awakening

GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

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GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

Reversing directions

Nearly all of us, in some way or other, are focused on what we want.   We’ve created our vision boards, completed our intention setting, prayed our manifestation prayers, did our ceremonies and rituals, recited the mantras and affirmations, all to bring about what it is we want.  Always it seems we are asking the inner question “how will I get what I want today” or a more sophisticated version of that is “how will the world and my experiences be how I want them too?”  When we ask these questions, either deliberately or automatically, what happens is that we align our actions around that sole quest.  The quest of what we want.  What frequently comes with the quest of following our desires is an idea or picture of what our desires look like to us when they are fulfilled.  The most tangible example of this would be to say that we want something physical like a house, car or any other physical object.  We typically have a pretty clear idea of what it is we want or don’t want.  An image forms in our mind and we move towards that image.  We may “sacrifice” on some of details, but other things are non-negotiable.  If we really want a convertible car we are unlikely to buy a truck, as it’s too far off from our desires.  

What arises however when what we want isn’t available or not present inside of our immediate experience?  We want a convertible, but there are none available.  The house we want isn’t for sale.  The latest iPhone we want is out of stock.  We could also extrapolate this to less “physical” objects such as relationships, opportunities, health, safety, security, stability or particular emotional states.  When there are no suitable partners, the trip we want to go on is sold out, we don’t feel secure or stable in our life, or we feel sick, angry, frustrated or sad, it seems that what we want is not available.  Where does our focus go?  Our focus is on what isn’t inside of our experience.  We actually lose touch with our true desire because we are so focused on what isn’t here.  Then we have some version of a freak out and we feel anxious or depressed, because that is really the only way to feel when we are focused on what isn’t.  

We internally stir, attempting to figure out how we will get what we want.  We do more to get the things.  Work harder, manifest longer, say our affirmations more frequently.  We can’t seem to figure out why with everything we are doing we still don’t have what we want.  We wonder why isn’t life working for us or with us.  What we want seems outside of us, like it’s something over there, somewhere inside of an object or some other person or place, and if we could just figure out how to get it.   The secret is that our desire is not outside of us.  We are it.  However when we merge our desire with the objects we think possess our desire, we feel helpless, frustrated and confused.   

BE YOUR DESIRE

Shifting focus

Desire steers the ship of this life, but life is not about us getting our desires.  Rather life is about being our desires.  This can seem very confusing to our mind that projects everything onto our experience rather than seeing ourselves as the source of our experience.  This projection is why it seems that what we want is inside of something or someplace else, and why we get anxious or depressed when our experience of life, or the appearance of things, is not how we want it to be.  What appears (ie. our experience) is a reflection of us, and when we feel something is lacking or missing (scarcity mindset) it ultimately seems that something is lacking or missing in us, hence the epidemic of feeling not enough that runs through the human experience.  

This brings me to the most important point, which is to give what you want.  I will repeat again what I wrote above, life is not about you getting what you want, but rather about being it, being your desire.  The only way to experience what you want is to give it, which is the same thing as being it.  Now your mind will want to come in and insist that this is impossible.  How can you give what you perceive to be missing or not present?  How can you give what you want life to give you?  Let’s say that you want to be loved by another person in a relationship, your mind will say that the only way you can fulfill that desire is to be loved by another person. How can you give that, doesn’t that come from someone else?  But does it really?  Is it not you that feels loved inside of you?  Say you want safety or security from another person.  How do you give that too?  Let’s go to the more physical examples.  You might argue that a house, car or any other physical object doesn’t live inside of you.  You are correct, they don’t physically live inside of you, but your desire for them does.  We never want the thing, we only want the feeling that we think the thing will bring us.  Maybe your desire for a house is because you want a feeling of stability.  Again how can you be or give stability rather get stability?  

Simply notice whenever you feel that life is not working out for you or not what you want.  You will always be focused on what isn’t rather than on what you desire.  You must train yourself to find what is it you really want and when you connect with your actual desire you will begin to feel good again.  If you start to focus too much on the forms, appearance or happenings of your experience rather than your desire, you will likely suffer again.  Sometimes the appearance of life will be as we want it to be and sometimes it won’t be.  As far as I can tell this is constant inside of this human experience.  This may feel like a bold statement, but the appearance doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you give to life what you desire too.  That you be what you want to be.  That you are an expression your heart’s desires.  Unlike the mind’s complexity the heart is simple.  It desires only love, connection and bliss.  You must recognize when you stop choosing that, when you stop focusing on that, when you stop desiring that, and instead get lost in what doesn’t seem to be here that you think will give you the experience of love, connection and bliss.  As soon as you recognize that you’ve lost your focus on what matters, you must do everything within your capacity to shift your focus back onto giving that which you desire to be.  Herein lies fulfillment beyond any getting that you can ever get.

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

PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION

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PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION 

Going beyond the known

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

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

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

FUNCTION OF PEAK EXPERIENCES 

Bring the extraordinary to life

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T

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LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T 

No moment is better than another

We are all over conditioned to do.  Something must be done, we must accomplish and finish, get it done, check it off, do, do, do.  If we aren’t doing we tend to feel purposeless.  Doing provides the meaning for our existence.  Each day we wake up and think about what we must do that day.  Our day revolves around our doing.  We do our morning workout, yoga or mediation, we eat our breakfast, we work, we run errands, we make dinner, we do our hobbies and then we “relax”.  So often we are trying to get to this place where we can just relax, but we have to finish all of our doing first.  This is the pretty typical day to day human existence, thinking there is somewhere to go, something to get and some place to arrive.

Doing is so close to us that we often don’t see that we are in a state of constant doing.  We might not even think to think that there is another way of living other than doing.  Pause for a moment and ask yourself what would happen if you stopped putting any focus at all on doing, accomplishing or getting things finished or done.  The most common answer is that nothing would get done.  However do you know this to be fact?  Have you ever stopped focusing on getting something done while engaged in doing and noticed what happens?  The experience tends to be what people call a flow state, which is one of the most desired states for many.  

Why do we get so trapped in doing?  The primary reason that I’ve discovered is that people tend to perceive that one moment or experience is better than another moment or experience.  It is easy to fall into flow and joy while hanging out with friends, being on vacation, playing your favorite sport or eating a decadent meal, but less easy to fall into flow while exercising, working or running errands.  These are aspects of experience that many try to get over and done.  When you stop trying to get an experience over than there is nothing left but to be in the experience that you are in.  

The judgment, preference or bias for one thing or experience over another thing or experience puts us into doing mode as we attempt to get where we more desire to be, which is frequently other than where we are.  Doing mode takes us out of presence and is mechanical in nature.  Mechanical because it is work that is disconnected from aliveness.  It takes effort and is hard.  Its focus is only on something physically shifting or changing and does everything from a physical perspective to shift a physical thing.  It gives the appearance of getting somewhere or something happening when there is no where to get and nothing to happen.  If you were to instantly realize that you can never get somewhere other than where you are and nothing can happen other than what is, you would see how preposterous all of the doing really is.   

FOCUS ON LOVING 

Work through giving & receiving

What if rather than focusing on doing, getting it done or accomplishing something, you instead focused on loving?  What if you stopped all the incessant brain activity and brought your awareness into your heart and just left it there?  How different would your life be?  How different would you feel?  How much more would you overflow with radiance and serve?  From my experience doing doesn’t really work.  Its tiring, its hard and oddly at the end of the day I don’t feel like I did anything except make myself really tired.  Maybe actions occurred that gave the appearance that stuff happened, but nothing really changed.  The only thing that occurred was movement from place to place to place or moment to moment to moment, and while movement happened there was nothing there doing the movement, no real conscious one home inside.  This is quite honestly the state of most of humanity.  It is not bad, it just asleep, disconnected, and not aware.  

If we are to live more awake then we must realize that we are in this perpetual doing mode and wake ourselves up out of it.  This requires being more attentive to self and to your patterns of doing.  Learning to refocus your focus from the linear projected course we all believe that we are on into the present moment heart.  The heart equally gives and receives.  It is through receiving that it gives and through giving that it receives.  This is how doing or work gets done.  Work by and through radiation and invitation.  Actions still occur when you are loving, it’s simply that you are not focused on the actions themselves or trying to make anything different.  Instead your focus is on loving and that is it.  Change effortlessly and instantly occurs.  This is because that natural state of love is recognized and seen by you and through you.  

The change that occurs through loving is an opening into more.  It is through opening into more that our perspectives widen.  How we see changes what we see, not because the actual object, person or thing changes, but because we see it differently.  This is how you begin to really get that trying to shift or change an object by physical means from a physical perspective is really hard and actually maybe even impossible.  Instead loving melts, molds, and reshapes everything into its original forgotten nature. 

Doing is an elementary step in the evolution of remembering what we are.  You realize at some point along the journey that the doing mode is optional.  The more you bring into focus loving and drop into your heart the more you increase your awareness of yourself and your energy becomes more coherent.  Magic occurs, and its not even really magic, its just the way it is when you live loving rather than doing, but it seems like magic to the ordinary mind.  As always please don’t just take my word for it.  Try it out.  Experiment.  Try only focusing on loving all day long no matter what actions you are engaged in or what experiences present themselves.  Stop trying to get anything done and just love and see how you experience life.  

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

OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING

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OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING 

Remembering what we’ve forgotten

There is a tremendous amount of energy and time spent searching, looking and seeking healing.  We typically embark on this search because something inside of us hurts physically or emotionally and/or we know that there is more to life than what we are currently experiencing.  The healing journey is thus the search to somehow feel better and make our experience of life fuller, easier or more enjoyable.  

The thing about the healing journey is that often we seek outside of ourselves to find it.  It is one of those human tendencies to look for things out there rather than inside of us.  As such we expect to find healing in an answer, an insight, another person, a tool, a technique, a being from another planet, something we ingest, something we wear or breathe, a trip or adventure, a relationship, and the list goes on and on.  On the surface we measure success by seeing an external change, meaning our body changes its sensation patterns or a situation in our life shifts.  This is the example of someone who has a particular body symptom or condition whose pattern changes and they exclaim “I’m healed”, or a person that was desiring a certain situation in their life to change and it changed and now they feel whole.  However a sensation/symptom pattern shifting in your body or a situation in your life changing, in and of itself is not an indication of healing.  Not to say these things don’t occur along with healing, but as a stand alone they have nothing at all to do with it.

So what is healing if it’s not a change in external conditions (your body is also a condition) or circumstances, and how is it measured?  A true measure of healing is your state of being or identity.  The most healed state of being/identity is “I am” or just the pure recognition that you exist, nothing else added.  Your state of being informs the perspectives you are looking through.  Do you perceive life happens to you or do you perceive you are happening to life?  Do you feel powerless, like you have to wait for life to change or do you see that you are in charge?  Do you perceive things as right or wrong, good or bad or do you see the absolute perfection in everything?  These are very different perspectives informed by your state of being/identity and a much more accurate measure of “healed-ness”.  

If I was to sum up what healing is with one word I would choose the word remembering.  All healing is remembering.  Remembering who you are, remembering what you are, remembering the perfection of all.  It is quite literally that simplistic.  Yet what that remembering takes and our willingness to accept what we remember is the entire reason healing seems to be a process rather than just occurring in one full swoop.  In and through remembering everything returns to its original state, its original knowing, and all distortion corrects itself.  Said another way, all that was forgotten is remembered so distortion simply cannot be created because distortion is only created by not seeing or remembering the truth.   

INFINITE MIRRORS 

The how of healing

This brings me to how we heal.  For a moment imagine an entire dimension of infinite mirrors.  Everywhere you look all there is are mirrors and you can only see the image of yourself reflected back.  Who or what is seeing the reflection and what does that seer or perceiver project onto the image that it sees?  What gets projected or what you see depends on your perspectives, thoughts and beliefs.  Those are what filter or color the picture or image of you that you keep seeing everywhere in this infinite mirror dimension.  If you pause for a moment you can see that you are in a ocean of your own projections.  Inside this ocean it is very tricky to see anything other than what it is you keep projecting.  However an opportunity arises when one of your mirrors disagrees with what you are projecting onto it.  This becomes the how of healing.  

A healer is not one that does anything in particular to you (because truly that would impossible), but instead a healer is one that provides an opportunity for you to remember yourself as the truth of perfection so that you can align your perspectives accordingly.  The role of the healer is really singular; it is to help you remember.  The healer does this in a few ways.  One way is to disagree or create waves inside your incomplete or distorted projections of yourself.  This creation of waves or insertion of a new image inside of your ocean of projections is your carrot or golden healing nugget.  A moment of clarity.  A lightening of load.  An effortless breath.  Your only task is to accept this new reflection.  It is outstanding how relieving this new reflection feels and simultaneously incredibly ridiculous at how adamantly we refuse to accept it for much longer than a second or two.  However when we can unwaveringly accept this new image (some people call this embody) healing has occurred as we’ve shifted state of being (identity) and perspective.  

Other ways that healers help you remember is simply by resting in the truth of infinite complete perfection and emitting that through all their modes of expression.  Movement, words, sounds, touch, etc.  The importance is not on the expression or the form that it takes but instead on the awareness or knowing from which it comes.  For those that can see, or are open through their hunger to see, will receive that awareness broadcast just like an antenna receives waves.  Its like a meeting or a matching.  Awareness meeting itself through the projection of you and the projection of healer.  It is a transcendence of form and a knowing of the knower of form. Life then effortless moves itself, does itself, and there is no doer of it and no one done onto.

It should be evident by now that healing is an inside job.  No one can heal you.  Healers simply provide opportunities for it.  Healing occurs through you remembering and accepting the truth of you.  A different image then appears on your screen, meaning you see the world and yourself differently.  The projection is simply what the senses can perceive, but it is not real.  You are real, the projection is not, however you can use the projection to mirror yourself back to you.  You can use it as a measure of progress, but remember it is you that shifts not experience.  Experience, imagery, projection, and appearances all respond to you, they take their cue from you.  You heal, you remember yourself and then your body changes, and your circumstances change.  It is also important not to get caught up in trying to make circumstances change through your healing.  When you are truly healed you realize the simultaneity of it all and also that whatever circumstances are arising they are perfect as they are.  You are less concerned about trying to create or make the perfect life or world and instead you are waking up and realizing the already perfect world.  It is through your realizing of it that it instantly becomes lived reality.

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

SOUL’S JOURNEY

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SOUL’S JOURNEY

Outside the box

We are all on a soul’s journey.  Current incarnational destination, Planet Earth.  Your journey did not start when you were born into this body, nor will it end when you leave this body.  While you are in this body you learn to call yourself human and think of yourself as this body, but you are not.  This human experience is simply one stop along a infinite spiraling journey that your soul is embarking on to learn, teach, expand and make manifest its creative potential.  

Your life is not what you think it’s about.  Most people are absorbed in the content of the day to day life of what it means to be and think yourself as human.  Things like how to survive, pay bills, build family and relationships, connect with people, have good health, manifest dreams and desires, have fun and hopefully create cool stuff are the typical human scripts.  This lens of human focus is narrow and rarely takes into account anything beyond the surface appearance of what is occurring.  Well all of these aspects of the human experience provide learning, adventure, and add value to your soul’s journey, they often occur out of connection with the knowingness of your actual self.  There is nothing wrong or bad about this, its simply an incomplete knowingness or lack of awareness as what is really going on beyond the senses and the logical mind.  Due to this we think our life is about all the stuff and about our individual human selves when really it is about the recognition of our true nature as the source or creator of all the experiences.  Said another way life is not about the experiences, but instead about the recognition of the experiencer.  

The way I see it is that there is a master architect that organizes all of this experience that we call being human including the opportunities we have or don’t have.  We are largely unaware of this architect.  Sometimes we notice synchronicity or what we might call magic and that gives us a glimpse of the architect, but yet it remains a mystery as to what is really going on here as experiences continue to endlessly come our way.  Just as a person locked inside a room for their entire life would not know that anything outside of that room existed, being human is similar.  As humans we are unaware of the box that we are living inside of.  We don’t know that there is a box nor that there is something outside of that box, until we find the door and open it.   

BECOMING ENSPIRITED 

Return of life

The master architect is the soul.  You can think of your soul as less personal than you probably tend to do.  Your soul is more like a consciousness or a state of knowing rather than a being with some other form somewhere in a far away distance galaxy or dimension.  In fact your soul is here now informing your mind and body and organizing your life, whether you are aware of it or not.  It is the intelligence that knows.  It is the knower.  It is the actual you rather than the person human you that you think you are.  There is nowhere that your soul is not.

Part of having the human experience is about being unaware of the architect.  Even though to some aspect of consciousness the architect is blatantly obvious, to human consciousness it is not.  Yet we are now moving into a time of evolving beyond human.  Human is simply one stage of consciousness, one platform of learning, of which there are infinite platforms.  Humanness is not the be all end all.  It is not the top of the hierarchy.  Our consciousness and thus perceptibility is expanding to see what else is here that we have not been able to see before.  

Waking up means to become aware of the next level of consciousness that comes after human.  Rather than being asleep to yourself you start to recognize yourself.  Rather than experience being the thing that takes up the entire screen of your focus and attention, the shift is made to the experiencer, to the soul.  The focus is turned inward and then outward rather than simply outwardly focused.  This is the recognition of the soul’s journey.  Through this recognition you become enspirited, meaning you remember that you are spirit and not a body and that you have never been a body.  Life returns to you.  Memory returns.  You are no longer lost to yourself.  The aliveness of everything, even of the densest matter, is easily recognized.  What we call form, appearance or experience is simply vibrational packets of consciousness that organize themselves according to the information contained within.  This all becomes common sense, common knowledge, and common experience.  

The cracking open and breaking down of the perpetual mental fixations on thoughts (aka things) takes us out of solidity and into fluidity.  Through fluidity we can merge and go beyond the rules and structures that keep us locked inside of the human mind.  As we destabilize our sense of the self as merely human the world follows suit and destabilizes right with our awareness even if it looks the same to others within it.  As they recognize themselves the appearance of the world will change for them as well.  As we each individually and collectively recognize ourselves enspirited, as more than human and not as experience, but as the creator of experience the world re-stabilizes into something else entirely. 

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

Collective Responsibility

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Collective Responsibility 

A step beyond social responsibility

earthMany people are talking about social responsibility, meaning distancing yourself to not harm yourself or others, and I would like to move that conversation even a step further and talk about collective responsibility,  Collective responsibility is an entirely more active process than simply keeping yourself physically separate from others.  It points to how to effectively use this time as a catalyst for collective awakening rather than merely as personal resting time. 

People, particularly in spiritual circles, talk about us in general being in a “time of awakening.”  We often think that awakening means happiness, butterflies, and bliss.  What we often don’t include in our definition of spirituality is that destruction or destabilization must occur before new awareness is realized.  This is the un-fluffy side of spirituality as it often feels painful or bleak, and when it arises even the most “spiritual” people want to look away or retreat from it.  

From how I see it we are currently experiencing a collective purge.  Purging is what occurs naturally as part of a healing process when the body relinquishes that which no longer serves it.  The purge is what we often call illness, but if we did not purge, just how sick would we be then.  To hold onto things which don’t serve us is even more toxic than the purge appears to be.  

Historically we attempt to control and contain the purge because we are uncomfortable and fearful in regards to the uncertainty of it and how messy it feels and looks, yet if we don’t allow the body to purge it will get sicker than ever.  The body of humanity is undergoing this process now.  Many bodies within the one body of humanity are purging.  Purging from systems, ideas and thoughts that don’t serve it and it is manifesting as what we call illness in our bodies.  Recognize that systems that are ill must purge and our body is a cell in a much larger system.  This is part of the healing process that is required for us to be healthier, stronger and more whole than ever before. To allow the impact of what is currently taking place rather than be in a state of vigilance and self-protection will aid you deeply in through this process.  It is when we don’t allow what is occurring that we truly suffer.   

Active participation 

Your personal actions matter

Whether or not this virus directly impacts your body, I invite you to do your part to actively participate with this collective reorganization that is taking place rather than passively wait to see what happens.  The most collectively responsible thing that you can do in my opinion is to use this time to deepen your self-awareness, personal awakening and add as much energy as possible to the collective field.  

What does that look like?  First and foremost, where you can, serve others.  Help out and support.  There is nothing that brings more energy into a system than serving others and right now we need to access all the energy we can to vitalize the body of humanity as its been drenched in fear and scarcity.  Even if you can’t be in physical contact with others you can still creatively find ways to serve.  Second meditate for as many hours a day that you can, at a minimum at least 4-6 hours/day.  Purify and empty your mind so that you can recognize the empty spaciousness of awareness rather than be consumed by thoughts.  Don’t watch a bunch of movies and spend hours on social media.  Disengage from distraction.  Use this as an actual time of awakening rather than finding things to do to “waste time until this thing passes.”  Third clean your own body out.  Eat healthy and stop consuming crap.  I get that most everyone has stock piled cabinet food, but I invite you to eat as fresh as you can to detox your own body.  What you consume doesn’t just effect you, it effects us all.  This is true for food and also what you put into your mind.  

If we all do this, and really take on this collective responsibility, just how much more awake and aware will our collective consciousness be.  Its not even really that hard.  Just takes discipline.  

We are not really individual beings.  Now more than ever we have been given an opportunity to directly know this as lived reality rather than just spiritual concept.  For those who have been on a spiritual path for a long time I invite you to use this as your time to fully awaken to interconnectedness, and beyond that, oneness.  How I see it is that this first big wave of instability is really to help those of us that know ourselves to be light workers or who incarnated to up-level the consciousness on this planet, to more fully awaken so that we can live our purpose here at this time.  The waves yet to come will help more and more of the masses to awaken, and us paving that path right now will serve those to come. 

Though many may actually need to use this time to decompress, relax or have a mental check out from their stressful lives, there are others that know that these scenarios are exactly the reason why they are here and feel the hunger to use the catalyst of this virus to further expand and grow.  To those of you I speak.  Do not waste this precious and rare opportunity that we have right now to collectively awaken.  While the external is quiet I invite you to actively serve, clean out your body-mind, and deepen and expand your consciousness to new levels of awareness that will serve our one body for all future generations to come.  

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

The Dynamic Principle of Awakening

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The Dynamic Principle of  Awakening

Ingredients of the Universe

Illustration man sitting in pose of lotus. Meditation on outer sWe are all awakening.  Every being, human and other, within this universe is waking up to more and more of itself.  Awakening is the blueprint of creation.  It’s written in the fabric of the cosmos and intelligently informs all expressions of life, including you. What does it mean to awaken?  Awakening is the process of becoming increasingly self-aware.  As you become more and more aware of yourself, the self that you once identified or thought of as you begins to dismantle its ideas, boxes and containers of what/who it thinks it is, so that a greater experience of your self is revealed and known to you as you.  Meaning what you once identified as you changes and you re-identify as something beyond what you previously did.  In a nutshell that is awakening.  The final identity, if you will, is an identity of pure being, or what people describe as oneness or God. 

Often when people think about awakening they think about meditation, silence and inner contemplation.  While these are aspects or modes to assist in awakening they are not awakening itself.  What awakens is consciousness to itself and this can come through many different modes and look a lot of different ways outside of these traditional ideas.  

For simplicity consider that there are two primary ingredients to this universe.  There is consciousness/awareness (these terms mean the same thing) which is still, unmoving, intelligent and unchanging.  Then there is energy/movement, which is dynamic and always changing and making new configurations of forms.  This energy/movement is the dynamic principle of creation and it is how things come into existence.  This energy/movement is at its core, Love.  In this way Love is the substratum of all of creation.  It is the matrix with which everything gets built from and on. Ultimately love is informed by awareness/consciousness.  So awareness (pure being) intelligently moves love.  This is what we call creation.  A blend of awareness and love.   

Active Love 

Coming into expression

statue golden girl doing yoga at sea 3d illustrationYou can think of love and awareness as two sides of the same coin.  They are inseparably one yet seemingly different aspects of creation from a relative perspective.  Awareness knowing itself as intelligent pure potentiality and active love making the pure potentiality of awareness come alive through light and the myriad of expressions and forms.  Our soul/higher self is an expression of this intelligent aware love that has more remembrance of what it is then say our human minds know us to be.  Our souls are each expressing a unique aspect of awareness/love while simultaneously knowing that they are that one awareness/love.  As human beings we too are expressing a unique aspect of awareness/love yet we don’t remember that we are that one awareness/love.  This is the difference between the human perspective and the soul perspective of ourselves and hence the “need” for a path of awakening, back into this remembrance of ourselves.

This brings me to the dynamic principle of awakening which is love.  Many beings awaken to and through this active principle of love and into increasingly subtler and subtler aspects of it.  In essence all that is, is an expression of love and yet we can increase the brightness of our awareness to realize it (aka ourselves) at more refined levels.  The most dense or grossest level is physicality.  As the brightness of our awareness increases we are able to tune into, realize and experience the more subtle aspects to our beingness, first realizing our energy body, then our soul body and eventual back to the one pure beingness body.

When our awareness wakes up to our soul body we have dismantled many of our identity boxes that have kept us as being a separate being.  This is the level of being or identity in which there is no longer a separate person moving this form we call a body.  Instead because that story/idea of being a separate person has dismantled, at least to some degree, awareness/love moves through forms much less impeded or distorted.  This is when people begin to experience spontaneous or non-planned/non-thought movement and energy course through their physical form.  At first it can be surprising and the “person” identity can come back in and feel like its being moved by some outside force or energy.  However with further awakening one comes to realize that it is the prime mover rather than the one being moved.  

For many this is their path to awakening.  Rather then a purely meditative/awareness path it is a path that includes energy and the dynamic love aspect of beingness.  Both are the one simultaneously.  It seems in general that people tend to gravitate towards one aspect more than the other.  Meaning some focus strictly on the pure awareness aspect (more meditative) while others focus on the love/movement aspect (more energy).  I have found that there are different phases and rhythms where the focus on one aspect rather than the other is of benefit as a being awakens.  I personally do not believe that focusing one aspect is superior than the other (though some will definitely disagree with me), instead I find both mutually beneficial to the journey.  Always follow your own resonance as it is your best guide to what you need to awaken.      

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

Everything is energy

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Everything is energy 

Beyond perceiving meaning

Sacred geometry symbols and elements background. Alchemy, religiEverything is energy.  We have all heard this, but what exactly does that mean and how do you perceive it?  Well the truth is you are already perceiving energy everywhere.  Even though things may seem solid, physical and real to you as you look at and feel them, the truth is that you are really just looking at and feeling energy.  Its simply that you have been taught labels and given things meaning so what you perceive is those labels and meanings rather than what is actually there.  If you suspended all of your labels and meanings all you would see is light (aka energy) because that is what everything is.

Due to the fact that we have all been conditioned to death with meaning since the moment we were born, and most of us seek more meaning because that’s what we been taught to do, we are constantly creating separation where there is none.  Any time that you create meaning you create distinction and thus separation.  Separation equals suffering.  Ultimately nothing is inherently separate, you just keep creating that illusion in your own mind through your incessant meaning making, and thus create suffering for yourself.

Many times when people get interested in energy, healing or subtle energetics, they try to see something other than what is.  Like some other magical thing is supposed to appear to them.  Typically, at least in my experience, this strategy is not helpful.  You are not trying to see something other than what is there, you are just seeing what is there by forgetting what you’ve learned to see.  This may seem like semantics to you, but I assure that it is not.  When we believe appearances we are lost to seeing what actually is, as appearances are simply things we’ve labelled as something in particular.  

I have found frequently that as people go through this awakening of sorts of beginning to perceive what they label as “energy”, that they make it another object.  Essentially what they have done is given some meaning to the “energy” they are now sensing/perceiving and this births a whole set of ideas of good/bad energy or trying to avoid, move, or manipulate energy somehow.  They’ve taken that same meaning based strategy and pasted it onto the more formless aspect of being that is coming into their awareness.  So even though they may be learning how to perceive beyond certain meanings that they have given to things, their stage of developmental consciousness progression has not yet shifted beyond separation.  What I’m saying here is that being able to perceive “energy” in a more formless state does not make you more evolved than some other person who does not yet think that they perceive energy.   What really matters is making the shift in your awareness from perceiving separation into perceiving inseparable unity.    

Your energy bodies

Unwinding and unbinding

Outer space. Meditation.This brings us to your energy body.  We all have multiple layers to our energy body.   The first layer, if you will, is the physical body (which we are most identify as), then a subtle body (which is associated with our emotional body), beyond that a mental/wisdom body, beyond that a soul/bliss body, and beyond that the one body/being or pure awareness.  All of these bodies are accessible and perceivable to anyone, each one begin more expansive and formless then the one previous to it.  The degree of relevance for your journey at this time, and your desire to perceive the various level of your bodies, will determine your experience of them.

The subtle body, which again is related with the emotional body, is often what is waking up into awareness when people talk about being able to perceive energy as if its another object out there.  People often report seeing colors or visions, feeling vibrations or densities, hearing things and the like.  Essentially we might put all of this into the category of extrasensory perception.  It is also not uncommon that as people’s systems unwind tension that they begin to perceive in this way.  The more that we perceive and create meanings and labels, the more our spinal cords and nervous systems respond to those perceptions, and develop spinal distortion/tension/twisting patterns through which then experience the world through.  Those patterns become the filters through which we perceive everything.  We often simply experience this as tension, pain or the inability to fully relax and we really don’t know what else is going on underneath it all.  

Tension patterns keep us more bound, and thus perceiving only the physical appearance/label of things.  As we unwind and unbind, things begin to lose some that seeming solidity that we once thought that they had.  The less that we can create the tendency to label things the more our awareness will be able to progress further into our more expansive bodies.  Its important to remember that no awareness of self or of your various bodies is necessarily better or worse, its all inclusive of the previous layers.  It is however helpful to cultivate a desire inside yourself to experience yourself beyond and beyond and beyond if that so resonates with you, as it is through that desire that the path of further awakening will reveal itself to you.  

So I invite you to explore meaninglessness.  See what it is like to not know what it is you are looking at or touching.  Begin to empty yourself out of all your learned content about what is, who you are, and appearances.  Expect nothing, and that which is already, always there will be seen.  Remember energy/light is all there is, but don’t hold onto that as a concept, simply remember it and let it go.  Recognize that distinctions are illusionary and separation has never existed and you will begin to directly experience and know that world of inseparable aliveness of which you are.    

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, Network Chiropractor Boulder Colorado

The stages of healing, transforming & awakening

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The stages of healing, transforming & awakening

Cliff notes version

Decorative mandala round pattern with sacred geometry element MeMost of you have heard me talk about the “12 stages of healing.”  The 12 stages of healing are what the structure of Somato-respiratory Integration (SRI) is built upon and represent stages of consciousness or awareness that a human experiences on their journey from separation to unity.  This particular structure of the 12 stages of healing was based upon the work of Dr. Donald Epstein, however these stages of consciousness are universal and you can find them named in many different traditions or schools.  

What is unique to them here is that their are paired somatic “exercise” that go along with each of the 12 stages and corresponds to a level of awareness.  The idea behind doing the exercises is to more fully “land” or be in the stage that you are in.  No stage is better or worse than another.  We all experience all of the stages at different times or rhythms of our lives.  Progression through stages is also not linear, meaning you don’t always go from stage 1 to 2 to 3, etc.  There is also no defined amount of time to be in a particular stage.  Some people may be in 3 different stages in a single day, where others may be in one or two particular stages for years.  

So what are the benefits of knowing the 12 stages?  Its helpful for many of us to have a roadmap or structure so that we can “know where we are”.  Knowing where you are helps you create more coherence within your experience because you can better align your perceptions to where were are at.  For example say that in your life you are behaving in ways that feel congruent to you, like maybe you are exercising or being helpful to others, meditating or eating healthy, but your perceptions (thoughts, emotions, sensations) you don’t really match it.  There is an incongruence between the actions you are taking and your perceptions of life.  This is where SRI can be helpful in bringing to light more of the perceptual consciousness shifts required to make your experience more congruent.  Ultimately meaning that the actions you take feel 100% aligned with your feeling and thoughts.   

The seasons of well-being

12 stages grouped

The 12 stages are further grouped into what we call the seasons of well-being in Network Care.  To begin the 3 basic seasons are called Discover, Transform and Awaken.  It looks something like this:

Season of Discover: SRI stages 1, 2 & 3

Season of Transform: SRI stages 4, 5, 6 & 7

Season of Awaken: SRI stages 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12

So what are these seasons and why are they important?  The season of Discover is the self- discovery process of becoming aware of how you have kept parts of yourself separate from the whole of you.  Said another way you discover how you have protected yourself from experiencing painful feelings, thoughts and sensations.  Within this season the first 3 stages of SRI are included. Stage 1 (suffering) is the experience of discovering that you have been disconnected or at least a part of you has been disconnected.  When you discover this you realize that you have been living in some level of separation and the experience of that separation or disconnection is suffering.  In SRI stage 2 (polarities) you are aware that a part of yourself has been separated or disconnected, so you are not in full separation, but you resist this part of yourself.  It’s the experience of “disowning” or rejecting those parts of yourself that you don’t like or can’t be with.  Lastly SRI stage 3 (stuck in a perspective) is where you realize how you continually resist this part of yourself over and over and over and over again.

Next is the season of Transform.  Transformation is ultimately the refusal to keep any parts of self separate anymore.  It includes SRI stage 4, which is where you declare to include an aspect of self that’s not been included. It’s saying enough of separation of this part of you. No more are you going to not include this part. Enough of not including it.  SRI stage 5 is merging past the illusion that this part is really separate.  SRI stage 6 is a preparation into full self, absolutely nothing will ever keep this part separate again and stage 7 is the resolution of separation and a surrender of this part into all of you. It’s the full embodiment of self and realization that all parts of self must be included.  We essentially go through these various stages of 1-7 discovering and reclaiming all the various aspects of self until everything is included.  This is the healing/growth journey.

Lastly is the season of Awaken.  Awaken is the knowing that nothing ever left the whole, nothing was/is ever separate.  SRI stage 8-12 correspond to this knowing.  As you become more familiar with all of these stages of consciousness you can begin to integrate various stages with other stages to help support and resource you throughout this journey of separation to unity.

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