bliss

BELIEVING IN MAGIC

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BELIEVING IN MAGIC 

Possibility, imagination & creation

Most of us love the idea of magic, but few of us actually believe in it.  It seems that magic is reserved only for small children.  Once we reach the age of “logical” brain development, magic becomes silly fantastical play that only little kids do and since we are becoming a “big” kid, magic goes out the window for us.  Why do we stop playing and believing in magic?  Why do we get so serious and realistic?  It’s really all about what we value as a society and what gets reinforced.  We get acknowledgment and praise for getting good grades, excelling at math and science, and for doing our school work well.  We don’t get acknowledgment for how well we play, the worlds we create with our imagination or how much we believed in magic today.  Since there is an innate human need to belong and be part of the group, we follow what the collective agrees to value even if it isn’t in alignment for us.  Despite our best efforts to stay connected to our steam of magic and all of its infinite possibilities, we often lose connection to it our mid-late childhood development.  

What is magic?  Magic is the space of possibility, imagination and creation.  What we often fail to realize is that we are imagining our entire reality.  We each are already master magicians (ie. creators).  The world we create/are creating is flat, mundane and logical because that is what has been reinforced to us as what’s real and important.  Therefore that is what we see and continue to create through our seeing.  In this way reality appears to be devoid of magic, but rather it’s that we’ve used our magical powers to create this seemingly ordinary experience.  Inside of this experience we pretend to know what is going to happen next, we create plans, schedules and routines that give us a sense of familiarity, and the world of infinite possibilities gets scaled down into just a few known potential outcomes for how things can be and operate.

You can see that regardless of whether or not you believe in magic, you are utilizing it everyday.  It’s simply a matter of tuning in, paying attention and inquiring into what it is you are creating.  We create with our imagination and our seeing.  Whatever you can imagine is possible you can create.  Again you are already doing it all of the time, it’s only that your range of what is possible is likely quite narrow and your active imaginative qualities are somewhat off line.  You keep creating the same reality because you aren’t conjuring up anything novel from the well of your creator powers.  The question then becomes how do you get yourself back on line, activating your imagination and making magic that makes your reality feel alive, invigorating, exciting, mysterious and blissful.  

GETTING TO THE HEART 

The well-spring of magic

The portal into our active imaginative qualities and creating a more magical reality experience for ourselves is finding our way into our heart.  We are born open and in the state of love.  This is why a young child’s heart is naturally open and why they have access to the world of their magic.  Even if you don’t perceive what they perceive or join them in their creations, they are in their own magically reality all of the time.  That is until they learn the seemingly “fixed and solid” natural of reality that we condition them with and they start to believe that they are a product of creation rather than the magician/creator of it.  This is when the world of infinite possibilities becomes only a small handful of options and we forget, lose touch or disconnect from the fact that we are the ones doing all of the creating.  

As time goes on, and we have more and more experiences of being human, we move further and further away from the source of ourselves.  This means we forget ourselves more and more with time.  In addition, many of the experiences that we have being human don’t feel good and we learn to protect ourselves from physical, emotional and mental pain.  Protection means that we shut down, close off and become less open and available to participate with creation.  Since we’ve forgotten that we are the magician/creator we feel powerless to the circumstances of life, and helpless to how we feel, sense and relate to life and others.  In essence it’s kind of big, confusing mess.  

Finding our way back into our heart often means feeling the things that shut it down in the first place.  When we feel the pain it breaks our hearts back open.  We move through the feelings rather than stay closed down and shut off.  We open into the pain rather than protect ourselves from it.  This is healing in a nutshell.  It’s not complicated, but it’s also not necessarily easy.  It takes quite a bit of courage and ginormous heap of trust in ourselves to reopen.  Well it might seem easier to stay closed and continue life as the mundane status quo, you will feel unsatisfied and non-magical.  Your experience of life will be functional, but it won’t necessarily be fun.  

Your heart is the well-spring of magic.  It makes everything come alive.  It allows all possibilities to emerge.  It activates your imagination and helps you remember that you are the magician of this creation.  The reward of feeling the pain becomes clearly evident as you embark on the journey.  Your commitment and devotion to the path is key.  Some days it will feel hard to find your heart, but your desire to do so will be your guiding light.  If your level of commitment or devotion is high then before you know it there will be nothing that doesn’t fit inside of your heart.  You will have engulfed all of creation in love.  This means you will undoubtedly experience magic as your lived reality moment to moment.  As always the choice lies in your hands, your heart and your desire.   

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

Abundance as the Natural State

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ABUNDANCE AS THE NATURAL STATE

Focusing on what is

So much we are focused on what isn’t.  We spend our energy thinking about all the things that we desire as if they are somehow lacking now with the aspiration that we will attain them at some future date.  This is the near constant game that our mind’s play on us.  It goes something like this.  Look out at the manifestation of this thing that we call physical reality.  See how there are certain things not in your visual or mental perspective that you would like to see or believe are there.  Things such as cars, houses, clothes, friendships, partnerships, children, jobs, degrees, money, vacations, etc.  Decide that at some future date those things will be there.  Work to achieve said things until they arrive at future date.  Become happy when things arrive and become sad when they don’t arrive.  In many ways this sums up our human existence.  

While exciting at first, or exciting when you are feeling successful, living simply to achieve your desires is temporary unsustainable happiness that is dependent on what is showing up being in alignment with what you think should be there.  Read that sentence again until it really sinks in.  What if there is another way to live besides for the achievement of your desires?  Would you be willing to stop focusing on what is missing from your experience and trying to get something from it that you perceive isn’t there?  Many people might initially say yes however when it comes to implementation, follow through is often poor.  We are addicted to focusing on what we think isn’t there and such our experience is one of lack, followed by effort and trying, and feeling only success if we can somehow get the thing to appear to us.  This is the cycle of suffering.

You might be thinking how do I not perceive lack when clearly I can’t perceive the thing that I want as being in my direct experience.  First I will say that your focus on it not being here is all that keeps it from being perceivable to you and what pushes it away or keeps it out from your direct experience.  Mostly we are unaware that we are even doing this, however whatever we insist upon will be what we experience even when we are unconscious as to what it is that we are insisting upon.  Something to entertain to help you open up your perspective is the recognition that somewhere what you desire exists.  It is not out of creation, it just simply is not directly here now.  This perspective can be a bridge for you until you can more fully rest in the abundance of is-ness itself and begin to slowly shift your focus on what is rather than what isn’t.  If you fully shift your focus solely onto what is, even if only for a few seconds, the abundance of life as the natural state will be evidently clear. 

COMPLETENESS OF ISNESS

Want nothing to be different than it is

Due to that fact that most all of us think that the goal of life is to achieve our desires and then die we completely miss the fact of our own existence.  We place most of our attention on the stuff of life and very little, if any, attention on the fact that we exist, that we be, that we are, and so we are unfamiliar with ourselves or with is-ness.  Simply is-ness is.  Is-ness is before any forms or before anything takes shape in our perceptible and sensorial experience.  Recognizing is-ness is the recognition of completion, abundance and the natural state prior to phenomena.  

You may wonder how you can more fully pay attention to the fact that you exist.  The easiest way that I have found is to set yourself in the attitude of not wanting anything to be different than it is.  When you stop resisting what is, either through giving up your focus on what is not or by directly surrendering to your conflict with whatever the appearances are that are showing up for you in any given moment, you are left only with is-ness.  That pure state of beingness before thought forms emerge which begin to inform your experience.  In addition to not wanting anything to be different than it is, is also not wanting anything from anything.  In this way you end your desires to get something from anything.  When you do this you will see how much of your energy and attention it takes to engage in life by trying to get something that you perceive you want, think will benefit you, keep you safe or ensure your survival.  Once suspended, all of that energy and attention that was bound up in getting, can then be redirected into the pure focus on your beingness rather than on trying to somehow manipulate life to your liking.

What I am pointing to here is quite simple in application, so it begs the question as to why we don’t follow through.  Why do we stop ourselves even before we try?  Why do we want so much to hold onto our perspective of lack which leads to effort and trying rather than surrender to life and experience the abundance of it?  First the mind doesn’t like simplicity.  It wants it to be more complicated than that so it will do its best to try and complicate and confuse things for you.  Two, we often think that our desires and preferences are more important than they actually are, so we don’t want to give them up.  We confuse our desires, preferences and what we think should be (rather than what is) for self-empowerment and therefore think we need to justly fight or stand up for what we want.  When we don’t get what we want, or achieve what we want, we feel cheated or somehow worthless or not valuable.  It’s hard for our egos to swallow the fact that they really aren’t that important.  That what we want isn’t that important and often not even relevant.  It feels like a punch in the stomach, or a death of sorts, like everything you thought was so important no longer being so.  This is the beginning of the dis-identification of the ego as you and the surrender into the god state where you come to know the real you.  

Lastly we’ve confused our happiness, joy, bliss, safety, security and ok-ness to be locked up in something seemingly out there so we keep trying to get it from out there somewhere, in circumstances and conditions.  It will never be found there because conditions always change.  What doesn’t change is you, is is-ness.  Is-ness always is.  It doesn’t come and go.  It is the stability in the ever changing sea of appearances.  Lock onto that instead and you will know yourself and what true sustainable abundant, bliss, joy, freedom and safety is.  No more will you need to seek it out in the world of appearances. When you arrive here you will begin to see that your necessity to make things happen through the physical lessens and your more formless nature will be more real than the form.  Greater ease and effortless doing naturally emerges.  You become more in agreement with God, with the real you, and that alignment, though death to your ego, will set you free.  That is divine union.  That is mergence with God.  That is the return of oneness remembering itself.  My best advice is to stop being so stubborn and just let God be as God is and you will discover everlasting peace.  

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

Being Forgiveness

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BEING FORGIVENESS 

Resistance, wrongness & righteousness

What is forgiveness? What would it be like to live and be forgiveness?  In a nutshell forgiveness is the dissolution of charge.  It is resolution.  It is the allowing of what is to be as it is.  It’s the opening of one’s self, or one’s system, to that which it had previously withdrawn or removed itself from.  It is the end of insistence on your rightness and the washing away of your biases.  It is the return to non-separation.  It is instantaneous peace, freedom and bliss.

Forgiveness is the gateway into everything that we desire.  Forgiveness of self, other and all.  Ultimately to forgive, no matter what it seems like we are forgiving, is to come out of an erroneous perspective that we’ve been holding onto and into the truth.  That is why we always feel clearer and better after we forgive, because we are seeing from a perspective that is in greater alignment with the truth of what is.  The truth always feels better to us.  

Why do we not instantly move from suffering, charge or being stuck in a perspective into forgiveness?  Really we could at any moment choose this instantaneous transformation yet most of us don’t because we are too busy continuing our fight (internal or external) with what is.  Resistance is a tricky thing and hard for most of us to see in ourselves.  Sometimes we can feel the effects of our inner resistance as tension or pain in the body, but often we don’t make the connection that the stress, tension or pain we feel is part of our own inner resistance to something that is.  We attempt to address these effects that we feel in our body (i.e. tension or pain), but without going to the core and looking at what it is that we are in resistance to in the first place.  This is an endless chase that resolves nothing and provides only temporary relief.  

We also hate feeling wrong so we will fight to the end to prove, justify, and validate why something or someone else’s behavior, action or perspective is wrong and we are right.  When we go to the depths of wrongness it often brings a sense of inner shame and the pushing away of ourselves from ourselves.  It is the experience of self-resistance rather than self-love.  The proving or justifying that we do in order to not feel shame or self-rejection may be expressed subtly inside our own thoughts and mind and or it may be expressed more externally through the pushing away of certain people or things in our life.  The more righteous and insistent we are on our viewpoint the more we will suffer and the longer we delay the peace and freedom we desire.  The insistence of the rightness of our perspective and the wrongness of another’s is the prime reason why we don’t forgive. 

KNOW THYSELF 

Free will to forgive

When we live in a state of resistance or non-forgiveness we are withdrawing our love from certain aspects of creation.  There is no greater pain than to withdraw our love and put up energetic walls between self and other.  This is to live disconnected and experience separation, suffering, helplessness and powerlessness.  The only way to experience and know your power and live in connection is to be willing to put down your guards, dissolve your illusionary walls of self-protection and be rested open in a state of forgiveness of all.  True power comes from the heart and from not needing to push away any part of your experience.  When you can fully receive all of your experience you have won your internal battle and have mastered yourself.  This is what it is to be forgiveness.  

It is important to remember that you can choose this at any moment and in any experience.  Your free will to forgive can never be compromised by anyone other than yourself.  To choose and live moment to moment forgiveness opens up a portal of sorts in your beingness to infinite energy and intelligence.  You become agenda-less and therefore have access to the infinite wisdom and love that you are.  Your very essence serves you and all of creation.  

Some people may feel scared to put down their walls and drop their guards.  They may not yet know the power of love or be rested in the support that comes with it.  They may fear getting hurt, feeling pain, or being vulnerable or susceptible to attack- whether that attack is from others or self.  This is an indication of trying to control or manage life (rather than be present with and open to it) by attempting to push away or prevent certain feelings, sensations or experiences.  This is part of the inner resistance I was mentioning above and it can be tricky to see in ourselves because it is so engrained in the way that we operate.  In fact we often confuse our walls, guards and protection mechanisms as ourselves, as who we think we are, when really they are simply the aspects that interfere with or cloud our ability to truly see and know ourselves.  

Dismantling the resistance that we have built inside of our own selves opens us into love, which is our essence and true nature.  When we don’t yet know love we feel disconnected from our power because love is the ultimate power and the ultimate protector.  Inherent in love is everything we could ever want or need.  Love illuminates, invites, includes and is fiercely coherent in its capacity to organize everything into it.  Love leaves nothing out.  

Forgiveness is our be-line into ourselves.  It is the fastest way, the accelerated path, to knowing ourselves.  Know Thyself is one of, if not the prime tenet of all wisdom traditions.  Forgiveness is its key.  Use it if you so desire to move as quickly as possible into the light or your own consciousness.  God is none other than the clearest, most perfected perspective of yourself.  Clear the canvas of your mind and come to know yourself in what remains.  

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

Bliss

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Bliss

Ecstasy of being

Who doesn’t desire more bliss? The pure joy and ecstasy of simply being.  Whether we seek bliss through objects, relationships, service work, recreation, nature, food or other means, we all hunger for it.  Its at the root of what drives all of our meditation, personal growth work and willingness to dismantle our programmed sense of self.  Ironically bliss, which is very thing that we are, which we claim to desire more than anything else, is the very thing that we give away a million times a day.  

Why is it that we give bliss, which again is our essential nature or self, away so often?  Why is it that other things seem more important than bliss and therefore reign as primary in our day to day experience.  To begin many people do not realize that they are in charge of themselves.  What I mean by this is that most people are significantly disempowered and are unaware that they are deciding their life.  They believe that life is random, including their emotional states, and they just hope that they wake up on any given day and feel good.  With this lack of awareness of self there is the appearance that circumstances decide for you and that there really is nothing you can do about it.  When we disown our power in this way we fail to see any responsibility or accountability that we have for our self and our state of being.  We therefore hope for something great, magical, or some object/person that we desire to come along and fix us or make things perfect and right, and we become part of the circumstance rather than the creator of it.

Outside of lack of awareness of self and the disownment of our power what things interfere with us choosing bliss moment to moment?  One of the prime things that interferes is our minds need to know what’s happening or where things are going and our attachment to things or outcomes.  When we desire a thing or outcome more than we desire bliss, then the thing or outcome is what is in charge and no longer is bliss center stage.  Often we fear loss of an object/outcome or even loss of the thought of an object/outcome, because we have confused the object/outcome with our state of bliss.  

If bliss had an enemy, which it doesn’t, but if it did, its enemy would be certainty.  Nothing compresses, flattens, and attempts to put bliss in a box more than the our mind’s perceived need for certainty.  Uncertainty is bliss’s playground while certainty is the mind’s.  Nothing is certain until you decide on it.  Take great care and attention to what it is you decide on as that will be your experience. 

Bliss Beyond Beliefs 

Allowing bliss to reign

There are umpteen million beliefs that interfere with bliss.  They are along the lines of thinking you don’t deserve it, can’t have/be it, impossible to live in at all times, its not real, bliss is only for some people, its not enough, its impractical, its more important to be right, tragedy can’t be blissful, bliss is not sustainable, too many things are wrong in me, too many things are wrong in the world, bliss is circumstantial, it’s only for sometimes, can’t be blissful for no reason, can’t be blissful if other people aren’t… and the list goes on and on.  These are our roadblocks in bliss.  Imagine a road that is made of pure bliss that goes on forever and ever.  Now imagine that every 10 feet there is red light.  All of those red lights are your interfering beliefs that arise and pause your experience of bliss.  The more red lights on your road the less you get to experience the road.  

When we do the work of investigating our beliefs we have fewer and fewer red lights on our road.  This is a worthwhile journey, though arduous and seemingly unending at times.  This begs the question as to if there is a more accelerated way to reclaiming bliss.  Can we in one full swoop be fully rested as bliss here and now in this human experience?  The short answer is absolutely yes.  What’s required is to see bliss inside of every single face, circumstance and experience no matter what is appearing.  In essence replacing everything you perceive with its actual true state, which is bliss.  This brings you into correct seeing, and it is a tall order for most people.  Hence the arduous path of self-inquiry and investigation is often needed.  

Why bliss you might ask?  Well outside the fact that it’s your natural state, it is also what makes things come alive, organizes and reorganizes forms, is self-intelligent, and not to mention feels A-MA-ZING!  There has never been a moment when I regretted being rested and moved by and as bliss.  It is the dismantler of all untruth, the dissolver of all inauthenticity, the lover all expressions, the breaker of chains, the wise one, the mover, the knower.  It’s the portal into your most absolute self.  So really a better question to ask is why not bliss?  

When you give away all of your insistences, biases, and attachments to people, objects, and outcomes, bliss is more and more revealed to you and becomes more and more your direct experience of reality.  The greater your willingness to give away your roadblocks and red lights and give into the bliss that is already here the more you will enjoy your human experience.  The more purposeful you will feel even if you “do” nothing.  The ease with which you will be able to engage on relational levels with other people will increase.  The fears and thoughts that once crippled you will be no more.  Everything you perceive will look more inviting to you.  Truly when you give everything over to bliss is the first time that you can genuinely serve or care.  To be without agenda or attachment to outcome is to allow love to simply be and move as it so intelligently is organized to do.

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

Body-Mind-Spirit

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Body-Mind-Spirit 

Where’s Spirit? 

Meditation - flower of lifeWe are all body-mind-spirit complexes.  Many of us are aware of the fact that we have a body and a mind.  Less of us are aware of the fact that we have a spirit.  Conceptually it may seem obvious to us that we have a spirit however experientially many of us may not be making direct contact or have direct knowing of our spirit.  In fact often times when we do make contact with our spirit we may experience a few moments of bliss and then our minds comes plunging in trying to make sense of it all or even deny, forget, or flatten the experience of spirit altogether.  

Why is it that even when we have been on a spiritual seeking path for many years that spirit remains an elusive mystery to us in our direct day to day experience?  Why do we continue to attempt to rationalize spirit and put it in some kind of box to make sense of it?  Our minds so badly want answers and want to feel safe, secure and like they know what is going on even when they don’t.  Because we have the tendency to heavily rely on and believe the thoughts that our minds create as the sole reality there seems to be no way around this.  The mind believes that if it can just figure spirit out then it will know what spirit is.  This would be equivalent to the body trying to sense the mind and through sensation know a thought.  A sensation however cannot know a thought, just like a thought cannot know spirit.  Meaning you can’t use your mind/thoughts to know spirit.  Your thoughts can think about spirit, this is called conceptual spirituality and where most spiritual seekers hang out, but a thought cannot directly experience and know spirit.  

Just like the mind can see what might be helpful for the body, which the body can’t necessarily see on its own, the spirit knows what is helpful for the mind (and body) more so than by their independent faculties alone.  Spirit is that next level of ourselves which many of us are waking up too.  Its that intelligence which moves us into alignment and greater coherence once we make direct contact with it.  As our awareness finds spirit, spirit is revealed to us and becomes active in our day to day lives.  What then does it take to bring greater awareness to the spirit aspect of ourselves rather than being so heavily dependent on the body-mind aspects of ourselves? 

Bringing spirit into greater awareness

Beliefs, worthiness and self-commitment

Man with conceptual spiritual body art

In order to bring spirit into greater awareness for your direct experience of it you must first investigate any stories and beliefs that you have about spirit which don’t support your capacity to perceive it.  Our beliefs are our filters.  They color everything we see and thus everything we will experience.  Even if we have thoughts about liking spirit or thinking spirit is real, our beliefs will trump those thoughts.  Many of us don’t even know what we believe because we haven’t ever really investigated ourselves to discover it.  Once we do find value in this self-investigative process we will begin to see ways in which our beliefs don’t support the direct perception of spirit.  If you don’t directly experience spirit at all times you can bet you have some beliefs that aren’t supporting your capacity to know spirit.

Another thing that often interferes with our direct experience of spirit is our sense of worth.  Many of us feel incredibly unworthy of spirit.  Substitute the word divine, God, or love for spirit and you may find some of these unworthy feelings arise.  If you feel unworthy of spirit you will be unable to perceive spirit, or anytime you begin to experience it, you will find some way to deflect or push away the experience.  Often people will go into their head to try and figure things out as a defense mechanism to prevent themselves from having to feel unworthy of spirit.  Allowing yourself to feel the unworthiness, rather than go into your head or flatten out your experience in some way, brings you closer to the experience of spirit.  

Lastly where you place your value and focus is of prime importance.  If you only conceptually value spirit and get some sense of personal identity or validation from being a “spiritual” person this will not lead to the direct experience of spirit.  You must create a hunger so intense inside of you to know spirit.  This is how you will begin to stably experience it at all times.  Until that is your sole value you will find yourself distracted and more focused in your body-mind reference point of self.  

Many will get tastes of spirit, but few will commit whole heartedly to a life where spirit is in awareness 100% of the time.  Without this commitment the value gets placed on other things and experiences which take precedence, and suffering continues as you don’t yet know yourself.  It takes a full-hearted commitment to want to know yourself completely.  When you do you activate the pure potential of life to emerge through you into a myriad of infinite expressions and into this play of forms we call creation.  

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

Tasting beyond the ordinary

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Tasting beyond the ordinary 

Deepening & expanding into more of you

Child Sailing in Water on Umbrella BoatWe get glimpses into beyond the ordinary.  Many of us have tasted these glimpses, some more than others.  They often come with a sense of synchronicity, lightness, aliveness, lucidity, energy, peace, and bliss.  There is frequently not a care as to what others think about you and a clarity, knowing and resting in yourself.  These are the states of being which we most often desire and seek after as the baseline from which we experience all of life.  

Whether you’ve had one, or a thousand tastes beyond the ordinary, it really truly doesn’t matter.  You are not better or more spiritual if you’ve had more tastes.  People often confuse experiences with who they are.  Defining yourself by the experiences with which you’ve had or not had is a slippery slope into self-comparison, separation and judgment.  

It can seem paradoxical when a person appears to be able to penetrate into deeper or more expanded states of being and yet on a personality level there are parts of them that aren’t congruent or fully aligned.  Perhaps you have even had this experience yourself.  Where you’ve been able to experience yourself beyond the ordinary yet you continue to get caught in fear, worry, mistrust and making sure people like you.  

So why the incongruence?  Why can we taste ourselves beyond the ordinary (sometimes over and over and over again) and not fully integrate that into our beingness?  The answer lies within our personality and our humanness.  Many of us may not even want to admit to ourselves that we are indeed currently human, but we are.  Being human requires that we take on particular distortions of personality that go along with the human experience.  These distortions are not the ultimate truth of who we are, but we tend to believe them because they are what we know ourselves to be from this human perspective.  The level to which we believe the distortions to be true will be the level at which there is incongruency in our system between living in the ordinary and living beyond ordinary experiencing.   

Intensifying the light 

Relating to life from expanded self-awareness 

Sun SkyBeyond ordinary, or that state of peace, bliss, and aliveness is always present, always here.  The more times you taste it doesn’t make it more here.  It doesn’t come and go.  What comes and goes is your relationship to it and to life.  

Ultimately what those tastes beyond ordinary do create is an opportunity for the breakdown and dissolution of the distorted perceptions, beliefs and thoughts, that interfere with you recognizing the bliss that’s always here.  This is one of the reasons why spinal entrainments are useful.  They give your system a taste, an opportunity, to experience and thus know itself beyond the ordinary, to whatever degree your system feels safe enough to do so or is currently relevant for you.  If however you get that taste and then simply fall back into the same ways of relating to life, then you haven’t fully seized the opportunity that’s been presented.  

When the intensity and frequency of light/energy gets amplified, the veil of illusion of separation gets increasingly permeable and the opportunity for penetration beyond ordinary increasingly probable.  This is what I do, and the opportunity I offer people, when I work with them in my office.  When your awareness is at this level of realization there is a higher order of intelligence and energy available and an increasing capacity to be self-aware.    This mean you can see more clearly yourself, your patterns, your habits, your stories, at whatever pace and to whatever degree is relevant for you.  

That higher order intelligence which sees and knows is you, but from the perspective of being human it simply informs you.  In this way you are self-informed and self-organizing.  There are no “outside” magical forces.  It is just a bigger soup of you, in which you are now able to make contact with.  That which you then are able to see and recognize in this more expanded state of yourself, you must take action on within this human level of experiencing.  This is how you change how you relate and eventually integrate that state of peace and bliss as your baseline experiencing.  

Many people see themselves in this light of awareness, but then refuse to or don’t take action, so they then go back into forgetting, and thus ordinary experiencing.  They go back behind the veil until the next opportunity where the intensity and frequency of light/energy is such that they can penetrate beyond it again, see themselves more clearly again and take new action.  

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

Divine perfect love

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Divine perfect love 

The magic of you

magical youDid you know that you are pure magic.  Divine perfect love.  Flawless.  Do you know that there is nothing but this. Our fall from grace, or God, or love comes through forgetting this simple truth and then refusing to believe it when it is pointed out to us.  What would your life look like, how would you feel and who would you be if at every moment of every day you brought this knowing, this remembrance, alive and in the forefront of your consciousness.  If you didn’t allow yourself to believe or even entertain any other possible truth or reality.  

Doubt and mistrust are the killers of life, destroyers of all possibilities and the zappers of love.  When we doubt who and what we are, believing that we are other than divine perfect love, then everything we see becomes a reflection of our doubt.  Things, events, situations and people appear distrustful.  Life feels devoid or empty of something but we can’t quite put our finger on what’s not there.  Sometimes we feel hopeless and lost and can’t find our way back home.  Our heart feels a million miles away and we are not even sure how to feel it again.  The world looks flat and ordinary.  Nothing seems magical.  We all know some level of having tasted this place.  Its called the “human condition” and sadly most people in our world our living this as their constant reality.  Some are just better at functioning within it than others.  

So what is our issue with not claiming, knowing and being the divine perfect love that we already are?  Why are we playing this game of denial with ourselves?  Why does it feel so hard to accept this truth?  We have become so focused on our body, matter and form that we have forgotten our spirit.  The fact that we are spirit as well as form feels like quackery to most because they can’t “see” their spirit.  Other people feel arrogant in saying they are spirit or divine, feeling “who are they to be so worthy and magical.”  We have been conditioned, simply by being born here, that we not divine, not worthy, and not perfect.  All of life’s seeming challenges, pains, sickness, and such are all catalyst and fuel to help us remember and reclaim what we already are while we simultaneously are inhabiting this body.  We are here to wake up to what we are inside of this form.  This is the primary lesson that humanity is learning right now.   

Pulling up the roots 

Unearthing the lies you’ve been taught about who you are

40630695 - big tree roots and sunshine in a green forestWe’ve all got roots, and for some of us it may have been a long time since we cleaned out our garden.  In fact some of us may have never cleaned out our gardens and are thus still living in our parents, grandparents and societies gardens.  We may be so rooted down to certain concepts and ideas of ourselves that we learned from others, that we actually believe we are those concepts and ideas. 

Its important to know exactly what is growing in your garden and how deep down in the soil of you it is rooted.  This is your responsibility and it is how you step into being the conscious, deliberate creator in your life.  Its how you literally create yourself.  It is up to you to do this.  Unfortunately no one can do this for you.  That’s why someone can tell you just how perfectly divine you are and yet you can’t believe it.  Its because you’ve got roots deep down in your garden that believe other and since you are the gardener of your garden it is fully up to you to tend it.  

Pulling up the old roots (stories, concepts) of self that don’t serve you is vital.  If you don’t pull them up then they will keep growing and showing up in your life.  At times they may even take over your entire garden.  Pulling them up allows room for new flowers, plants and trees to grow.  You must investigate and decide what greenery and roots that you want in your garden, and just like any garden you must nurture, nourish and water those that you want and let the others dry up. 

So what is nourishment in our metaphysical garden?  Nourishment is energy and energy comes from the thoughts, focus and the attention that we give to things.  What we focus on grows, what we don’t falls away.  If you want divine perfect love to grow then plant the seed and give it attention.  If you want unworthiness, doubt and mistrust to dry up then stop feeding them your energy.  You may see them arise in your garden from time to time, or even on a daily basis, and just as soon as you are aware of them choose not to give them nourishment.  Choose to take energy out of those plants and put it into other plants.  Be clear and intentional on what you want to grow and what you don’t want to grow.  Be willing to be so flexible that you can shift your attention and thus the nourishment you give to things the moment you recognize that they’ve arisen.  Decide that it is important enough to you to not keep feeding those old plants and be willing to shift your focus instantaneously.  

Again only you can do this.  Support from others that can point and direct you is vital but ultimately it is up to you.  Take the energy out of blame, shame, victim, and fault and take ownership of your life.  Be the driver and you will see just how much power you really have to create yourself and your life.  

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

Allowing

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Allowing 

Not needing or wanting anything to be other than it is

AspirationsWhat is it to really allow?  To drop all of your agendas, expectations, and desires for you or for life to be other than what it is and simultaneously move forward into change, growth and expansion?  Most of us have a drive towards change or evolution and can get conflicted as to how to not come from a place of forceful doing and lack in the process of moving forward and living our life.  It is a seeming paradox as these can appear to be opposing states, doing vs. being or being vs. doing.  Its seems that it has to be one or the other, however true allowing is mastering this being-doing dance.  

In general it is more common that most of us are coming from a place of pure doing, rather than being.  It is culturally accepted to do rather than to be, so we have been conditioned to be doers.  There is still a “bei-er” in doing, but most of us are only focused on the doing and are thus identified as/with the doing that takes place.  We tend not to focus on the fact that there is a being doing the doing and instead only on the thing that is done.  

In order to bring focus on the being we need to pause what we are doing and simply notice what is present when there is no doing.  This is what most meditation techniques are pointing towards, that of noticing beingness, which is also called is-ness, existence or awareness.  True allowing starts with the recognition that there is being or beingness.  You really can’t allow until you can recognize the beingness that is always present, seemingly behind the scenes, and bring it more into the forefront.  

The aim of meditation is to recognize this beingness as you.  For some this is the end of the game and they dissolve further and further into pure beingness and become increasingly formless.  However for most of us that have a human form at this time this is not the end game and instead just the beginning of stages of this being-doing dance that I call true allowing.   

Forces of acceptance 

The interwoven field of bliss-love

Power of couple loveIf the first step is recognizing being, then the second step is accepting exactly what is present without the hunger to change it in any way.  When these first two steps have occurred we empty out ourselves (aka our limited identities) and the ever present, interwoven throughout everything, field of bliss-love becomes known to us.  This field penetrates everything including our sensory-body experience.  The experience of it is like becoming bliss-love, only we are not becoming it, but instead realizing we are it and it is everything.  It is from this knowingness, from this direct experience, that we truly rest.  We have dropped personal agenda, expectations, needs, wants and desires, and have literally fallen into love.  

From this state of rest and of knowing self as god-creator identity, doing arises as allowing.  Doing is the recognition of this bliss-love field as everything you interact with and touch.  It is the allowing what is to be what it truly is simultaneously with the knowing that it can’t not be.  Through you touching an aspect of yourself with the recognition of itself it wakes up and realizes itself as what it is.  It reorganizes its configuration (aka identity) to match that of what it truly is.  This reorganization is the doing or allowing.  It occurs without effort or force, but instead awareness intelligently moves energy into a new configuration.  

Everything in creation is simply energy.  Energy responds and organizes itself in congruence with awareness (beingness).  Our beingness determines creation (doing).  The doing (reorganizing, creating) is simply the effect of awareness.  Things feel effortful and forceful when we are disconnected from ourselves as awareness and identified as the doing.  

In summary the steps are 1) Stop and recognize beingness, 2) Accept everything exactly as it is without the hunger to change it, 3) As a result of steps 1 and 2 empty out of personal self and be filled with the bliss that you are, 4) Recognize bliss-love in everything and watch/allow the doing to unfold throughout itself.  Allow life to reorganize itself and reality to change its form in response to your observation of it as its true nature.  When our true nature is recognized everything can’t not come into congruence with it.  It is in the this way you realize you are not separate from creation.  Creator and creation are one and the same.  There is no doing to some separate object, but instead only recognition of what is, what you are, and then watching/allowing how the manifest creation changes form in response.  

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

Suffering as a gateway to bliss

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Suffering as a gateway to bliss 

Body-spirit disconnection 

I frequently see people who have spent years trying to heal their pain or condition and they feel like they have done all their inner work, yet feel frustrated, exhausted and at a loss as to why they still experience pain, disease or discomfort.

I have found that the reason why there seems to be a gap between our inner work or “spiritual knowing” and our physical experience is because there is a resistance to or grasping onto of something that we have not yet discovered.  Essentially there is some aspect of ourselves that we have not fully seen, felt and opened our heart too.

50353353 - young woman with mental disease with alter egoAllowing ourselves to suffer is actually the quickest way to heal, however most of us really have no clue how to suffer.  We spend an exorbitant amount of time, resources and energy on avoiding suffering, and we don’t even know we are doing this most of time.  This shows up in a million ways.

Some examples would be “overdoing” so you never have time to stop and pay attention to what is going on beneath the surface.  Or overthinking so you stay wrapped up in your story thinking you are gaining insights, but really are on your hamster wheel.  Avoidant eating, shopping, drinking, drugs (recreational or prescription), facebooking or any activity done with the intention to “decompress” or get the edge off.  These activities can dissipate your charge, which is an ok starting ground, however people stop there and often don’t then inquire as to what they are trying to “decompress” from.  What is it that they  don’t want to see, feel, look at and be with?

Experiential suffering

Learning to suffer well

Many people say things such as “I’ve already experienced so much pain from such and such experience in my life (typically referring to a traumatic experience), how could I feel more around it”?  This can also look like people saying things like “I’ve already worked through that issue, (maybe referencing worthiness, insecurity or the need to be liked), so this couldn’t be related to that still, I’ve already healed that.”  This often comes with an underlying unwillingness or  resistance to experience anything more around it.

When you’ve really healed an aspect of yourself you will no longer have the relationship to it where you are unwilling to return to it.  In fact, it’s the opposite.  This aspect has become so integrated as a part of you now that there is nothing to resist or dread to return too.  Instead only love is present.  If you don’t feel this overwhelming love when you think of it, then there is more work  do.

So the question becomes how do you start to discover what else might be going on, what you are still resisting or grasping onto, so that you can actually experience suffering rather than staying on the edges of it, thinking about it or creating stories around it?

21639547 - stairway in sky is revealedWhat’s required is true desire to discover, heal and resolve whatever shows up and love it like crazy.  If you remain unwilling to love what  presents itself, you will not heal.  Instead you will stay separate from this aspect of you and therefore some level of suffering will always be present, either consciously in your mind or unconsciously as expressed through your body as pain, disease or chronic illness.

Stage 1 of Somato-Respiratory Integration is a powerful tool that provides a framework for you to use in order to bring to conscious awareness those things which are currently hidden from your sight, so that you can then make the choice to either resist or to accept and love.  Continued resistance creates more suffering and newfound acceptance creates a gateway to bliss.

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

Create bliss in your body naturally

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Create bliss in your body  naturally

Bliss chasing 

We are a culture of bliss chasers.  You will be hard pressed to find someone, especially in Boulder, Colorado who hasn’t experimented with marijuana, psychedelics or other substances in order to experience more ease and bliss.  While ingesting these substances can produce temporary state changes and extraordinary experiencing, they do not teach you how to produce these state naturally in your body.  In essence you are  reliant on the external substance to produce a state change for yourself.

Screen Shot 2017-05-07 at 3.53.39 PMIs there another way to sustain easeful and blissful states in your body?  In fact there is!  You are wired for bliss. There are opioid receptors (pain blockers) that run all along your spine.  Endorphins and enkephalins, your body’s natural opioids, get produced when you experience pain and also when you experience enjoyable, high energy states.  Your natural opioids find their receptors and light them up, hence you get physiologically rewarded for bliss feeling states.

So now the question becomes how do you create extraordinary experiences using your own physiology instead of an external substance?

 Sustainable bliss 

Accessing your body’s own resources

A-P-090As a spine specialist I’ve had the pleasure to see what happens when the position, tension and tone (vibration) changes in a person’s spine.  When a person has greater freedom and range of motion they are able to live in a higher energy and more blissful state.  Inversely when a person has high levels of tension in their spinal cord it is harder for them to take a full breath, to physically move or be flexible, and to be an in open state, which is required for ease and bliss.  These individuals can ingest a substance and shift their state temporarily, but when the experience wears off they are still living in the same body that does not feel as free as their substance induced state.

In order to experience sustainable bliss in your body you must be able to breathe fully and productively.  If you have high levels of tension in your body you are not doing this.  You must also learn the skills to be present in your body instead of lost in thoughts in your head or floating somewhere out in space.  That requires you learn to be with the range of uncomfortable and comfortable sensations, feelings, thoughts and experiences.  Lastly you must take responsibility for your state of being.  Instead of just haphazardly being in whatever state of being you are in, you must choose the state of being you want to be in.  If you choose a blissful one you will expand your energetic body, along with your field of influence, and you will start to notice people feel good and energized just by being around you.  Your bliss will help others experience bliss, however they must do their own work to sustain and share that bliss with others.

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