spirituality

Master of Limitation

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MASTER OF LIMITATION 

Human experiencing

Having a human experience often feels like one hard thing after the next.  Roadblocks, challenges, and hoops to jump through every single day.  Wanting things to work out, manifest and be as we desire them to be often feels like one failure and miss after another.  All of the little annoying arising we must deal with when we would much rather just feel flow and ease.  We get tastes of flow and ease, but then, just like that, it seems to disappear and we find ourselves trodding uphill, against the current of life and fighting against what we don’t want, so that we can hopefully get to what we do.  Why isn’t it easier?  If we are all powerful creators like all of the spiritual teachers tell us we are, then why can’t we have what we desire in each moment?  These are great questions, for which I don’t have any grand answers, except that, this is the way it is.  It’s as if we are here to learn how to navigate in an environment of extreme challenge and limitation.

The experience of limitation of capabilities, capacities, power, resources, opportunities and overall self, can really dim the joy we experience.  It takes whatever light is inside of us, and like a dimmer switch, gets lower and lower, until we can’t see anymore and all we experience is darkness, confusion, and powerlessness.  We don’t know who we are, what we are or why we are.  We just feel disconnected.  This is suffering.  This is, for the most part, the human experience.  The fact that we can find levity, joy and some sense of purpose, is nothing short of a miracle considering it all.  In suffering it’s hard to be grateful and nearly impossible to feel connected.  I’m not sure why it’s necessary that we experience this, only that somehow it’s relevant because we are experiencing it.  

I could hypothesis that perhaps it’s simply to learn how to be a master of limitation.  Not necessarily to overcome it and no longer experience it, though that is all well and fine if you do, but to develop ourselves in such a way that no matter what handicaps we have given ourselves or that have been given to us, we can learn how to adapt and use whatever it is that we have available to us in whatever ways that we can.  We may want it all to be a bit more magical than that, especially if we’ve experienced states of being where we were less bound by limitations.  Yet perhaps it’s about allowing ourselves to have this human experience of limitation, exploring what we will inside of it, and being a master of limitation, rather than trying to somehow get beyond it all so that we don’t experience it anymore.     

CHANGING THE SEER 

Mastering being human

When we allow ourselves to have the experience of limitation, challenge, obstacle, inconvenience and the like, we embrace our experience rather than fight it.  This embracing of the experience doesn’t necessarily change the outer experience, but it does change our inner one.  We may still not like what is happening, it may not be our preference or desire, but it no longer has us completely hooked.  We are less triggered and therefore inherently less bound and more spacious inside of the experience of whatever the limitation is.  Well this might not equal the experience we want to be experiencing, it will end our resistance to what is and we will feel more accepting and empowered just by that shift.  

While it might not feel like you choose this human experience and everything that comes with it, somehow here you are.  You’ve arrived here, chosen or not, and the only thing you can do is make the best out of it.  It’s kind of like arriving to a party that you find to be less exciting than you originally thought it would be.  You find it rude to exit the party early, so you can either drag yourself through the party until it ends or you can find some way to make it kind of interesting for yourself.  That is where your choice comes in.  You may not always get to choose the environment of the party and all of the people at it, but you do get to choose how you want to experience it.  As I see it this is true self-empowerment.  

We often get confused by all the messages we hear about how to manifest our reality and make it what we want it to be.  We think this means that we should have all the things we desire to have, and when we don’t have them we somehow think we are failing, and then feel even more frustrated by our lack in making our situations different than they are.  Being the creator of your reality is not about controlling all of the circumstances, situations and happenings of your life to match your preference.  It about shifting your inner state of being to match the state of being you prefer to be in no matter what is happening with the situations and experiences of your life.  It is easy to be in our preferred state of being when everything looks and feels like we want it too.  It is quite a challenge to do so when life doesn’t.  This is how we become a master of limitation.  

No matter what limitation, obstacle, or the grim appearance of our life shows to us, in order to become a master of limitation you must only look out and see what you prefer to see, rather than what your mind tells you is there.  Some people might call this delusion, I prefer to call it sanity.  It might just be the only true way to change the world.  As we see so it is.  Without this skill, and eventual mastery, you are subjected to what your mind tells you that you are experiencing rather than innerly experiencing what you desire to experience.  When you take your cue from the grim appearance of life, rather than from yourself and what you desire to see, you are left feeling absolute powerlessness, from which no change can occur.  To master limitation you must accept what you see, and rather than try to change the appearance of it, change that which is doing the looking, which is you. 

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

Moment to Moment Surrender

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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

You Don’t Need to Do More

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YOU DON’T NEED TO DO MORE

Be as you are

Nearly all of us have bought into the story that we need to do more and more and more.  It’s as though we could give everything we’ve got to give and somehow we still come up short in what we think we need to give.  The doing, and the thoughts of all the doing, are exhausting.  We then wonder why we are so tired and depleted, and yet we keep attempting to give more than we’ve got to give.  What happens when we run out of fuel, but we keep giving anyways?  Breakdown.  Breakdown of our body, our mind and our lives.  We see the breakdown and still we don’t stop trying to give more than we’ve got to give.  

Where does this insatiable need to do more come from?  It comes from a deep seated belief that we are not enough.  We think that if we can somehow give or do more, then we can bridge the gap between our not enoughness and what we think we need to give in order for it to be enough.  It’s as if all of our doing can somehow compensate for our sense of not being enough in/as our natural state of being.  As an extension of this, our sense of not enoughness often shows up as a feeling of lack in abundance of resources.  We give or do more, more, more so that we don’t feel this lack of enoughness.  We fear that if we don’t over-give or over-do then we won’t have what we need or we won’t be taken care of.  So we are like slaves to our avoidance of feeling the not enoughness that we fear we are.  

It’s an edge for many of us to simply be rested as ourselves without feeling the inner obligation, necessity, or burden to do or give more than is natural for us to give or do.  We hope that our doing will make us feel like we are enough.  We try to get to enough through our giving rather than simply being enough.  It’s a losing game, because we can never feel or experience what we don’t first become.  We must become enough before we will experience the feelings of enoughness.  Nothing we do can will ever sustainably get us to feeling complete.  We are attempting to do it backwards.  We somehow think that we have to prove, attain or show our worthiness in order to experience it.  Yet the recognition or realization of our enoughness, in our already state of being as we are, is the answer to the end of feeling not enough.  When we see ourselves and what we have to naturally give as enough in its expression, then so it is.  This doesn’t always mean that the people or things in our life will always get what they want from us, but it does mean that you will be alignment with yourself as you are.   

A WORLD OF ENOUGHNESS 

Abundant in abundance

A world of absolute and complete enoughness.  Can you even imagine what that would feel or be like?  Imagination is exactly what we need.  Imagination that is rooted in knowing that it is already so.  In this way our imaginations can create the playing field of experience to match what we are already convicted in to be true.  This is the way it works.  It’s already working this way.  It’s simply that what we are currently convicted in is lack of enoughness of self, and the projection of that is the experience of lack in this world.  One might say that we are abundant in lack.  There is no real lack, but only the perception of it.  That is true for how we view ourselves and the world.  We can see ourselves as not enough, but we can never actually be not enough.  This is not to say that other flavors, resources or beings might not be needed in certain situations in life, but just because something more or else is needed has nothing to do with our inherent enoughness.  

We don’t need to be everything, we just need to be ourselves.  Being ourselves is enough even if more is needed.  We don’t have be the more.  This is why there are billions of beings on this planet.  Each being has the responsibility to be itself, nothing more and nothing less.  Neither is even possible.  You can always and only be what you are.  You can try to be more, but this where burnout and breakdown occurs.  Give over trying to be it all in order to be enough, and let in all of the other beings in this life to support whatever is needed in each and every moment.  We are not designed to do it all or be it all rather we are designed to be who we are, just as we are.  

It takes courage to not take it all on as yours.  Courage to trust that you being you is enough.  That you can love yourself just as you are and you don’t have to first be more.  Give what you want to give.  Do what you want to do.  Let whatever your giving and doing is be enough.  It is.  Just because you think that other people, or the situations of your life, want or need more of you than you have capacity to give or be, it’s ok to let it be or let them want.  It’s ok if they are disappointed or upset and/or if you are disappointed in yourself.  Come back to knowing that you are enough in your current state of giving, being and doing.  Get more and more convicted in the knowing of your enoughness.  The paradox is that the less you attempt to be more than you are, the more of you that you’ll have to give.  

Knowing you are enough is the same as loving yourself.  Honor who you are.  Stop wishing you could somehow be different or more.  That’s unkind, and if you value kindness then start with yourself.  You will naturally grow, expand and develop as a being, but none of that growth makes you more than you already are in this moment.  You are complete and enough right now in exactly whatever it is you give and do.  More giving or doing doesn’t make you more. Recognize your enoughness now and you will experience a world of enough.  A world that is abundant in abundance rather than abundant in lack.  It all starts and ends in how you view it.  How you see, so it is.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractor, 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

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

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