alignment

INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

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INTUITION & ALIGNMENT

Convincing ourselves other

We always know what is and isn’t in alignment for us.  Even if we don’t know certain facts, details, or the specifics of things, we know what feels on and what feels off.  All children know this.  In fact it’s even easier as children because there aren’t as many inner stories or rules to interfere.  We are naturally intuitive.  Where we run into trouble with ourselves is when we stop listening, ignore or take action in the opposite direction of what feels energizing to us.  When we choose the less energizing choice we feel the agony of inner conflict.  A conflict that is often reinforced by a sense of obligation, feeling like you have to do it a certain way or like you don’t know what else to do.  When doubt, fear and obligation rear their heads we can find ourselves sliding into what we know and what is familiar to us rather than what is actually aligned.

Convincing ourselves to take unaligned actions even when we know we will feel less energized by doing so, sometimes feels like the only way.  Why is this?  It’s because we don’t want to feel the uncertainty of not knowing what’s next.  We let our avoidance of uncertainty of outer things override our knowing of inner things.  We start to accommodate to the appearance of outer things rather than stay centered in our inner knowing.  Sometimes it feels just so tempting to do so.  We feel lost because the outer world isn’t giving us facts, details and certainty.  Our inner world, while feeling good in its alignment, gets swayed by the seeming lack of things showing themselves to us.  Alas we get swayed by that part of us that feels like it has to know what will happen and needs some solid evidence of it.

We know we’ve been swayed when we start to feel heavy.  Our energy feels drained and it takes a lot of work to do little things.  It feels hard to make things happen.  Nothing seems to work and we feel unclear.  We become impatient and demanding.  We lose touch with gratitude.  We don’t see the magic in life and typically we complain a bit.  We work harder to make something, anything, happen.  We don’t even know what we specifically feel anymore, only that whatever it is we don’t like it and we want some information, details, facts and certainty to show up already.  We’ve all experienced this a time or two.  You wouldn’t be human if you hadn’t.  This is what it feels like to be disconnected.  Disconnected from yourself and therefore being or choosing differently than what is actually in alignment for you and where you would like to come from.   

CHOOSING THE ENERGIZING WAY 

Building the alignment muscle

Surprisingly choosing what feels more aligned or more energized might freak you out a little bit.  Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it will require that you allow yourself to feel the mystery of not knowing.  However if you can handle the heat you will develop the muscle of following your alignment, and that is a muscle worth developing.  Some people might call this faith or trust, and in addition to that there is a huge heap of courage needed to listen and follow what it is you already know inside.  To break this down a little further, uncertainty can manifest as someone not responding favorably to a choice you make.  It might also look like not having a back up plan.  It can be taking an action towards something that feels exciting without any clue what the results with be.  It can be pausing or waiting when no answers or options are presenting themselves.  There is perceived risk in these things.  Risk to our sense of identity, to our relationships, to our feelings of safety and sense of progress.

Yet if we desire to feel energized, to feel alive and vital, then we must learn to follow our inner knowing.  Call it intuition, inner knowing or alignment, it’s all the same.  When we choose the choice, the way or the path that energizes us, whether that means taking no action or taking massive action, we always feel better.  It always feels better to choose our alignment even if it feels scary, threatening or uncertain, and even if it means we have to let something go.  Letting something go could be letting go of a way of being, thinking or seeing that is very familiar to us.  It might be letting go of a relationship configuration so that it can reconfigure.  It might be shifting physical locations or letting go of objects.  It might be letting go of ideas that aren’t really exciting to us, but that we’ve convinced ourselves we need or want.  When we let go we create space for life to show us what is really in alignment and what the appearance of our true alignment looks like.

We all have the capacity to take actions in alignment.  It is of course our free will to choose whether or not we will.  It is more exciting and unnerving to follow our inner knower all of the time.  Our inner knower is our compass, our guide, and our friend in this lifetime.  It is constantly informing us even when we aren’t listening.  However if you choose to listen and have the courage to take action in response to its messages, you will always feel like you are on purpose even when you don’t know what the heck you’re doing or what heck is going on.  You can simultaneously be in the total mystery and complete alignment at the same time.  Having your mind know something based on the appearance of what is showing up in your life pales in comparison to living an aligned life in complete mystery.  Again courage is required and with more and more aligned action you will come to understand the basic mechanisms of how life works.  Life will show you what your alignment looks like when you come from being aligned.  You can forget about what you think life should look like from your ideas of alignment and instead watch the movie be revealed to you before your very eyes.  It’s exciting, and it’s a mystery. 

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

ACCEPTING THE MISSION

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ACCEPTING THE MISSION 

Get aligned with the call

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

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

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

REMEMBERING THE MISSION 

Be who you are

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

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

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

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

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

STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE

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STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE 

Be finished with finishing

So often we do to get things done.  In fact most of our days are spent getting through one activity or task after another.  It seems as though the doing is ceaseless, except perhaps for a few moments at the end of our day or week.  Why do we live in the constant cycle of doing?  It as if we are all trying to get somewhere.  A place where we can rest, relax and be at ease.  We think that we might arrive there if we can just get done all of the stuff we feel like we have to do.  Such is the case that most of us are not enjoying much of our doing, but rather wanting to simply get it over with so we can move onto doing the next thing that we don’t enjoy.  All so that hopefully, at some point, we can get to an activity we like or simply just rest. 

In a culture where we value productivity more than enjoyment, connection or presence, and perceive non-activity as laziness, we are set up to live as doing machines.  The foundation for our dominant train of thought is how much or how many.  When we go to our jobs we don’t get praised or promoted for our non-productivity or for our presence, but rather for how much we get done.  We don’t get paid for how much we enjoy what we are doing, but rather only for the job done.  While the culture creates this container for us, it is still us that values productivity more than enjoyment of what we are doing, and we continue to insist that perhaps we will arrive somewhere better at some future time.  

As a result of this we are fairly disconnected from own impulses, urges to move and natural rhythms.  You might call this intuition, but really it’s just listening and following your inner rhythms rather than your conditioned response to things. We constantly feel like we need “know something out there” because we can’t hear our own inner knowing.  We seek for safety and certainty inside of situations or circumstances rather than within our own selves.   So like any good and reliable machine we produce.  We meet all of the outer expectations from bosses, friends and family members.  We live up to all the marks the best we can and do whatever we perceive we need to do in order to be ok.  With this we often ignore, repress, or deny our own rhythms of activity and non-activity.  We feel stressed, not necessarily because of the situation, but because of our own disregard for listening to what feels good to us.  We fear we won’t be taken care of, supported, or have all of our physical, emotional or social needs met if we don’t answer to the doing machine.  We reserve relaxation for the few moments in our life where we don’t perceive threat.  Then we call this being human.  I’m not sure about you, but I think being human can be better than this.   

DOING FROM ENJOYMENT 

Courageously choose joy

What would it take for you to do all you do through enjoyment, and never simply to get something done again?  How would you have to think or structure your life differently?  What if the purpose of activity is not to finish it, but rather to actively participate with the doing of it?  What if you did not allow yourself to do something unless you were in a state of enjoyment about the doing?  This is what it would be like to enjoy life rather than do life.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that the activity of life will never come to a halting stop, but what can is how we engage with activity and what we value in terms of productivity and presence.  There are no hard and fast rules here.  It’s all about creating your experience of life how you want to be rather than the way it currently seems to be set up.

Many live as if there isn’t enough time.  Like we can’t, or won’t be able to do all the things we need or want to in the time allotted.  What if you create a new story for yourself that there is enough time for everything.  Beyond that, what if rather than focusing on time altogether and what will or won’t be done inside of that time, you focus on enjoying whatever is occurring now.  What if you stop should-ing and hav-ing yourself, and dismantle all of your resistance to enjoyment.  Yes believe it or not most people resist enjoyment, but gladly accept suffering through things to get them done.  It’s not logical, but it is normalized.  

You might realize that you have some pretty hardcore beliefs in there that you are supposed to do stuff at whatever cost it is to your own enjoyment.  That to enjoy life is a luxury rather than a must.  But what if you made it must?  What if you realized that enjoyment is not luxury, but rather it’s the value or standard you firmly ground your feet in and make it more important than productivity and getting things done.  What if you don’t force yourself to do things that you don’t feel like doing, and what if you made it ok to rest and be, without guilt or fear, rather than always be engaged in activity?  See it’s really your choice even if you think it’s not.  

You might be wondering, won’t there be “consequences” for your actions, or more particularly for your non-actions?  There will most definitely be effects, however they may not be as negative as you conjure them up to be in your mind.  You might discover and fully embrace resting and enjoying, without judging it as lazy or making it mean something about your worth as a human being, which is something that not many people are successful at achieving (pun intended).  Also as you let go of the pressure you place on yourself to do many of things you do or think you should do, you may find that you want to do some of those things, and in that way they become desirable and enjoyable rather than tasks to get done.  This  is all to come to the knowing that your ok-ness, worth, validation, approval, permission to feel good about yourself, security and safety is not dependent on your actions or non-actions.  This frees you to do only from and through enjoyment.  To longer be manipulated by your own or other’s stories about what you must do.  Believe it or not, doing only from enjoyment takes tremendous courage, even though it’s the most natural way of living, which points to the fact that we live quite unnaturally.  Be courageous and do only from enjoyment.  

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

UNIQUELY YOU

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UNIQUELY YOU 

You are a gift

Each of us is unique.  An expression of the one infinite that no one else can be.  While in essence we are all the same, each of us carries  a unique flavor or frequency, which we share by being who we are and taking action in ways that excite us.  You are ok just as you are.  There is no one else that you need to be, or even that you could be for that manner.  There is nothing you need to do except that which feels resonate with you.  Yet we spend much energy thinking we must be like so and so, and that we must do more or do differently than what we desire to do.  We create negative meaning about ourselves based on arbitrary stories of who we think we should be and what we should be doing.  We then of course feel bad about ourselves, unworthy, not good enough and like we are failing our purpose.  We don’t appreciate who we are or the flavor we express, which results in us not taking actions in ways we desire.

Why do we see others and appreciate or “envy” them while not appreciating or envying ourselves? Perhaps you think it’s self-absorbed to appreciate your own being.  Maybe it feels awkward to you to like yourself and acknowledge how you contribute.  Perhaps you’ve confused loving yourself with arrogance.  Regardless of what it is for you there is likely self-denial of your own worth or refusal to see yourself as a gift.  Imagine a world where we all saw ourselves as a gift.  Since giving is inherent in being a gift, life would be an abundant resource of available energy for exchange with no depletion.  By not seeing the magnificence of your own being you actually take energy out of the field of life rather than contribute to it. Seeing yourself as a gift is the least arrogant way of viewing.  

Unwinding the story of arrogance and relaxing into yourself is not difficult.  It requires no special skills, knowledge or profound healing experience, but instead requires only the inner permission to do so.  There is no outside person, situation or force that will make you ok as you are.  Only you can decide to be ok as you are and come to appreciate and like your own self.  Seeing value in the unique expression that you are without adding anything to you is key to feeling like you are fulfilling your purpose for existing.  The reason that so many feel lost without clear direction is not because there is a lack of guidance, but rather because there is a lack of self-appreciation and love.  How on purpose you feel is directly related to how you feel about yourself.  If you turn the pressure down on trying to be or do something other than you are and turn the appreciation up on yourself as you are, your calling or purpose will be clear to you.   

CLEARING JUDGMENT  

No right or wrong

There is no right way to do life. There is also no wrong way.   This is challenging for most people to accept.  Regardless of how spiritual or evolved we think we are, most of us have judgment of self or others.  What if you radically realized that you really don’t know either way or any way, what is really right or wrong.  That your conceptions of rightness and wrongness are based only in what you’ve been conditioned to believe.  If you cleared yourself of all beliefs there would only be pure meaninglessness or said another way, there would only be what is without thought about what is.  Many will argue still that there is right and wrong, better and worse, good and bad, but what if there just is what there is.  If we stopped judging what is and instead saw what is, we may surprise ourselves as to what it is we see.  This state of clearness, of non-bias, is the essential ground from which you can effortlessly be and share the gift of you.  Where you know how to serve, share or express the gift you are and participate with what is rather than think, strategize or attempt to figure things out.

Giving yourself the permission and freedom to stop judging life frees you up to be of service to it.  When you no longer need to make a difference, only then can you actually make one.  This is when simply being you, as you are, makes the difference.  There is nothing out there, added or extra needed.  There is only the unique expression of what you are to share without agenda of what will come forth from your expression.  When you appreciate and know enoughness of what you are then enoughness is the result, but because we come from incompletion and attempting to get something to happen or to get somewhere, we never quite arrive.  

All of this to say, and to give you permission if you so need it, to feel amazing about yourself.  To embrace the unique expression of the one infinite that you are.  The only things to clean up are those things in your mind or life that are inconsistent with you feeling amazing about who you are.  You don’t have to clean up to be better, you don’t have to heal in order to be more, there is no more or better to get too.  Dispel any of the beliefs that you have that this may be arrogant, dismissive or prideful.  To feel bad about yourself and/or your expression is the true pridefulness.  Recognize that where you are trying to ‘get’ to is simply to feel good, love/be yourself, and share your unique expression with others.  There is also nothing others need to get or receive from you other than what you are.    

Everything you could ever need will be met and taken care of once you embrace you.  It’s the end of trying to get things, accomplish stuff or be loved by others in order to be ok.  You will have all things you need, accomplish what is yours to accomplish and be rested as love when you accept your own inherent uniqueness as you are.  No one else can be you.  No one else can serve as you do.  No one else can fulfill the that purpose you are.  Be done trying to be or do something other than what you are.  Discover the joy, freedom and love in being you and the wonder, awe and gratitude of what naturally expresses through.  

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

KNOW WHY YOU ARE

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KNOW WHY YOU ARE 

You do not exist to do

There really is nothing more pivotal, more important and more fundamental to your existence then knowing why you are.  Why you are is who you are.  Why you are is your existence.  It is the only function, the only purpose, the only intention that your existence serves.  So many people feel lost.  So many feel that they don’t know the very foundation of their being or why they exist at all.  It seems as though nothing makes sense and life feels hard as they attempt to try to make things happen from a state of disconnection from themselves.  When we don’t know why we are we feel helpless, like a circumstance to life, like a product of our environment of which we are powerless too.  It seems life can give and take things from us.  It seems like we have no control over it all.  

When we know why we are and we align our entire self with that knowing, we live without any agenda and nothing can interfere with what we know ourselves to be.  What we be, we are, and we give.  Our need to manipulate or control life to our desired appearance or picture ends.  All we care about is who we are, why we are and being that.  The outcome of anything ceases to matter at all.  This is freedom.  This is the full exercise and expression of our free will.  This is living power and the recognition that nothing can take that from you.  No person, no decision, no structure outside of yourself, and no inner thought, story, sensation or feeling can take away why you are.  

Why you are is not what you do.  What you do is informed by why you are when you know why you are, but what you do is not why you are.  You did not come here to be a doer.  You do not exist to do.  Doing is rather an extension or means of sharing why you are, but it is only a means to share and not the reason you exist.  So often we confuse why we are with what we do.  When we are more identified with our body, our personality and the things of our life, then we are with why we are, we feel at threat, unstable and we attempt to control all the parts and pieces of life.  When we are rested in why we are, the endless stream of thoughts about past and future pause.  You stop focusing on what you are doing and rather focus on why you are doing.  The ‘what’ seems almost trivial as you recognize that it is not the purpose or intention, but only a way to express the intention.  At first this can be a bit much to really look at as we gain so much of our identity, value and worth through what we do.  We may not want to let go of the doer/doing as our identity.  Yet as you reorient to why you are you will find freedom through letting go of the what, even if you worked really hard at creating it.   

THE WHOLE PICTURE 

Why you are is who you are

The picture of why you are is different than the picture of what you think you want.  The picture of why you are comes with what you want others to experience and know through your presence.  This is way, way, way more simple than most people think.  See because we don’t exist to do and make shit happen, because that is not who we are, we must look a little bit past the surface appearance of ourselves to see why we fundamentally exist in the first place.  You may be wondering how to discover this for yourself.  Start by locating a profound moment in your life.  Perhaps a moment or some moments where you felt fulfilled or in a peak state of being.  Notice what you felt.  What was the essence that made up those experiences?  What did you know or feel in those moments?  See if you can find repeating patterns between moments.  Is there a core theme?  If that seems elusive to you then another way to discover ‘why you are’ is ask yourself: what do you want to leave the people of the world knowing?  If you were to transition out of your body tomorrow what would you want people to know, feel or experience?  Whatever words you can find to describe that feeling state of being or knowing is the reason why you are.  It’s not more complex than that.

But boy do we love complexity.  The more complex, complicated, and involved we can make it the better.  The mind just loves to be lost in its own creation of conceptual confusion, meanwhile creating postponement for us in thinking about our purpose rather than living it or being it.  The mind always thinks it needs more of something first before you can live or know your purpose.  It needs more information, more learning, more money, more connections, more resources, more clarity, more self-worth, more love, more, more, more.  It really is endless.  Meanwhile while you’re busy feeling lost and confused, attempting to get more more more in order to be better, so you can know why you are and be of service, you could have just been being your calling.  

Again your calling, purpose, intention, or why you are is not something you need to figure out.  It is who you are.  It is natural.  It is present when you feel great and when you feel crappy.  It is there when you are clear and when you feel confused.  It’s available when you’re energized and when you’re tired.  It exists no matter what actions, projects, activities or creations are being done or not.  Why you are is not contingent on anything.  When you deliberately use your awareness/focus and place it on why you exist, rather than on what you are doing, you turn the light up on your calling.  You feel it more.  You feel yourself become it more.  You feel more aligned.  Things flow differently for you because your focus is on why you are rather than what you’re doing or creating.  Life responds to that.  People respond to that.  The truth is life and people are always responding to how you are being you, and when you deliberately align your focus with why you are, you have the experience of mountains moving without you having to physically move the mountain.  What you want people to get they get.  You are fulfilling your own mission for existing.  You could even say your mission is complete and you are just dancing in the experience of it playing itself out.  So for whatever reason you exist, whatever the intention for your being is, whatever you want to give the world or want the world to get by your presence, it’s here now.  Always in the background and patiently waiting for you to use your focus and bring it to the foreground.  To do so is live fulfilled.  

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

SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT

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SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT 

What it is?

Most all of us desire spiritual alignment.  We may not call it that exactly, but the essence of it, is that we want to feel soulfully connected with ourselves, have purpose, be contributing to life in meaningful ways and feel as good as possible while engaged in this thing called being human.  Many people have the misconception that being spiritually aligned means that everything is easy, you get what you want, and you never struggle, have painful sensations or feel bad.  In fact people think that if their life is not the idealized picture they have in their head of what their life should be, then they must not be spiritually aligned.  

I’d like to make two distinctions.  The first is that on an absolute level there is no such thing as misalignment or being out of alignment.  Every single aspect of your experience is perfectly orchestrated for every learning and expression that you are participating in and creating.  Rest knowing that all is well regardless of whatever your thoughts and feelings are about your current experience.  The second distinction is that on a relative level, which is the level of this dualistic human playground, there is the experience of misalignment or being out of alignment.  Part of the learning here in this human game is how to refine ourselves to become a closer and closer reflection and expression of our complete self.  Since nearly all of us are living as a twisted or distorted fragment or version of ourselves, this refinement is a necessary process in coming home or remembering who we are.  

Back to spiritual alignment.  What blocks or seems to interfere with our experience of it?  The biggest obstacle is our definition of what it is and what it’s not.  The second is our lack of passion or intensity of desire for it.  Lastly is our avoidance of un-pleasurable sensations, feelings or experiences.  The combination of these three things makes for the experience of living spiritually unaligned.  It takes redefining, intensifying and moving with un-pleasurable experiences in order for us to have a new experience of alignment.  One that feels soulful, on purpose, and gives to others and life.  As you move up the developmental levels of your being you start at your root where the focus is survival, then moving up to having personal, emotional and social needs met or achieved.  The next level after that is the heart.  Once you reach the level of the heart, living spiritually becomes the central focus of your learning, sharing and expression.  Aligning yourself with the bigger picture of why you exist is fundamental to your growth as the spiritual being you are.   

LIVING SPIRITUALLY ALIGNED

Redefining, intensifying & moving with un-pleasurable experiences

Let’s start with our definitions.  We all have ideas and pictures in our minds of what living spiritually means.  Take a moment to ponder, investigate and explore what your particular ideas and pictures are.  Maybe there is a certain way you imagine it feels to be spiritually aligned.  Perhaps you see yourself having certain financial resources and being at a certain “place” in your life.  You might see that you have some special gift, knowing or intuitive abilities that you’ve harnessed.  Maybe you have specific relationships, partnerships, or connections with people.  Perhaps there are projects or work that you are doing that is more “spiritual” in nature.  Most often we have many of these ideas running in the back of our mind as to what it means to be spiritual.  Yet none of these things, ideas or pictures equals living spiritually aligned.  These are all simply preferences and appearances.  To live spiritually aligned is all about where you come from in your moment to moment experience and has nothing to do with the experiences themselves.  Where you come from is an intention or vibration of beingness.  Orienting to that over and over and over again is spiritual alignment.

Next is intensifying our passion and desire for orienting to our intention for existing.  We are mostly distracted by the experiences of life and what we are getting from them even if we think we are altruistic and spiritual.  We often don’t have much inner driving force beyond basic survival needs and personal and social validation.  Once our needs are met and we feel validated in our existence, meaning we’ve proved to ourselves and everyone else that we are worthy and valuable, we often lack drive and intentionality.  We’re lazy.  We don’t have much self-discipline.  Truly who can blame us.  The experience of a human life is not exactly a walk in park and if we aren’t literally “forced” (i.e. perceive a strong need) to make something happen then we typically won’t bother.  To be moved or driven, not by need, threat, loss, lack or what we think we will get, but rather moved only by our intention for existing is to live devoted.  Devoted and committed to the sole purpose of our existence.  This too provides the direct experience of spiritual alignment.

Lastly is our avoidance of uncomfortable sensations and feelings.  Whether or not you are aware of it your life is likely focused on how to increase pleasurable sensations and feelings, and how to avoid the un-pleasurable ones.  We tend to categorize unpleasant sensations and feelings as less spiritual than the pleasant ones.  When we feel bad we like to blame the circumstances, conditions, people, our body, ourselves, and on and on.  Through our blaming we hope to feel better so that something can be responsible for how we feel, rather than allowing ourselves to feel what is present.  I will simply say that life is full of un-pleasurable sensations and feelings.  If you just accept it rather than avoid it, you can include all of your experiences inside of your spiritual alignment rather than push some of them away.  Unpleasant sensations and feelings are not bad.  They are just part of the experience.  Suffering occurs only when we are in opposition to what is occurring, meaning when we resist it.  Painful sensations and feelings do not equal suffering when we unwind our story about what they mean.  

I invite you to play with these 3 ingredients of living spiritually aligned.  Redefine your definitions, intensify your desire and accept all the sensations and feelings that come with your experience.  Recognize that perhaps living spiritually aligned is different than what you thought it was.  Explore where you need to clean up or elevate your perspectives.  Be surprised and surprise yourself.  You might even find that you already are living your highest alignment.  

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

BE THE FREQUENCY OF YOUR DESIRE

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BE THE FREQUENCY OF YOUR DESIRE 

Next level manifestation

Manifestation is popular spiritual concept.  Everyone wants to know how to manifest what they desire and experience the life of their dreams.  There tends to be two extreme ways that people go about manifesting.  One way is to work to make happen.  This means doing whatever it takes, at whatever cost, to make the thing you desire happen and create your life how you dream it to be.  I call this the active way.  The other way is to open yourself to what you desire and let it happen through you.  I call this the passive way.  It involves intention, conviction, faith and surrender.  Neither way is right or wrong, and believe it or not, one way is not easier then the other way.  They are simply two different approaches to the same desired end goal.  

Just to be clear from the beginning, what most people desire is a state of being and not an actual thing or experience.  For example you may think that you really want a relationship, money, a home, a business or some particular experience, however what most people want is how they think that the thing will make them feel.  We want feeling rather than physical substance despite the fact that we really think that it’s the thing we want.  How many times have you gotten the “thing” you want only to be dis-enamored by it 2 weeks, 6 months or 5 years later.  Relationships can be a good example of this.  You might get really excited about a new partner, only to find that you don’t really like them a year or two into the relationship.  All the ways you had hoped you would feel in the relationship you no longer feel and now you find yourself trying to find a way out and seeking that ‘state of being’ you desire through new experiences or forms.

When you see that it’s the state of being that you desire it stops the cycle of chasing experiences or things.  Sometimes we have to go through many, many disappointments before we realize that what we want isn’t the thing.  Some people never learn this completely.  There is power and freedom to the end of the chase, the end of seeking and of looking outside of yourself for fulfillment, love or purpose.  If we spent as much time and energy on cultivating our desired state of being, as we do on trying to both actively and passively get what we want, we would rather quickly discover fulfillment.  We need only to dismantle the story that it’s the thing that we want.  Let our attachment to the form of our desires go.  Forms change and change and change.  Forms are simply modes and methods of experience and learning, and attaining them or having them is not what brings us lasting joy.  Rather our determined state of being is.   

TRUE FULFILLMENT 

It’s not about getting

In a way true fulfillment requires both active and passive manifestation.  When we relinquish our attachment to forms and experiences, and rather focus on our state of being as primary, we will discover that life moves through us.  This is the more passive way of manifestation.  Even though I call it passive, it requires surrender and letting go of control, which most of us really suck at.  Frequently when people say that they are going to allow what they want to happen through them, they either don’t have any real conviction or intention behind it, or they “secretly” are trying to control what is happening.  I say secretly because they are often quite obviously to their lack of trust and often mentally attempting to control outcomes. 

When we do align ourselves or become the frequency of our desire we will frequently find that activity wants to be done by us and through our vehicles (i.e. our body and mind).  This means that there may be lots of activity and doing of stuff.  Many times when people choose active manifestation they do it from a place of not first being in their alignment.  Their focus is more on the outcome of what they desire rather than on their state of being.  This leads to burnout and overtime resistance to doing.  Many people feel tired by the active way of manifestation.  They don’t want to work so hard.  They want to play more.  However what I find that people are really tired of is not all the doing and hard work, but rather they are tired of being out of alignment or not in their preferred state of being.  Work is play when we are aligned.

I wish that all of the spiritual programs that advertise things like “manifest the life of your dreams”, rather said “become the frequency of your desire”.  It would be a lot less confusing for people and end the frustration people feel when they are unsuccessful in their attempts to get the thing they want.  See nothing about this life journey is about getting, and while almost everyone is focused on getting one thing or another, it all leads to disappointment at some point whether you get it or not.  It all ends.  All forms at some point change form.  People, relationships, businesses, communities, projects, events and on and on.  This is not a negative unless you choose to look at it from that perspective, which most people do.  Rather it’s simply the way of expression of life.  Everything is constantly learning and changing it’s form and structure based on it’s learning.  This is intelligent design at work.  It’s evolution and growth.  There is nothing bad or wrong about it.  

So if life is not about getting, manifesting or creating everything you want, then you might wonder what it’s about.  It’s about what you are.  It’s about your alignment with the intention for your existence.  It’s about being your preferred state of being no matter what is happening in the appearance of life.  True creation and manifestation occurs by your vibration.  You create what you are, not what you do.  You give what you are, not what you do, even though doing is often involved.  Ultimately you get what you are as well, even when the focus is not on the getting.  When you give to life, rather than get from life you add energy to the field and your experience naturally becomes richer.  I am not suggesting martyrdom, though some may need to go that route first.  I am suggesting placing more attention, focus and awareness on your state of being as primary.  As your alignment in your preferred state strengthens you will discover giving is just an effect of your alignment.  

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

ALIGNMENT IN SELF

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ALIGNMENT IN SELF 

Generator of inner & outer worlds

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

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

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

DISCOVERING THE IMPULSE 

Being yourself

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

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

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

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

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

Soul Alignment

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Soul Alignment 

Connecting to the sound of you

Licht Transformation Blau WeißWhat does it mean to align to your soul?  We all have a purpose or calling as to why we are here.  There is an intention and a desire to express this intention into manifestation that guides our life behind the scenes so to speak.  Some people refer to this as a blueprint, which is a map of sorts that we follow consciously or unconsciously.  It is what brings particular people and experiences to us, it’s responsible for the perspectives and views we have about life, and it lays the foundation for our beliefs, all so that we can learn/express a particular theme which we came here to play out.  

Many people are not aware of their blueprint or what they came here to learn and share.  It’s as if a cloud came over our knowing and blocked the ray of sunlight of awareness of our soul.  Thus we experience this subtle, or not so subtle for some, feeling of disconnection and confusion nearly continuously.  We have become so accustomed to feeling this way that we’ve normalized disconnection and come to seek stability, safety and comfort in this external world rather than seek an inner knowing of ourselves.  

In order to hear the sound of your soul the desire must arise inside of you to know yourself.  The clouds that lay over your knowing are thick making it appear as if they are solid, impenetrable structures from which nothing can see through.  The only impulse that can pierce those seemingly solid clouds is your intensely committed and focused energy to know what is on the other side of them.  It is through the intensity of your commitment and focus to know yourself that you make contact with your soul and see your blueprint, your purpose and calling for being incarnated as who you are now.  

Aligning with and hearing your soul requires your complete devotion to that single focus above all else.  That means above what you sometimes think is supposed to happen or want to happen.  It requires full detachment from the physical person-centric life as a source of comfort and a resting into nonphysical aspects of yourself.  Your commitment to your purpose for incarnation and what you are here to learn/express must be prioritized more than any material or relational comfort you find yourself attached to.  It must become your default reference point so that in each and every moment your every thought and action comes from being rested in your soul.  It is from here that true clarity, connection and knowingness arises, which is an inherent effect of you knowing yourself.   

Becoming your calling 

Your calling made manifest

JourneyKnowing your calling requires that you hear the call.  What called you here?  Was it the sound of millions or even billions of people asking for help and seeking clarity and connection despite feeling lost and separate?  For many of us here at this time it is this very thing that called us into incarnation.  We came to shine light, express love and assist people in reconnecting and remembering themselves.  This calling that we have all answered, that has brought us here in this very moment, has also allowed us to bring our perspectives, our energetic templates and ways of seeing and knowing here with us.  The perspectives that we carry may not be novel to us, but they are novel for many people on this planet.  Novel perspectives (plus our inherent energetic constitutions) allow for different seeing, which brings with it new possibilities for creation on this planet.  

Most of our callings are simple.  To be who we are and share how we see is what creates an impact, yet many of us get lost when we come here to this planet.  We forget ourselves by getting consumed with the perspectives of our immediate environment which narrow and shut down our forgetting even further.  Our focus gets wrapped up in what the collective values and because we’ve lost sight of ourselves we follow the collective unconscious/asleep crowd.  We devalue our knowings and our perspectives until we no longer even remember them.  This is how we forget and how we stop hearing the call that brought us here in the first place.

The good news is that you are your calling.  There isn’t any special thing that you need to do or add to yourself.  You had everything you needed to complete your calling before you were even born.  That should feel relieving.  You already know and have all the resources that you need to be yourself even if you have forgotten why you are here.  However to feel the fulfillment that comes with living your calling it is helpful to learn to connect to and remember it.  If you don’t you may feel like you are drifting rather than feeling that deliberate, intentional, purpose driven life.  

The truth is you are always in alignment, you are always in some way answering the call that called you here, because just by your very being you cannot not be.  Yet your experience may not always feel like it is aligned to you.  This is important.  This is the way that you are directing and guiding your own self.  You must listen to when you feel out of alignment and follow whatever impulse or intuition you must to feel in alignment again, because this is where deep fulfillment lives.  When you feel fulfilled and aligned you perceive a universe that is abundant and perfect.  Don’t forget that your perspective is what creates the universe you experience and thus reality.  This is the very reality that you came here to help the collective you see differently.  So by bringing yourself into right relationship and perspective within yourself you answer your calling.  This is the difference between consciously being your calling rather than unconsciously being it.  You have a responsibility to yourself to hear the call and align yourself fully with the call, so that you are consciously creating this thing called life and bringing into manifestation the world you truly desire.

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

Claiming what you want

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Claiming what you want 

Finding the fuel for change

28365465 - fictional forest hunter girl with bow and arrowThere are a thousand million reasons why we don’t claim what we want.  We think we aren’t worth it, can’t have it, don’t deserve it, are incapable of it, don’t know how to claim it, aren’t qualified, and on and on.  In fact frequently we keep our desires hidden even from ourselves.  We don’t want anyone to see what we really want because we feel shame, inadequacy or unworthy of what we desire.  Often underneath it all we feel that what we desire might un-include us from our groups, friends, families or society.  If we really investigate our relationship with desire we might even find that we have a negative relationship to desire itself.  As if desire is something bad or sinful.

We aren’t really taught to focus on what we desire.  Instead we are taught to “do the right thing”.  Meaning to do what everyone else does and what has been culturally agreed upon and accepted.  Most people are living in this way and they don’t even fully realize that they are not living in alignment or connected with what they desire.  If fact they’ve deluded themselves to whatever degree they’ve been able to that they actually want what they’ve been told they want without ever investigating for themselves if its actually true.  So it gets really tricky to see the truth of ourselves and sometimes the only way that you can notice that you aren’t living connected to your desire, but rather to simply “do” this thing called life, is a subtle sense of low energy.  Other signs are not feeling an aliveness inside, not feeling your heart open, noticing a flatness or dullness or feeling unable to connect to yourself or others fully.  

Really what needs to happen is that you need to begin to see how the activities you are currently engaged in, people/groups you hang out with or ways in which you spend your day to day activities don’t resonate for you.  It may not be that all things, people or activities fall into that category, but if you begin to really honestly take a look you will find some that don’t resonate and yet you are continuing to engage with them. 

Committing to yourself 

Energizing effort

warriorIf you are really honest you should begin to feel a sense of frustration with engaging in those things which don’t resonate for you.  Often what happens is people get to this point of feeling frustration (or sense of feeling stuck) and perceiving the frustration as bad, so they look for ways to alleviate this tension that is building.  They might watch a movie, play a video game, eat some food, drink some wine, have sex, scroll Facebook, etc.  They now feel less tension, but they also have less energy for change.  Alleviating the build up of tension will always drop the energy that is available to you to move towards what it is you truly desire.  

With this drop in energy your consciousness also drops into a state of powerlessness or helplessness to be able to do anything about your own life.  You actually believe that you can’t do anything.  That its just hopeless and quite possibly will just always be this way.  Essentially that you can’t change, and you really feel that you changing is not up to you.  That its up to some external circumstances or forces, and that unless the circumstances (which include your body) somehow magically changes, you’re doomed.  This is disempowerment.  This is disconnection.  This is lack of awareness of your self.  And it fucking sucks.  

Moving from perceiving powerlessness to realizing that you are the one with the power is a tremendous shift in consciousness and energy.  When you are brutally honest with yourself and claim what you want the power arises, the energy arises, the determination arises.  You become unstoppable.  Its going to happen.  There is no longer any doubt or question about it.  Yes there is work, yes there is stuff to be done, but rather than it feeling like draining effort it becomes energizing effort.  Effort which produces what you desire, which is always fulfilling rather than depleting even if the physical body gets tired.  This is the difference between acting from your alignment/desires versus working from a place of nonalignment with self.  When you are out of alignment everything will feel like massively hard work even if its just cleaning out your refrigerator or taking a shower.  When you’re in alignment the focus is no longer on the activity, but on your desire and alignment.  The activity itself becomes a non-issue and your desire the only thing that matters.

Discover what you truly desire.  Bring it into focus multiple times a day.  Speak it out loud.  Share it will people even if you feel timid or unworthy of it.  This will bring it more and more into the field of your awareness and strengthen your commitment to you.  

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