connection

STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE

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STOP DOING TO GET THINGS DONE 

Be finished with finishing

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

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

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

DOING FROM ENJOYMENT 

Courageously choose joy

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

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

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

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

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

ATTUNEMENT

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ATTUNEMENT 

Harmony with self & other

Attunement seems to be a rarity in today’s age.  To attune is to bring harmony or tune with another’s rhythms and their emotional/spiritual well-being.  When one is attuning with, or attuned to another, there is a sense of connectedness between the two and of being met and seen.  Most people very much desire attunement because when they are attuned to they know that someone else is present, paying attention, invested, and involved.  It allows the person to relax and not have to fight for the presence of another.  Yet in today’s world we are ensued in the world of distraction.  We are hyper-focused on our phones, social media, email, news, and all of the noise it creates inside of our heads.  It leaves very little room for us to be present and in relationship with others in a way that is human, rather than robotic or purely functional.  

Our massive lack of attunement to others (and to ourselves) results in a sense of aloneness or disconnection.  In a world that is highly interdependent on and with other beings this sets up quite a predicament.  It can feel like no one is there, that people don’t show up and that they don’t care.  This makes us become super self-reliant, which at an extreme level makes it challenging for us to receive support when support does actually present itself, and beyond that we may even push support away.  Also when we are not attuned to ourselves we feel disconnected from our own inner rhythms and from knowing what is going on inside of us.  The only thing that seems to get our attention is strong physical sensations (ie. pain or hunger) or mental-emotional intensity, while the subtle nature of our being remains elusive to us.  

While at our deepest level we desire attunement, it can also feel uncomfortable if we are not used to it, which many of us are not.  Attunement is intimate.  It sees you, but you must also allow yourself to be seen in order to fully receive that attuning.  Most people have many layers of protection or defense that they place around themselves due to previous pains and hurts.  Those layers become barriers to allowing ourselves to drink in the nurturance that attunement provides.  So even if attunement is present often we can’t fully let it in based on the protection we’ve created around ourselves from previous experiences.  Its like listening to the symphony with head phones on and ear plugs in.  You may be able to hear some semblance of the musical harmony being offered, but there are layers in the way of you being able to fully hear and receive it.   

ATTUNING, HARMONIZING & ENTRAINING 

Into the heart

Attuning with, harmonizing or entraining (which are all the same thing) with another being allows for a shared experience when both beings are receptive to it.  Attunement requires heart, presence and caring.  If you don’t care or have desire for others than you won’t experience attunement with them.  Seems obvious, but maybe not for all, as some people truly don’t see or understand why they don’t experience the level of connection with self or others that they desire.  The field, intelligence and energy of the heart is what allows you to go beyond individual person into interconnectedness.  Without heart there is separate individuated beings doing their own thing, which pretty much sums up a large portion of how our society thinks and functions.  With heart there is a interwoven web of beingness all impacting itself, which is the next level of development for the beings on this planet to reach.  

From time to time people express to me that they want more experience from their experience, whether on the table during a session or in their life with others (I find the two to be synonymous).  They want to feel more or experience more, even if they don’t know what it is exactly that they to feel or experience more of.  Others are more clear in their desire.  They know they want to be more expansive, feel more connected, be more aware of subtlety or of their energetic nature, experience more inter-dimensionality, feel more loving, more bliss, more ecstatic, more open.  The first thing I say is that it is important to get clear on exactly what it is you want in the first place.  Put words to it.  Begin to feel it already and notice where you might have even the subtlest amount of resistance, doubt or uncertainty around what you think you want to more of.  These are layers or protection that interfere with you being able to attune and harmonize with your desires.  The second thing I say is that our very nature is all of those things: open, bliss, love, and infinitely deep and expansive.  There is no lack of open, ecstatic bliss because it is what you are.  It is not a destination to get to, but a realization of what you already are.  Notice where you put your “wholeness” in the future, where it seems unattainable or where you feel undeserving of it.  These are more layers that create interference.  Lastly I say that all of those things desired are found in the heart.  Opening into love for self and love for others is a portal into having the ability to connect to all levels of yourself and all aspects of other.  This provides the capacity for attuning to others and the willingness to be attuned too, which at our deepest level we are all starving for.

Attuning, harmonizing and entraining is the core of all relationships.  There is no real relationship without them.  There may be practicalities that get carried out, but no real connection occurs inside of a relationship without the capacity and willingness for attunement.  While practicalities are important they are not the juice of life that make us come alive and feel that life is worth living.  Instead relating, community, connection, interconnectedness, and the play of the heart are what lights us up.  This is where we forget all the things we thought where so important to remember, figure out, heal or know.  We forget about all the stuff we think we want to get and all the places we want to go.  We become present.  We are here.  Infinite energy, possibilities and connection live here now.  

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

UN-CONDITION THE SPACE OF YOU

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UN-CONDITION THE SPACE OF YOU

Birthplace of programs, patterns & conditions 

Often in spiritual circles we talk about deprograming or de-conditioning ourselves from the programs and conditions we’ve learned, which are either untrue or don’t serve us any longer.  Much of our personal work and development is focused on dismantling these patterns that create inauthentic ways of being, so that ultimately we can simply be ourselves just as we are with nothing added or subtracted.  In fact much, if not all of our suffering, stems from disconnection from ourselves (i.e. not knowing ourselves) and then attempting to be someone or something out of that sense of disconnected emptiness.  This creates the entire gamut of patterns, programs, strategies and conditions that come along with attempting to be someone or something other than what we nakedly and innately are.  

What are these programs, patterns and conditions really made up of?  All patterns are simply made up out of thought.  Those thoughts inform, direct and mold the forms and behaviors that you see and experience.  The root of thoughts are beliefs, the root of belief is perspective, and the root of perspective is simply perception or the ability to perceive.  So the fact that you can perceive (i.e. that you are aware) creates a perspective or lens from which beliefs, thoughts and forms are birthed or brought into creation.  Each level back is less conditioned or patterned.  Forms are the most conditioned or patterned, thoughts a little less so, beliefs even less so, perspectives less so than beliefs, and pure perception/awareness is the least conditioned.  This is why as people become more steeped in pure awareness (which is the most refined or primordial essence or substance if you want to call it that) the more transparent they become.  Transparent in actual form, less fixated in thought, and less biased and strongly held in their beliefs.  This is the space of what all of the work of de-conditioning or deprogramming brings us all directly into contact with and ultimately shifts our sense of identity.  

See when we are fixated on the body and the thoughts in our head we think ourselves to be a separate human being, that becomes our identity.  Be clear that separate human being is just a thought.  When we start to recognize the beliefs that create the thoughts and forms, we see ourselves as less and less separate as we begin to be able to change our thoughts and see the direct impact of that change on our physical world.  This makes us feel less separate from and more a part of or interconnected, so our identity is more like a web of beings rather than just a separate individual being.  When the beliefs become clearer and clearer and lighter and lighter we open into the recognition of perspective, which is like the lens through which light is focalized.  Here our identity is that of what I would call the soul or higher self.  We realized our selves beyond a linear timeline seeing our entire trajectory or journey forward, backward and now.  Until finally even the lens is transcended and all that remains is pure light or pure awareness, which is non-localized, spacious, all encompassing and all pervasive.  Here identify is just one, one beingness, which is what I call the God state.   

BEING UNCONDITIONAL SPACE

Giving the gift that you are

Now that we are clear on how conditions arrive in the first place we can easily see that as we track our way back to the source of it all we arrive in that unconditional, non-localized, all pervasive space of ourselves.  This is the purest state of being possible and it is your true self; it is what and who you are.  (Side note: There is a traversing beyond beingness itself which is to remove yourself completely from creation. It is quite advanced and another transition all together which I will not address in this article.)

When you know yourself as God, or as pure awareness, the space of you is unconditioned.  This means that anything and everything is possible as no conditions are set and no programmed responses have been decided or determined.  It also means that anything that interacts with this unconditional space has an opportunity to see, remember and know itself clearly.  For example say that there is a group of 5 sitting in a room and one of those in the group has recognition of the unconditional space that they are and they’re completely rested in that knowingness.  Through the restedness they have in themselves, in what they are, they naturally and effortlessly emit that and it becomes the container of the group or room.  What will then organically occur is that any beings that are present in that group who are more transparent in their form, thoughts, beliefs and perspective will naturally and effortlessly meet that awareness.  To whatever degree one is transparent in self will be the degree to which they can meet that awareness.  Of course that awareness does not stop at the container of the four walls and therefore has opportunity to be picked up by any and all open enough to become coherent with it.

When no conditions are set and no programmed responses have been decided or determined God just simply is and moves.  This is where we recognize that self-organizing principle of life that does itself by itself.  Our heart flies open and moves towards God, merging into that source of what it is through the recognition of itself.  If we are still fused with our thoughts including our worries, concerns, plans for our future and such, than we may try to define it, put it in a box, label it, force it somehow, or figure it out, but when we are beyond the box of our thoughts we simply allow it and recognize it as God and eventually as ourselves.  

To un-condition yourself, which is simply to remember yourself, is the biggest gift and really the only gift any of us have to give.  The giving being inherent and naturally occurring, you couldn’t stop it even if you tried.  Your thoughts, actions, behaviors, and movements are all seamlessly in God as God.  Nothing being out of flow or coherence.  Not acting as the person you, but from the knowingness of what is prior to it all.  

It all boils down to what you desire and where you place your focus.  Do you desire to play in the world of forms, manipulating and achieving, moving from here to there, feeling like you have purpose in a particular way and hoping to find peace and happiness once everything settles into place?  If so you will not have the penetrative power that you need to break through the layers of your own mind.  Do you desire to know yourself, know the truth and know God and is that your one and only sole desire that you seek at the expense of all else realizing there will never be an external settling into place or peace and happiness found in anything you do, achieve or accomplish?  If so you will have the fuel that you need to realize yourself and so it will be.  You then become the gift that you’ve been all along and your radiance touches all.

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

LEFT OUT OF THE GLORY OF GOD

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LEFT OUT OF THE GLORY OF GOD

Denying your Divinity

The primary drive of our soul is to remember and reunite with ourselves.  Most have completely forgotten their truest essence and only think or know conceptually what spirit is.  We have built up layers of beliefs (aka defenses) that perpetuate the experience of disconnection and separation from our goodness and the glory of God.  What do I mean by glory of God?  Simply the purest, most distilled, refined and inherently perfect and good true nature of ourselves.  We are God, we are the Creator, we are the perfection of all that is expressed through this human form, and yet we deny, push away or resist this thus resisting ourselves and creating a lived reality of suffering, pain and disconnection.

The spiritual journey is the remembering, reclaiming and reuniting with that which we already are and have always been.    You have never ever been anything but God expressed through a myriad of various forms, whose form is currently this human body.  The beliefs that keep you in resistance and denial to fully knowing this operate ever so subtlety underneath your conscious awareness.  This is why it is important to never stop seeking to know yourself.  To commit full heartedly to the journey over and over and over again, as without your devoted commitment you postpone the remembering of yourself.

Why do we resist what we are?  Why do we resist that we are good, pure and perfect?  Simply because we don’t believe it.  That’s it.  Its really that simple.  We don’t believe it.  Why don’t we believe it?  We don’t believe it because people, who also don’t know themselves, who don’t know their inherently perfect divine self, have conditioned our thinking mind-matrix to be in alignment with theirs.  We’ve agreed, consciously or not, to abide by others rules and stories so that we fit in with them, so that our needs and wants are taken care of and so that we aren’t left out.  In choosing to not feel left out on a societal and relational level we have given away our own true knowing of ourselves.  Anything that feels like it might threaten our basic human needs or wants for resources, love or connection takes precedence over divine connection.  To accept or believe that we are good, perfect, divine and complete throws a wrench into our entire internal system and threatens everything we think we know and everything we think we need. 

BEING THE CREATOR

Self-Empowered

We hear so much these days that we are the creator, but is this something that we just say in spiritual circles to feel cool or do we really, really get it.  Do we really get just how powerful we are or do we still think that our lives are happening to us kind of randomly?  Many people think they are more self-empowered than they actually are.  By in large people are living disempowered even if they are doing and saying all of the right things and in all the right spiritual communities.  Only if you are fully rested in your perfect wholeness and without personal bias are you truly self-empowered.  

We tend to view a self-empowered person as one who is manifesting everything they want and living in alignment with their personal dreams.  What this tends to look like is having an aligned job, standing up for all the right causes, having a healthy body, having seamless relational dynamics, and having all of your desires (physical and nonphysical) met. Many, many strive for this, and while it is a step on the developmental ladder, it is not full self-empowerment.  Full self-empowered living is not about having the perfect spiritual appearance of life, its about knowing that you are complete perfection no matter what.  

Being fully self-empowered paradoxically has very little to do with you at the personality-physical expression level at all, even though this is what we tend to associate it with.  To be truly self-empowered is to recognize that your personal preferences, desires and life, while relatively important for this moment in space-time, have very little ultimate importance.  This may sting a little at first thought as you might want to hold onto your personal agendas, significance and righteousness.  Feelings of confusion, aimlessness or directionlessness that are along the lines of “well if I’m not that, or this thing I care about isn’t important, than what/who am I” may also arise.  This is not the ultimate goal however as we let go of the limited perspective of self with limited power, which is often all we’ve ever known up to this point, we enter a mysterious emptiness that is frequently uncomfortable and disturbing to the personality mind that likes to always be in the know. 

Many are suffering because they are placing too much attention and giving too much significance to their small selves.  In my opinion this is actually an epidemic in personal growth and spiritual communities.   Yes we want practices and skills to dismantle the beliefs that keep us separate and keep us out of our true glory as God, yet frequently we don’t realize that this means that ultimately we have to let go of this idea that we have of a separate, disconnected and worthless self all together.  Its funny that we often don’t realize this end goal if you will to personal growth work.  That we must divorce or break up with our thoughts/beliefs that insist on our lack of complete perfection and goodness.  To not do so and to continue to insist on your worthlessness, is actually a selfishly arrogant act that sucks the energy and life out everything around it and postpones your joy and happiness.  To deny, push away, or resist that which you are, is energy depleting for you and all around you.  The fastest way to self-empowerment and self-knowing is to stop insisting that you suck.  

We are not a separate entity/person no matter how much appearances seem that way.  There is no such thing.  We could not be disconnected from God if we tried.  We are one, we are God, no division, no separation.  To be self-empowered means to love self and know self as Love.  There is no higher commitment than to be fully devoted to that knowing.  

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

Giving Everything Back to Source

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Giving Everything Back to Source 

Tendency to hold on

Studio shot of worried and upset caucasian woman holding hands in pray near chin, squeezing it tight and begging for something, smiling nervously and standing with closed eyes over gray backgroundAs human beings we tend to hold onto everything.  This perpetual holding on gives us a sense of security and like we can somehow manipulate our external reality if we just hold on a little bit tighter.  Holding on is our attempt to control the spontaneous, unpredictability of life so that we are not caught too far off our guard where we perceive that things might get or go “bad”.  This holding onto life keeps our life looking a particular way and provides us with the illusionary experience of consistency and sameness.  While a part of us feels better when this illusionary experience of life appears to be intact, another part of us feels stifled and like it can’t breathe inside of delusion we are perpetuating.  

We not only hold onto material things like homes, jobs, relationships and such, we also hold onto thoughts.  In fact we are almost never entirely without a thought.  For many people to open into the spacious, emptiness beyond thought is terrifying.  I believe that most have never done it for much longer than a second or two, if even that, which means that we are always holding onto something.  Why the terror to let go you may ask?  Perhaps we fear that this world that we live in now, with all the things that we know, will disappear.  Perhaps the tastes we’ve had of freedom have felt “too free” and we prefer some constraint and limitation over our freedom.  Maybe we’ve created the story that we don’t know how to let go, or maybe we don’t even know that we are holding life in the grips of our own mind.  

Regardless of our reasoning or our lack of awareness into ourselves as to our patterns of holding the result of holding is the same.  Holding on always creates some level of tension in our body-mind.  That tension then becomes the filter with which we interpret and experience everything and with which we come to believe what is.  Tension patterns also create disconnection from source or from the larger organizing principle of creation.  This is the inherent function of tension patterns, to be self-protective of this individuated body-mind organism that we call ourselves, and yet simultaneous with this comes reinforcement of the illusion of perceiving yourself as separate from the rest of creation.   

Reconnecting with Source 

Its easier than your mind thinks

Happy girl jumpingRe-establishing connection to source is always easier than our mind thinks that it is.  It is the job of our mind to make things way more complicated than they are in actuality.  People’s minds like to talk about how they have to do this or that, change this or that, or how they just have to surrender and let go already.  Yet for most this simply stays in their mind as another thought or idea that takes up space inside of the infinite spaciousness of ourselves.  I find if people are talking about their need to surrender and let go they are quite far from actually doing it.  Why does letting go or surrendering stay in the mind rather than become our direct experience?   It is because ultimately we don’t really want to let go of what we say we want to let go of.  We prefer our uncomfortable (or unnoticeable for some that have less awareness of themselves) tension patterns and delusional stories of reality over ease and truth because more than anything else we fear what we might lose.  

So fear of loss runs the show of our lives until we boldly and courageously decide to no longer let it.  Not until we are willing to lose everything can we truly experience surrender.  Few people arrive here without exhausting every other possible route first.  We quite literally exhaust ourselves into the truth.  Our beliefs in scarcity, lack, and wrongness, that we won’t have enough, be enough, achieve the right things, things won’t last or turn out, that we’ve failed, will be alone,  etc… triumphs.  

How do we walk this path towards surrender step by step?  I have found that to give everything back to source is the quickest route.  This means making the commitment to first tune into yourself and develop awareness of your patterns of tension and disconnection.  As tension patterns arise at the body level immediately release them.  Don’t try to figure them out or process them at length, simply just drop the tension.  Rather than continue to hold on to it, let it go, just like that.  You will notice instantly more ease and breath in your body.  You will also begin to realize just how powerful you are and how you are the creator of your own tension patterns.  Second is the willingness to let go of your thoughts as they arise.  This will take consistent practice for most.  If you get fixated on a thought recognize the fixation and then let the thought go.  This is important particularly for thoughts that really grab you and bring you into a less resourced and often fearful state.  

As you do this more and more you will be developing your skill set in giving back to source rather than taking from or holding on as if nothing else will ever come your way.  Whenever we give back we are instantaneously rewarded with more energy and aliveness.  What we hold onto we maintain.  At best our energy state stays neutral which means life looks the same and feels mundane most of the time.  However what we give back to life, to source, frees us up and thus we become available to exponentially greater and greater states of energy.  This also means that we almost never know what will happen.  We are in the moment of ever present aliveness, trust, and knowingness in the perfection of it all.  This is what at our heart of hearts we all desire and seek no matter how much our minds want to interfere.  

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

Soul Alignment

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Soul Alignment 

Connecting to the sound of you

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

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

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

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

Becoming your calling 

Your calling made manifest

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

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

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

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

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

Lover & Loved

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Lover & Loved 

Lack and Abundance

Love Rose ConceptMost all of us have a hunger to be loved.  Some people seek for love through affection and relationships, and others through accomplishment, success and acknowledgment.  The largest wounding we have as humans is the feeling of being unlovable or like we are somehow not enough.  We are constantly trying to prove our enoughness to ourselves through external validation that can come either directly from another person, or indirectly through following all of the societal and cultural checkboxes and expectations for what it is to be a good and acceptable person.  

Your hunger to be loved might be hidden from your awareness.  Sometimes we are not fully aware of what is underneath all of the things we do or the ways we show up as we just assume it is just who we are.  However, upon deeper investigation we can often find that who we think we are and the things we think we want really come from a place of unlovability rather than true authentic desire.  So how do we discern if what motivates our desires is coming from lack (meaning trying to prove ourselves) or from abundance (a pure sharing, expressing and being of ourselves)?  It’s really quite easy, simply ask yourself if you are wanting something out of it.  Any time that we want something out of something that we are doing, rather than to purely give to what we are doing, we are coming from a place of lack.  Lack is always connected to not enoughness; not enoughness of self, not enoughness of resources, not enoughness of energy or opportunities.  No matter what the not enoughness is doesn’t really matter, it is all birthed from the same level of consciousness and is therefore the same.

You can equate lack to a state of unlovability, or a state of being that doesn’t know what it is.  When we don’t know what we are, meaning when we are not rested as love, then we will always feel some underlying hunger towards finding or getting it, because it seems to be missing.  This hunger towards finding or getting love is innate to us because in truth love is our natural state of being.  When we lose touch with love/ourselves (or perhaps have never known it) it is only natural that we will seek for it.  That seeking is often sought at first as something outside of us (relationships or accomplishments) and with greater experience, discovery (and disappointment), alas we being to look for that very love inside of us.   

Lover & Loved Become One 

The One who Loves the Loved 

17540280 - atomic love concept illustration design over a white backgroundWhen our outward search becomes less and less fulfilling and we realize the temporariness or inconsistency of love from “out there” which is dependent on people or circumstances doesn’t equal being rested as Love within ourselves, a new path must be sought.  While receiving love and allowing ourselves to feel the love that we are which comes through the  mirroring of things or other people is an important step, it is not the final destination. It’s not the final destination because when those people or things go away then our source of love/lovability goes away as well.  We find ourselves back at square one not knowing what we are again as our source/reflection of love has gone away.  We see this when relationships end or life circumstances change that disrupt our sense of self dramatically.  We feel a sense of deep loss of self, aimless and not knowing who we are anymore because who we thought we were was entirely wrapped up in those external situations and relationships.  

The only way to sustainably know yourself, to be centered and always connected to yourself is not only through being loved and feeling loved; you must also realize yourself as the Lover.  Not just lover to others, but lover to your own loved self.  The source from which love is created and flows.  The one who loves the loved.  Lover and loved are one.  They are complementary pairs, which are always united, one does not exist without the other.  To find that ultimate unity which we all crave, which is underneath all of our desires, which is the blueprint impulse of all of creation, can only be found in this pair of lover and loved, and reconnection with ourselves as both in one.  

Disconnection from ourselves as Lover is why we feel so powerless, lost, and don’t know who we are.  We keep thinking that Lover is found in people, things or in some aspect of creation, but it is not.  Instead it is the source of all of creation.  Looking outward to creation for the source of creation will never result in the creator being found.  It must be found inside of you.  Loved does not exist without Lover.  We have been confused in knowing ourselves only as loved, only as expressions of creation and not as the source of it.  You are the generator, the knower, the creator, the lover, not merely the expressions of such.  When you see this truth and finally recognize yourself you will never again feel like you are unlovable because you will know that you are the lover, the generator of the loved, and thus so love is implied, inherent, and literally cannot be.

The Lover is not another object, thing or person.  It is you.  Its not the stuff or ideas that you call and identify as you, but the you that is the real you.  We have been in the dark as to our true nature as lover.  We have not been able to see how we can love this expression of love that we call ourselves due to this darkness.  We are not victim to the darkness.  We must simply turn our seeking direction around and stop looking out into creation for what which we seek.  Instead we must become silent and turn our seeking inside, towards us, a direction we may have never looked before, and simply ask that the truth of ourselves be revealed to us.  We must put on our big boy and girl pants and become accountable, disciplined and devoted to knowing ourselves as the Lover.  Your full devotion to knowing yourself will reveal yourself to you.  Nothing else will.  Lover and loved reunite, become one, and never fall out of love again.  

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

Being with physical pain

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Being with physical pain 

Types of pain

There are four primary types of pain each having their own flavor of expression. Physical pain is the most obvious being that of the production of unpleasant sensations in the the body.  It often deeply activates our survival mechanisms and more primitive, reactive brain structures.  Emotional pain is experienced when our feelings get hurt or we feel unloved or unloveable.  This is less connected with our immediate survival and more with our sense of a personal self and inherent worthiness.  Mental pain is the experience we have when we’re trying to force or insist that life to be a particular way,  when we argue with what is and can’t see outside of a limited perspective.  This is often connected with who we are in the world, what we want to accomplish and how we are perceived by others.  Lastly spiritual pain is that which we feel when we tap into the collective at large and feel the suffering of a group or community.  Spiritual pain is the least personal of all the experiences of pain, but it tends to invoke a high desire towards service towards others when felt.

Though none of the pains that we experience are necessarily easy to be with I find that physical pain can sometimes be the most challenging for us. Our relationship with physical pain is such that we feel the threat to our survival through its expression.  Most of us have subtle, or not so subtle, beliefs in place that to allow ourselves to feel physical pain may ensue our demise. Even if our higher brain centers know this is not necessarily the case, the lower primitive survival structures take precedence and rule our reactions.  

Due to the perceived threat to our survival that physical pain activates inside of our psyche we have a higher tendency to protect or guard ourselves from this type of pain.  This creates a hyper-vigilance which activates our sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system, creates massive amounts of tension and hijacks our awareness.  In this state of being our capacity to recognize that we are not the pain and that the pain does not control us is quite limited.  We feel consumed by it and have lost awareness of anything else.   

Mastering the primitive nervous system

Coming back into connection with yourself

separated by wallUltimately we must become the master of this primitive survival response of our nervous system so that we can learn to be present with physical pain rather than consumed by it.  When we guard against physical pain we wall off our awareness from  that particular location within our body.  Walling off awareness creates a sense of disconnection from that expression.  When we perceive disconnection we feel powerless because the expression is something other than us. When something seems other than us the mind perceives it to be an external problem and often goes into trying to figure out the solution to that problem. This is a rabbit hole without resolve. You will constantly be looking for and trying the next best magical cure.  

When instead you begin to create a connection with this aspect of your self that’s expressing as a painful sensation you begin to realize your power again.  You realize that you can be with this expression too. That you can even move into and towards it rather than away from it.  That you don’t have to protect yourself from it, but rather that you can experience it. 

It is through this and through realizing your power and thus your capacity to work with these sensations that you can come back into oneness with yourself and with that which was previously perceived to be other than you.  This is how all healing happens in every category of pain.  In this way you begin to master those primitive survival responses of your nervous system.  Rather than letting them run the show of your life you develop greater awareness of your self beyond them and with that new options for how you can engage with these painful sensations begins to open up.  With that you stop seeing pain as the enemy that’s overtaking you and you discover how you can work with whatever sensation arises.  In this working together communication happens.  Vital communication.  Communication that is required for all systems to function and work coherently towards a common vision, in this case a physical vehicle that moves with ease.  

All healing happens through connection and coming back into oneness with yourself.  When we forget our wholeness we appear to ourselves to be broken. From the perception of brokenness no healing arises, only further brokenness.  To join with what’s present (even physical pain), rather wall yourself off from it, creates balance, harmony and an optimal environment for you to thrive within. 

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