empowered

GOING WITH LIFE

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GOING WITH LIFE 

Separation to liberation

We spend an awful lot of energy keeping ourselves separate from life, understandably so.  We are given a name, develop characteristics, preferences, likes, dislikes, roles, habits and patterns of thinking and behaving that create an identity of who we come to know ourselves as.  An identity that seems like a separate person who is distinct from other persons.  We have functional control over this physical body, we sense through it, and we assume that we are located inside of it.  We believe the information that our senses give us and what our thoughts tell us as fact.  We don’t recognize that we are what is aware of the sensations or thoughts, and not the sensations or thoughts themselves.  Said another way we become our experience rather than recognizing we are what is aware of our experience.  All of this reinforces our sense of separateness from awareness rather than one with it.  We feel powerless to something that seems other than us and find ourselves kind of at odds with life.  

When we feel at odds it’s like we are always working against something and there is a sense of hardness that comes with it.  It’s the feeling that there is you and then there is this other thing, object, or person, which you have to work with to do something to.  Like this other thing, object, or person is separate and you have to maintain that separateness.  If you decided to make a bold move one day and didn’t maintain that separateness, all of life would flow and you would recognize that you can pay attention to content (i.e. sensations & thoughts) or you can pay attention to the fact that you are aware while all the content comes and goes.  What is important here is that you would get that you aren’t what you experience, but rather you are what is aware of the experience.  You would feel freedom instantly rather than the bound-ness of maintaining separation, but this freedom of rejoining yourself feels chaotic, destabilizing and unknown to your current sense of being a separate person with the identity that you have created as yourself.

To go with life rather than feeling at odds, or like you have to go to work on it by attempting to do something to it, is to stop fighting anything.  It’s to end the thought that anything needs to be different.  It is the cessation of the idea that there is somewhere else to get to where you will feel amazing and where all of your prayers are answered.  There is no location that exists other than where you are.  The freedom you seek is contained inside this moment and every moment.  You will not ever arrive somewhere other because there is no other and there is no out there.  At some point we must stop running from thing to thing to thing hoping to find relief and answers.  There is nothing out there. 

ENDING NEEDS 

Arriving in the present

Part of maintaining separation is the illusion of needs.  When we believe ourselves to be a separate person we feel as though we have a lot of needs and that we somehow we have to work to get them met.  However as we merge back into ourselves, into non-separation, we realize that all needs are met because everything is gotten.  Meaning life has its own back.  It’s completely taken care of.  It’s fulfilled and all set.  When we are in contact with ourselves we know this, and when we are disconnected we don’t know it.  To be free of needing anything is to be truly free.  You lose all agenda that might have subtle underpinnings in your subconscious.  You can just be because there isn’t anything pulling you out of yourself to go and get or figure out.  Everything is also known even though paradoxically your mind knows nothing.

There are a few fundamental points to emphasize here in arriving where you are and the cessation of needs.  One is a foundational acceptance that absolutely nothing needs to change or be different than it is.  Along the same lines it would suffice to say that all is well just as it is.  Creating this as the container for your mind allows your mind to relax its incessant attempts to hook into thoughts in order to do or figure out something that it perceives to be other than itself.  There might still be thoughts, but you simply notice them rather than become them.  The next piece is giving yourself permission to not have to know and be in the space of the unknown, which is another term for the present moment.  When we arrive here to the present moment nothing is known and everything is revealed.  Our minds tend not to easily surrender themselves because the job of our mind is to maintain “known-ness”, identity and separation.  To give away what we think we know renders our mind useless and minds like to be used.  From the perspective of our mind “unknown” equals the experience of confusion.  This is one of our least favorite states of being, however learning to be good with confusion without attempting to get rid of it by making something certain again, is the gateway into now and to going with life.

To go with life is to know your freedom and experience it.  It’s to no longer be at odds with anything.  It’s to no longer perceive separation.  It’s to no longer control the happenings of life.  It’s to no longer insist that anything, including yourself, be any certain way other than what it is.  The experience of this is rested while awake.  The experience of this is peace.  It is not an outside job, it’s an inner one.  It’s not far fetched or out of reach, it’s all already here.  There is no distance to traverse, no progress that needs to be made, and there’s nothing more that you need to get or figure out first.  Available in this moment is liberation.  It requires nothing to be different than it is right now.  You don’t need to be more worthy than you already are.  You don’t need to love yourself more first.  Stop trying to get somewhere so that you can arrive and be where you are already.  You will not recognize wholeness and perfection somewhere out there at a future date if you don’t recognize it now.  Liberation is available, “achievable” and is the natural state.  It requires nothing to be done in order to “get” it.  The only sacrifice, if you want to call it that, is giving away your current state of everything you think you know.  What we think we know is actually confusion and what we perceive to be unknown and therefore confusing is truth and freedom.  

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

Finding your Power

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Finding your Power 

Moving beyond fear & accepting uncertainty

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

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

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

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

Changing your programming 

Being in the Driver’s seat

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

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

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

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

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

Your life is not your own

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Your life is not your own

Existence beyond being a body

Basic RGBTruly your life has never been your own.  What the heck does that mean?  If your life isn’t yours than whose is it?  That is a great beginning question to ask yourself.  We make a lot of assumptions about who/what we are with very little investigation as to if those assumptions are true.  One of the primary assumptions that pretty much most everyone makes is that they are a separate person.  It is hard to fathom otherwise.  If you aren’t the you that you’ve thought that you are then who are you exactly?  What would it even be like to know yourself other than the you that you think you are?

Let’s start at the beginning.  Not just the beginning of your memory or of this physical body, but of who/what you were before your were born.  Did you exist or does your existence only begin once you have a body, and even beyond that when you are aware that you have a body?  When you where a baby, prior to your physical memory or knowingness that you had a body or existed, did you not yet exist?  Simply because we don’t have a physical memory of our existence or an awareness that we exist does not mean that we do not exist.  Nothing proves this more than when we are infants, not yet knowing that we have a body or that we exist, and yet we clearly un-doubtingly exist.  

Existence has nothing to do with whether or not we have a body or know we have a body.  That being the case we must entertain that our life as we know our life to be may very well be made up of a bunch of untrue assumptions that we’ve simply learned that we are rather than the truth of who we are.  If this idea that you are not your body is true, and you exist without a body and even without the awareness that you exist, that poses a whole world of new questions to ask yourself about what is and what you are. 

Asking these questions opens up the doors to a new knowingness of yourself, but you must earnestly seek to find.  For without the hunger to discover more, more will not be discovered.  That impulse inside of you must be sparked alive in order to provide the energy needed to guide your path and attract the ever expanding awareness of who and what you are to you.   

The Grand Orchestrator 

Coming to know your true self

Bright Flower of Life With Stars On WhiteI like to use the analogy of the body, meaning this body that you have which currently houses your being, as one cell in a much larger body.  Just like this human body is made up of trillions of cells that are specialized to perform certain functions, there is a larger body which all humans, and really everything in creation, make up together.  As humans we often are not aware that this larger body, of which we are inseparably a part of, exists.  Yet simply because we are not aware of it doesn’t mean that it does not exist.  It just means that we haven’t become aware of it yet.  

For simplicity sake recognize that every human, animal, plant and mineral form on this earth is really just one body (not multiple bodies) and that every individuated expression, meaning each and every form of this one body, has its own specialized function depending on its blueprint.  At the level of the human body cell we call this blueprint DNA.  DNA is that encoded information which tells an individual cell in the body how to function.  Going to the next level up, which is the mind (i.e. what most of us identify as who we are) organizes the entire human organism so that there is harmonization of all of the cells and systems of the body working together rather than individual cells just doing their own thing.   In this way you can think of the mind as blueprint/DNA for the entire human body as a unit.  Then at the next level beyond that, that of the larger one body of which all is a part of, the blueprint is the soul.  The soul writes the instructions for all of creation.  You can think of the soul as the DNA for the collective creation body.  Even the soul, which knows oneness and inseparability, has something that informs it, which is the grand orchestrator.  You can call this source, God, Love or whatever name fits your fancy.  It is the ultimate intelligence from which all of creation or all of the universe is born and that which informs and organizes all of it.  

This brings us back to the beginning and this notion that your life is not your own.  Your life is 100% completely divinely orchestrated.  Not because your body or mind is in charge, but because something beyond what you may currently know is in charge.  When life appears to not be going your way or things occur that you don’t like, it is because you are seeing from a very limited perspective.  Its the perspective of being a separate human being, which you have never been.  That which is viewing the circumstances is the separate body-mind which is not yet aware of its larger body self.

So what is your choice here?  The choice is to surrender to that which appears to be mysterious to our mind and learn to develop faith.  Faith is how you will come to know yourself beyond the mind.  Faith is the bridge from mind to soul.  Faith allows you to recognize your self beyond this person you’ve come to know yourself to be.  Faith is the end of all resistances, all insistences, all wrongness, all judgment.  Faith is the end of experiencing separateness.  Faith is the end of suffering.  Faith brings you home into the remembrance and recognition of the larger truth that you are.  When you get this you experience total freedom and not the powerless that the mind thinks it will experience because it comes to the end of thinking its charge.  Instead you become fully empowered in the truth of you.

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

Living Surrendered

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Living Surrendered 

Distinction of acceptance & surrender

34683163 - beautiful young woman jumping on a giant flowerMany people talk about their “need to surrender” as if its another thing on their to do list to get done that they keep procrastinating.  There’s an idea that surrender is this thing that you do once, or maybe a few times, in regards to a particular situation you find yourself within.  Most think that if they could just surrender or let go then their torment will end.  Within this mode of their thinking there is an inherent sense of powerlessness.  “If I could just let go” implies feeling choice-less and thus disempowered.  What many people are pointing to when they say that they need to surrender is really that they want to feel empowered and realize their choice in their situation rather than feeling like a victim of it or like its just happening to them. 

This above described situation is really a call for acceptance rather than surrender.  These terms mean different things though many people use them interchangeably.  Acceptance is accepting what is present.  This means accepting rather than fighting or resisting a situation that is currently present.  Acceptance is accepting what is known, what occurred, or what is here.  If we find ourselves in situations that we don’t fully like, that seem like something we don’t want, or that feel overwhelming or jarring to us, we typically don’t want to accept the situation as it is.  The reason for this not wanting to accept what is, is because underneath all the competent facades and masks that people wear, they feel largely disempowered and incapable of being able to work with what is present.  Due to this underlying feeling of disempowerment there develops an unwillingness to want to accept what is and instead we go into trying to manage or control the situation, or we feel collapsed and helpless about it.  This is how the traditional fight, flight or freeze protective/fear responses show up in our lives and keep us defensive rather than empowered.  

Learning acceptance of what is, is fundamental to feeling empowered and recognizing your choice in whatever situations you find yourself within.  Acceptance, will in a way, force you into experiencing your power.  It opens the door into your capacity to see your choices.  With this we often find ourselves stepping into situations needing to show up differently rather than expecting the situation to change.  This can be uncomfortable, which again is another reason we don’t want to accept what is, but ultimately it is what helps us realize our power and shift our underlying baseline feelings of disempowerment and victimhood.  

True surrendered-ness 

Working as intelligent energy

glittery lightSurrender has become such a popular term yet so few are actually experiencing what it is to live surrendered.  Surrender is not just this thing you do when you are at your whits end, feeling helpless and you don’t know what else to do.  In fact in my experience you must feel pretty empowered and know your worth in order to begin to truly taste surrender.  Surrender is an entire way of being and living.  As acceptance is an end of resistance to the known, surrender is an end of resistance to the unknown.  As acceptance is often a doorway into self-empowerment, surrender is a doorway into self-realization.  Self-empowerment is owning your personal value and worth, where self-realization is knowing yourself beyond the person.  Both self-empowerment and self-realization are important in terms of knowing your ultimate self and being able to live that here in this physical-relational world.  

Surrender requires that we use something beyond thought to navigate life. Rather than think-doing, which is how most people operate, surrendered living requires that we open into emptiness of thought, or empty the known.  Not being in resistance to the known is quite helpful for this and is why acceptance is often a preliminary skill set to living surrendered.  When we empty the known, yet simultaneously have unwavering confidence in the unknown (some people call this faith), then rather than thought moving you, soul moves you.  You could also substitute the words love, light, or god for soul.  It is an essence that is beyond what you as the identified thinker/person know.  In a way that thinker/person gets dis-abled, or unable to be used in its traditional mechanism, and something beyond what you’ve identified as you takes the reigns.  It moves your body-mind, it knows.  It knows exactly what to do without it going through your thoughts to figure it out first.  Your mind is still present its just not running the show in any way whatsoever.  

Living surrendered is to be overtaken by soul, by that intelligent energy-awareness that knows, which is really just you from a wider perspective.  Not everyone truly wants this now, nor is it relevant for everyone at this time.  Yet it is part of the developmental progression of beingness and at some point along the path its relevance will find everyone.  It is ultimately inescapable.  When its relevance does find you and you begin to taste surrender its like living magic.  The need for your mind to figure it all out decreases dramatically.  You realize the limitations of the mind and that you are not it.  You feel less and less separate.  There are no more boxes.  Being with another is like being with yourself.  Your body-mind is just moved.  The more and more your soul consumes you the more you realize that you are it and that you’ve never been this mind-personality-body ever.  You re-identify as soul, light, love, god.  

Things still happen, movement occurs, it is incredibly active and simultaneously still.  The perfect orchestration is revealed moment by moment as there is nothing that has to be other that what is.  There is full relinquishment of any personal agendas or will as you see yourself and know yourself, as soul, as Creator, as the One.  You are submerged in the mystery; willingly, gracefully and lovingly, dancing and moving to its rhythms.  

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

Free will

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Free will 

Reclamation of our true nature

Broken chainsWe all are and thus have free will.  Free will is that which underlies all things yet is often mysterious or elusive to us.  Many people’s free will is wrapped up in conditioning, so much so that free will can be unrecognizable to us as our free will, but instead is a bunch of assumptions that we simply believe in without investigation that seem to dictate our lives.  Because we simply believe without investigation of truth we can feel powerless or victim rather than as the free agents that we are.  The un-investigated belief decides for us rather than us recognizing that we are the one that decides whether the belief is true or not.  This is what is called “being asleep” or being unconscious to what we are.  

The reason why so many people are on a path to “waking up” is because they want to feel and be free, which is our true nature.  Its inherent in us to move towards more light, more awareness, more truth, more of us.  It is a natural impulse that is built into the entire universe including you.  In order to find your freedom, your free will, you must become more awake or conscious.  This occurs through a process of slowing down, investigating your beliefs and over time reclaiming and waking up to more and more of your free nature.  The term free will can be used synonymously with the term awareness.  To be aware is to be free.  

So where do you start?  I’ve found that having the hunger to be 100% responsible and 100% in charge of my own self is key.  Developing and committing to that desire no matter what.  If you don’t have the commitment to take 100% responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, actions, emotions and sensations then you will always find yourself victim to something.  This is not easy in a world where we have been brought up believing that life and circumstances are happening to us, rather than that we are the one creating them.  This is one of the most important beliefs to investigate.  When our lives don’t look like or feel like we want them to we often go to blaming circumstances or conditions rather than seeing how we have been creating unconsciously.  Your beliefs will create the reality you perceive whether you are conscious or unconscious as to what you believe.   

Living in awareness of choice

Touching our true essence vs. knowing it as us 

freedomUndoubtably we have all had experiences of touching or tasting our true essence.  It may have been through a peak experience, or during a meditation, or through taking a psychedelic, after a really restful nap, during entrainment or an SRI session, or by coming into direct contact with someone who has more awareness than us, etc.  All of these are vehicles, ways or portals into which we can get a taste of our more true essence and free will.  

A common tendency is to believe that it is the thing or person that gives us this experience of ourselves when really they are simply doorways or permission slips to what is always already there.  That which is always, already there must be pointed to less we go into idolizing the portal rather than what the portal opens up into, which is our true nature.  This can be frequently missed because again we have this inherent underlying belief that life is happening to us rather than we are the creators of our lives.  Said another way is that an experience of divinity is happening to us rather than we are the divine that is expressing.  

Its important to investigate your relationship with the above.  See where you still relate as life happening to you, experiences happening to you, God happening to you, rather than you as creator/God happening to life.  The bridge between touching your true essence and knowing your true essence as you starts through conscious, deliberate and intentional choosing.  

Most of the time we are simply waiting for things to happen to us or for us rather than being deliberate and intentionally setting our internal environment to the conditions we desire.  At first it can feel like work to create your internal environment to be conducive to your desires, and sometimes you have to start even more fundamental than that and explore what it is you truly do desire.  Again many of us are living desires that we’ve learned, that are not inherent to our personal, individualized theme and purpose, so we must weed out what is truly important to us from what is not truly important.  Once we decipher our true desires than we must align fully with it.  Set our internal space to it.  Ask ourselves questions that align us with it, over and over and over again.  Anywhere we catch ourselves being aimless we must become deliberate realizing that we truly are in charge of our experience 100%.  This empowers us and frees us.  Through this process we reclaim and realize our free will and free agency as creators of this creation we call life.  

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