network chiropractic

Heart Magic

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HEART MAGIC

Dying to the self

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

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

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

WORLD OF WONDER 

Voluntary relinquishment

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

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

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

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

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

Embodiment

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EMBODIMENT 

Finding the ground

Embodiment.  Seems like in some way we are all on a quest for greater embodiment.  To be present, in this moment, participating in the full experience of life.  In spiritual circles embodiment is a popular topic and is often referred to as being “in” our body, feeling the sensations, and moving our bodies with the inner rhythms of our being.   It seems that the aim of the embodiment movement is the shift from living in our head/thoughts into a more visceral, connected or integrated experience of existing.  Along with embodiment comes the idea of being grounded, which we often associate with a down or into our physical body direction.  

For many people there is an experience of overwhelming activity in their day to day, which can feel scattering, lead to being hyper-mentally focused, and or an experience of being “up”.  This up or scatter is what people attempt to bring down through embodiment practices.  These practices are incredibly beneficial, particularly if we feel disconnected from our physicalness or from our feeling body, but they are not the full picture of embodiment.  While they can greatly support us feeling more alive and engaged if we are stuck in our heads, the overarching goal of existing is not to be more “in” our physical body.  Rather the goal, so to speak, is to be or express more completely in and through all our bodies, of which the physical body is but one expression of who we are.  

The most pertinent questions here now are how do we be grounded, energized and expressing through all of our bodies?  And how do we become aware of the life and intelligence in all aspects of ourselves?  Our physical, emotional, mental and soul bodies are all vital expressions of our beingness.  True embodiment is being present in all directions and levels of ourselves.  Being grounded up, down, in and out.  If we are too physically focused our spiritual bodies might not be energized.  If we are too spiritually focused our physical, mental or emotional bodies might not be energized.  There can be any combination of these occurring.  You might wonder how you would ground up and out, since this is not the typical direction that people associate with the ground.  As a reframe, think of ground as everywhere and more as a state of being rather than as a dense form.  Throughout the entire universe there is ground.  Ground is not just down into the earth, but it is water, it is sky, it is the infinite cosmic expanse.  Ground is also not just physical, but it is subtle and etheric.  In fact the most coherent and stable ground is pure light itself; ever present, always here and the source of all life. 

GROUND OF BEING 

All bodies

If ground is everywhere, then you can experience ground in your physical body, ground in your emotions, ground in your thoughts and ground in your soul.  You might wonder what it looks like to be grounded in all of your bodies.  Being grounded in your physical body means your sensory-motor skills are intact and things are running smoothly with all of your physical body parts.  You are also not overly tense and breath moves freely through your body.  Being grounded in your emotional body means you know what you are feeling and you can feel your emotions when they are present.  You don’t try to think your emotions and you are not numb to them either.  Rather emotions are present, you feel them and the energy of them moves.  Being grounded in your mental body means that you have clear, coherent and organized thoughts.  You can pay attention to detail, follow things through and also see the larger perspective of how things fit together and impact each other.  Being grounded in your soul body means you know your multifaceted, multidimensional nature.  You feel connected to your heart and the hearts of others through yours.  You know knowledge without needing to learn it in book or from someone else.  You regularly feel ecstatic states of bliss and rapture.

Each of our bodies do have different directionality, frequency and relative size or distance.  Physical body density is slower.  You can see the size of this body with your physical eyes and the directionality is down/in.  The emotional body is less dense, but still has substance or thickness to it even in its non-physicalness.  Emotions can feel heavy or light and the direction can be up or down.  The mental body is less physical as we don’t directly see thoughts with our eyes like we do our physical body.  The frequency of thoughts is higher than emotions or the physical body, and the direction tends to be up.  The soul body is the most subtle of our bodies.  It has the fastest frequency, and is the largest and most expansive of all of our bodies.  Its direction is up and out, and eventually all pervasive as you reach full fusion or unity.  I share all of this because as you learn to ground in each of your bodies, knowing how they move and where to find them is useful.  If you are constantly drawing your energy and awareness down and in, then it may be more challenging to find coherent thought or expansive states of unified bliss and rapture.  Opposite of that if you are always up and out, your physical body or emotional body may be a bit more elusive to you.  

Embodiment includes of all you, in all directions and all rhythms.  Sometimes you may need to find up, at other times down, sometimes in and at other times out, until eventually you are rested in the allness of everythingness that has no direction and no distinction of bodies because it is just one unified whole.  This is the ground of all being.  The source from which all life sprouts forth from and returns to.  The source of existence and existing.  We are all already this.  The journey of embodiment is the expression of this source into infinite forms (ie. what we call creation or the universe), until the eventual return of the essence of these forms dissolves back into the source from which it emerged.  Returning to itself.  Expanding out and contracting back in.  Embodiment is the creation, it is the expansion out.  The return to source is the dissolution of all bodies and forms, aka disembodiment, but that is a topic for another time.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado

Committing to Love

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COMMITTING TO LOVE 

Not as easy peasy

People who see themselves as being on a spiritual path, often have as one of their top values, to come from love in all things.  The desire to feel blissful, juicy, aliveness in every single moment, as the baseline for existing.  We strive to be connected, in flow, with our hearts open and unshakably rested as a presence of loving goodness.  Even though most of us feel a strong desire for this, and to share this love with the world, many of us are not really committed to it.  It sounds good in theory.  We might even start imagining the creation of our next program or offering to help the world somehow be more loving.  We get excited about the possibilities of how beautiful and peaceful life would be if everyone came from love.  If the whole wide world was one big heart centered yum fest where everyone was supporting, looking out and caring about everyone else.  Like a magical island where ecstatic rapture and divine bliss are the norm.  Oh yes we all want to live there, or I should say we all want to live there in theory.

The reality is that most of us don’t really want it.  Why do I say that you ask?  I say it because we are not choosing it.  For 99% of the people on this planet this is not a lived reality.  It’s just a concept.  A fantastical idea that feels good to think about.  Perhaps we choose that all embracing, allowing and present love for moments, like when we are at a retreat, program, festival or on some exotic vacation.  But when we come back to “reality” or whatever we mean by our more ordinary lives, we find ourselves stuck inside of our typical triggered responses to the movements of life.  Something upsets us and we get pissed.  Things don’t turn out how we had hoped and we see failure and doom.  Everything feels like hard work or an uphill battle.  We judge ourselves and others when things don’t live up to our expectations. We can’t stop thinking about stuff, tense up, plot for retaliation or desperately try to find way out of it all.  

I am not suggesting that it’s easy peasy to choose love.  The truth is, when life is not feeling like we are merrily floating down the stream of it, it is hard to choose love.  Love seems like the furthest option from our reach.  We are hooked into our story about what life is supposed to be rather than choosing to love it for what it is.  When things feel unjust, unfair, not right or unwelcome, or when we feel unappreciated, not seen or undervalued, choosing love is hard.  In choosing love our egos take a hit.  It seems we have to swallow something that tastes really, really bad.  How do we let go of that thing we keep saying we want to let go of, but which we keep holding onto for dear life?  We let go by letting go.  We feel the little micro ego death that comes with it.  The death of not getting what we want or what we feel like we deserve.  Then we experience the openness that remains when we relinquish.  That openness, which is the fertile field of bliss and rapture.   

NORMALIZING RAPTURE 

The doorway in

If more people were choosing love, then more of us would be experiencing ecstatic rapture as the norm rather than an unpleasant, drab, harsh world.  Magical rapture would be our ordinary reality.  It is however quite remarkable how much we don’t allow ourselves to feel good.  It’s like we all have this internal goodness meter, and we can only let it go so high before we start to find ways to make ourselves feel not quite as good.  A little bit of joy and happiness is acceptable throughout our day, but not too much.  A tad of pleasure and ecstasy is ok from time to time, but not too often and as long as no one else sees you experiencing it.  This is the inner reality most of us live.  Can you even remember when the last time was that you allowed yourself to feel uncontrollably ecstatic in front of others, outside of an alcohol or drug induced state?  Before you started to be self-conscious and began to value fitting in and caring about what others think of you.

What if we didn’t need to find ways to feel less good?  What if we didn’t get hooked anymore into our stories about what is or isn’t, in order to bring our state of being down?  What if we were more committed to being love than to receiving what we want or getting justice?  When we commit to love we bring ourselves into the reality of rapture, of direct commune with the divine, not as a concept or idea, but as our very being.  There is nothing outside of us required for this to become our experience.  It is an inner commitment, an inner choice, by you and for which only you can make.  Containers can be set to deepen the inner permission, but you are the permission giver.  

The permission to feel good, while simultaneously letting things go that we don’t really want to hang onto anyways, is the doorway to rapture.  Rapture simply because you want to choose it rather than what your mind tells you that you should choose.  Some people might think that this naive or stupid, and your mind will likely fight you some on this, insisting that you are letting things go that you shouldn’t.  Your habituated thoughts will attempt to find ways to get you to hold on, to fight, to seek righteousness, because your thoughts think they know how to get you what you want, but they always come up short.  What you want lies beyond them, in the world of the heart.  

While committing to love and living from the heart may feel like defeat to the mind, the result is that you get to experience that state of rapturous delight the moment you choose love.  You don’t have to wait until your thoughts agree, or until your physical reality says so.  You get to experience it the moment you decide to let go of your current commitment to discontent, frustration and misery.   While those states are familiar and addicting because we have normalized them as our reality, we can begin to normalize rapture now.  Rapture is our nature.  It’s what we are made of. Unification with our essence is rapturous union with the divine.  Committing to love in face of everything is the doorway in.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Chiropractor & Spiritual Guide, Boulder, Colorado

Magic of the Spine

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MAGIC OF THE SPINE 

Conduit between spirit and form

You might not have heard or known, but your spine is a conduit for magic.  Real, live, magic.  Yes, that’s right.  Perhaps you’ve only thought of your spine as just a bunch of bones that make up your back, but there is much more going on back there then what meets the ordinary eye.  First of all your spine is not just a bunch of bones.  Yes there are bones, lots of beautiful bones, but the bones aren’t even the most exciting structure back there.  The bones house or encase the spinal cord.  Thank goddess for those bones.  We need them in order to protect that spinal cord.  The spinal cord is that ever so precious structure that allows communication between spirit and body to take place.  Yep you read that correctly, spirit communicates to your body right through your glorious spinal cord.  

A few definitions first.  What is spirit?  Spirit is intelligence.  It is awareness.  It is the source of all knowing and life.  It is all information that is available for everything in creation.  It is breath.  It enlivens or gives life to all forms.  What is body?  Body is form.  It is where awareness (ie. spirit) has localized and configured into a specific structure that we call body.  It is also typically what we identify as ourselves.  Sometimes we like to differentiate our brain from our body, but the brain is body as well.  It’s form equally enlivened or organized by the intelligence of spirit.  Just like your liver has the functions of detoxification and bile production, your brain has the functions of memory, thinking, personality and so many other functions, many of which are not even activated or awake.

The tone of the structures of the body determine how spirit moves through it.  What does that mean?  It means that the positioning, holding and posturing of the tissues of the body, directly influence how intelligent awareness can enliven, move through, and organize them.  The spinal cord is the central tissue structure in the body, which connects to and has immediate impact on every single structure inside of the body.  The tone of the spinal cord determines how information gets communicated to the liver, kidneys, muscles, brain and everything else in the body.  This is why the spine is a conduit for magic.  It provides the path for how spirit moves through, energizes and wakes up all the functions that these bodies have.   

KUNDALINI ENERGY

Movement of the spine

It is no accident that our chakras (i.e. our body’s energy centers) are aligned along the vertical axis of the spine, and why yogis and meditators pay special attention to their posture and unwinding tissue tension in order to achieve desired states of consciousness through their practices.  If you are familiar with yogic Indian teachings you’ve likely heard about kundalini energy.  It is described as an energy that is coiled in the shape of serpent at the base of the spine.  It lies dormant there until the right conditions for when it can begin to rise up the spine.  As it rises up the spine it activates, clears and awakens the chakras that are aligned along the vertical axis.  As each chakra is enlivened, functions of the body and its various components can change.  New sensory faculties can awaken, different perspectives can be seen, personalities can alter, until Nirvana or enlightenment is experienced.  For some this experience is the natural progression of inner work and spiritual discipline.  For others it can occur spontaneously during energy work, ingestion of medicinal substances, sexual experiences, or in the presence of someone who has activated their own kundalini.  

In Network Spinal Analysis we use the term “Somatopsychic Wave” rather than kundalini energy, but regardless of the term used, it is pointing to the same thing.  Network Spinal supports the unwinding of the tonal tissue patterns in the spinal cord.  When those tissue patterns begin to unwind, the energy that sits at the base of the spine begins to awaken.  With that awakening there is a rising of energy up the spine.   For some this is a gradual, subtle sensation of movement from deep inside of the body.  For others it is an intense expression of movement that seems to be beyond the physical body and can be clearly seen by the visual eye.  

Kundalini is a force of instability.  Its purpose is to clear stuff out and shake stuff up.  It destabilizes tension patterns so that spirit can move through and more fully infuse, invigorate and activate these bodies of ours.  It clears the way for intelligence to freely circulate throughout.  It helps support personal transformation and spiritual growth.  It assists in the embodiment of our soul and states of ecstatic rapture.  Physically it allows life force intelligence to flow to our organs and glands.  Emotionally it helps us open into and feel our emotions.   Mentally it clears the way for more confidence, brightest and clarity.  Soulfully it helps us find the center of ourselves, our inner knowing, our truth and our heart.  

It’s evident, our spines are downright magical.  When the tone of the tissues of the spinal cord change, so does our entire experience of life, for better or worse.  The body and all of its components come alive because of spirit, and spirit organizes the body.  When was the last time you thought of your body as spirit’s home rather than as your personal identity?  Heaven is already on earth by the simple fact that spirit enlivens a body.  We are everything we’ve been waiting for and everything we’ve been waiting for has been here all along.  

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

See As Your Higher Self Sees

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SEE AS YOUR HIGHER SELF SEES 

Working with discontent

Many of us relate to our presence and purpose for being here on this earth as bridging the gap between spiritual knowing and human experience.  But what does that really mean, and beyond meaning, what does it require of us?  We may be aware of our higher self, or of a self that sees and knows that all is well and perfect.  While the perspectives and knowings of this self are easy to tap into when we like what we see and feel inside of our human experience, our higher self’s perspectives and knowings just as easily go out the window the moment we experience discontent, powerlessness, irritation, sadness or anything else that we don’t like feeling.  The heaviness of heart that arises in the face of experiencing what we don’t want or prefer to, disconnects us from the view that our higher self sees.

Likely most are familiar with heaviness of heart.  For many it may actually be all they know.  Some people live in a perpetual state of discontent and it is so familiar that they don’t even realize they are living it.  Discontent has simply become their mode of operation.  This state of heaviness comes with the point of view that if only things, people and experiences could somehow be different, then everything would be better.  While this point of view may be valid, things might be better if they were different than they are, it doesn’t change the fact that things are as they are now.  Our hoping that things will be different keeps us from accepting things as they are.  The paradox of this all is that things often don’t shift or change until they are accepted in their current configuration.

If we want to bridge the gap between our spiritual knowings and human experiencing we must bring our spiritual knowings into this human experiencing.  That doesn’t mean teaching others about what the most enlightened perspective is from our point of view.  Rather it means seeing spirit inside of this human experience exactly as it is currently configured.  While you may have incarnated to do or create particular things, your intention for doing those things should simply be because it brings you joy to do them, not because you think they are going to fix this world or the people in it.  The people and the world don’t need fixing, they only need love.  If you really tune into your true desire for existing it is likely only to be and share love through your creations and not to fix anything.  Fixing brings a weight, pressure or burden with it, where creating just to express and share love, feels joyous and light.    

BEYOND UNDERSTANDING

Avoiding death and failure

One of the prime things that keeps us out of accepting what is now, is that we don’t understand why things are the way they are.  Especially if we have vision and can see all of the grand possibilities for what the human experience could be for ourselves or others, we get stuck in our own confusion about the way it is and needing to make sense of it all.  This needing to make sense of it or coming to terms with the state of whatever it is you are currently experiencing in your reality, postpones your acceptance of it.  Sometimes acceptance feels like death.  That death is the death of the dream or the vision that you are wishing was, rather than what is.  Sometimes acceptance feels like failure.   The failure of making happen what you think you were supposed to make happen, or things being what you hoped they would have been or are. 

We avoid feeling failure and death at all costs, hence the postponement of acceptance.  The thing is that all we are really avoiding are our ideas about what is or is supposed to be.  If we let go of our ideas about perfectionism, idealism, better than and the like, then we can actually experience those things inside of our current experience.  It is our ideas about what is or what is supposed to be, that keep us from bridging the gap of spiritual knowing and human experiencing.  These ideas or ideals keep us from seeing as our higher self sees.  

I am not suggesting that you lower your standards.  Quite the opposite.  You must continue to discern what feels aligned for you to participate with or not.  Beyond that I invite you to raise the standards for how much love you can be and see inside of what is.  Your reality responds to how you see it.  If there are aspects of your reality that persist in the ignorance of themselves and deny the love you see them as, then you may find it appropriate to not directly engage with those elements.  Not from a place of resistance, frustration or irritation, but rather from a moving towards or along the path where the love you see everything as is available to be received.  You don’t need to exhaust yourself in attempting to have love be received.  Rather allow it to simply be an invitation or offering that can be received or not, and move along your path appropriately.  There is no failure when you come from love, even if things don’t match up to how your ideas think they should be.  

Understand that you don’t need to understand why it all is the way it is.  Why things have occurred or do occur as they do.  Understanding is not required in order to love.  Love is how your higher self sees.  It sees and knows all as love.  Even if there are elements or aspects of creation that are ignorant to knowing themselves as love, still your higher self sees and knows it all to be love.  Next time you experience or see ignorance inside of this human experience, simply remind yourself that ignorance too is love, love that has forgotten itself.  Turn your heart towards love and move in the direction that is most aligned for you.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractic & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

Letting Your Soul Be Seen

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LETTING YOUR SOUL BE SEEN 

Finding your heart

Whether you know it or not, you are an expression of light.  The light is the one infinite source of all of life.  Everything that is created comes from this source.  The light is clear, pure, aware, intelligent, and it just is.  Pure being.  Endlessly radiating.  You can’t not be this even if you try hard not be it, deny it or don’t know it.  Regardless, your fundamental essence is a spark of the brightest light you could ever imagine.  That spark is called the Soul.  Other terms that could be used to describe it are your Higher Self, the Heart, or Love.  That spark of purity and innocence can be most easily seen and felt in babies the first few months after they are born.  They do not have the filters, dampeners or defenses in place yet that distort the light.  The light and love they emit is clearly evident and transmitted.  They are not attempting to hide, dim or deny anything.  

As we develop our body and mind, and begin to have experiences, we start to bend the light that we are.  This doesn’t make us any less the light, but rather only adds twists, turns, and rotations to the light’s expression as it moves through the vehicles of our body and mind.  Some of these twists and turns distort or block our knowingness or remembrance of the spark of light that we are.  This means that we forget that we are a Soul, but again and of prime importance, our forgetting of what we are doesn’t make us any less it.  We are still a Soul.  That never changes.  Our light, our presence is never touched by our forgetting of it.  

Also just because you forget something or it’s blocked from your view, doesn’t mean that you can’t remember it or discover where it’s been hiding out.  Just like you can forget where you put your keys and then you can find them, it’s the same for your Soul.  It may take some work to untwist and detangle some of the stuff so that you can begin to see your pure essence, hence the need for inner work of increasing one’s awareness of self.  You typically don’t find your keys unless you look for them.  The best is when you’ve been looking for them and all the while you were holding onto them in your hand.  This is what it is like to re-discover your Soul.  You seek to find it and then realize it’s been with you all along.  Still we must do the seeking in order to uncover and  realize what is already here.  

UNWINDING THE TWISTS & TURNS 

Doing the inner work

The distortions of light develop in response to a perceived need to protect ourselves from hurt or harm.  When we perceive threat, we twist or turn in order to move away from or not feel physical, emotional or mental pain.  While these twists and turns dampen our experience of suffering, they also dampen our experience of being the source of light that we are.  We lose sight of our Soul.  Hence the massive amount of spiritual disconnection most of us feel.  This process occurs mostly unconsciously.  If we were self-aware, we would turn towards the experience, feel the impact, allow the sensations, feelings and thoughts to move through us, open our heart to the source of pain, love it and remain connected to our Soul.  If you are avoiding feeling the feels of life and protecting your heart, you can’t love with it.  Love is the portal into Soul.  This is the path of healing and what you learn to do as you spiritually wake up.

So while our self-protective defenses serve an important function of personal and social survival, they distort our experience of the light.  Our defenses are intelligent and the moment they perceive threat they will activate.  You could also exchange the word threat with the word stress.  When you feel stress, something feels scarce or threatened, even if you aren’t aware of what feels scarce and threatened.  You might not even associate the words stress or overwhelm with feeling threat.  This is why it’s so important to do your inner work.  Through inner work you wake up your own awareness to yourself.  You bring the light back.  You begin to see your defenses, why they get activated and what is underneath them.  As soon as you see through them they unwind.  The bends unbind and you open into your Soul.  The light is clearer and you can see yourself again.

Once we begin to open into our Soul we typically feel lighter, freer and more expansive.  However we can have all kinds of stories and beliefs as to why it is not safe to allow others to see our Soul or why it’s not safe to fully express ourselves.  Our defenses can arise just that quickly again.  We fear judgment from others or that we are unworthy of being the light that we are.  We are afraid people will reject or feel bad around us if we express and allow the light that we are to be seen.  We might feel some shame for feeling bliss or ecstasy, or feel too big and bright.  We fear people’s confusion as to why we are the way we are and what we are experiencing and expressing.  We jump into the practicalities of life and prioritize them rather than valuing the expression of our Soul.  We grasp back onto our stressors and irritations, wanting to hold onto them rather than dissolve into our Soul where they are all resolved.  

It is vulnerable to let our Soul, Heart and true Self be seen.  However the more inner work you do to increase your awareness of your patterns the less you will perceive threat, and the less vulnerable it will feel to express the light of your Soul.  It will just be you, being you, heart wide open, undefended, feeling the feels of life, allowing what is to be and loving it all exactly as it is.  

Do the work to remember the spark that you are and then let it be seen.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado

Learning to Love Life

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LEARNING TO LOVE LIFE 

Logic is not the answer

This life is not always a walk in the park.  In fact much of the time there is challenge, hard work and lots of arduous learning to be had.  Sure there are rhythms when things flow smoothly and all goes according to our desired plan, yet there are many rhythms when things don’t.  Rhythms where we feel lost, confused, bored, restless, stressed, and where we are ready to be off planet in some peaceful paradise where things work easily and we feel good all of the time.  Yet the fact remains that we are here on this planet, with this physical human body and there are things to be learned, shared and created right here where we are.  How do we make peace with being where we are even when we don’t like it?  How do we live in acceptance rather than resistance to our experience of challenge, work and learning?

When things are difficult many of us are good at logically rationalizing the situation.  For example say you are experiencing a tough rhythm.  Something you really want isn’t working out.  You feel confused and lost as to what is going on in your life.  You keep trying to think and find a logistical way out of the situation or something that will make it work out, but you are just spinning.  You can’t seem to find your way through.  You feel stuck, and little hopeless.  This is an incredibly common scenario.  You might logically know that somehow everything is going to be just fine, and while you logically know this you can’t quite seem to get yourself to really believe it because you are still spinning inside of it all.  Utilizing logic is not the solution at this stage of the game.

While logic is not the solution, this doesn’t stop us from trying to use it in order to get out of whatever it is we don’t want to experience in this life.  The reason why logic is not the answer is because from our mind’s perspective it is illogical to accept what we don’t like or understand, and ultimately acceptance is the solution to learning to love life as it is.  Your logic will likely not get you into acceptance of whatever is, but rather will keep you continuing to strategize how to not accept whatever is showing up in your life that you don’t want or understand.  Accepting what is also means that we have to feel what is.  This is again why we default to logic.  Most people prefer being tortured inside of the tornado of their thoughts rather than feel their emotions about what is.   

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE 

Accepting what is

Feeling our emotion about what is, bridges the gap between what we are logically trying to get ourselves to figure out and accepting what is.  When we feel emotion it clears out our resistances.  We stop trying to fight an uphill battle and therefore we can take a breath.  We may still not like, prefer or want what is, but we are no longer trying to deny, escape or get out of its existence.  We are rather just with what is, no longer fleeing from the dangers of feeling our emotions about it.  We’ve felt the thing, or more accurately we’ve felt our emotions about the thing.  We now experience some space, some ease and some peace.  We may not have clarity or know what we need to do, because perhaps there is nothing to do, or maybe there is, but either way we are more embracing of being in this moment rather than trying to get out of it and into the next one where we perceive we will feel more peace, joy or excitement.  

How does all of this lead to loving where you are?  When you are more accepting you are naturally more loving of everything.  You can still not like certain things, but your liking or not of what is, doesn’t touch you loving it.  Yes that’s right you can love what is, and simultaneously not like it.  You can respond with authenticity and grace, receiving what you don’t like and loving it exactly as it is.  But as long as you are in resistance to what is and not feeling your emotions about it, your mind can’t grok how this would be even possible.  Acceptance of what is opens the doorway in your mind so that you can comprehend this.  

Until we reach acceptance of what is no real change can occur in us or in how we perceive or feel about the situations of our life.  Instead we will just keep trying to fight or flee from it.  We won’t find love where we are if we are resisting what’s here.  You can’t escape your resistances.  You will take them with you into your next situation, and your next one, and the one after that, and on and on for eternity.  They don’t just go away because you insulate yourself from them through carefully crafting or controlling your environments.  Rather you only keep them at bay while they lurk in the depths waiting for their next opportunity to present themselves so that you can heal, resolve, and integrate them rather than move away from them.  

To not love where you are in this moment is to reject life and be in a state of unappreciation, and there is nothing more painful than that.  If your circumstances or situations change to your liking and then you decide to love life, your love is conditional.  The condition of your love being that your preferences are met.  This is not the stable, unshakeable, unconditional, divine love that we all seek to know.  To know this love is to become it.  How bold is to love life even when it’s not up to your liking?  How brave do you need to be in order to feel, accept and love life as it is and know that it will work out perfectly for you even if you don’t like it? This is what takes in order to learn to love life and to love where you are in this moment.  

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

Self-Purification

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SELF-PURIFICATION  

Saving Ourselves

We are often looking for someone or something to save us.  Maybe it’s the government that will fix all of the things that are wrong with the world.  Perhaps it is our parents or the next generation of children that will bail us all out of trouble.  Maybe it’s the doctors that know, or the wise teachers and spiritual gurus that have the answers.  Perhaps God will just fix everything.  All of these scenarios are tempting to lean into.  They lure us in with the hope that they contain the solutions to the problems we perceive ail us.  It’s so enticing to deny, reject or ignore our own knowing and power and give it over to something or someone that seems to know better.  It appears easier and takes less energy because it allows us to not feel the growing pains of taking responsibility and self-purifying.  Resting our wishful hope that something or someone other than us will fix all of the stuff that isn’t working in ourselves or in this life, provides a great opportunity to leave us feeling powerless, helpless and needing saving.   

None of this implies that we don’t need other people or other things.  We very much do.  There are also some scenarios where we do need to be saved.  These include situations or dynamics where there is a power imbalance and harm is being inflicted.  That power imbalance could be physical, meaning someone is harming another using their physicalness or by physical means.  It could also be a mental-emotional power imbalance where someone uses emotions, or knows information/details not known by the other, and uses that as a strategy for manipulation and to gain power.   We also sometimes need to be saved from our own limiting or negative thoughts that may result in self-injurious behavior, which is often a means to feel some power or control.  Outside of these types of scenarios we don’t need to be saved, but rather need to step into our lives.  

Ultimately what we want to be saved from are the feelings we have about the things in life that we don’t like.  This could be sensations in our body, our inner self-dialogue, how someone talks to or interacts with us, the dynamics of something happening at work or in our business, the structure of our schools or healthcare systems, and on and on.  When we have a feeling that we don’t like about something we are experiencing and we perceive a sense of powerlessness, lethargy, apathy or complacency with it, this is a recipe for deflected power.  This is a hopelessly hoping that our feelings about whatever the thing is will change without feeling like we have any ability to change it.   

YOU ARE THE SOLUTION 

Life happens with you

We all get the spiritual concept that all of life is interconnected, yet we often don’t really understand that life is happening with us.  Rather we tend to interact with life as if it is just happening, either on its own accord, randomly, or to us.  For example we hear some piece of news, develop a sensation in our body, or have an unpleasant interaction with someone, and it seems to just be happening.  We aren’t even really sure how we arrived in this moment, inside of whatever experience is showing up.  It just seems to be here now.  Sometimes our logical mind can induce and reason as to why things are the way they are.  For example maybe you ate some bad fish and now the sensations in your belly are telling you about it, or perhaps you made a snarky comment to your partner hence the unpleasant interaction.  But making the connections as to how life is happening with us isn’t always as clear.  

Just because we don’t always make the connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one to be made.  It’s simply that we are not aware of it.  This is where self-purification comes into play.  In order to increase our awareness, make connections and see how life is happening with us, we need to be a clear channel.  If we are full of stuff (ie. the content of our lives) then we don’t have the bandwidth available to pay attention.  It is sort of like you are watching a show on channel 4 that is full of drama, action, relationships, and a story line that really has you hooked.  You keep watching episode after episode of this program because you just can’t seem to turn it off.  It has your full attention.  You’ve heard through the grapevine that there is a really good program on channel 1, but it’s more chill over there so it has felt a little less exciting to you.  You’ve changed the channel a few times to go and check it out, but there is just a lot of peace and quiet on the channel.  You get kind of bored and switch back to channel 4, where you can be on the edge of whatever twist or turn comes next, maybe a gas station will explode, a bank robbery will take place or a relationship saga will unfold.  That’s better, much more exciting, but gosh you still can’t figure out why your knee hurts, or why your boss was mean to you today, or why our school system sucks so badly.  We tend to think “I guess somebody will figure it out or it will figure itself out.”  This is our often disempowered, disconnected stance.  

From this place we have a tendency to think that the answers we seek will come through more and more outer stuff, but it’s the opposite.  We distract ourselves from the quiet of our inner knowing because it just seems like nothing is there.  However the more inwardly still we become and the clearer we are of stuff, the more aware we are of everything.  With more awareness it is easier to see and make connections.  When we make connections we feel more empowered, look less for someone or something else to fix this life, and see more what we can contribute to it all.  We also see that how we are experiencing life is directly correlated with how we are.  How we feel and what we do determines how this life is created.  It is not a passive, random process that is just happening, despite how it may currently seem to you.  You are not a character in the show you are watching, you are the creator of it.  Nothing is happening to you, but rather you are the source of it.  It only requires some stillness from constant content in your mind to see what’s actually going on.  

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

Navigating the Space Between

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NAVIGATING THE SPACE BETWEEN 

Allowing un-resolve

Life is constant flux.  Always moving from one thing to the next.  Projects, relationships, activities and even healing, constantly starting, going, ending and then arising again.  Seems to be that most of us have energy in the beginnings of things.  We also tend to like the completion or sense of resolution that comes at the end of things.  But what about the space in between?  The time after the initial excitement to get something going or make something happen, and before the completion of whatever the activity, project or thing is.  The space of unknown, of navigating the process, of ups and downs, certainties and uncertainties.  How do we navigate inside the middle?  

The truth is that this is the space where most of life happens, and it’s the space that we tend to dislike the most because it is unfinished.  This is where all of our protective mechanisms reside and our triggers live, where we just want to get out or get it over with, whatever it is.  The space between often feels chaotic, overwhelming, like we don’t know how we can make it all work out.  Sometimes it even feels boring.  The harder we try the more frustrated or hopeless we feel.  Our head spins, we feel restless, we get bogged down, our energy state is lower, and our excitement or drive wanes.  We can begin to feel like we aren’t making progress, not moving forward and we get depressed, angry, irritated or restless trying to find a way into completion already.

The most direct way to work with the space in between is to stop trying to get to the end of things while allowing things to be unorganized, unresolved or unknown.  This is a beast for many of us.  We like order, clarity, and knowing what to expect.  When these elements are not present we get unhinged.  Our emotions rise up and begin to take charge of our behaviors and state of being.  We become not “ourselves” and react from our charged emotional state.  This is fun for no one.  Along with allowing things to be undone it is equally important to actively accept the fact that life is a big mess.  One mess after another.  While you are busy cleaning up the messes, don’t forget to learn something through them.  The purpose of the mess is not to clean it up, but rather to learn through the experience of it.  When you understand this, you will experience how life cleans up its own messes once you’ve learn whatever you need to learn through them.

LIFE IS LEARNING 

Learning is the destination

Life is not supposed to be already done.  Life is supposed to be lived and created.  Creation is learning.  If you are a parent you get this.  You’ve created a child and now you are learning to be a parent.  You don’t know how to be a parent before you become one.  It’s learned as you go.  Sure you can read books and take courses to prepare, but you don’t learn until you do it.  While some of it is smooth sailing, likely most of it is a rocky adventure on uneven terrain.  Ups and downs, highs and lows, certainties and uncertainties.  However most people don’t quit along the way because they feel a social and moral responsibility to care for and tend to what they have created even when it get real, real hard.  It’s one of our creations that we generally commit to more than others, and therefore is incredibly growthful.

While we might have expectations to be a perfect parent, we soon discover that we aren’t.  We come to accept that we are learning.  If we don’t then we will have a  challenging time attempting to live up to ridiculous ideals.  With time and some experience under our belt we start to understand that the most magic and intimacy is experienced when we are on uneven terrain.  Without the rocks the journey is flat, and quite honestly a bit boring because there is very little learning.  Learning equates to feeling a sense of progress and eventual accomplishment, but the reward is in the learning itself rather than in your attempt to get the experience over with so you can feel resolve.  

It’s really like this with all of the space between.  When we create a business, start a project, get into a relationship, build a house, reform our body, or embark on healing, we are committing to create.  To bring something new into our experience.  There is a beginning, a space between, and an end to all of these.  The space of most learning is the space between.  When you reframe that life is about learning, rather than about accomplishing, finishing or getting things done, you can rest more in the space between.  Even if there is restlessness, uncertainty, mess, boredom and the like, you can rest into the larger perspective of learning.  There will still be uncomfortableness or sometimes numbness, because that is a part of learning.  You can’t get away from it regardless of how hard you try.  It will follow you into your next creation, and your next creation, and the next.  

There is no where to get, really.  Yes there will be things you will accomplish and complete, but then you will create more things.  We are creators.  I don’t think that creating is ever complete.  It’s simply that we need to interact with the space between differently.  Rather than it being a burden, a problem, or something we need to get out of or endure, we need to see it as learning and growth.  Recognize that the learning and growth is the actual destination, even before we reach completion or resolve of whatever we set out to create.  This is how you become present in the space between.  This is how you move into life rather than trying to get out of it.  

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

Trusting Soul

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TRUSTING SOUL

Beyond the mind

Despite the fact that most of us like to think that we trust life and desire to go with the flow, the truth is that we mostly don’t.  We would rather be stressed, anxious and fearful than trust our soul, pretty much any day of the week.  Recognizing where you don’t choose trust may be a bit elusive to you.  You may think of yourself as a very trusting person and might even spout off to your friends how you are choosing to “surrender to life” and go with the flow.  Yet there is often a disconnect between what we think or say and how we feel and experience life.  The sensations in our body are more than willing to reveal the disconnect to us even if we can’t intellectually see it.  Trouble sleeping, difficulty digesting, tension, nervousness, fogginess and the like can be cues that we may be out of trust with life even if we don’t know that we are.

You may wonder why wouldn’t you trust?  There is a misconception that trusting feels good.  While it’s true that ultimately it does and that your body will relax in response to you trusting, getting to trusting and relaxing can be super uncomfortable.  Yes that’s right, relaxation can be incredibly uncomfortable to our mind.  When we choose trust we put the mind out of commission.  It’s vigilant job to avoid potential danger and threat around every corner gets temporarily laid to rest.  While the constant control mechanism that we call our mind is taking a nap, we get to experience the uncomfortableness of being open, relaxed and exposed to life.  In the middle of our ordinary daily life most people can only take this in, in short bursts, if at all.  

Our controller (i.e. our mind) is persistent and it’s strong.  After all its job is avoidance of pain whenever possible and survival in all the ways.  Physical, emotional, and social survival are its perceived responsibilities.  That’s a big job, bigger than the mind, but the mind only knows itself.  By definition the mind is egocentric.  It doesn’t recognize that there is anything beyond it or bigger than it, that it can rest into, so it goes about doing life in ignorance to the soul.  Rather it thinks it is the sole source of everything.  Yet somehow it knows it can’t manage everything, but that doesn’t stop it from trying at all costs.  It is kind of like a fish swimming in water.  It has no idea that it is fully submerged in the perfect environment needed for the survival of its body, yet it is.  The mind has no idea that it’s resting inside the soul that is the container for everything it needs.   

RELAXING INTO MORE 

Knowing all is well

What we don’t yet know we take on faith.  If we don’t choose faith then we are left only with our fears and uncertainties about what will be.  We regurgitate our anxieties around in our minds over and over until we can’t take it anymore, until our bodies start to breakdown, or until we can find a distraction or way to take the edge off.  This is the path of nagging misery.  A path that doesn’t really go anywhere even if we feel periodic relief from time to time.  There is dragon after dragon to slay on this path.  They never stop coming.  We hope that they will, but they don’t.  We are nearly always freezing, fighting, or fleeing from something, hoping to get out of this and arrive somewhere better.  While better does arrive, and we try our best to hold onto better when it’s here, it is soon followed by another sneaky little dragon. 

Faith ends this cycle.  Faith is the path to knowing.  It is also the prime learning or lesson of the human experience.  That which is unknown or un-perceivable to us in this moment, can become known and perceivable, but it takes faith.  It takes not knowing in order to know.  You can’t see more from the place you currently see.  You have to suspend what it is you currently think you see or know, to see beyond where you do now.  A fish can only see the water once he is no longer submerged in it.  The fish has to pop out and above the water in order to see it and likely the fish won’t initially know what it is seeing.  With more and more jumps above the water the fish will begin to recognize the life sustaining fluid it swims in all of the time.  Just like the fish we have to rise above our current perspectives in order to see beyond them and to begin to recognize the soul, which always exists and is tending to all of the needs of our life even when we don’t see it.  

It takes courage and faith to rise above the water, because for a moment it feels like you won’t be able to breathe.  You are in a new, uncharted environment where nothing is familiar to you and you have no idea what you are seeing.  This is the uncomfortableness of being open and in the unfamiliar.  Moving forward in faith, in the unknown, so that what is there can be revealed to you, can become known to you.  You want to relax, but can you trust it?  Can you trust that which you don’t yet know, so that you can come to know it?  Riding this edge is your growth and it is the soul’s journey into remembrance of itself.  

By now you get that is takes a ginormous dose of humility and a whole lot of courage to trust soul.  Oscillating in and out of being able to relax into more.  Popping out and seeing above and then landing back into the experience of your life.  Seems we must do this many times over until we finally accept what we see and come to know from above.  From here we no longer need to seek relief or find distraction from the dragons of life, because we become rested in the entire gamut of our experience.  There are no more dragons, but rather life all working seamlessly together.  We know all is taken care of because we know soul.  We see and know the water that we swim in.  No longer do we need to have faith or trust.  Faith and trust are just the path to knowing.  We need them only until we know.  To know soul is to know the divine order and perfect orchestration of every movement of life.  It is to know, without even the suspicion of doubt, that all is well.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractic & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado