chiropractic

GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

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GETTING BEYOND COMPLACENCY

What do you tolerate? 

It’s easy to get lazy.  As humans we are creatures of habit.  After we do something a time or two or three, and the novelty of it wears off, we go into automatic pilot mode.  We assume that what is will always be the way it is because now we are used to it being that way.  We create the illusion of solid and fixed, and with this we stop being fully present.  Our experience of what was once novel and exciting now become more ordinary and with that we slip into a habituated state of being, which you could also call your “usual” state of awareness.  But who really wants usual and ordinary?  None of us do and yet it’s easier to maintain the lower frequency of usual than it is the higher frequency of excitement.  

In order to get beyond the habit of our usual state of being we need to literally stretch our bandwidth or increase our capacity for what we can maintain.  For most people stretching is a bit uncomfortable because it comes with a sense of effort and work.  It takes more energy to get out of our normal habituated ways of being then is does to continue with our automatic thoughts, behaviors and perceptions.  This energy expenditure is exactly what is required to increase our capacity and maintain a higher frequency, yet many chose the way of utilizing as little effort and energy as possible.  You could also equate this to not having enough desire or momentum to create change.  You might think you want something to be different in your life, but you don’t really want to put in the energy to make it different.  

We all have different tolerance levels.  Some people might tolerate being 10 pounds overweight while another person won’t tolerate being more than 2 pounds over.  Some people tolerate being out of alignment or distracted 50% of their day, while others won’t tolerate more than 10%.  There is no right or wrong here in regards to where you are at, it’s simply important to take note of it.  Take inventory of what your tolerance levels are in all the important areas of your life.  Then honestly ask yourself if you are ready to shift your level.  If you aren’t ready, what would it take for you to be ready?  In this way you get clarity around where you are and even if you aren’t ready to shift anything at least you can accept it and do the preparatory work required in order to be ready.  

Our vibrational state is up to us and only us.  No one can or will shift it for us.  Your level of desire and willingness to participate is key.  To move from your normal baseline to your next level is your work and responsibility.  You can use things or people as permission slips to feel certain ways, but ultimately you must become the source of your frequency in order for it to sustainable. 

FREQUENCY OF EXCITEMENT 

Becoming more childlike 

As much as we all like to feel excitement, most people aren’t feeling it much.  Our focus tends to be on all the things that need to get done, rather than on feeling amazing and following what feels good.  Many of our automatic patterns of behavior help us be efficient doers, which can at times be helpful, but they can also make us robotic.  We are going through the motions of life and doing all the things, but for what?  To get everything done so that we can do everything again tomorrow?  Where exactly do we think we will get to once all the doing is finished?  From what I can tell the activity of life, of this infinite creation, never stops.  We could constantly find ourselves doing something.  The goal is not the cessation of doing or activity, but rather to be present right now.  To find and feel our excitement in this moment and not when something is finished or done.

The frequency of excitement is high.  Think of a small child and how excited they get, and how much energy they have.  It’s off the charts.  They are pure examples of living excitement.  Yet we often feel tired by that level of excitement.  We don’t have the energy to keep up.  Where does energy come from anyways?  Why does it feel limited to us, but infinite in a small child?  Energy comes from excitement.  You generate energy through excitement.  Now I am not saying that rest is not beneficial.  Rest is necessary for these bodies.  What I am taking about is all the rest of the time when you are not resting.  You may also find that you require less rest the more you are able to maintain a higher frequency of energy in your day to day life. 

Like I mentioned earlier there is a stretching phase.  A phase when it feels like it takes a lot of energy to elevate yourself.  It’s true, it does.  Stretching is not effortless.  It requires work.  Work that will then require rest.  However at some point you will maintain at a new higher level of vibration that feels lighter, freer, and more childlike.  A child may swing on the same swing 50 times at the park and it will not be normal or ordinary to them.  They will find a way to feel excited about it each time, and then when some other object at the park strikes their fancy they will run over to it and play on it.  They continue to generate and follow their excitement.  

Giving yourself permission to live life in a more joyfully free and excited way is a permission slip worth giving yourself.  Trust the rhythms of life more.  The comings and the goings.  The ebbs and flows.  The natural pacing and rhythms.  Trust yourself more.  Your feelings and intuitions.  Your joy and excitement.  Follow them.  Do your best not to let your rational mind make things ordinary and normal.  Find novelty in swinging on the same swing 50 times.  Life is not flat or mundane on its own.  It requires our perspective of it to be flat or mundane.  Through what perspective do you see life?  If it’s not what you desire, are you ready to shift it?  Be willing to do the work required to raise yourself up and to get to the next vibrational level of yourself.  

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

THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER

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THE ULTIMATE RECEIVER 

Where’s your focus?

Receiving.  Most people have difficulty receiving.  As much as we all want to manifest and create we don’t give much attention or space to receiving.  Rather we work hard, and then harder, to create what we want and then wonder why we are so tired and still don’t have the life we desire.  While it seems that receiving would be the simplest of things, we defect it, avoid it or feel like there is never enough of what we need because we can’t receive what’s in front of us.  To receive is to be open, to be receptive, and most people spend their existence being closed off, shut down, narrow minded, and in judgement rather than in open receptivity.  We then wonder why life doesn’t look or feel like we desire.

We are quite wired to see what isn’t.  We focus on where we’re going and what we think we are going to get when we get there, and rarely see what’s here.  This is because we tend to live in a lack mindset.  We view whatever is here now as if it is missing something.  Something that we need to work to find or get into our lives.  We might perceive that we don’t have relationships that we want, money that we want, opportunities that we want, skills that we want, the inner state that we want, the outer environment that we want, feelings that we want, and on and on.  It really seems that life isn’t quite here yet, but will be here once something arrives inside of our experience so that we can give ourselves the permission to temporarily stop seeing through our lack glasses.  Our focus on lack is intense.  It pretty much takes up our entire bandwidth whether we are conscious or it or not.  This is why we feel bad so frequently.  

The thing is that in order to receive you have to see what is here rather than focus on what’s not here.  Since this is a mostly rare way for us humans to focus we are always feeling depleted.  Depleted because our focus is constantly on what isn’t in our experience, or what is in our experience that we don’t like.  When there is something we don’t like or doesn’t feel good, we attempt to get into our experience whatever we perceive is missing, which we believe will make us feel better.  At the core of this game of lack that we are playing out in our physical reality, is a sense of inner lack.  A sense that something about us is missing or incomplete.  A feeling that we somehow need to be different or more than we are.  So we reject ourselves.  We work really hard to prove ourselves.  We over stretch to attempt to meet what we think the people of the world want from us.  All the while not really realizing that we aren’t receiving our own selves.  Again we wonder why our life isn’t as we desire it to be.  Why aren’t we manifesting or creating what we want.  As long as we continue to come from lack, to come from the perspective that something is missing, that is all we will ever create.   

GRATITUDE 

The “how”

You might say that our “inability” or difficulty with receiving, stems back to the fact that nearly all of us feels a sense of inner lack.  You could call this the “not enough”  or “not good enough” perspective or wound.  It’s like an article of clothing that we all get when we are first born into this world.  Most of us have been wearing this piece of clothing for so long that it’s kind of become like a part of us. We’ve identified with it and let it become who or what we think we are.  It colors everything we see.  Other people, or reflections in our environment, have mirrored this not enoughness back to us and we’ve come to believe that lack must indeed be a very real thing.  After all we experience it and see it, don’t we?  

We experience what we see and what we see depends on the glasses (or clothes) we are looking through.  Said another way, we experience what we believe and not necessarily what is.  The good news is that all articles of clothing can be taken off even if they are really, really tight; even if they appear to be fused to our skin and inseparable from the tissues underneath, they can still be removed.  Essentially what I am saying is that every belief that you have can be changed or a new one can be chosen.  It may not be as hard as you think it is.  How might it be easy you ask?  All that is required is a quadruple shot of gratitude taken several times a day.  It is the instant cure for your lack mindset.

In general we tend to be incredibly ungrateful.  This is why the lack mindset is so strong and pervasive on this planet still.  It is why human consciousness doesn’t evolve.  It’s why people continue to be asleep, disconnected and working hard to prove themselves or get what they think will make them happy.  Every time you don’t receive yourself you are ungrateful.  For many people that is their constant state of being.  They know nothing else.  For others it’s more intermittent or dispersed, but nonetheless still present.  The level of self-rejection is high among humans and this makes it nearly impossible to receive, and ultimately therefore create, as creating is receiving.  When you have a belief that you are not worthy, that belief is incompatible with receiving.  It’s incompatible with being open to life or others.  It’s incompatible with manifesting your desired reality and seeing the abundant world that you want for yourself and others.

Many people don’t know that they aren’t receiving.  We are so used to pushing our energy in the outward, doing direction that the receiving, inward direction is quite foreign for most.  If you are very innerly or outerly busy this is key sign that you aren’t receiving.  Do your thoughts never stop?  Do you talk incessantly?  Do you listen or receive others without thinking about what you are going to say or do next?  Do you constantly need to be doing stuff for yourself or for others?  Is it hard to tune into yourself for more than few moments?  Do you feel tired a lot?  Are you “doing” your meditation rather than actually meditating?  These are all signs that you aren’t receiving.  In order to receive you must be worthy and know that nothing is missing from you.  That you are complete and whole as you are.  To bridge the gap from incomplete to complete you must only find, feel and radiate gratitude.  Gratitude for yourself, gratitude for what is in your experience now and gratitude for all future experiences.  At any moment you can tune yourself to become a stream of infinite, unconditional gratitude.  It is always here and available for your choosing.  

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

AVOIDING NOT ENOUGH

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AVOIDING NOT ENOUGH 

Focusing on what isn’t

Most of us are on a rampage against not enoughness.  We work hard to achieve, prove ourselves, make money, know all the right people, have the relationships, the opportunities and all the stuff of life, in order to avoid not enoughness.  Most often people don’t even know that they are avoiding not enoughness, rather they feel like they are simply living their life in the ways set out by the standards they’ve created for themselves.  In this way not enoughness can be tricky to see as it is such a common, well-believed way of seeing one’s self and the world.  

The perspective of not enoughness can manifest in many ways.  Sometimes it shows up personally, meaning we feel like we are not enough.  This can look like never feeling that what we do is ever quite good enough.  We might do-do-do or over-do in order to attempt for it to be enough, which ends up leaving us feeling stressed and exhausted.  It can also manifest in the other direction of procrastination because we feel like whatever it is we want to share or bring about won’t be good enough, doesn’t matter or no one cares.  Not enoughness also manifests as being judgmental about ourselves, our actions/non-actions, the way our body looks, our position or status, or where we are in our lives.  It can also show up in our experience.  Rather than feeling that we are not enough we feel that there is never enough of something.  Frequently this shows up in the form of money for people.  It can also show up as not having the relationship(s) that we want, not having opportunities that we want or not getting the acknowledgment, recognition, praise or understanding for who we are or the things we do or create.  

There is a predominant tendency among our society to focus on what isn’t.  We could collectively call this focus scarcity consciousness.  If you look around you will see this pretty much everywhere.  It is blasted through marketing campaigns of all sorts, “don’t want to miss this”, “only a few left”, “you’ll get xyz though this”.  These messages are all based on the assumption or threat of lack, and because we want to avoid feeling lack so badly we fall for these messages.  We feel a sense of false urgency, as if we don’t act now all will be lost forever.  Our focus on what isn’t fills our conversations and internal dialogues.  We point to what hasn’t happened yet, where we aren’t yet, or where/what we are hoping to get too.  Consumerism and “getting” is based on scarcity, on what isn’t here yet.  Notice how much you focus on what will happen in the future, and how much you project abundance of self or resources into some future moment or happening, placing your center of attention on what isn’t here now or yet. In this way we create scarcity in the present, moment by moment, and place enoughness at some other moment in time that isn’t this one.     

ACCEPTING NOT ENOUGH 

You may never feel like enough

If we are aware enough to recognize our habitual tendencies to come from the perspective of not enoughness we may have gone on a crusade to dismantle our focus on what isn’t.  We might have taken all the “self-love” classes and “manifest the life of our dreams” courses (we might have even created a few).   Done the coaching, gone to therapy, given ourselves daily mantras that affirm our worth and abundance to ourselves.  We might have cleared out our childhood trauma, wrote all the letters, said all the things, faced our fears head on, yet there is a lingering feeling of not enoughness or that life still doesn’t quite reflect full abundance.  What’s that all about?

What I’ve found is that despite our gallant efforts to transform ourselves and transmute our life experience into one of fullness, what we often neglect to do is accept not enoughness.  We are so busy trying to make it different, to be enough, experience enough, know enough, that we miss this fundamental piece of accepting not enough.  So rather than being able to radically change our belief system about ourselves and what we think is, we are left attempting to paste on top of life, the story of abundance, without believing it’s possible or true.  

See nothing shifts without acceptance.  Yet acceptance of that which we don’t want to be true, or that we don’t like about ourselves or life, pisses our egos off.  We don’t like to feel a sense of failure so we will avoid the obvious thing we are experiencing or feeling by doing all the things to change it.  Yet to surrender to what is, to what we believe to be true, even if we don’t like or fully agree with it, is the only way to find peace inside of ourselves.  It the only way to stop all the avoidance strategies, because once you accept it you can’t avoid it anymore.  You can’t try to deny its presence, you no longer deny how you feel, you are just raw and real even though that rawness and realness is not how you want to be seen or see yourself.  To see yourself and let others see you as not enough, as a failure in your attempts to be enough, do enough or have enough, feels like suicide to our minds idea of what should be.

You may never feel like enough.  You may always perceive that there is not enough resources for you.  But so what.  Live your life anyways.  Be yourself anyways.  Let the not enoughness of self or resources exist and be, because it exists and “be’s” inside of your experience.  I promise if you do you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.  You will find your way through.  You will care less and less about your thoughts and stories of not enough the more you just let them be there.  Stop trying to change yourself to be better, different or more.  Have faith even in the not enoughness.  Enoughness exists inside of not enoughness, but you can’t know this until you accept not enough.  End your avoidance and strategizing your way out.  Rather go towards what is, fully 100% let it be as it is, even if you hate it or it disgusts you, even if you want it to change or be different more than anything else.  Anything that wants to change and transmute will do so naturally and organically once you accept what’s here.  This is the end of controlling yourself and attempting to control life.

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

HAVING FAITH

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HAVING FAITH

Moving beyond the doubter

It’s evident that there is an intelligent principle at work in this universe.  Something that has organized the suns, planets, galaxies and the infinite cosmos.  Clearly no human intelligence made this universe and yet we tend to doubt that anything but human intelligence exists or is at work.  Even if we consider ourselves spiritual we often don’t live in the knowingness or conviction that “spirit” is really present in our life.  Regardless of what we want to call this intelligence (ie. spirit, soul, source, love, grace, presence, etc.) it appears to be beyond our current human capacity in its intelligence and its ability it organize life at the galactic or universal level.

The more lucid you become in this human dream the more clear it becomes how little the human perspective takes into account.  From the perspective of the human it feels that we must take care of it all, do it all and make it all happen on our own.  We feel everything is up to us and therefore live out our lives making things happen without too much recognition of forces or intelligences at work underneath the surface of our life.  This is because the human sees itself as a separate self, a sort of object in a sea of other objects.  We give this object that we perceive a name and further identity characteristics that seem to validate its separate and distinct beingness or existence.  This distinct identity and separate self is what gives rise to the experience of disconnection and the experience that in order for things to occur one object must do something onto another object.  There is no consideration of anything deep to the surface appearance.

From this widely viewed human lens of seeing objects, separate parts and the mechanical view of life, it’s no wonder people are stressed out, anxious, depressed and overwhelmed.  Living disconnected from the source of life leaves us feeling vulnerable, exposed, uncertain and unsafe.  We do our very best to create certainty and a sense of safety, yet it comes at great cost.  The cost being that we give away our enjoyment, presence and childlike wonder in order to give ourselves some perceived sense of safety and certainty.  We become insistent about what the picture or appearance of our life should look like in order that we feel ok to relax and be, and we work really, really hard to get that picture right.  We are defensive and self-protective.  We live in a constant state of doubt.  Doubt that we will be ok, doubt that we will be taken care of, doubt that we will get to do or experience the things we think we want to, doubt that life is or will work out.  We lack faith, and because we lack faith we can’t sleep at night, we feel tense, we have digestive upset, our thoughts race, we have trouble focusing, we never feel like we can totally relax and we live in a state of vigilance to what might happen next. 

LEAPS OF FAITH 

Past the edge of fear

There is a way through continually living in doubt (aka fear), but it requires us taking lots of leaps of faith.  We must take these leaps of faith in order for us to become rested in faith.  To be rested in faith is to know, to be convicted in, the wellness of all.  It is to stably know all is well and not jump into doubt, fear and separation when life seems to throw you curve balls or challenges.  It is to stop attempting to control and manage life, and rather enjoy and live it.  This is always inside of your choice even when it feels like it’s not.  

From the perspective of the human mind it takes tons of courage in order to take leaps of faith.  When you leap you are essentially letting go.  Letting go of your story, your agenda, and your ideas about what is.  These are all modes of control.  You are also subtly letting go your identity, of your sense of rightness, your sense that you know how things are, of how you think things are supposed to be, and so it feels shaky, destabilizing and uncertain.  This is the place of the edge of our fears, which really are simply distorted perspectives of separation, but nonetheless they feel very, very real to us.  

Leaps of faith are the way past the edge.  They will take you into and through a portal into an expanded perspective.  After you take the leap and are on the other side of the experience you will see that the thing you feared so greatly really wasn’t a big deal at all.  They only thing that was ever a big deal was your doubt about it.  It is only by taking the leap and going through the portal that you come to know safety, stability and well-being.  You can’t know it by thinking about it, reading about it, or talking about it, you have to experience it in order to know it.  You must leap.

When we don’t take the leaps that we need to we feel stuck.  We feel trapped and can’t find the way or “how” out.  When we think we need the how first we are simply postponing making the decision to leap.  “How’s” come after we leap, not beforehand.  The mind hates this, and yet it is how you learn faith.  Faith doesn’t guarantee any outcomes.  Things or people may come and go in and out of your life.  Desired happenings may or may not happen.  Faith puts you in a state of openness and receptivity, to receive life rather than have to make it happen.  This is how you come to know that intelligent force that is beyond the human mind.  It is how you start to reconnect to that source of love.  It is how you experience unity with others and all, rather than viewing yourself as a distinct, separate person.  Before you take the leaps required all of that will simply stay conceptual to you.  Like thoughts that you like to think about, but you won’t know it or experience it, and you will probably feel frustrated that you don’t.  

Faith is the primary human lesson.  Conviction in faith is the end of stress, anxiety and overwhelm.  It is the recognition and connection with your galactic brothers and sisters and beyond.  Don’t take my word for it though.  Try it out.  Take the leaps that life is asking for you to take.  Feel good and free yourself.  

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

NOTHING IS LACKING

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NOTHING IS LACKING 

Key to perceiving all as is

We have an almost incessant persistence to view from the perspective of lack.  It appears to us that things are missing, out of place, or somehow not present.  We attempt to create that which we view as not from seeing it as not, which often comes with feelings of frustration and fruitlessness as we work really hard to get nowhere.  We create definitions and meanings about what is not that further reinforce our perspective of not-ness and frustration about what isn’t.  What if not-ness is not?  What if our perspective of lack is actually the presence of something?  Perhaps our focus on what we view as not, blocks our view of what is.  

Where does our desire to create come from?  What is the fuel source of our desires?  Are you motivated to create because you perceive something to be lacking or because it’s simply your joy to create whatever it is you are?  When you create are you creating from the perspective of seeing what you are creating as not, or do you see it as already present?  These are not trick question, nor are they law of attraction, spiritual, new age hogwash.  There is more than semantics happening here.  The truth is most people create because they perceive something to be lacking.  We then take that perspective of lack and attempt to create that which we see not present.  One of the key indicators that you might be doing this is that you are secretly miserable in your creation attempts of whatever it is you are wanting to create, despite the fact that you present good face to your friends, family and social media.  Even if whatever you are attempting to create is altruistic and service oriented, meaning it’s goal is to support others in some way, if you come from the perspective that whatever it is you are wanting to create is lacking, and that the world really needs it because its not present, you will only create more lack rather than than the thing you really want to create.  

The key to know here is that we create with our perspective not with our hands.  That is not to say that we won’t need to use our hands to do things and move stuff around in this material reality, but actual creation comes from how we view.  The perspective of seeing something as lacking creates more of that lacking.  The perspective of seeing what is as already here, actually seeing it here, creates it.  Seeing creates what we see.  Seems obvious, but we often don’t recognize the source of our seeing and rather focus only on what we see.  The source of what we see is the seer, or the perceiver, or you.  It now becomes obvious that you are the creator, and what has been unconscious is the how of how you create and how you’ve been creating this entire time.   

BEYOND DISBELIEF

Getting things to reveal themselves

We are riddled in disbelief.  We use our disbelief to validate our perspectives in order to be right about whatever it is we are insisting on, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in our own foot.  Our “healthy” skepticism keeps the ordinary magic of our everyday reality just out of our reach so that we can keep experiencing our reality in the same rote, lacking, and scarce ways we always have.  As much as we might “believe” that it’s hard to change our beliefs, it’s actually not.  It’s easy as pie.  What’s challenging is letting go of our sense of rightness, or that we know.  The blatant truth is that none of us know shit, even though we really like to think we do.  Pretty much everything is cloaked in mystery, yet that amount of magic (aka present moment spontaneously arising aliveness) is often too much for us to take.  So we find a way to generate certainty for ourselves by creating “facts” of reality, which are really just beliefs that we’ve come fully believe in as law, the truth, or the way things are.  The good news is that we can actually make this work for us rather than against us.

Our “hardcore” belief in lack is really just our insistence, one of the prime ones, of how reality is.  We accept this belief so blindly, meaning most don’t even think to question it.  Reflect on the following example: you look out in front of you and see that there is not a zebra in the room with you.  Let’s say that you take the perspective, based on this tiny little viewpoint of you in a room, that a zebra is lacking in existence because it’s not here in this room with you.  Rather than zooming out (ie. in this example zooming out would be doing something like turning on the African nature channel) you conclude that you must create a zebra because it is lacking.  This becomes very important to you because you view zebras as pivotal creatures to this planet.  You do your best to find all the parts of a zebra in order to create it from scratch, but you find that it’s super hard work, pretty much impossible to create, but none-the-less you persist and devote your entire life to creating zebras.  

Even though this is an absolutely ridiculous example it makes an important point.  What if rather than looking at the situation and concluding that a zebra is lacking because it’s not in the room with you, you set out to find its existence, because you believed, or somehow intuitively knew, that it already exists.  How far would you have to go to discover it?  Would discovering the zebra be more fun than creating it from random pieces and parts that don’t really fit together?  Believing, or choosing to know, that what we want to create already exists takes a tremendous burden off of us, a burden that nearly all of us carry around.  Rather than us having to figure out a bunch of stuff that we don’t know how to figure out, and do the seemingly impossible, we simply get to be in the curiosity of how to find the thing or how to get it to express itself.  We tempt and tease it into existence like a strategic game of hide and seek.  When we realize/believe that it already is, that nothing at all is lacking, it really just becomes a game of discovering how to get things to reveal themselves.  We may midwife them into form, but we are not responsible for the form.  The only thing we are responsible for is that we have fun while we curiously tease life to express itself.

You can exchange the word zebra with any of the following words: partner, business, project, finances, house, car, baby, healthy planet, healthy body, and on and on.  You can see how this becomes relevant for you now.  Just because any one of these things aren’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  If you go about attempting to create them from the perspective of lack, it will be not be very much fun.  You will probably suffer, struggle and cry a lot.  That’s what it’s like to create from lack.  However rather than taking on the burden of creating from lack (which is actually impossible) you choose to see them as already existing, then you get to play the game of revelation.  It is absolutely imperative, critical, crucial and necessary that you have fun playing the game and not get too focused on what the revelations that reveal themselves look like, meaning what form the forms decide to take.  The zebra may be striped purple and black rather than white and black, but it’s ok.  The form is less important than the play of creating from existence rather than lack.  When things are allowed to be themselves they naturally reveal themselves, they naturally express.  The better you are at allowing what is to be as it is, seeing what is as whole and complete, it will show you that, and the more proficient and easeful creator you will be.

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

TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS

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TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS 

Good days and bad days

Most all of us desire a state of inner peace.  That sustainably stable center of being, that remains undisturbed regardless of situation or circumstance.  I really don’t know anyone who isn’t in someway looking or desiring this for themselves.  Often times we taste peace.  For example we might wake up in the morning after a great night’s sleep feeling rested and fantastic.  Then we start our day and tiny little peace disrupters attempt to find their way inside of our experiences.  Maybe our partner is grouchy and that affects our state of joy a little bit.  Perhaps we don’t have the food in our refrigerator that we want to eat for breakfast because our kids ate it last night.  Possibly you receive a phone call from your doctor telling you they didn’t like the look of some your routine blood work that you did last week for your annual check up.  Then you get in your car, start it up and it’s making some strange noise.  You arrive at your scheduled lunch meeting only to find out the person you are meeting is running 40 minutes late.  You get the idea.  The list could go on and on and on endlessly forever.  

It’s really no wonder that we feel stressed out most of time and not really as present and centered as we’d like to be.  It seems to be that there are a thousand tiny, little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters that happen in a give day.  You can find them in nearly every moment it seems.  Little ways that life does not appear to run smoothly, where things are less desirable than we want them to be, and where life just doesn’t feel like we want it to feel.  We worry about the outcome of all the things and if everything will turn out alright.  We dread the hassle of taking care of things that we aren’t sometimes even sure how to take care of.  We live in this state of a sort of powerlessness to life and its occurrences, and we hold our breath while we are in the uncertainty of it all.  I’d say that this is a pretty regular experience of life for most.  

Days that we call “good days” are typically days where we either perceive that less peace disrupters are present or where they are present but don’t seem to effect us.  In these situations it is often that something that we perceive as really good happened in a day so we are less easily affected by the other going ons of life.  It can also be that we have more distance from the occurrences of life on a given day (i.e. less attachment to the outcome of things and more acceptance of what is) so the little things seem to grab us less.  Some things are easier for us to accept, others not as much.  The more we resistance we create, the less resourced and energized we are and the more those tiny little peace disrupters run the show. 

STABLE INNER CENTER 

Playing the game of challenge

All of those tiny little peace disrupters are really just little challengers in the game of life.  They are opportunities for you to learn greater and greater inner stability.  One of the things I hear most frequently from people whom I work with is that they want to have stability in feeling good, energized, joyful and in their center or truth.  They want to less taken by the circumstance of life and be in more choice about what and how they are feeling on a day to day basis.  So often people don’t feel in choice about how they are feeling and that is actually what feels bad, that is not being in choice and not necessarily the bad feeling itself.

One of the fundamental perspectives to take on this whole matter is that everything that happens is happening for you not to you.  If you make that shift in perspective than you can easily see that all of those tiny little peace disrupters (and even the big ones) are simply coming into your experience to help you learn how to have a stable inner center.  See we ask to have a stable inner center and yet when we are given a thousand opportunities a day to practice it we fail to see that we are being given exactly that which we need to learn exactly that which we desire to learn.  It’s tricky because when we see through the perspective that life is happening to us we feel powerless to circumstance and feel that we have no choice in the matter of how we feel about what is happening to us.  However if we pick up and put on a different pair of glasses for the day, glasses that see that every single occurrence inside of our experience is happening for us then we are much more readily available to learn from life rather than feel victim to it.  We can also more clearly see things as opportunities to learn and not as permanent, never ending states of being of which we will never escape.

Most people don’t realize how powerful they are.  In fact most don’t realize that they have any power at all.  Some level of denial, confusion and lack of awareness seems to be present for most people when it comes to knowing themselves as the all powerful creators that they are.  Yet the evidence is everywhere.  How you perceive everything that you perceive is evidence of your power.  How you perceive is how you will experience life.  What is more powerful than that?  How you perceive is how you create and thus how you will experience life.  At any moment your free will to perceive is intact.  Free will the first expression of creation.  It is what you are.  Free will itself.  You are free to perceive however it is you would like to, and you will thus create an experience of life based on your perception.  Perception is creation.  If you see things as bad or wrong, you will experience bad, wrong or the threat of bad/wrong.  If you see things as good, you will experience good and that life is working for you.  

It is really that simple folks.  You might like to insist that you don’t have any power, and that you can’t change how you perceive, but you’re the only one that can.  No one can give you a stable inner center.  Tools, techniques and programs can guide you towards it, but ultimately you must learn it through the opportunity of tiny little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters.  The gift of them is the re-remembering your power and your never ending free will to perceive/create as you’d like.

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

UNWINDING NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

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UNWINDING NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE 

Dismantling our protection from pain

We’ve all experienced tension.  That tight, constricted, unrelaxed feeling.  Sometimes it feels hard to breathe.  It can come with feeling overwhelmed and like there isn’t enough time or resources available to us.  It can be challenging to discover and feel what we are feeling.  Often it comes with uncomfortable sensations in the body.  Tension is means of protection.  We create tension, and our body feels that tension, in order to protect us from pain, when we perceive that pain might be present or imminent.  The pain, which tension is protecting us from, isn’t always clearly evident to us.  Yet if we investigate we can always find the thing we are attempting to avoid feeling or experiencing.  

Pain can come in many forms.  It can be purely at the body/sensation level.  You might experience this in a car accident or a fall where you finding yourself bracing (i.e. creating tension) in order to protect the body from damage and lessen the impact.  You may also have a chronically painful part of your body.   Often we create tension around that area in order to attempt to not feel the pain as much.  It’s not the tension that is painful even if that is what we think is the source of the pain.  The true source of the pain is often below the tension.  The tension is the means to dull what is underneath it.  Pain can also be felt at the emotional level.  The root of most emotional pain is the fear/experience of being unloved or unlovable.  At the next level up pain felt at the mental levels is often rooted in not being enough, sharing enough or having anything worthy to give/be.  Lastly pain is also experienced at the spiritual level, which is rooted in believing we are separate from spirit/God.  

Due to the fact that most people don’t want to experience pain we learn to create protection or defense from it.  We gear up and create armoring.  This armoring is like a neurological suit that we wear that we don’t even know that we are wearing.  Everything we experience or interact with gets to come into contact with this suit.  The suit is a filter.  It’s not who we are, but it is often who we think we are and also who others perceive us to be.  Loosely you could call this our personality, and it also comes with a particular way we posture our body, talk, walk, think, perceive, dress, eat, behave and the sensations we have or don’t have.  It colors our entire world.  The suit comes with wiring.  That wiring is called neurological defense.  There are patterns and architecture to neurological defense.  These patterns are specifically what Network Chiropractic addresses.  Network assesses for the patterns that are present and helps wake up awareness and liberate energy inside these patterns of protection, so that your true self may be known to you.   

OPENING INTO THE HEART 

Rewriting the nervous system

The true self is the heart.  It is that space or experience of relaxation and easefulness that is joyfully and blissfully present.  It is light and spacious.  It is all inclusive and allows everything inside of it to be as it is.  It is energized and alive.  It is awake.  It sees nothing as wrong.  There is no resistance and we feel just as our self.  Nothing to hide, protect, avoid, or run away from experiencing.  It is that which we are all hungry for and finding our way into in our own ways.  The heart is not just for some people or for some times.  It is for all times and all people.  

The heart seems absent, foreign or mysterious to us when we are in a state of neurological defense.  When we are in protection mode we view ourselves as a subject/object that is independent from other subject/objects.  This is how most beings in the world view themselves and also why there is such a disconnection from the heart amongst our collective at large.  When separation is the predominant perspective than there is always something/someone to protect ourselves from.  Yet when that predominant perceptive changes to non-separation or unity, than protection becomes nonsensical and arbitrary.  

The heart isn’t something hard to find.  Its all pervasive, ever present and never comes or goes.  What does come or go is our focus or attention on it.  When our focus and attention is wrapped up in all the ways we need to protect ourselves to physically survive, get all of our emotional needs met and to satisfy the demands of the stories we’ve learned to tell ourselves about what our life is supposed to be and who we are supposed to be, then the heart is not in our view.  Shifting priorities, changing stories and reconditioning the neurological patterns present in your energetic and physical configuration is required in order to experience life as heart.  

Opening into the heart is closer than you think.  It’s not too hard to find/feel glimpses of it.  These glimpses are important as they start to light up pathways that don’t get lit up that frequently inside most people’s nervous systems.  This is what Network entrainments provide the container for as well.  During entrainments an energetic field is created that is organized in such a way to amplify the experience of heart for you.  While the gentle contacts along the spine help dismantle neurological defense, this field or container of the heart is readily present and available.  With continued tastes, touches and glimpses of this field of the heart, a person can receive and exchange more and more energy and awareness with this field.  The energy, awareness and perspective of heart then becomes the dominant program in your system.  The heart starts speaking louder than the pathways that are fighting for survival and viewing life from a scarce and separate perspective.  This is the progression, the objective and the intention.  It’s simple.  It’s available.  It’s time is ripe.  

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

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING

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YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO  ANYTHING

Fear of badness

So often we feel this pressure, pull or weight to do.  That we have to do against our will or desire to do.  There seems to be an ultimatum if we don’t do.  We fear that if we don’t do whatever it is that we think we have to do, then something bad will happen.  We don’t even typically know what will happen, we just think that it will be bad.  This fear of “badness” and of not wanting to feel it, keeps us locked into the feeling state of being trapped, and the thought that we must do even when we aren’t sure what to do or feel strong opposition to the doing we think that we must do.  

One of the pivotal things to accept is that as humans we are essentially blind.  Spiritually blind that is.  In many ways we are masked, muted and confused.  We can see the appearance or expression of life, but we can’t see the source of it.   We don’t know who we are or what’s really going on beyond what we’ve been taught by other beings who are similarly confused.  When you accept that you are, by nature of this human experience, highly confused and that its okay to be confused, its much easier to take the pressure off of yourself.  That pressure to do something because you fear badness is alleviated when you accept your own state of blindness.

When we accept that we mostly don’t know anything we can realize that even our projected fear of badness is inaccurate.  The truth is we don’t know if something bad will happen or not happen based on our doing or non-doing.  We may create elaborate stories based on ideas in our mind or on previous life experiences, and yet even so we don’t know what will truly happen, ever.  All of the doubt we feel in our decision making processes (i.e. the pressure we feel) is simply rooted in the perspective that one way is good and another is bad.  One way is right and another wrong.  That the result of one choice is preferable and the other un-preferable.  

Rather than forcing yourself to do, take some kind of action, or make a decision, first giving yourself the permission to not know and not act is key.  Even though it seems like there are deadlines and timelines remember that all of that is made up.  It’s true that if certain “timelines” don’t get met than certain things may not occur, but remember there is no badness in the occurrence or non-occurrence.  Only the perspective you take on all of it matters.  There are truly no missed opportunities.  There is only what happens.  That may be hard for you mind to accept and your acceptance of that is key to your peace.   

WANTING EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 

Doing from choice

Conjure up something in your mind that you think you have to do.  Maybe its your taxes, paying your bills, or a project for work or for hobby.  Perhaps its a conversation with someone, an email to write, a new diet or exercise to start, a relationship to end or a new job to start .  Make sure that whatever it is you bring into mind right now is something you think you have to do, rather than something you want to do or that you feel in neutral acceptance about doing.  Notice the pressure, heaviness, tension or perhaps scatter that occurs when you think about doing the thing.  Listen to the stories and thoughts that are occurring in your mind about having to do the thing.  Some of those stories that are flittering their way through your mind might have flavors of failure, dread, uncertainty and confusion.  Notice what ultimatums you are giving yourself if you don’t do the thing and how you might feel bad about yourself or about the outcome of doing or not doing.

Now feel what its like to give yourself the permission to not do the thing.  There might still be that initial dread or fear that something bad might happen, but let that story lift as well.  For just a few moments stop making all assumptions about what you think might happen and fully allow yourself to not know what the outcome might be or not be.  Be in the mystery.  Allow the not knowing to be present.  Give space for potentiality before making a concrete reality-assumption in your mind.  Now simply notice how you feel.  You should notice that you feel lighter.  That its easier to breathe.  That you are more present.  Continue to allow yourself to not have to make any decisions or take any actions in this moment and continue to notice your energy and feeling state.  

I recommend aiming for this more neutral and easeful state of being before taking any actions.  If you don’t you are simply reacting to illogical stories and disempowered patterning.  From your now current state of being check in and see if whatever it is you conjured up to do still feels relevant to do.  If it doesn’t then just let it go as its not serving you to keep entertaining it.  If it does still feel relevant than begin to see how it is something that you want to do rather than continuing the story that you have to do it.  In the shift to wanting to do it perhaps you notice that you feel like you don’t know how to do the thing, or maybe like you don’t have the resources (physical, emotional, mental or other) to do it.  Notice if this is the case.  These are the situations to seek support and advise from others.  Find the “how” so that your mind doesn’t put a stop to it or insist on keeping you victim to it.  In this way you begin to learn that there is nothing that you have to do.  There is only what you want to do or get to do.  When you have this as the relationship with everything in your life the pressure and tension is gone because you stop being in conflict with yourself.  When you are aligned with yourself there is still work and energy expenditure, but the tension of dread of what bad thing might happen is transformed into excitement for what you get to do instead.  You open more into the mystery and worry less of the outcome.  

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

CREATING FROM PEACE

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CREATING FROM PEACE 

It’s possible 

We are constantly creating.  In fact we are creation machines.  Creators through and through.  There is nothing that you do that isn’t an act of creation.  From brushing your teeth in the morning to closing your eyes before bed, everything in between is an act of creation.  While some acts may seem more routine or mundane than others, they are all nonetheless still acts of creation, being birthed by and through you.  In most of the activities of our day we don’t really realize that we are creating, rather we see the activities of our day as our ‘“to do list” and we aspire to get everything done on the list.  Our sense of accomplishment, or rest or peace, is in the completion of our doing not in the act of doing it.  

Imagine for a moment what you would feel like if opened your eyes in the morning and your first line of priority was to generate a state of being of peace.  What if you did not allow yourself to get out of bed until peace was achieved throughout the entirety of your being.  No conflict, no restlessness, no worry, no thoughts of the day, just peace.  Now imagine getting out of bed and everything that you do comes from this state of peace.  How do you feel?  I’d imagine you feel totally amazing, and a feeling of fulfillment far beyond the satisfaction of getting things done.  Ask yourself now in this moment, do you believe it’s possible to operate and live life coming from peace?  If you don’t, what arises for you?  Many think they will not get things done, they believe all the stuff they want to produce won’t get created, and at the core of it they feel purposeless.  In general people derive a tremendous amount of their sense of worth from the things they do.  When the doing stops or gets threatened it feels like a threat to our value and worth.

To come from peace means you have nothing to prove (particularly your own worth and value) and nothing that you have to create or do.  It means you are creating/doing not from a sense of deficiency or perceiving a problem, but rather from pure joyful desire to create what you create and do what you do.  This is the end of inner chaos and dysregulation.  When you start with peace there are no problems to fix, only fun things to do with your body and mind.   How often do your creations come from lack, or from the perception that something is wrong that you think needs to be fixed or done?  Lack motivates most of our actions.  Yet if we zoom out and see a bigger picture, we can see that nothing is wrong and nothing needs fixed.  This seeing is foundational to consistently coming from peace.  You must only ask yourself how badly you want peace versus the chaos and dysregulation you regularly choose.  While it may seem that peace isn’t always available, it always is.  Even in the most distressed state of being, peace is there as an option for you to choose.  To step into it you must only let go of that which you are perceiving as wrong. 

BRINGING JOY TO EVERYTHING 

Creativity in action

Some people do not view themselves as creative, and yet it is impossible not to be.  What seems to distinguish someone who is “creative” versus someone who is “not creative” (which again is impossible) is how much fun they are having inside of their creation.  You could make the bed as a routine you do every morning, which may seem uncreative to you, or you could make the bed in joy, and alas it becomes a creation that feels creative to you.  You may find yourself making pillow and blanket art.  When you see that everything is creative nothing seems mundane anymore.  There is no more just getting through your day or your to do list.  Mundane is simply something we have yet to find how to bring joy too.  

When you start with peace, when you come from peace, you quickly realize that there is nowhere to get.  Most of our doing is an attempt to get to peace, but when you start in peace all of your attempts to get somewhere disappear.  You arrive and are alive.  Not the kind of alive that is a waking zombie that we call being human, but the awake kind of alive.  The rested alive wakefulness, which allows us to flow with life and for life to flow through us.  How wiling are you to give up your un-peace?  Are you ready to die to your insistence on chaos and distress?  Do you want to claim peace, joy and creativity as your consistent state of being from here on out?

It sometimes feels hard to imagine or believe that we can truly be peaceful.  Yet when we choose distress over peace we create a world of distress rather than peace, and while perhaps you have the perception that what you choose as one individual doesn’t really matter, it does.  Your choice for peace or distress impacts this collective reality that we experience as one consciousness.  We are all part of one unified awareness and we can’t help influence and impact one another.  The generation of reality starts and ends with awareness, with us.  We as one are the awareness that creates all, creates this entire universe, all dimensions of the cosmos.  You are more powerful that you currently dream you are.  

Find ways to bring joy to all that you create/do.  Rather than avoiding, ignoring or refusing to do things that you perceive as un-joyful, find ways to bring joy to them.  It is not the activity that is un-joyful, but rather your state of being from where you come from in your doing.  All creating can be made fun when you realize that nothing has to be done.  Release yourself from the prison of thinking that what you create needs to be created, and reclaim your joy.   This doesn’t mean that you won’t create or do, you will, but no longer will you need to for any reason whatsoever.  Here is where pure innocent organic joy is found.  Only your desire and choice to put your energy and attention where you put it will guide you.  No longer will you need anything from anything or anyone.  Nothing has to work out in any specific way according to your preferences and likes.  This is freedom.  You are the power for this.  Choose peace.  Come from peace.  Start in peace.  If you do the only reality you will experience will be joy, not because your reality is joy, but because that is what you choose.  

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

LACK OF PERCEIVED SELF-WORTH

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LACK OF PERCEIVED  SELF-WORTH

Self-absorption & taking from the field

Not valuing ourselves is a rather common disposition among humans.  It tends to be more socially acceptable to share feelings of lack of self-worth than it is to share expressions of worthiness.  If someone is confident they are often viewed as arrogant or conceded, and if someone lacks self-worth they are viewed as altruistic or humble.  Due to this social conditioning many who are confident don’t share themselves fully for concern of not wanting to “make” others feel bad about themselves or appear non-caring or un-empathetic.  Meanwhile those that don’t value themselves set the social bar for the level of self-love that it’s ok to share and express.  

Not valuing one’s self is the lowest energy state.  It literally takes energy from everything that it interacts with because it never feels like it’s enough.  Not only does it perceive itself as not enough, but it views everything else from the same lens that it views itself.  It can’t not.  It does not give to the field, but rather takes from it.  It is the most self-absorbed state.  Some people may find this paradoxical because what is perceived as confident or arrogant is most commonly associated with self-absorption.  However this is opposite to the energetic dynamics that get played out.  

Understand that to not care for yourself or see value in who/what you are is not humble or altruistic.  You viewing yourself as less than does not make you more kind, loving or selfless.  Rather it makes you more selfish and more wrapped up in your own self-created delusion of inadequacy and lack.  This sucks the life out of you, and out of everything and everyone around you.  Lack of self-worth is like a black hole that absorbs all the light of the world into it and yet remains empty because there isn’t enough light in the entire universe to illuminate it.  

The only thing that can shift this is if that which views itself changes its perspective of itself, meaning you change your perception of yourself.  If rather than seeing yourself as lack and valueless, you see yourself as you truly are, which is abundant, complete and full.  If that simple perception shift occurs, than no longer does one need to get from its environment or from other people in order to attempt to fill itself up.  Only then will you stop sucking energy out of the field and become a radiating stream that gives to the field by its very beingness.  Rather than being self-absorbing you become self-emitting, shining light wherever you go.  Many desire this, to be a light, and yet simultaneously don’t understand that their perception of themselves and their worth influences all of the energetic dynamics about them.   

FUELING YOUR BELIEF IN SELF

Prisoned disempowerment or free will

The larger truth is that its impossible to not be worthy.  You can only perceive yourself to be unworthy, and that perception creates the reality you experience, whether it’s true or not.  The only questions become, how do you want to participate with/play the game of life, and will you wake up to your choice?  See nothing in life happens to you unless you view it as such; unless you choose the victim position.  Most people unconsciously choose the victim position because the sea our consciousness swims in is filled with that programming.   The whole process and point of waking up is to consciously recognize that you are choosing and also then what you are choosing.  In this way you can consciously create your world rather than blindly accept the status quo.  Just because the large majority of people choose prisoned disempowerment as their story doesn’t mean that you must as well.   

The fuel of the reality of prisoned disempowerment is re-enforcing the belief of non-worth, non-value, and powerlessness.   In this reality some people have power and some don’t.  Some people matter and some don’t.  Some people are valuable and some aren’t.  You must ask yourself if that is the reality that you want to fuel, and also be willing to see how you do fuel it though the “innocent” interaction you have with how you see yourself as unworthy.   If you desire to create a different reality you will require a different fuel source.  The reality of free will is fueled by the belief of infinite value, inherent worth and powerfulness.  What is required for you to experience free will is the knowing of your worth.  Your power is your worth, your worth is your power.  In this reality all have power, all matter and all are valuable.

Its important to know what reality your energetic vote and perception of self, contribute to creating.  People tend not to know the power of their inner dialogue and the power of the lenses that they wear when they look at self or at the world.  How you view becomes your reality.  Even though your power could never be more or less than it is, which is synonymous with saying that your worth could never be more or less than it is, in this relative game we are playing there are two ways to increase power/worth/energy.  One way is to control others; the other way is to empower others.  If you control others you then gain/take their free will and it adds to your own.  You gain power.  If you empower others you give free will and it adds to the greater collective all of which you are included.  This is essentially your “how to” recipe: view yourself as valuable, help others view themselves as such through your capacity to view yourself as such, create a lived reality where free will is your direct experience.  

Understand that to view yourself as unworthy or not valuable is to disregard the beauty of God and it’s creation.  It’s to deny the perfection of the creator expressed through you.  It’s paradoxically the most self-absorbed perspective through its rejection of self.  Its the lowest energy state, which you then experience as your life.  Through viewing yourself as unworthy you create a disempowered reality and willingly give your free will, your energy and your power over to it.  When will you have had enough?  When will you decide you are more then you’ve been perceiving yourself to be?  What will it take for you to stop insisting that you aren’t worthy?  How much more suffering are you willing to create by holding onto your view of unworthiness?  

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