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Moment to Moment Surrender

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

MOMENT TO MOMENT SURRENDER 

Nuanced subtlety

What does it mean to live surrendered?  We often speak of surrender as something we do in situations where we are relinquishing the outcome of anything happening in a particular way.  For example we might find ourselves intensely desiring or holding onto a specific thing occurring or not occurring.  We mentally regurgitate it over and over and create tension in our body as we attempt to control the unfolding of it with our mind.  Often we will reach a point where we simply can’t try to control it any longer and we let go.  This is what we refer to as surrender.  We let the outcome be the outcome even if it is an undesirable outcome.  Our attachment dissolves.  We feel the release of trying to impose our will on the situation and we simply let it be.  We’ve surrendered.  Now we can just be and allow the movements of life to move about.  

When there is a situation that feels big to us, it is easy to see how this process works.  There is a build up of tension to the point where we simply can’t take it anymore and it seems that the only choice is to let go.  But what about all of the space in between, the small tensions that arise in our day to day living that we just live with, that we’ve accommodated to tolerating as our baseline for existing?  We often wonder why we don’t always feel flow, or why some days seem easy and others so challenging?  It seems that our stable base of goodness comes and goes, and that it isn’t in our control.  We don’t realize that what seems to interfere with our stable base of flow and ease is our tolerance for small little tensions that we hold onto without really knowing that we are.  We may notice tension in our body, or that our breath doesn’t feel as full, or we may feel the clunkiness of the day or week, but it’s a mystery to us why we feel this way and why we can’t just get back to flow.  We can get back to flow, but first we must realize what small little tensions we are tolerating in our life.

Recognizing what we are tolerating and holding onto requires subtlety.  We must become more subtle and nuanced in paying attention to ourselves in an inquisitive way.  Often this means slowing down for moments throughout our day so that we can pay attention.  As soon as we notice effort, pushing, non-presence, or trying to just get through, we need to use this as a signal to ourselves to pause and inquire as to what we are feeling below the effort.  Diving in and bringing to awareness or light whatever subtle thing(s) we are trying to manipulate, control or manage.  Once you identity it, you can, just like that let it go.   

FINDING FLOW

Knowing what you are holding

The flow we desire is here now inside the same moment where we feel effort, strain or tension.  By recognizing the subtle little tensions you hold and being willing to let go of them as you notice them, you come into moment to moment surrender.  This is living surrendered.  It doesn’t mean that you are passive to life, but rather that you allow life to be as it is in response to you.  You take action on life in the ways you desire and then you allow life to give you the fruits of those actions in whatever ways it will.  You detach from insisting that your desires should manifest in any particular way.  If you do this you will experience the freedom that is always here, but which you simply are not attuned to when you are bound inside of your tensions.  

You might wonder why you tolerate a bunch of little tensions throughout your day or why you indulge in being non-present.  It’s this.  We tend to think that all of the things we hold onto are important.  Somehow we perceive that it’s vital that we hold on to say a certain perspective we have, a feeling we are feeling, or a thought that we are mulling over and over.  There is some value we find in not letting go of whatever it is we are holding onto.  Some of it is habit, meaning we are unconscious to what we are holding so we just hold it, but as soon as we are aware of what we are holding onto it is no longer a habit, but rather a choice.  When we bring into awareness our tensions we make the them conscious.  Once we are conscious we are in charge. 

We may or may not like being in charge of ourselves.  We may not want to have as much power over ourselves as we think we want.  Regardless the power is yours.  There is nothing you can do about the power that you are/have except give it away to circumstances, events, situations or other people, or claim it as your own.  Either way it’s still yours.  You are free to do whatever you’d like to do with your power.  If you choose to claim it then you are able to let go of whatever you’d like to and also hold onto whatever you want to hold onto.  It’s now what you are choosing rather than it seemingly being the random state of being that you are in.  You now know why you feel effort or flow, and you realize that you can shift whenever you want to.  

Each time you notice that you are not in the state of being that you desire, you can check in and discover what little tension is interfering and let it go if you want to experience flow again.  It’s this commitment that creates a stability in your state of being because now you recognize that you can consciously choose your state.  This is moment to moment surrender.  It’s the giving away of what your mind thinks is so important and opening into what is instead.  At our core we all want to be open into the presence of being and the aliveness of this moment.  It’s where all the richness resides.  We hold on because we somehow think that through holding onto whatever we are holding onto, that we will arrive in this richness because we will get what we want.  Surrender allows us to receive what we truly want which is often beyond what our minds can perceive. 

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

Emptying into Openness

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EMPTYING INTO OPENNESS 

Beyond open-mindedness

Most people like to think of themselves as being open-minded.  What is often meant by this is that we are available to perspectives, points of views and ways of thinking or behaving that are different than our own.  While we might not take on those ways of behaving or thinking, we don’t judge, shame or ridicule others for doing so.  While this is a valuable developmental stage in becoming less egocentric, it is rather rudimentary in the larger scheme of what it is to be open.  I could very simply state that to be open is not only the acceptance of all points of views, but beyond that the dissolution of all perspectives and points of view, most importantly your own.  That is another level of openness, where even your own perspectives don’t interfere with what is.  

For a moment feel what it is like to be empty of all things that you think you know.  All things that you’ve learned and experienced up to this point.  The easiest way to do this is to stop engaging with any thought that might be passing through your mind in this moment.  Just let it be rather than merging your awareness with and into it.  When you stop engaging with your thoughts, you are left with the clear space of being.  Some people call this emptiness, awareness or the open sky.  The thing about this is that there is nothing for the mind to grab onto and therefore nothing for it to identify itself with.  Some minds interpret this negatively and may feel fear at this level of non-engagement with stuff.  Fear of dissolving, of not mattering, of not having significance or worth, and of feeling like everything in the world will fall apart.  It is not so much that everything in the external world will fall apart or that your body will dissolve into thin air, rather its simply that your mind quits interpreting everything it perceives through the lenses you’ve learned and worn.  

While this may feel scary to some, my friends, this is freedom.  Yes freedom can feel scary to the mind that has ever only known imprisonment.  A mind that has been stuck inside of its’ perspectives and points of view that have given it a sense of the known.  Perspectives that you don’t even know that you’re trapped inside of.  The openness of being is stepping into the moment, which is unknown, and which unfolds itself inside of itself.  It cannot be pre-known or preplanned.  It can only be experienced presently.  While we are hungry for this level of unbridled novelty and aliveness, we are simultaneously terrified of what happens to the sense of stability, safety and security that we get from thinking that we know stuff.   

DEATH OF SELF-DELUSION 

Stable ground of self

When we are without our learned perspectives for even just a few moments, we get a taste freedom.  Yet letting go of what we know feels sometimes confusing and like a bunch of little micro-deaths.  That belief, thought or idea about life, that we had so much conviction in just a moment ago, now no longer gets front stage, as we relinquish our grasp on it.  What happens now to our sense of self, to our identity, to who we think we are and what we know?  You might wonder how can we function in this space of not knowing.  What I can say is that you are already functioning in this space of not knowing, it’s only that you’ve deluded yourself into believing that you know.  That deluded knowledge or knowing, while comforting, is also a prison of monotonous stagnation.  So it’s not so much about “how” will you function if you let go of all of your preconceived notions about everything, because you already are functioning in empirical uncertainty, but more about consciously choosing to not delude yourself anymore.  

The choice to not delude yourself anymore awakens you out of your self-imposed prison.  To not indulge in the stories or fantasies that your mind conjures up about what is, and not give any type of meaning to what is occurring or not occurring and rather simply experience it in its innocence, is the freedom that we all dream of.  The full permission for everything, including ourselves, to just be, in every single moment.  Anew.  Like a child seeing the world.  While we all think we want this, what we don’t realize is that we have to give up everything we think we know first.  That can seem like a high stake gamble to the one that is thoroughly invested in its’ identity, what it thinks it wants and needs, it’s stories, and all of the stuff that seems so tangible that it has created.  

Surrendering our thoughts can feel like death of our dreams, worth, purpose, significance and stable ground.  Yet thoughts are not as stable as we like to think they are.  One moment the thought “I am amazing” can arise and in the next moment “I suck” can arise.  We grapple.  Which is right, and which is wrong?  Am I this or am I that?  How stable does that feel to you?  Not stable at all, which is why, underneath it all, none of us feel like we have any stability.  We attempt to create stability through the ever changing sea of thoughts that run through our minds, rather than in just being.  In “I am”, rather than I am this or that, we find the stability we seek.  That stability is in an identity that is not fused with anything.  No thought, feeling or sensation about itself, but rather simply itself being.  

To live open we must untether ourselves from the false, from the points of views and perspectives that keep us seeing through dirty glasses.  Tempting the emptiness is like seducing the mystery to show herself to us.  It’s playful, exciting and light.  It’s like falling into the abyss and discovering the net that’s been there all along.  There is no real danger in the emptiness of freedom, only the imagined danger of what you think recognizing your open self might be.  Emptying into openness reveals only the innocence of pure being and the rested stable ground of yourself.

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

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

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

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

Revealing Spirit

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REVEALING SPIRIT 

Spirit is here

Whether we are attuned to or aware of it, spirit always is.  Spirit does not come and go.  It does not decide to be here in one moment and leave the next.  There are no conditions in which spirit does not exist.  Spirit is unconditional in its presence and in its beingness.  What does come and go is our focus on it.  Maybe you’ve had the experience where one day you feel completely connected to spirit and then the next day not so much.  You might wonder why does this happen?  Why does it seem that you can’t stay in connection with spirit all of the time?  The first thing to recognize is that you can.  It is entirely possible to live in a state of conscious awareness and connection with spirit at all times.  The second thing to know is that it’s going to take some work, focus and commitment to do so.  It’s likely not just going to happen.  While we might have insights, epiphanies and awakenings along the way, to live fully connected is not instantaneous for most people.  

What is spirit?  Spirit has a lot of words to describe it, yet it isn’t defined by any of the words.  The words simply help give the mind context.  Spirit is what enlivens all forms.  You could call that breath, energy, awareness, being, presence, aliveness, love, light or heart to name a few.  It is that which is before any thought, feeling or sensation arises and it is what every thought, feeling and sensation rests in.  It is what every form is born out of and that which penetrates every form.  It is the root of all wakefulness.  It is the stillness that guides all movement and motion.  It is the source of all things.  When you make contact with spirit you make contact with that one source that makes you, me and everything come alive.  

While the workings of Spirit are mysterious, its presence is not.  It is as close as your breath.  It’s as obvious as the fact that you are aware.  Often that which is the closest and most obvious is overlooked.  Our mind thinks that it is supposed to be something else.  Something more complex or occluded.  Something harder to see or know.  Something more “special”.  But that fact that you are aware that you exist is evidence enough.  Making spirit less mysterious and more obvious will help dissolve the apparent disconnect you sometimes feel.  Rather than thinking you need to find some magical or prescribed way back to spirit, really you can just notice the fact that you exist.  Notice your beingness and it will bring you back into conscious connection with Spirit.   

DEVOTION, COMMITMENT & PRACTICE

Noticing Spirit

Now that you are clear on the non-mysterious nature of the presence of Spirit that always is, we come to the practical piece of devotion, commitment and practice.  If we don’t practice noticing Spirit than we won’t notice it.  Obvious, right?  It is, yet most of us don’t get this.  We wonder why we feel disconnected when we haven’t really made an every day practice of noticing Spirit, or noticing that we exist.  I know this seems so simple, and it is, maybe too simple that your mind gets bored and starts focusing on the things of life that are moving all about.  Before you know it you are totally absorbed in your activities, your to do list, your thoughts, and all the things you need to figure out in order to heal.  While you are busy being focused on all the stuff, you are not paying attention to the fact that you exist, that Spirit is.  

Be honest, what percentage of the day do you simply pay attention to the fact that you be, that you are, that you are aware of being? 10% (1.5 hours of a waking day), 5% (45 minutes), 0%?  It’s no wonder we feel largely disconnected from Spirit and kind of a miracle that we ever feel connected at all, as little of our attention that we give to it.  As you are evaluating yourself here you may be surprised how little attention you give to noticing Spirit despite how many spiritual activities you do in a given day or week.  Oddly enough doing spiritual activities doesn’t always bring us back into conscious connection with Spirit.  Often we are just doing the activity such as meditation, yoga, prayer, etc., just to do it, but without really being devoted to reconnecting.  Being devoted or committed takes energy.  It requires that we elevate our state of being even when we feel low.  It also requires that we know what to pay attention too.  It’s one thing to be mindful or aware of things, it’s entirely another beast to mindful of pure being minus the things.  

Again while your mind might at first be bored by paying attention to Spirit or just being, there is a magic that reveals itself the more that you do.  Spirit is anything but boring, however to our overstimulated, instantly gratified mind, that thinks it can get to Spirit by thinking or doing something, we might just perceive Spirit as a vast boring beingness that is devoid of all things.  We might wonder when we can get up and just do something already so that we can get somewhere or figure something out.  How can anything come out of this nothingness?  You might think, “can’t I just try to get to somewhere else instead?”  Can’t I find a way to get to Spirit rather realize that I be Spirit? The human mind is so impatient, demanding, confused, and arrogant.

The more you absorb your attention and awareness onto Spirit the greater conscious connection you create.  You begin to lay down pathways to stably know and rest in connection with Spirit.  Remember Spirit always is.  It’s only you and the use of your will, devotion and commitment that shifts.  Nothing else does.  Regardless of what appears on the screen of your life you can learn to be consciously connected in Spirit at all times if you so choose.  

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

Being Accountable to Your Perfection

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BEING ACCOUNTABLE TO YOUR PERFECTION 

Your perfection has never been touched

It is a tall order and a high ask to be accountable to your own perfection.  To take ownership of what you innately are, and stand behind it no matter what you or others think, can feel like an impossible feat.  At times we are filled with contrary and conflicting thoughts, which seem like hard proof or evidence, that we are indeed imperfect.  To go against our hard pressed belief in the imperfection of ourselves, and the projection of that belief onto things, circumstances and other people, is a journey only for the brave at heart.  The paradox of this all is that claiming the truth of what we are requires that we allow ourselves to be wrong in how we’ve been viewing ourselves and life.  Since the fundamental wounding in denying our own and other’s perfection comes with a ferrous will to never be seen or viewed as wrong, we perpetuate our belief in imperfection through avoiding it.  

You may feel confused as to how allowing imperfection leads you closer to perfection.  You may perceive that to be the opposite direction.  I assure you it’s not.  Simply because we avoid or deny something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.  What is exists regardless.  The distorted ways in which you perceive what is simply are, even if you attempt to not see them, or you want to fix or change them.  Just because something or someone, or better stated a perspective, is confused in the way it perceives, doesn’t make it any less or more perfect.  In fact the perfection of the person, thing or perspective is never touched, tainted or influenced at all by how it is seen.  You many wonder how can this be?  Surely you’ve felt impacted by how you’ve been viewed by others, or by thoughts you’ve had about yourself.  The key here is that you’ve felt impacted, but you’ve never been impacted.  Your innate perfection has never, even for a moment, been anything but perfect regardless of how you’ve felt about it.

All this to point to how allowing imperfection never touches the perfection of what you are.  In fact if you are a hard core believer in imperfection, and thus attempt to create perfection inside and all around you, then allowing more and more imperfection will move you into the realization of the absolute perfection in everything.  You are allowed to feel, see and perceive imperfection all about you.   You are also allowed to feel exactly how you feel about it.  Sad, mad, frustrated, irritated, confused, hopeless, powerless, etc.  Allowing what you feel will help pop you up and out of your current perspective and into a wider view of things.  

Light of Perfection  

Beyond being liked

By now I hope you see that feeling imperfection is perfect and it never touches the perfection that you are.  Now onto what is to be accountable to your perfection.  First things first.  You are not here inside this human experience to be liked and approved of by others, or even yourself.  If you choose being liked or approved of as your priority, than you will likely be side-railed in being accountable to your perfection.  It’s like this.  If you are really honest with yourself, you always know when you are in alignment and when you are out it.  You know when you feel pulled by something, but it doesn’t feel quite right.  That something could be a behavior you do, an action you take or don’t take, words you say or don’t say, or things you think.  We all have an inner guidance system that let’s us know.  Now sometimes we don’t want to listen to that guidance or follow through on it.  We don’t want to because we fear we might lose something if we do.  That something might be connection, love, respect, an opportunity or thing we really want, and so on.  Rather than listen to what we know, we choose contrary and go out of alignment with ourselves.  The primary reason we do this is because we don’t have faith in ourselves and life, but rather let fear run the show. 

Being accountable to your perfection means that you act in accordance with the knowing of it, even though at times it may feel scary, uncomfortable, and stretch you outside of your normal character structures.  In knowing your perfection you may at times feel or be perceived as arrogant, fierce, unkind, non-caring, disregarding, judgmental, mean and many more.  I’m not saying that you are any of those things, but rather that you may be perceived, either by yourself or by others as such.  In general most people try to avoid being any of those characteristics, hence why we will go out of alignment with what we know, and choose to be liked by others rather than stand in truth with them.  You may wonder why you might be perceived in these ways just by standing in your perfection.  The answer is because there is strong opposition to the belief in perfection.  When you challenge people’s, or your own imperfection belief, by standing in the knowingness of perfection, you can expect that it will not always be received in an open and glowing fashion, even though it has the purest and most loving intentions of all.

Being a light of perfection in a collective consciousness that does its best to find wrongness in everything will make a warrior out of you.  To pierce through and be a clear transmission of the truth of what you are, of what we all are, takes courage and full accountability.  Whether or not people agree with you or not, doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you stop being afraid of what you know.   That you have the courage to claim what you already are.  That you walk with the knowing of the perfection of all, including all of your perspectives of imperfection.  Only then can you see through the confused perceptions and beliefs that exist inside of you and others, and become a beacon of light.  A light which points back into the direction of home, of truth, of remembrance of the most fundamental nature of all.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado

Your Impact on the Field

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YOUR IMPACT ON THE FIELD 

Tuning your awareness

We tend to think that the world inside of our heads lives only there. What we internally focus on or pay attention to in our minds, we think affects only ourselves, if even that.  We don’t really realize the impact of our awareness on the field, space or environment all around.  Often our experience is that our thoughts are simply random passing flickers and we really don’t get the power that we have in how and what we pay attention too.  Due to this, many of us are not disciplined in utilizing the power of our minds and therefore we don’t feel that we are very powerful.  The thing is that regardless if you are aware of the power of your mind or not, you still have one, and you are consciously or unconsciously using it to focus in certain ways.  The way in which you focus is affecting you, the field you perceive around you, and arguably the expanse of the entire universe.  

The field is the interconnected web of which you cannot not be a part of, even if you don’t want to be.  Many might think of it as the empty space in between things, but it is much more than that.  Even though you can’t see the field with your physical eyes, it is densely packed with energy and information.  The energy and information that the field contains is made up of awareness or consciousness.  What that means is that the source of energy and information that makes up the field is you, as you are awareness.  You are the awareness that is aware of your body and of all the things you perceive in your environment.  You are not the objects or forms, but rather the awareness of the objects and forms.  Having this basic understanding of the field can help you see how you have direct impact on the field, as your awareness makes up the field.  

Why is this important?  It’s important for many reasons.  One of those reasons is that in recognizing that you impact the field you can begin to be more conscious of that impact and even utilize it.  The result of this is that you create an experience of life that is more in alignment with your desires and you feel more powerful in your ability to work with life.  You perceive the happenings of life to be less random and become more intentional and participatory with manifestation.  When I say manifestation I simply mean the physical, tangible world of experience.  One of the reasons that physical manifestation sometimes seems to not match our inner state of preference or desire is because we lack coherence with the whole.  Another reason is that we are not consciously aware of where we are manifesting from, meaning we are unconscious and undisciplined in the power of using our minds.   

BECOMING MORE AWAKE 

Bringing more magic to life

The more you realize your impact on the field, the more self-responsible you must become to your own state of being and how you use your focus.  This is the process of becoming more awake.  Being more awake doesn’t mean that you are more aware of spiritual concepts than your neighbors, family members or the average joe.  Or that you attend more spiritual workshops, read more books, or do more ceremonies than other people.  Rather being more awake means you are more accountable to your inner state and your impact on the field.  It’s a bit more practical and a little less woo then some people might prefer.  It’s not about someone or something saving you from your experience, but rather you bringing to your experience what you want it to be.  

The waking up process can be perceived as perhaps less magical and require more work than we would like it too.  After all being accountable to our state of being is not something we are really taught early on.  Rather we learn that our state of being is dependent on our life looking, feeling or being a certain way.   This is why we keep recreating the same experiences over and over and why it sometimes feels like nothing is changing and we aren’t growing, both individually or collectively.  When we don’t deliberately choose our state of being and focus, then life just seems to be happening on it’s own, and in a way it is.  We aren’t awake or conscious enough of ourselves to run the show, so the show just runs.  If we want to watch a new program, or have a different experience of life, then we must get up and change the station.  Getting up and changing the station is the equivalent to shifting what or how you use your focus.

Often as spiritual seekers we are attempting to bring some kind of levity, light, bliss, joy and ease into our experience and the world.   Yet we often fail to see how we aren’t bringing that.  We are caught in our feelings and sensations of heaviness, darkness, confusion and hard work, and genuinely don’t know why we aren’t experiencing butterflies and sunshine everyday.  This isn’t about denying or spiritually bypassing what we are feeling, but rather feeling what we are feeling, accepting it, and then choosing what we truly desire.  This is often hard to do.  It requires energy.  It requires changing our mind’s focus.  It requires that we care about ourselves and our experience of life.  

Your impact on the field is a real thing.  How you show up, what you choose to focus on, and where you place your awareness will determine your experience.  Beyond that it will also either enliven or drain the field, it will either add life or take life out it.  You can move mountains if you learn to discipline your focus.  You can do things that appear to be magic.  You can bring actual magic into your everyday experience for yourself and others in a very real and practical way.  You stop creating separation between your spiritually preferred reality and the ordinary reality that we seem to be living in.  There is no difference.  The forms of our ordinary reality will shift and change in response to the information they receive from the field, from you, from your awareness.  Learning to discipline your attention and focus might possibly be the most important thing you can do for yourself and others. 

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