beliefs

INTENTION & FOCUS

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INTENTION & FOCUS 

A dash of magic

Intention guides life.  Life follows focus.  To some degree we all know this yet most of us aren’t really utilizing the power of it in our day to day life.  Rather we are often unfocused, scattered and distracted.  We decide for a moment or maybe two, that we want to feel a certain way, walk in a particular direction, or take hold of our state of being, but in the next moment we forget it.  We then wonder why we can’t seem to have the healing, life or state of being that we desire.  Then, on top of it all, we have a long list of impossibility beliefs to add into the mix.  If we muster up our will and utilize our focus, then this or that impossibility belief rears its head.  Feeling overwhelmed by it all, we stop in our tracks and give up.  We return to distraction because we can’t seem to find a way through.  We find ourselves feeling stuck, like we (or things) will never change and we feel resigned to life the way it is.  

I think the prime difference between people who feel like they are living aligned and those that struggle to stay aligned is harnessing the power of intention and focus, along with not being afraid of a little magical thinking.  If you’ve ever spent any time around a baby you know that they see the world through the lens of magic.  Something appears in front of their visual field and they get absolutely ecstatic.  They have no idea how it arrived or even what it is.  They are simply enamored and in a state of bliss by whatever it is they see.  They attempt to interact with it however they can, having no idea at all what to do with it.  This is what we call playing.  Then due to the fact that they have no label, definition or meaning, all they experience is magic.  Magic being the essence of the thing and not the thing itself.  As soon as we give names to things we no longer see the magic, and rather see only what we’ve decided something is.  All other possibilities flatten.  

The other thing to notice is that when babies are playing they are totally focused.  They quite dislike it when you remove their “object of magic”, which they are entirely engrossed in.  Their attention might move from toy to toy, but they are just as present with the next non-labelled, no meaning magical thing that arrives into their sensory experience.  As we become toddlers and begin to develop our analytical thinking mind we want to know what everything is and what it all means.  We start to get lost in the world of concepts rather than in the pure potential of what is.  Our minds learn to multi-task and focus on facts, details and the like.  We lose connection to the essence of things and begin to focus on the things themselves.   We move out of present moment and into thought.  

IMAGINATION & REALITY 

Increasing will

And well who doesn’t love thinking?  To just let your mind wander from this thing to that thing.  To be lost in thought.  To contemplate.  To imagine.  It’s fun to imagine, yet for many it stops here.  You might think that imagination is just imagination, not reality.  You may even be very good at imagining, yet if you don’t have any intention or focus behind your imaginations they remain formless.  This is not a problem, again it’s great fun to imagine in our minds, it’s only that you will not have a different human world life experience.  You will be living in thought or concept.  There will be a disconnection between your imaginal world (you could also say your desired world) and what you actually experience.  We are at a stage of human development, in this space-time nexus, where there is massive disconnection between our desired realities and the ones we are living in.  It doesn’t need to be that way, however it does take a heap of intentional focus in order to bridge the seeming gap.

Intentional focus might not be as hard as it seems, but it may appear to come at some sacrifice.  See when we align ourselves with our intention and focus we have to let all of the other stuff go.  That other stuff consists of a lot.  It includes, but is not limited to all of our divergent or distracting thoughts, all of our tendencies to avoid what we think can or can’t be, our habits of comfort, our low demand energy states, our pictures or ideas of what our intention is supposed to look, be or feel like. We have so so so so many ideas, and while ideas are great for imagining possibilities, they can also get in the way of letting the picture of it all reveal itself to you.  Our desires or imaginations are like the seeds, our intention and focus the water, and the sprouting flower just sprouts as it does.  We don’t get to decide it’s appearance.  We can guide and set conditions for it, but we can determine its expression.  We can only nurture it’s becoming and then let it be what it will be. 

If we are too fixated in our analytical mind then we will overly focus on the form of what is.  We will perceive disappointment if the form doesn’t match our desire.  If we return to our infant pre-mind state, we can see only the essence, the magic, the seed, the desire and then accept the form, the picture, the image that is the result.  This acceptance is very different than resignation.  Acceptance sees the beauty in the appearance regardless, where resignation sees only what is doesn’t want in the appearance.  The distinction is the seer (ie. you).  From where do you see?  

Harnessing the power of intention and focus is learning to increase your will.  To be determined without attachment.  This is the dance of will and surrender.  Coming from and with everything you’ve got and then with full embrace letting it be as it is.  Giving or aligning your whole self to your intention in any given moment is magic.  Essence is seen and the forms naturally reconfigure in response.  This is not a forceful or manipulative will, but rather a sacrificial will of sorts.  A will that will give away all of its petty distractions, impossibility beliefs and preconceived ideas for its true desire or intention.  A will that aligns behinds itself and that is self-generative.  A will that takes all of you, but of which you can find absolutely nothing better to give yourself too.  A will that eventually becomes much bigger than you.

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

DELUDE YOURSELF INTO TRUTH

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DELUDE YOURSELF INTO  TRUTH

Using what you already know

So often we don’t want to believe what is true.  We would rather believe untruths that feel bad, then truths that feel good.  We like to hold onto stories that create distress for us rather than generate stories that create a sense of inner peace.  When I speak of the word truth what I am pointing to is the ultimate source of goodness from which all, include us, arises.  Truth accepts all as it is.  Truth is vey different than rightness.  Rightness has to do with human preferences and judgment.  Truth sees no right or wrong, but rather the pure perfection that is all.

You may ask why it is that we don’t want to see the pure perfection that is all?  Well because we have preferences of how we think or want life to be, mostly our life.  So we forego truth and find ourselves in a world of right & wrong, good & bad, confusion, judgment, lack, separation and polarity.  That is the world of untruth, of which we have deluded ourselves into believing as the truth.  We have done such a fantastic job at deluding ourselves into untruth (mostly unbeknownst to ourselves) that all the conflict, confusion, lack and separation feels very real to us.  It feels like the truth.  Like the reality.  We are very convinced of it.   

It can be challenging to dismantle our thoroughly deluded beliefs in untruth because they seem so real and like all we’ve ever known.  Rather than attempting to change every stinking untrue belief you have, which is a lot by the way, the best way I’ve found through is to continue the strategy of delusion, but use it for truth instead.  This may seem a little crazy at first, but I assure you it’s the surprisingly sane route and will get you more of what you actually want in this life rather than what you think you want.  You may wonder how you might exactly go about deluding yourself into truth.  Well you are already kind of a master of this, it’s simply that you are using your skills in a slightly different way.  First simply recognize that everything you see, think, feel, or sense is based on some belief that you have, some meaning you’ve given to your experience, whether or not you are aware of it or not.  All interpretation and meaning is based in belief.  If you are perceptive you can begin to see that you are creating this entire experience of what you call reality.  Reality isn’t out there somewhere in some physical object over there.  Reality is in your head, well not literally in your head, but inside your psyche, inside your beliefs.  When you realize this, like really get it, then you can see that you and you alone get to delude yourself with truth or untruth.  The power is in your hands, or better said your mind.   

DISCERNING TRUTH

Following what feels good

Now some of you may still be a bit confused about what is truth and what is untruth.  Truth is the perfect acceptance of exactly what is.  Untruth is all the stories, meanings, and interpretations we create about what is.  One of the ways to discern this more and more for yourself is choosing to believe what feels better.  Say for example you are presented with a situation.  Let’s say you unexpectedly got fired from your job or you lost your entire business overnight.  Pick whatever is most applicable for you.  For most people this would be hard to accept.  I know very people, who if presented with this situation, would have no thought about it and would joyfully go about their day, that is unless they were ready to quit their job or let go of their business.  The reason for this is that we have umpteen-million things we think this means for us.  Maybe it’s a loss of financial support so we wonder how we will eat or pay bills, maybe it’s a loss of purpose so we wonder why we even exist, maybe is a sense of betrayal from the universe and we wonder if God even cares about us, maybe it’s loss of connection with others and we feel all alone now, and on and on and on.  None of these thoughts feel good.  In fact they all feel really, really bad.  

Many of you have heard me say this, but one of the beliefs I choose to live by is that if things feel good they are closer to the truth than things that feel bad.  Said another way if things feel bad they are less true than things that feel good.  In the above example believing  that losing our job/business overnight means we won’t eat, pay our bills, have purpose, are alone and that God doesn’t care, are all less true than what would feel good to believe.  What would feel good to believe is that we will be able to eat abundantly, pay our bills, that we are on purpose, that God does care, and that we are more connected than ever before.  This is closer to the actual truth, but this is hard for us to believe because of how we’ve either been conditioned or conditioned ourselves.  So you see this is where delusion comes into the picture.  We must delude ourselves into the truth, and I promise you it will feel like delusion to your mind even though it is more true.  It is quite the seeming paradox.  Your mind most likely will not want to believe what feels better to believe, but with some persistence you can get your mind to do so, because after all you are the one in charge of your mind, nothing and no-one else is.  

This is a really fun game to play with yourself.  It will also radically change your experience of life.  Life will become less and less of a bummer because you will less and less be perceiving things in ways that feel bad.  You will create more and more of what you actually want, which is simply to feel good.  We think we want all the stuff, the house, the kids, the cars, the friends, the relationships, the businesses, the travel, the purposes, but what it all boils down to is that we want to feel good.  When you feel good you radiate.  You are naturally and effortlessly of service.  There is nothing in particular you have to do to fulfill your purpose.  You are your purpose.  This is to live truth.  Truth feels good.  

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

BELIEFS, BELIEFS, BELIEFS

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BELIEFS BELIEFS BELIEFS 

Disowning our power

We all conceptually know the power of beliefs, yet most live in lack of true recognition of the power of their beliefs.  Even beyond that, most people are not aware of what they believe and they think that life somehow operates outside of what they believe about it.  Beliefs are like the lenses we wear on our eyes, they determine what we see and what we don’t see.  They determine what we feel and what we don’t feel, and also how we behave and function in our environments.  Beliefs create our experiences.  Whatever it is we experience and attract is based on our beliefs.  Our beliefs literally create the world we perceive.

Beliefs are fundamental to every aspect of our lives and yet we give them little credence.  We ignore and devalue the impact they have and most of the time aren’t even aware of what it is we are believing.  We insist that some other forces are at play other than our beliefs, and that those forces are more powerful, more based in reality or more true.  Understand that, that is also a belief.  It’s simply one that disowns and projects its power outside of it’s seeming self and creates separation between self and stuff.  When we participate in such a manner, where we disown our beliefs and project them on the stuff of life, we give the stuff of life our power.  The stuff of life has no independent power, it has only the power you’ve given to it.  In essence it seems that the picture, the experiences, the interactions, the people, our body, etc. is what has the power, but it does not.  It only has the power you’ve given it.  

This can seem confusing for the mind to grok.  This is because most people have some heavy duty beliefs in there that believe that things have independent power.  They only appear to if you believe that to be so.  The world you will perceive will be one of independent objects, where things will feel other to you and there will be some sense of separation or disconnection.  This is how the majority of humans operate.  As a species we come from a level of awareness that developmentally doesn’t know its power yet.  It’s like how a baby doesn’t know how to speak until it hears words and speaking is modeled to it.  As adults we don’t know our power until it is shown to us.  Then once we see it we can’t unsee it.  Our power comes through knowing and choosing what we believe; deliberately, precisely and consciously.  It’s taking responsibility for  ourselves in such a way that we know what we believe and take full accountability to the creations we manifest based on those beliefs.  

CHANGING BELIEFS 

Utilizing our power

Some of our beliefs are tricky to see because they are so close to our faces.  They are kind of like a contact lens.  If you are an avid contact lens wearer you don’t really know the lens is there until you, or someone else, tries to take it off of your eye.  Once it’s removed, meaning once you are no longer looking through the lens of that belief, only then can you actually see it.  If it remains on your eye without your awareness of it, it will simply be how you see the world.  No other perspective would even be apparent to you.  Often when the metaphorically contact lens is removed we recognize our belief(s) and clarity about how we experience life is revealed to us.  It is as if all the sudden we can see what we couldn’t see before.  

Perhaps some of you are at this stage where you can see a belief or a handful of beliefs, yet you feel that you struggle in changing or shifting them.  This is the juncture where you get to utilize and learn fluency with and in your power.  It’s like pulling out your sword, magic wand, wizard’s staff, or any other empowerment symbol that resonates with you.  Be clear that the symbol is inert by itself, however you get to learn to utilize your power through it.  It’s you that makes life come alive, not the other way around.  The key ingredient is conviction in choice.  If you are either not sure that you get to choose or you don’t have conviction (meaning true belief) in what you actually desire to believe, than it will feel hard to change a belief.  

The honest to god truth is that it is very easy to change a belief.  You just do it.  You are after all the only one in charge of your life.  There is no one else inside of your head choosing for you.  Its just you in there.  All of the struggle or seeming hardness is simply your desire to hold onto your current belief.  For some reason you think that whatever belief you are choosing to keep serves you more.  There is no wrongness in that.  Only the recognition of what you are choosing so that you can be clear about how you are creating the world you experience and take full accountability for it.  

Once you get this and start truly applying it you will begin to deconstruct how you’ve thought the world works.  It will be the end of the powerless, hopeless perspective.  You’re in charge.  You’ve always been.  You just didn’t know it.  This is the next stage of development for human consciousness.  To become aware of itself in such a way that it recognizes that it’s had the power all along.  Its the end of subject-object separation.  There is no more you and other, no more you and your body, no more you and your emotions, no more you and the stuff of life.  You recognize you as subject, as the central operating force or principle.  All responds to you, not the other way around.  It starts and ends with you and your beliefs.  Know what you are choosing and choose in accordance with the experience of life that you desire.  Nothing is impossible.  What you decide is real is real.  What you decide is hard is hard.  What you decide is easy is easy.  Even though it may seem that two people experience the world the same, they don’t.  Things are not as solid as they seem.  Play a little.  Take a chance.  Believe something radical and fully believe it.  Your conviction is your doorway into new experience and novel creations.  

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

STOP WAITING

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STOP WAITING 

Your life is happening now

How often do you wait?  Wait in line, wait for a package to be delivered, wait for a new relationship, wait for a relationship to get better, wait for your body to heal, wait to feel good… just how much of your life do you spend waiting?  If you do a thorough self-analysis you might surprisingly discover that you spend most of your life waiting.  Waiting for things to get better, waiting for them to be different, waiting until you are clearer, waiting until things open up, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Why do we wait?  To the mind there appears to be this mysterious future where everything arrives that we have been waiting for and then abracadabra we stop waiting and live.  We all know it doesn’t actually work that way, but that doesn’t stop us from living that way anyway.  Crazy I know.  Another way to say waiting is to use the word postponement.  When we wait we postpone life.  Why would you postpone your life?  Perhaps you think you can’t have what you want now or you think its not possible or available.  You might think that what you want isn’t here or isn’t incompatible with what is here.  There is also the possibility that you don’t really want what you think you want or that you think you aren’t ready for it. 

The next question is do you even know what you are waiting for?  We often think that we are waiting for the thing to arrive.  The package, the relationship, the house, the healing of our body, the healing of our trauma, but we are not waiting for those things really.  What we are waiting for is the feeling that those things give us.  Get that.  It is not the thing or result, it is the feeling that the thing/result permissions us to feel.  If you get this you will instantly see that there is never again a reason to create waiting or postponement for yourself.

See the entire gestalt of life that you desire can be experienced now in this moment.  I know you think you want the picture, but the moment the picture arrives in the next it will change again.  The picture is not stable.  It is ever changing.  It is a temporary illusion of movement and energy configurations made up of gives, takes and energy exchanges.  None of them static.  What is stable, non-changing and eternal is you, and you are in charge of you.  You is under your control.  You are the decider, the chooser of you.  You are the seat of all of your waitings and non-waitings, living and not livings, you.   

CHOOSING LIFE NOW 

Life happens through you

You might wonder what it takes to choose life now rather than wait for life to happen in a future moment.  Really all it takes is for you to see that your life is happening right now.  Perhaps not all the things you think you want are in your current view, but that in no way stops, prevents, interferes or slows down what is here.  This also in no way negates that there may be things that want to shift in the appearance of your life.  Often simply in the noticing of what is things move and reconfigure themselves into new configurations.  

One of the most fundamental aspects to keep in the front view mirror is that all of the changing that may be occurring in the picture of life that you see in front of you is reflecting you.  Its reflecting your perspectives.  Everything that you look out at really is just an external representation of you.  You masked as a multitude of infinite forms constantly fluxing, changing and shifting in response to you.  You are not the forms themselves, but the architecture of your perspectives builds the representations that appear.  In this way you can use what you see as information about your state of being, what you are aligning with and attracting to the canvas of your life.  

These reflections are valuable as they can show you your impossibility beliefs, your perceived cant’s, and also quite clearly what you want and don’t want.  What you actually want is what you will see in the reflection of the appearance.  What you think you want but don’t really want you won’t see appear even if its there.  In this way you will be able to tell where you are full of shit about waiting or being ready or not ready for what you think you want.  I also invite you to play with replacing the words ready/not ready with the words want now/don’t want now.  In this way you can more clearly see that you are the one in the driver’s seat of your choosing and can instantly stop waiting if you so choose.  

Remember what we want is to feel amazing and allow life to flow through.  From this flow we serve, we contribute, we give to life.  This is the fuel of creation.  Our state of being paints the picture and that state of your being is your one and only true responsibility, your one and only true choosing.  No matter what appearance appears right now on the canvas of your life start to see how your view and feeling state of it changes it.  Be bold enough to see the beauty, love and joy in all, that is if it excites you to do so and if that is how you want to experience life.  Don’t wait for the picture to change first.  Don’t wait for your body to heal, to heal your trauma, for all the money, or the relationship to arrive.  Feel amazing no matter the appearance.  

Life doesn’t happen to you, as you aren’t the appearance.  Instead life happens through you, through your awareness of it.  There isn’t a destination.  You don’t arrive.  You are.  That is it.  Stop trying to get somewhere else by waiting for something to arrive.  Just be, already here, already perfect, already love, now.

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

Finding your Power

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Finding your Power 

Moving beyond fear & accepting uncertainty

colorful color splash paintbrush rowWhen people perceive uncertainty fear often strikes.  The key here is perceive.  The truth is uncertainty is the perpetual state that we live in moment to moment.  Nothing is known until the moment that it is experienced and lived.  In this way we are always looking onto a blank canvas and waiting for the next stroke to appear.  What we frequently don’t realize is that we are the artist.  We are the one drawing each stroke and our perception is how we draw.  What we perceive is the picture of life we paint ourselves.  

It is in this way people are not living in the same reality.  There may be the surface appearance that we are all living in the same world, meaning we both see the same objects, and yet how people are experiencing this surface reality of objects is radically different.  It is truly in this way that you are the master-creator of your reality.  It is no joke or just new age spiritual nonsense that you are in charge, you actually are.

So the question becomes why then are we living so disempowered?  Why is it so hard for us to see, know and taste our power?  It is because the veil or covering of fear clouds our awareness and thus only allows us to perceive through its lens.  When fear is our lens we see/perceive threat.  Fear reinforces the idea of separation and promotes self-protection.  Fear is lack of faith and lack of trust.  It’s constantly doubting and questioning because it feels scared and alone.  This is the miserable state of being that most people are living in most of the time.  Know that ultimately fear is just one state of being from which you can choose, yet our tendency is to default to this program of fear whenever we perceive uncertainty.

On a lighter note this state of being of fear is what most of us came here to see through and overcome in order to help bring forth new possibilities of a reality that is lighter, rested, and more joyful for those that are ready for it.  Understand that not everyone is ready for a new reality and that is ok.  Sometimes holding onto patterns of fear are our only known way to create a sense of stability for ourselves.  The desire to hold onto the external sense of stability, as wavering and unstable as it is, outweighs accepting the truth of uncertainty.  However through accepting the truth of uncertainty you allow yourself to rest into it rather than fight it.  The relinquishment of your own inner resistance to uncertainty is what propels you into your power where you find true stability.  Stability in your own beingness that is independent of any circumstance, situation or condition.   

Changing your programming 

Being in the Driver’s seat

Hacker using the Internet hacked abstract computer server, databHow is it then that we change our default response?  How do we reprogram ourselves to a new patterned way of perceiving?  I wish I could give you some elaborately beautiful answer, but Nike said it best with their slogan just do it.  Understand that when we aren’t ready to change, change will seem really complex.  We will feel lost, confused, stuck, frustrated, and like things are impossible or hard to see.  We will think a lot, weigh options, blame, justify, rationalize, validate, but that is all preparation, or said another way, postponement of change.  When we are ready there are no more questions, we just simply see clearly and in that clear seeing we choose differently.  At the end of the day its really that simple.  

It takes however long it takes for us to stop postponing our own change.  It should in some way come as a relief to know this, as it means your ability to shift how you perceive and thus change your programming and the reality you experience is always up to you in each and every moment.  It should feel empowering to know this because it puts you back into the driver’s seat.  The truth is that you have always, always, always been in the driver’s seat, you just haven’t realized that you where.  This is what is called unconsciously creating our reality.  It is based on previous learning and experiences and it tends to just run on automatic in the background.  It doesn’t require much energy and feels somewhat static, which gives the illusion of a consistent or same world in which things can’t change, won’t change or don’t change.  Its not that things don’t change, it’s that you don’t change and when you don’t change the world looks the same day in and day out.  

The key here is that there is no right and no wrong to this.  There is not a right or wrong perception/experience.  There is only your preference.  What is your preference?  How do you want to perceive/experience?  Do you want to look through the lens of fear or the lens of safety?  You are not choice-less in the matter, you are the chooser.  When you get that life is not based on circumstances, but instead is based on you, you will have gotten what it means to live empowered.  

When you live empowered you are consciously, deliberately choosing your perception.  This means that you are free.  Free to decide for yourself.  Free to no longer allow circumstances, conditions or other people and their actions/non-actions decide for you.  No more having to play nice to hope to get what you want or control other peoples actions or responses to you.  Free to see how you desire to see.  Free to live in your preferred reality rather than the one that has been spoon fed to you.  Freedom from backlash or negative impact because you realize that you are in charge and that is true no matter what occurs.  This doesn’t mean that potential “negative” things won’t ever occur, but it does mean that you are the one deciding what you choose to term negative or not.   Again remember not everyone is ready for this level of freedom.  Not everyone wants it yet.  That is ok and perfect.  Do also realize that this freedom is always here, always present and always ready for you once you ready for it.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, 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

Not enoughness

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Not enoughness 

Seeking external safety & approval

competingMost of us are familiar with the experience of feeling like we are not enough.  When we feel like we are not enough the tendency is for us to compete, even if that competition only lives within our own minds.  The way that competition shows up differs for everyone.  For some it is a constant pressure and striving on self to “do more” or “be better”.  For other people it is through being stronger or more powerful than others.  It is either through forcing ourselves to be better or by being better or more powerful than others that we find our validation and safety when we feel like we not enough.  

Not enoughness is the foundation of lack and scarcity.  When we inherently believe ourselves to be not enough we create a life where we are always needing to control, manage and prove ourselves so that we have enough “out there” and therefore feel internally ok.  Our inherent internal worth is not present so we must find enough outside of us, in our environment, relationships and situations.  You will notice that this is the case for you if you feel threatened by things in your environment changing.  This could be a change in your job, or in how your body functions, or a change in a relationship.  When a change arises, if it seems to threaten your sense of safety and stability, you can know its because you have outsourced your safety to things in your external conditions or environment, even including your own body.

When we outsource our safety and stability to things, our body or people in our environment there will always be a sense of inner powerlessness.  That means that any time we feel threatened by a feeling, an emotion, a sensation, or by what someone else does or doesn’t do, or says or doesn’t say, or really any experience at all that feels threatening, its coming from an underlying belief that somehow, in some way, we are not enough.  That ‘not enoughness’ can feel like death.  Death of our physical self, or psychological self or interpersonal/relational self.  It is this underlying belief that we are not enough that than causes us to react out of fear, to create stress hormones in our physiology, and that activates our nervous system into fight, flight or freeze.  This little or not so little belief in our ‘not enoughness’ effects everything from the health of our body, the quality of our relationships and how we can show up and participate in life.   

Falling out of flow 

Un-prioritizing what’s really important

A faucet with a water drop / Water consumption and shortage conceptMost of us desire flow state.  Flow state is that magical, energized state of being where things simply occur without too much effort, thinking or work.  If there is work it comes from this rhythmic dance of co-participation with the forces of life and nature.  We often feel light, blissful and inclusive of all that arises when in flow state.  We have all experienced some version of this and most of us are hungry for some flavor of this to be our constant state of being.  This is the state of being of abundance of self.  This is actually our true state.

The belief of our not enoughness/lack runs contrary to our true state of enoughness/abundance.  When things aren’t true, or said another way, when things are out of alignment, they feel bad.  This is why it feels so bad when we feel ‘not enoughness’.  Its actually out of alignment with our highest truth, but when we get hijacked by this belief it takes over as truth and we have a hard time seeing anything else.  Here begins the loss of our flow (natural, inherent) state of being. 

So what can we do about this?  As always the first thing is to be aware that this is happening as its happening.  Often we go unconscious and are not aware of ourselves while we our in patterns.  We get sucked into the pattern/belief and we don’t even know we are in it.  We’ve merged with and have become the pattern.  So we must pause, and recognize that we are believing that we are not enough and see all the ways that the pattern is manipulating our behavior.  Are we trying to be better, do more, prove ourselves, be stronger, smarter or more powerful than others?  Are we comparing ourselves to others, or to ourself? Do we feel crappy about ourselves, like we suck, like we are never going to get it?  Are we feeling scared, threatened, like we aren’t going to be ok?  These are all the behaviors and thoughts associated with the pattern of lack or not enoughness.

Once we are aware of ourselves to the point where there is some aspect of ourselves present that is not totally merged with the pattern we must prioritize the flow state of abundance.  Since we’ve experienced flow before we know it exists.  If it existed once it can exist again, we simply must bring it back into view.  We must see that it is here too even within the state of not enoughness.  The state of abundance includes everything, even the state of lack.  As we do this we begin to reabsorb and reconnect into more of our true state. Bringing more and more energy, focus and priority to abundant flow and simply noticing when you revert and go back into focusing and prioritizing lack.  This is a dance.  A dance of prioritization in which you get to rest more and more into your true state the more and more you bring it into awareness.  

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

Physiology follows perception

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Physiology follows perception

The filters to perception

filterWe are all familiar with the mind-body connection.  We conceptually know that beliefs, thoughts and emotions effect our body.  Something we think can produce tension in our muscles or pain in our stomach.  With this knowing many of us still do not investigate our beliefs when tension, pain or dysfunction arises in the body.  Instead we go to some physical thing that we are doing or not doing, such as our diet, exercise, or sleep that must be the culprit.  

Why is it that this is our first reaction?  The truth is most people are not adept at paying attention to their feelings and thoughts or investigating their beliefs.  Instead the relationship to feelings and thoughts is typically only to try and stop the thoughts during meditation or figure out how to get relief from feelings that don’t feel good.  Most of us don’t automatically go towards feeling the uncomfortable feeling, noticing our thoughts or investigating what is creating the feeling or thought in the first place, which is the belief.  If we did we wouldn’t need to stop our thoughts or resist our feelings anymore, instead we would get to the core or their creator, our perception.  

Perception is the lens with which we look at life.  The filters for our perception are our beliefs.  If you imagine clear perception (before any beliefs) you would simply have pure light, or pure awareness.  Think of this as your primordial state before you learned anything.  You were totally clear, pure, innocent, light.  You can see this light in newborn babies or baby animals.  That’s why we love them so much!  You will also notice in babies that they are not resisting their uncomfortable feelings, but instead simply expressing their discomfort.  Likewise they are not thinking yet as their mental faculties are not yet developed, so they have no thoughts to resist or contend with either.  In fact they are a total blank state, or pure in their perception.

As life progresses we learn things from others and in that learning we develop filters (aka beliefs) that begin to color our perception.  Instead of our perception being clear it now bends or distorts creating ripples in the fabric of our clear awareness.  This is how we begin to create our reality so to speak.  Our filters determine and decide what we see, how we see and that quite literally create the reality that we perceive.  That reality that we perceive then obeys the laws of our filters (beliefs).  It literally can not.   

Perception is chemistry 

Identified as a body

10618311 - test tubes in the laboratory on a gray backgroundOk now that we understand perception lets tie this back into our physiology, our chemistry and the experience of having a body.   Depending on your particular filters that color your perception you create not only your reality at large, but also your body and how your body functions (its physiology and chemistry).  From this perspective you can ultimately see how you are the creator.  Now most of us don’t really know that we are the creator, instead we think we are a body, but really we are the perception that creates the body.   Take a moment and let that really register and sink in.  

Now when you are identified as a body (instead of the perception that creates the body) you feel powerless or victim to how the body expresses.  You have to wait or try and figure out what the perfect conditions are that will hopefully support your health and vitality.  This comes back to why our focus first goes to the things in our environment that we can somehow physically manipulate or change.  Our hope is that by manipulating or changing these things that our physical body and physiology will change too.  Now sometimes this works, or works for a little a while, and sometimes it doesn’t.  When it seems to not work and we have tried it enough times to realize it isn’t working, we may get curious about what else is creating this situation in our body/physiology.  Here is when people may start to explore their emotions, become aware of repressed emotions, things they have buried and haven’t allowed themselves to feel, and they begin to feel them.  This is a step closer to empowerment because you are getting more subtle than just working with physical manipulation of objects and things in your environment.  You are including more of you in the process and that comes with a sense of increasing empowerment rather than simply having to wait for some physical thing to change.  

Often once you have been able to access some of the more deeply stored emotions you begin to have more inner space and with that the ability to become more aware of your thoughts.  You may start to notice the direct connection between a thought that you have, how that makes you feel and the effects it has on your body/physiology.  Once this is realized the next step is to investigate the thought and see what belief (or filter) created that thought.  Say for example you recognize that you have the thought “I’ve done something wrong” and it comes with the feeling of overwhelm and the sensation of gripping in your gut.  If you have this much awareness you can now investigate the belief that created the thought “I’ve done something wrong”.  In investigation you realize that you have a filter/belief that shines the color of there being “rightness and wrongness.”  When you can see at this level you can even begin to then transcend the belief itself and return into the primordial, pure awareness state, before anything was learned or created into manifestation.  It is from this place in awareness that you can dissolve filters and begin to re-create a new reality and a new body/physiology for yourself.  This is the ultimate empowerment because you are now in your true state rather than identified with your body.  When you are identified with your body it is very hard to make changes in your chemistry/physiology without the use of physical agents.  Once you become increasingly subtle in your awareness, starting with emotions, than thoughts, beliefs and finally pure awareness itself, shifting the physical manifestation becomes easier and easier.  Your need to rely on external agents become less and less.  

It is my theory that one of the biggest reasons why conditions, pains and disease manifest in the physical body/physiology is to help us realize more of what we are and more of our power.  They do this though showing us where we are still misidentified as something other than the pure awareness (which is so clearly seen in a baby) and where we are giving away our power.  When we can learn to use things that arise in our physical body as teachers in this way we can greatly accelerate our journey into remembering, reconnecting and embodying our truest Self or identity while here in this body on this planet.  

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

Embracing limitation

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Embracing limitation 

Stepping into limited experiencing

20595789 - wall around the girl as the fear conceptWe are often striving to grow, expand, deepen and increase our experience of ourselves.  It is phenomenal that most of us have this hunger.  This hunger is often sparked from a feeling of knowing there is more to existence (life) than we have been experiencing.  This feeling that there is more often comes with the awareness that we are currently experiencing limitation in some way and in response to that feeling we’ve lit a fire inside of us to move through into more.  

The reason this fire gets lit is because the experience of limitation is uncomfortable, frustrating, and annoying.  No one enjoys feeling limitation, so in order to not feel limitation we find ways, places, tools, and the like to move us into feeling less limited and more free.  Being free is our most natural, innate state.  So when limitation arises it contradicts that which we know to be more true, that we are free.

So how do we rest in the knowingness that we are free while simultaneously experiencing limitation?  The key here is in embracing what we perceive to be our limitation.  Now almost no one will readily do this.  This is one of the primary reasons why we have a field of “healing” in the first place.  No one wants to embrace those things or experiences that feel crappy, such as limitation.  Often it feels like we are “going in the wrong direction” if we embrace that which we are trying to change or don’t like, almost like we are inviting it in rather than transforming it.  

The truth is when you embrace you do invite it, but you invite in that which is already there.  Our frustration comes when we don’t invite or include in what is already present.  In that way we resist a part of our experience rather than accept our experience.  We all know that what we resist persists, so what you end up getting is more and more of the experience of limitation or whatever it is you don’t like.   

The other side of embracing limitation

Your free self

What happens on the other side of embracing limitation?  When we are able to drop into receiving what is presenting in our experience the pressure to have to be different subsides, which is experienced as a huge relief to our system.  That thing that we all call “stress” seems to relax.  What is really relaxing is us.  Its through this process of accepting what is that our freedom can begin to be felt and experienced.  We are now free from something about us or in our experience having to be different, better, or changed.  What then arises is a state of presence; we become present.  

Underneath the experience of limitation are the thoughts and beliefs that you are not capable, that something is not possible, or that something is fixed or solid.  None of these beliefs are ultimately true, but they are true to a part of you that is experiencing the limitation.  When that part that is experiencing limitation is felt and allowed its calms down, and rather than it controlling your experience, something else arrives on the scene.  That something else that arrives is experienced as a calmer, stiller, clearer and more aware presence.  That is you, the free you.  

The free you that you truly are never goes anywhere.  It just gets covered up by thoughts, beliefs, concepts and ideas, which confuse you and make you feel like you have no idea what is going on.  Most of us are trying to fix or figure things out from this confused, covered up aspect of ourselves which makes us feel like we are moving in circles and never getting closer to the truth. 

Fallen angel with black wingsIt is only through surrendering to these parts of ourselves, ending our battle with them, that we can move through.  This may feel like failure, like giving up, like losing fight, or like the wrong direction because you are so identified with the part that feels the limitation and so determined to overcome it and not give into it.  If you simply just let this part win, allow the experience of limitation without the fight, I promise you something else will arrive on the scene.  That something else that arrives has always been there its just that its been covered up by the battle to make some aspect of itself different.  When you end the battle now you can perceive this truer aspect of self.  The battle that you create inside is what perpetuates the limitation and continues what feels like the never ending cycle to nowhere.  When you are willing to rest your sword against your own experience your freedom awaits you.  

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