to hear the subtleties of your soul speak to you.  

You might be curious as to where you are resisting this human experience and/or how to fully accept it.  Noticing resistance is sometimes obvious and other times a bit tricky.  On an overt level it is the experience of not wanting things to be the way that they are.  You might manage this by avoiding certain things or people, avoiding potential confrontation, complaining, playing the victim role, pretending everything is perfect when you don’t feel like it truly is, or getting angry when things don’t turn out the way you want.  Subtler levels of non-acceptance can come through not forgiving others or self because it’s “justified” not too, feeling dissatisfaction even when life is good, not feeling open or available to self or others, participating with life but secretly wishing it was different or over, or wanting to be somewhere other than where you are.  In order to accept life you must discover where you aren’t accepting it.  Again it doesn’t mean you have to like it, but only that you let it be as it is.  

In the process of letting life be as it is a beautiful thing occurs, you become open for the business of your calling again.  It’s like when you are in resistance mode your antenna is broken, but as soon as you move into acceptance your antenna starts working again.  That antenna is your be-line into your home frequency.  Essentially you are able to channel yourself again.  Through this you begin to feel and remember yourself.  You come to hear the call that brought you here to begin with and your heart realigns with itself.  You might still not know the what’s and how’s, but you realize that those are revealed to you as you need to know them.  What matters is that you know, feel and hear your why.  

When we let go of our insistences of what we wished was here that isn’t, and open to what is here instead, only then can we really impact the picture of life.  Only then can we really feel good and be of service.  Only then can we become channels of our home frequency and permeate our experience with it.  This is what it is to answer the call.  The call is for us to be ourselves and share that.  Not some twisted or distorted version of ourselves, but the pure unfiltered clear expression of our unique spec of consciousness that is currently located inside of this human form.  You are not too far away from home, home is wherever you are.  You take and bring home with you everywhere you go.  There is nowhere that home is not if you are there.  Allow your home frequency to be here.  That’s what was called for.  That’s what was asked.  That’s what’s needed.  It’s not something outside of or other than you.  It’s you, as you most naturally and effortlessly are.  Accept the call, remember the mission and get aligned with yourself.  

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

SET YOUR LIFE DOWN

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SET YOUR LIFE DOWN 

All is taken care of

Whether or not you are aware of it you are most likely holding life.  What I mean by that is that there is some level of managing, controlling or attempting to keep all the parts in place.  There is frequently a feeling like we can’t stop holding or set things down, or else we won’t be in control of all of the pieces.  We fear that if we aren’t in control then things will go wrong, badly or just simply feel uncertain, which we tend not to like.  The paradox is that if we do find a way to set the things of life down we feel more ease, yet getting to the point where we feel like we can is the tricky part.  Probably the even bigger paradox is that ultimately we don’t have control over all the pieces and parts that we hold onto so tightly yet we illogically hold onto them anyways.

The effects of not being able to set life down are many.  At a body level we feel tension in our head, jaw, muscles, chest and belly, our breathing is not as full as it could be, we feel fatigue, there can be difficulties with sleep and digestion.  Beyond that we may experience things like pain or other various bodily ailments that are the result of life force not being able to efficiently flow through and fuel our bodies.  On an emotional level we may feel anxiousness, irritation, frustration, impatience, annoyance, restlessness, and general vigilance.  At the mental levels we can have ruminating or repeating thoughts, feel unable to turn our thoughts off, be hyper-focused on what we think others are thinking of us, or constantly be trying to figure things out in our heads.  For most people all of the things I just described are their “normalized” state of being, meaning people throw all of those things into a basket called “stress” and assume that this is just the way life is.  They don’t see how they are creating this experience of life for themselves.

In order to even begin to entertain the idea, and beyond that the actuality of setting our life down, we must know one fundamental thing and that is that all is taken care of.  If we don’t know this then we will never set things down because we will always feel like we are somehow in charge of it all.  Knowing that all is taken care of requires a hefty dose of faith that something that is more aware or intelligent than our individual limited minds, is running the show of this cosmic dance of life.  We must move past our egocentric view of ourselves and our lives as being the center of everything and realize that they aren’t.  We are part of a much larger orchestration of things occurring, most of which we are completely unaware of.  Yet as obvious as this is, we tend to think we know what is going on, what should or shouldn’t be happening and how things should turn out or be.  This is the root of all of our stress.   

NOTHING CHANGES IS-NESS 

Being always is

Setting your life down takes faith and also courage.  Courage in knowing that you are important, valuable and an indispensable part of creation even when your individual life isn’t the center of it.  Though you don’t have awareness of the entire cosmic game, you are perfectly positioned to be playing whatever part that you are, and that requires a bit more faith.  When you trust and believe in yourself, in who you are just as you are, knowing that you could be nothing and no one else, you come into agreement with life.  You stop self and other judgment, you stop hating yourself and others, you stop disagreeing with or opposing what is.  Another way to say this is that you accept yourself and in doing so you realize you can’t be other than you are, so you whole heartedly accept the position you are currently playing in this game of life seeing that it could not be other than it is.  With this a whole new perspective or view of life emerges.  You see through different glasses.

This new set of glasses sees what is without trying to figure it out, make it different, manipulate it some how or change it.  You come to know and rest in being, rather than stuck inside of controlling, managing, fixing or doing as if there are separate objects doing onto other objects.  A shift in identity also starts to occur from the one that does all the stuff and thinks a whole bunch of thoughts, to the one that just is.  The being from which doing or activity arises.  This enables us to set life down as we move from “do”-er to “be”-er.  

When we recognize that we be or that we are, we can see movement or activity occurring, yet we know that we aren’t the activity itself, but rather the source of it.  Activity happens, emotions continue to occur, there are sensations and thoughts, but none of them affect or change the fact that you are, that you continue to be.  Another way to say this is that as you recognize yourself as being, you are unaffected by the things that are occurring.  You also don’t see yourself as a separate person/object from the stuff, but rather as the source of it.  The experience of this is that you feel stable, rested, and at ease regardless of how the parts and pieces of life are moving about.  You are no longer concerned with trying to control them, but rather recognize them as expressions of you.  

Nothing can change is-ness.  Being always is.  It is the source of all expressions.  The light behind the forms.  When you recognize that you are not the stuff of life, you can put the stuff down and rest back in yourself, into being.  Nothing could ever not be taken care of because all is included in being, all perfectly playing its part, in this infinite celestial soup of light.  Start by being courageous enough to know you are a valuable part and set the luggage that you carry around on your back down.  The luggage that is always trying to make sure that you are ok.  Have faith in being and come more and more into knowing yourself as that, that you are.  If you do you will become increasingly more sourceful and rested in your actual self, and your experience of life will match your newfound glasses.

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

ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF

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ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF 

Your high self is here now

Entrainment is a process of two independent systems or frequencies coming into alignment or phase with one another.  We can see this in biology as our circadian rhythms (i.e. light/dark sleep cycles) come into alignment with the seasons or time changes.  We also see this in physical systems such as when two individual pendulum clocks that are sitting on the same surface become synchronized to each other in their movements.  Energy gets transferred between the two independent moving systems and eventually they get locked into phase or frequency together for the period of time that they are interacting.  

Our individual physiological, psychological and I’ll even say our spiritual frequencies or rhythms can respond and lock into phase with other frequencies or oscillating bodies.  This in fact how spinal entrainment works when you are laying on the table receiving Network Care.  One spinal segment or oscillator interacts with another spinal segment or oscillator and they entrain to each other, hence why we call the sessions entrainments.  Entrainment is happening all of the time though it’s mostly unconscious to us.  Individual cells in our body are entraining to rhythms or frequencies put out by master gland or organ systems.  If we are around one person a lot we will start mimicking some of their behaviors or even moving or sounding like them.  When we attend a retreat or healing program we will start entraining to the field that is created there with the intention that is set by those who are running the program.  This is why we might have access to different thoughts, emotions or spiritual frequencies that we don’t typically have access to when we are there.  

To me the process of entrainment clearly demonstrates that everything is vibrating/oscillating energy or frequency, and when we come into different environmental conditions, energies will vibrate or oscillate together.  In the process of entrainment, whatever energy or vibration is stronger or more coherent, that is the one that the two will come together and oscillate as.  If you have followed this so far then you could extrapolate that your higher self, which is that self that knows, understands, and sees from a much wider vantage point such as like the perspectives of an eagle to an ant, is also energy or frequency.  It’s simply vibrating at a different frequency than the one that your conscious mind is vibrating at right now.  Energy can never be created or destroyed which means that the frequency of your higher self is here now in existence.  Even if you don’t have conscious awareness of it, it is here among the frequencies of creation and is part of the cosmic environment.   

UTILIZING FOCUS 

Becoming in phase with your higher self

I often talk about focus and where we place it.  Our focus, meaning our awareness, will only notice what we choose to tune into.  For example if we are not at all interested in basketball we will probably never see a basketball game.  We know it exists, but we place no awareness or energy into noticing its existence.  If however you are incredibly interested in chocolate you will likely seek out chocolate wherever you go, meaning it will be inside of your experience a lot of the time.  Even though it seems like “spiritual” things are more elusive than say basketball or chocolate, using your focus or awareness works the same way.  If you have no interest in seeing angels you will likely never see one, however if you have an intense desire and love of angels you will more likely interact with them because your desire, focus and love brings them into your environment.  I see this the same as for your higher self.  

You might ask yourself how much energy, time or focus you give to your higher self?  Equally you may ask yourself how connected you feel to it?  You may even have to ask yourself if you believe in it.  If not that is totally ok, however you will likely need to shift that belief if you have desire to make contact with it, as our beliefs generate our experiences.  Imagine for a moment what it would be like to feel clear, confident, easeful, peaceful, rested, vital, aligned, fearless, abundant, blissful, wise, loving, compassionate, discerning and endlessly energized.  These are some of the frequencies that your higher self is constituted as.  What if connecting to these frequencies is the equivalent of entraining to your higher self?  What if as you use your focus to tune into these qualities of higher self you entrain or become more and more in phase with the frequency of your higher self?  It is after all just physics and biology at play in the realm beyond our ordinary visual sense awareness of what is.

Focus is one of those things that is not very natural for most.  Most of us can’t choose to one-pointedly focus on whatever we choose for as long we want.  We will get distracted nine hundred billion times by thoughts, feelings and sensations.  So if we want to use focus then we must train it just like we would train any other muscle.  In my humble opinion training your focus is probably the most worthwhile muscle to train because your ability to focus is your power.  Focus can activate every single super power that currently lays dormant in the infinite field of vast consciousness.  It is the attractive force of the universe.  It is what allows instant manifestation to occur.  Meditation is probably the best tool currently in existence to help you build your focus muscle.  

Entraining to the frequency of your higher self locks your current state of being into phase with your higher state of being, meaning your current state entrains to your higher state.  For as long as you maintain your focus on your higher self you will create the environmental conditions for entrainment to happen.  As soon as you lose focus, you fall out of the conditions required for entrainment and begin operating as a separate independent system again, entraining to your ordinary state of being and knowing.  Focus is the key, which is fueled by practice and your desire to live a more magical experience of existence.  

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

PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION

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PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION 

Going beyond the known

Many of you have had those experiences of pure bliss or ecstatic rapture.  Moments of profundity and transcendental insight.  Where you experienced or knew something beyond what your ordinary senses and mind experience on a day to day basis.  Something that left you feeling touched, moved, alive, open, integrated and whole.  Words often cannot describe these experiences.  In fact when we use words to explain them, the words tend to make the experiences seem more ordinary than they are.  Yet often we want to share something of these moments with others so we do our best to translate them into mental thoughts and ideas, even though they will never truly fit inside of them.  

Peak experiences are gateways for waking up our awareness to the fact that there is more than what we’ve been experiencing life to be.  They stretch us beyond our known world into something more expansive and inclusive.  They often show us that there is indeed something behind the appearance of solid matter and physicalness, and beyond the ordinary thoughts we think.  If we’ve never had a peak experience it’s hard to believe that there is anything more to existence than what we experience as our everyday reality.  We simply have to take it on faith that there is something more, that is until something pops us out of our ordinary experiencing.  Even if we had 1, 2, 10 or a 100 peak experiences it can still be easy to fall back into our normal, habituated way of seeing reality as a physical machine devoid of spirit or essence.  

Peak experiences can occur at any moment and don’t necessarily require anything on our behalf in order to “make” them happen.  There are however certain conditions that seem to make the probability of them occurring more likely.  One is an earnest and sincere desire to know one’s self or know the true nature of reality even if you don’t fully know what that means.  Our desire for this creates the internal conditions along with an attractive force that set the stage for extrasensory or beyond sensory peak type of experiences.  Any type of inner or somatic work that you do, which helps dismantle your physical and mental defenses, increases your receptiveness to these types of experiences as well.  Other activators can be near death experiences, traumatic experiences such as car accidents or other physical/emotional threats, consuming psychedelic substances, meditation, lucid dreaming, sweat lodges and other healing work, particularly when there is a group field effect in place that supports going beyond the known.   

FUNCTION OF PEAK EXPERIENCES 

Bring the extraordinary to life

The function of the peak experience seems to be to give us a new or wider perspective on what is, viewing life in a different light than how we’ve been seeing it.  They also tend to increase our hunger for truth, knowing more of what is, and bring us more into alignment with ourselves and the larger organizing principles of life.  We get to feel what it’s like to vibrate at a higher energetic state with more awareness, openness and inclusion.  I find that it’s fairly natural to desire more of these experiences once you begin to taste them, yet the peak experience without the integration of it, is simply chasing pleasure and in the longterm is not fulfilling.  It’s like sex without love.  It may feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t have any lasting ripples on your state of being or what you create as your day to day reality.  

For many the desire for these experiences is to help bridge the so called gap between what is experienced on the more ordinary levels of reality and what gets glimpsed, tasted and known as reality through them.  Our minds may not believe that the essence of those experiences can really become our day to day reality, and that is the very debris that we need to clear.  Sometimes peak experiences are not “pleasurable” in the ordinary way we think of pleasure, but rather they are uncomfortably revealing.  They reveal where we have thoughts and beliefs that don’t support a more alive, rich and expansive way of being.  It’s like interference in the system of naturalness or our natural state of being.  That interference is made of up of stories and perspectives that we’ve created about our experiences that are distorted or not in alignment with the truth of what is.  Even though we might be very convinced of our perspectives and feel that they are all very accurate, our conviction doesn’t make them true if they are not in alignment with how the larger organizing principle views life, which is always love and acceptance of all.  

The desire to hold anything separate decreases as we open into more and more.  As our rigidities soften, our dissociations land home, and our completeness is accepted by us there is less and less that we can even perceive as separate.  This is the perspective you taste during peak moments, and yes for the most part it feels good, or better stated it feels like unified ecstasy that is grounded and all pervasive, that knows without figuring anything out, that loves without thought, and that is without anything.  Integrating these experiences is work.  It’s the core reason why we do any of this inner work to begin with.  To live the truth of our being, which is free, boundless, unified, whole, in love and at peace, that’s why we do it.  

There is infinite oneness from which infinite possibilities are birthed and brought into expression.  The deeper you know this infinite oneness to be the truth of existence and the source of all, the more available and capable you are to bring these possibilities to life.  Beyond ordinary, non-ordinary and extraordinary is increasingly and increasingly more probable to be your lived experience as you commit to integrating and bringing your peak experiences to life.

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

SELF-CENSORSHIP

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SELF-CENSORSHIP 

Being dishonest

There is often controversy around censorship, particularly about information getting hidden or concealed in or by the media.  It is a popular topic of conversation as many people feel like they aren’t getting the full story or all of the information that is going on behind the scenes, or behind the appearance of things.  There are narratives that people want to be seen or heard more than other narratives.  Each person or group does their best to be the loudest or have the most attention placed on what they want to be seen or heard.  This often lends to debates around violations of free speech or free expression.  For some people this is a very heated debate.  Ultimately this censorship leads to feelings of mistrust and that no one is being honest about what is really going because the full story isn’t being shared.  

As we see this all being played out before us, sort of like watching a movie on a big screen, we are getting a peak into the inner workings of our own collective and personal psyche.  The way I see it is is that everything is projection.  That which we have the most inner charge around we will work out in our outer environment, and it will become our experience or what we call fact or reality.  The outer experience of censorship and the unfairness or violation around it, is a mere reflection of the massive amounts of self-censorship we do on a day to day basis.  Many are frustrated by how un-fully expressed they feel and simultaneously they are constantly censoring themselves.  Why do we self-censor?  There are a multitude of reasons.  We don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, we don’t feel like who we are is valid or good enough to express, we don’t want to appear to come off as rude or insensitive, we think other people won’t accept us, like us or maybe will even leave us if we don’t censor ourselves.  

Another way to say self-censor would be to say that we aren’t being authentic or honest.  When we censor ourselves we become un-trustable.  People don’t know if we are being honest or not and this makes them not trust us.  How much do you trust someone who you know isn’t telling you the truth?  Probably not much, and rightfully so.  If we want to live authentically, and authentically relate with others, then we must be ourselves.  Now on the flip side of this, sometimes we might not really want to know the truth that someone is expressing to us, because it isn’t what we want to hear, see or know.  As a “recipient” of authenticity we must be willing to receive the information as it is.  When we don’t receive the information well, it breads more of an environment where censorship is the socially accepted way of engagement in our collective and personal relationships.   

BEING AUTHENTIC 

Facing your fears

Making the shift from inauthenticity to authenticity may feel tough.  It may bring up some of your biggest fears such as rejection, worthlessness, or being a bad person.  These fears run pretty deep through most all of us as human beings.  What it boils down to though is the type of experience you both want to have and create, which are the same thing.  Even though authenticity can feel super scary and threatening, being inauthentic feels miserable in other ways.  We usually feel disgruntled, frustrated, stuck, trapped, unaligned, disempowered, heavy, tired, irritated, annoyed and not at peace when we are choosing inauthenticity.  On a bigger level it can also feel like we aren’t living our purpose or engaging with life in the ways we desire too.  We each must personally evaluate the cost and decide if authenticity or inauthenticity makes more sense to us.  We may perceive that we get certain things like survival needs, love, attention, approval, validation, or respect if we engage inauthentically, or in ways we think other people want us too.  On the other hand being ourselves, having self-acceptance, feeling at peace and being aligned with our purpose may hold more weight.   

Now being authentic isn’t a permission slip to be mean or righteous, rather it’s only to be truthful.  If the receiver of your authentic expression can’t receive you, first know that it isn’t about you.  It’s about them not being able to accept what is being presented to them in the reflection of you.  Secondly you can consciously choose not to express an aspect of yourself in any situation or relationship that you find it relevant not to do so.  The key here is that you are deliberately choosing to withhold because you feel greater relevance in not expressing yourself.  When you are in the position of chooser there are no feelings of violation of self-expression, no frustration in not expressing yourself and you feel nothing is lost.  It can sometimes be a bit tricky to discern if you are avoiding authenticity or truly feeling it relevant not to express yourself.  The determining factor is often how much inner peace you have at the end of it all. 

There are overt ways that we self-censor that are often very obvious.  Examples would be not saying something we are feeling to someone, flat out lying to others, saying we will do things that we don’t want to do, shutting down completely and not speaking.  These things are obvious to just about anyone that is aware.  There are also subtle way that we self-censor that may not be as apparent.  Examples would be ways that we posture our body, being stiff or rigid, holding our breath, not making eye contact, smiling or nodding a lot, being agreeable, shyness, and not feeling.  In order to uncover these for yourself simply notice when you feel most yourself and contrast that with when you feel the most not yourself, and then pay attention to some of these subtleties.  

To live uncensored is simply to be yourself and to receive what life offers you.  It is to be trustable in self and of life.  It is to live aligned and feel inner peace.  Being authentic with others is being authentic with self.  

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

UTILIZING IMAGINATION

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UTILIZING IMAGINATION

Giving non-reality form

Our imagination is the most potent creative tool that we have.  It far surpasses any mechanical device or conceptual knowledge we have in regards to bringing forth our creations into this world.  Without utilizing our imagination we simply create the same things that are known to us over and over again.  We then wonder why things look, feel and behave the same way and/or why our own patterns seem to never change.  What we often fail to recognize is that everything that is created has been imagined by someone at some point in time.  Imagination is the birthplace of all creation and the seed to transformation of all existing forms.  Part of what caps our imagination is that we have beliefs that say only x, y or z is possible.  Anything outside of our current beliefs is deemed impossible by our mind, and if we stretch too far, it’s just called fantasy or “made up non-reality.”

But what if made up non-reality is just the future of what is to come into creation.  I’d imagine that the person who created the airplane, the first MRI, the cell phone, the computer and on and on, had a hell of an imagination.  They would have to because they brought into existence creations that previously where uncreated.  Whether we are tapping into the collective unconscious and connecting with information contained there, or if we are simply making it all up in our own minds, we are bringing forth novelty into form.  This is the power of imagination.  Now it doesn’t stop at imagination.  If you want to make physical your imagination then there is work to be done.  Without the work imagination is just wishful thinking.  Physical manifestation requires output.  It requires taking action on what you envision, desire and dream of. 

I find that people are often either wonderful imagineers, but lack follow through in bringing their creations to life, or people are great doers, but don’t feel like they have much creative potential.  It can be easy to fall into thinking about stuff incessantly without following through on it, and equally easy to constantly be doing stuff without any time given to imaging new possibilities.  However both of these qualities are necessary in order to bring imagination to life and new and exciting manifestations into form.  This is after all how we up level our human experience.  The most important and key ingredient here is that you have to believe what you imagine is possible.  You don’t have to know how to do it, you just have to believe that it can be done.  I find this to be the bridge between imagination and action.  

IMAGINATION & SELF-DEVELOPMENT 

Creating new patterns

One of the overlooked areas is how we can use our imagination for self-development.  The same principles from above apply, however we utilize them in a more internal way.  Rather than focusing on something we want to create in our outer environment the focus shifts to our inner environment.  What new aspects, patterns or ways of being do we want to bring to life?  We can develop and recreate ourselves over and over again.  It’s unlikely that you possess all of the same characteristics that you did when you were 6 or 16 or 26.  Perhaps some things feel the same, but much has been altered, added or upgraded.  How we most often change aspects of ourselves comes through experiences that we have.  We learn through experiences and overtime we develop different ways of thinking, seeing and behaving.  For most people it seems that this process “just happens.”  What I mean by this is that most people are not actively pursuing change just for the sake of it and because they see everything as already perfect in themselves and their existence.  Rather life seems to give us experiences and then we develop through those experiences.  One of the cool things about imagination is that comes prior to our experience, not after it.  Imagining ourselves in novel ways, and changing our identity and the ways we engage with life can come before we have an experience that kind of “forces” us to change.  We don’t have to wait for life to hand us experiences (ie. opportunities) in order to up level ourselves.  We can simply choose to do it through using our imagination.  Once again there will need to be follow up with actions, and the fundamental belief that we can change is the foundational block that allows the entire picture to be built.    

You might be wondering what does all of this look like?  Well it’s really not that complex.  It starts with imagination.  What do you desire, envision and dream of for yourself?  How would you like to feel?  How would you like to be perceived or seen?  How would you like to behave, act or be?  Some of us are very good at doing this and for others it feels more challenging.  The challenge comes because we often feel like the same person because we are generating the same thoughts and feelings about ourselves.  This gives us the illusion of sameness and/or solidity in our identity.  However nothing is solid and everything can reorganize the energy of its form, therefore your identity is malleable.  As you begin the process of envisioning your most optimal configuration of self see where your impossibility beliefs arise.  Maybe you come up with a few things that feel alterable, but some that seem unalterable.  Simply take note.  Go to the edge of what your mind will still accept as possible.  This is where you can play.  If you perceive it to be impossible then you will have nowhere to go and you won’t take action on it.  Therefore go the edge of possibility and then start taking actions in alignment with whatever it is you come up with.  For example maybe one of things you desire is to feel joy.  The obvious action to this would be to activate more joy daily in your life.  Perhaps you want to become more intuitive.  Take actions that align with you in ways that you feel would help you bring your intuition to life.  Maybe you want to be seen as powerful, take actions that align with you feeling powerful.  This might mean changing the way you dress, how you drive, the places you eat, where you shop, the tone of your voice, the things you have in your house, and on and on.  This is a process, but with imagination and action you can become anew over and over again.  You can recreate yourself and all of your patterns.  Nothing is solid or fixed no matter how long you’ve been operating that way.  Nothing is irreversibly engrained.  

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