energy

BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

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BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

Get to give

Most are in a constant strive to get.  Get possessions, get relationships, get money, get fame, get love, get safety, get healthy, get enlightened, get well.  Getting seems to be the only way we experience what we want, or at least we think it is.  Many of our social and cultural structures are built around getting something or getting somewhere.  School, competitive sports, the right job, the creative business, even vacations, meditation, and leisure activities can become sources of getting for us when the intention is to get something out of them even if it’s relaxation.  

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with getting.  It’s simply that getting is an outsourcing of our own power.  It is also a never-ending, scarce way to approach life because it seems as though there will always be more that you need to get.  The perspective that drives this approach is rooted in a sense of lack of a self.  When there is not recognition of a self, of a you, that has impact and is a creator, than the source of creatorship or power appears to come from the things we perceive to be around us.  This is classical projection or disowning one’s power or self.  

While many people in spiritual circles and communities are busy attempting to dismantle their sense of a self, or ego identity as a separate individual, you must first discover that there is a self to dismantle.  If you don’t you will continue to come from disempowered views even if you occasionally experience high states of energy or have spiritual insights and experiences.  From a developmental perspective there is first non-awareness of self (or a pre-self) in which it seems life is randomly happening and there is a getting to survive.  Secondly there is development of a self, of a person, that has impact, that can do stuff and where there is a you that is happening to life.  Here we get in order to validate that we are a self and that we are important.  Thirdly there is non-self or transcending the sense of a separate individual person self into a unified sense of one self.  To develop from the second to third we must transition from getting perspectives to giving perspectives.  Here to give is to get as all is one being, yet that is only realized through first making the shift from get to give.   

GETTING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO RECEIVE

The frequency you choose

As much as we might believe that getting is the only way to receive what we think we want or need, it’s only because that is the prime way we’ve been operating.  We think we need to get something in order to experience what we desire.  For example if we don’t feel relaxed we think we need to do something or find someone to “give” us relaxation. Hence we need to get relaxation from somewhere. This can go for anything we are attempting to get like wealth, relationships, love, safety, health, enlightenment, wellness, and on.  Most people think they need to get these things or how else on earth will they ever experience them.  

Like everything else getting is simply a frequency.  When we vibrate with the frequency of “get” then we are vibrating with a sense of what we want isn’t here and that we must somehow, someway get it.  Essentially we are vibrating with the frequency of “not” or “lack.”  Nearly everyone is doing this, but they are unconscious to it, and even beyond that they don’t realize that they are in charge of their frequency to begin with.  The way I see it, the only true responsibility any of us has is to our frequency.   Though we might think we are responsible for all the comings and goings of life, of people’s reactions and feelings, and on and on, the only one real responsibility we have is how we choose to vibrate.  Yet we must recognize our choosing and that it is our choice first.  This is where that second stage of development comes in, the recognition of a self, a self that does onto life, prior to merging into the one self. 

In the recognition that we choose what we vibrate as you see that how you vibrate is what you give.  You give your vibration.  It’s natural and effortless regards of whatever vibration you choose to be, whether it’s lack or abundance, or getting or giving.  What you give is also what you then experience.  This is how you experience all things you want to experience without trying to go out and get them.  You must ask yourself what is at the core of everything it is that you want to get.  When you find the core of it, whether its love, safety, supported, nurtured, cared for, vital, free or well, decide to choose that vibration to be.  This is the only way you actually experience it.  Even if you continue to believe in the getting path, many of you know that you will get things that you think will give you what you want, but sooner rather than later, you feel not how you wanted to feel or how you hoped the thing would make you feel.  It’s because you never owned, you never became it.  You never became the vibration of what you wanted, you only temporarily projected it onto something, but then realized that all something’s change, and with the change so did your feeling state of what you desired.  

In order to not be shifted by all the changing of things you must be in ownership of what you vibrate.  Not in a sort of, sometimes way, where you are still trying to get what you want, while pretending to be spiritual.  Rather this is to be the source of wellness, after all you are it.  It is the end of using permission slips and projections.  To own that you are the source, is to be fully responsible for how you experience everything inside of your experience.  You are not responsible for the experience, rather only what you give to it, what you be, what you vibrate.  It is the end of the chase and of the never-ending experience of scarcity, but only if you so choose.  The projection, the appearance, the experience, won’t change until you do, or better said the projection, appearance or experience will mirror whatever it is you vibrate.  

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

SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE

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SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE 

Vibrating waves of light, frequency & tone

Everything in this universe is made of energy, which is expressed in its most basic building blocks as light, frequency or tone.  These vibrating waves of light, frequency or tone contain information which informs what forms and structures they will organize themselves into.  Forms and structures, which we call physical or solid, are simply patterns of energy that have configured themselves in certain ways to give rise to what we see or sense.  Everything in this universe is vibrational in nature and is singing a grand symphony, because at its core it is simply frequency.  Some tones are audible to the human ear.  Others are outside of the normal auditory sensory range, yet nonetheless are still present and can be heard with your “non-physical” ears.  What are those you might ask?  Let’s just call them extra-sensory organs which expand beyond the five normal ordinary sensory organs we currently use and know.  

Our spines are receivers of the grand symphony of the universe.  The position or tension pattern of the spine will determine which frequencies we can tune into.  This is kind of like the equivalent of turning the dial on the radio station and hearing a different station play.  However rather than turning a dial you are shifting the position and tension/tonal pattern of the tissues of your spinal cord.  What does this mean exactly?  Well in very simplistic terms its means that when your spinal cord is taut (tight) it tunes into a particular station.  That station might be playing some songs that are quite familiar to you.  The words, thoughts, and feelings that come with those songs might be something like “the world is not safe, other people are not safe, I can’t trust others, I can’t trust myself, I am not good enough, no one cares about me, I’ll never have enough resources, I’m not supported, nothing works, I have to do everything myself, life is against me, I’ll never heal, things will never be ok, I’m scared, I feel sad, things are looking down, this pain will last forever, I’ll never be able to relax and breathe…”.  Elements of this station are pretty familiar to most of us.  We’ve all listened to some of these songs over and over and over again.  For some these are the only tracks that have ever played.  

When the tension/tonal pattern of the spinal cord changes position (ie. relaxes) then our nervous system, which is simply an antenna, tunes into a different frequency or radio station.  That station might be playing songs like “I feel good, things are working out, I’m abundant, I decide, I choose, I can trust myself, I am free, other people are allies, I am safe, all is well, support is everywhere, I am getting better each day, life is happening in perfect rhythm and timing…”. We’ve all heard some of these songs before too, however sometimes they get played less frequently than the other songs.  To recap, when tension is high in our spinal cord we tune into frequencies that create a less enjoyable experience of life for ourselves.  When tension is lower we are able to tune into stations that play more enjoyable sounds and songs, which come with different feeling states and a more pleasant life experience.   

SHIFTING THE TONE OF THE SPINE

Conduit between consciousness & form

You might be wondering now how to change the tone, position or tension pattern in your spinal cord.  Well your entrainment sessions do just that very thing.  This is often why you might feel lighter after a session, or you might have different thoughts, or see something in a different way.  Sometimes people don’t always make those correlations, yet as the tension shifts in your spinal cord you are simply able to tune into stations that you were not able to before.  The more tension we unwind in our spine (ie. the more relaxed the spinal cord becomes) the more far reaching stations we are able to find.  Some of those stations we may have never heard before and they may seem totally foreign to us.  Yet even though they are foreign they are oddly familiar, and even though we don’t know the songs yet, they feel good to us.  In fact we might experience downright bliss, ecstasy and sense of overwhelming love and warmth as we “listen”, and yet we don’t have any logical reason  as to why.  

Listening at this level involves more of what you might call using your intuitive faculties.  We hear beyond the ears, see beyond the eyes, feel beyond the skin, etc.  To our ordinary sensory experience of life this seems abnormal or “special”, yet once your system is relaxed enough to find this station, it really is as normal as any other experience, only it comes with more energy, more aliveness and an experience of interconnectedness.  This is often what I refer to as experiencing or coming to know more of yourself.  You are more than your physical body, emotions, and thoughts, and yet we don’t often tune into stations beyond these.  

You might wonder why the amount of tension on your spine directly relates to or effects your experience of life.  The spine is the interface between consciousness and form in this human body.  Due to this relationship the information that it tunes into determines how/what you will perceive and experience.  Just like we can easily move the dial on the radio, we can also change the tone/tension of the spine.  We might go back and forth between stations all day long, sometimes playing the songs of not enough, feeling unsupported, and like life is not working, to changing to the tone and listening to songs of safety, freedom, choice and bliss.  Whatever songs are more relevant and resonate with us we will gravitate towards and listen to more often, because they have a similar frequency with us, with where we are at and with whatever it is that we are currently learning.  

In this way your spine is playing a symphony whether or not you hear it.  The information (ie. beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and sensations) all carry tones that make a song.  The sounds of that song transmit or express through you.  No belief, thought, feeling or sensation is good, bad, or better or worse than any others.  All are neutral at their core.  Yet there are often sounds and songs that we prefer more than others.  Preference is ok, insistence however generates the experience of suffering.  Learning to dance to any song that is playing is what it means to be resilient, and to become a master of this waltz.  This is what it is to create harmony where there is disharmony and to enjoy whatever music is playing on your station even if its heavy metal.  This is how you choose your station rather than shift between stations a hundred times a day.  Reminders are good until we remember that we can choose.  

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

CLEANING IT UP

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CLEANING IT UP 

Physical & energetic spaces

Ever notice how light you feel when you give things away?  A good example of this is when you empty your closet or your garage out of stuff you no longer use or want.  Suddenly you feel more clear and light.  There is a spaciousness present that wasn’t there before.  You feel freed up.  This freedom comes with a levity and clarity that most seek to experience in every day life.  Yet we spend most of our time cluttered up with things filling our space, many of which we don’t even know are there until we take the time to really look or springtime comes and we decide to do a clean up.

Most would agree that the clearing of our space is an important component of our overall well-being, however the tolerance we have for that which is no longer needed or wanted is often high.  We allow things to pile up before getting to the point where we will access their continued usefulness to us and take the actions necessary to get rid of them.  We have clothes in our closet we haven’t worn for years, thousands of meaningless pictures on our phone we’ve never looked at more than once, music and movies downloaded that we never listen to or watch, food in our cabinets that we will probably never eat, and boxes in our basement filled with stuff we never intend to use again.  All of this stuff lays around, filling our space, and we wonder why we feel tired, heavy and bogged down.  

The physical is of course just one element of this.  We also have ideas, partially implemented projects, and tons of emotional and mental content filling our subtle and energetic spaces.  We need our etheric vacuums to also declutter the thoughts that don’t serve, the emotions that lay around looping themselves over and over, and the clearing out of ideas and projects that we will never do.  Just imagine how free you would feel once you clear all of it out, what you might be available for, and how you might better be able to channel your energy and focus into what really matters to you.  To create a pristine outer and inner space that is filled only with what you desire to have inside of it.  Anything that doesn’t reflect joy or peace when you see or experience it has to go.  This requires a fairly constant attunement of noticing when its time to let things go.  The first clear out is often the largest, but the process is ongoing, a day to day noticing of what is in your physical and subtle spaces that doesn’t serve a good function that supports your mission and vision for being alive.   

UNCHOSEN SPACIOUSNESS 

Freedom of Loss

This same spaciousness we feel when we clear things out of our life that we no longer want is also experienced when something that we don’t want to leave our experience does.  We often relate to the spaciousness of unchosen loss as a feeling of emptiness rather than freedom, yet the only difference is in how we are relating to our experience.  Anyone who has experienced unwanted loss on any scale knows the clarity that comes through it.  When we experience this type of loss we no longer tolerate things that don’t matter to us.  It’s an instant clear out and clean up.  We stop pretending on all levels because we don’t have the energy to pretend anymore.  We become incredibly available to the present moment.  In this way there is freedom because we are not bogged down by stories and things of the future and such.  We are just here.  For many their intuition rises and they are more connected to the spiritual aspect of themselves even though they may be feeling sadness, rage and all sorts of other things. 

Life is constantly cycling through death and rebirth, comings and goings.  Goings create spaciousness where there was stuff before.  New birth wants to then fill the space.  This is the mechanics of the universe.  Goings can either be desired and chosen and we call that letting go, giving away or moving on.  Goings can also be undesired or unchosen and we call that all sorts of things depending on where we are in process of it.  However the resolution of chosen or unchosen deaths or goings brings us to the same spaciousness.  The same unbound freedom.  Our nature is the freedom before the form.  After the death and before the birth is where our essence is found.  We are creators, creating birth and death, comings and goings, and creating chosen and unchosen.   We are before it all. 

Whether our clearing out is deliberately chosen by us, or is chosen for us through others, we receive a unique opportunity to see ourselves and come into greater recognition of what is and is not important for our life plan.  The spaciousness of self draws to us that which is in alignment for us now that was perhaps laying underneath a pile of stuff or entangled inside relationships.  Remember everything arrives in perfect time and perfect rhythm.  Comings and goings are precisely orchestrated. Nothing can happen too soon or too late.  The deaths and rebirths will continue infinitely.  You will experience deaths and births billions of times on subtle and non-subtle scales and dimensions.  You are not that which is born or dies.  You are that which gives birth and death.  You are the potentiated, unbound freedom that lies before manifestation.  In silence, in spaciousness, recognize yourself.  Remember what you are.  Clear out of your life what you can clear out in order to create the space to better know yourself.  Clarity ensues.  Availability to now becomes.  Ever present eternal is-ness playing and creating through love and magic.  

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

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

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LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Ending the chase of what’s next

It is no secret that we live in a near constant state of trying to get somewhere.  We make goals, create plans, and think about what is next.  We measure our progress from start to finish and course correct along the way.  Without some degree of forward momentum, and the feeling that we are creating or accomplishing what we set out to do, we often feel stuck or stagnant.  This itch to be other than where we are creates a gap inside of our experience.  That gap is a self-created illusion where we believe that there is somewhere to get and somewhere we think we’d rather be.  When we place ourselves inside that gap we miss what’s here as we are ambitiously move towards what is next.  

Rarely do we rest into and love exactly where we are.  There are many reasons for this.  Many people believe that what is here is not enough so they constantly strive for more.  The moment they arrive anywhere is the same moment they jump back into the gap between here and what’s next.  That sense of not enoughness can be personal and express as always attempting to make themselves better (self-improvement can fall into this category), or it can be projected onto external circumstances by always finding a new thing or cause that needs to be improved.  This is not to say that things, causes or personality traits can’t be shifted to express in more coherent ways, they absolutely can, but when it comes from a place of scarcity in where you are rather than abundance in where you are, its rooted rejection rather than acceptance.  This leads to a constant chase in attempting to get, rather than devoted service to what you love.

Other reasons people don’t rest and love exactly where they are is because they don’t trust that what’s here is good and right.  They have a belief that something is wrong or bad with what is present and that they must somehow change it in order for it to be good and right.  They bypass the goodness and rightness that’s here for their belief that it lives somewhere else.  In my opinion this is the true spiritual bypass.  People also tend to believe that the conditions of their life are dependent on them being able to fully express and be themselves, but this is backwards.  You fully expressing and being yourself creates the conditions of your life.  Since people believe the other way around they will go about trying to make the conditions of their life match their mind’s idea of what it thinks it needs in order to be rested and in love here.  This chasing of conditions is tempting because it seems to go somewhere and things appear to be happening in a forward direction, however it leads only to continuing your postponement of loving where you are.  Some people postpone in such a way for their entire life. 

MAKING CHANGE IN LOVE 

How you source

We tend to believe that we can’t make change in love.  Historically we have needed to be fed up, dissatisfied and frustrated with what is in order to have the fuel to create change in ourselves or the world.  Can you even fathom what it would be like to love where you are and also create movement or change?  I believe this is how it is done in most portions of the universe, but here on planet Earth we haven’t quite learned this yet.  We still hold strong to states of pain, suffering and dissatisfaction being our primary fuel for change.  Be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact it is currently required, I’m simply inviting that there is another way.  

In this moment entertain, feel, channel or drop into a state of full love and acceptance.  Do so right now in this very moment.  As you do notice how much energy becomes available to you.  Notice how you naturally overflow and emanate lightness and joy.  Feel the levity and also the fullness that’s here.  This is always here, its simply that you haven’t practiced paying attention in this way.  Instead you’ve practiced paying attention to what doesn’t work or feel good and for lack of a better term, lower states of energy.  You’ve focused on what has to be done, what needs fixed or improved, and how something is better somewhere other than here now.  You’ve created distance, but understand that this distance isn’t real.  Its a concept, a thought in your mind, nothing else.  It has no separate existence outside of your thought of it.  Just as easily as you create that thought of something will be better in the distance, you can create a thought of amazingness of what’s here right now.  

Just through the simplicity of shifting your focus you dramatically shift your energy state.  The more energy you feel the more easily movement and change naturally flow through you.  You don’t need to dislike or feel frustrated about what is in order to find a source of energy to create change.  You can both love what is now and then love what is next when it becomes now.  You don’t have to choose to love one moment over the next moment, you get to love both, and the changes that need to occur will.  The only real requirements are to watch where your focus goes and be in charge of it.  Deliberately choose the focus of your desire and know that it will determine the energy level that is available to you and how change will move through you.

To love what is, is to dissolve your agenda for what must be.  In giving your life over to your mission, to your purpose, to why you are, over and over and over again, you will always find yourself perfectly positioned and therefore life will also appear perfectly positioned to you.  You can’t find anything out there because there is no out there.  Distance is made up by you.  Your sense of location is unreal.  You can never actually move, you can only be.  Choose your being wisely through how you focus.  Know that change will always happen, but how it happens is up to you.  How you source your change makes all the difference.  Change sourced through love breeds more love.  Its silly to think other and yet many do.  Where you start you will end.  Where you create from will determine the creation. 

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

LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU

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LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU

Serving others, serving life

One of the most sure fire ways to have a disappointing, unfulfilling and neutral/boring life experience is to make your life about you.  As soon as we develop awareness of self we begin to claim me, me, me.  It is all about our needs, wants and preferences and we have little awareness of others.  We see this in young children.  As part of our developmental journey we must learn to recognize and include others and see that life is not about getting what we want, however many people have been stunted along this developmental progression.  Many people, actually I’d venture to say most people, have as the focus of their life getting everything they want.  While not all have emotional outbursts about not getting what they want, the general aim of their life is about achieving their desires for themselves even if its masked underneath the appearance of serving others.  

As a caveat I will say that as adults it is fundamental that you have all your basic security, health and well-being needs met.  This is a baseline must.  Without this baseline stability in yourself of knowing your capacity to be well and take care or yourself, your survival mechanism will take precedence and your life will be about keeping this physical vehicle alive and well.  This baseline is likely a lot less extensive then you may initially think.  We really need very little in order to have all of our basic needs met.  Making sure this is in check for you is not making your life about you, but rather ensuring that you have the physical ability to make life not about you.  

One of the most important self-inquiry explorations you can do for yourself is to see where you are attempting to get something from others.  Whether its love, affection, attention, money, security, safety, approval, kindness, words of affirmation, someone “getting” you, being there for you or meeting you, its all about you.  Also notice where you might be giving to others in order to get these things.  That can be a sneaky way where it looks like we are serving, but really we are wanting to make sure we are safe, seen and supported.  Seeing these areas in yourself is the fertile ground for where you need to go to work on yourself.  As long as you are attempting to get anything from anyone you cannot be of service to them because you have agenda.  Even if your agenda feels innocent, justified or something you need because you are “human”, it is still agenda and distorts the purity of what is to be of true service, which is giving to life rather than taking from it.   

DEDICATING YOUR LIFE TO SERVING OTHERS 

Generating flow & energy

You may ask why you would want to dedicate your life to serving others and giving to life.  At some point, in this lifetime or one of your next ones, you will realize that there is nothing to gain in the getting.  It is a dead end.  The energy gets absorbed by you and stops.  There is a near constant replenishment that you must always be focused on in order to sustain you.  While there are temporary highs there is no sustainability in your presence, your energy or your state of being.  This is what its like for your life to be about you.  

In contrast when we give to life, when we serve life and others, we generate flow and energy.  Energy exchange is the name of the game of life.  You cannot develop past a certain point until you get this fundamental working of the universe.  Giving is receiving and receiving is giving, but not until you stop trying to get through either your giving or receiving.  What I find that most people truly desire is to simply be themselves.  When we are being just as we are without agenda, we radiate, we give naturally.  Sometimes people have the perception that to serve or give to life or others is exhausting and depleting.  That they have to go outside themselves to give “over there” endlessly.  This is not the case.  If you are depleting yourself in your giving you are out of balance, which indicates that there is still some agenda in your giving.  When your giving is pure it should be energizing for you.  

The reward if you will, of dedicating your life to serving, is the constant influx and flow of energy.  It’s not that serving others makes you a better person or that it is the right thing to do.  Please don’t “do it” for that reason.  Instead it is a way of honoring, energizing, including, evolving and giving to all of life.  Only choose service to others if you really want to and if it resonates for you.  Going back to our early development again, when we are just developing self-awareness our world is small with just ourselves and our few primary caretakers.  However the world is much larger than our nuclear family and the way to include more of it inside of our own developmental process is by serving others.  

Serving others stretches the boxes and containers of our zone of impact and increases the power that we have to create in and through love.  It opens our hearts into more as we begin to see beyond ourselves and our individual needs, wants and preferences.  We can let go of not getting what we want and instead focus on giving what we want.  We start to see one family rather than multiple, separate, individual families.  Other begins to seem more and more like self.  All of these realizations are aspects that wake you up more and more to the true unified nature.  

I invite you to start each and every day this week with the simple questions of asking yourself, who is it that I want to be today?  How do I want to show up?  How do I want to serve?  How do I want to give to others and life?  You don’t have to have the answers, just ask the questions and let it be revealed to you.  Allow the intention to guide your each and every thought and action.  

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

OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING

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OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALING 

Remembering what we’ve forgotten

There is a tremendous amount of energy and time spent searching, looking and seeking healing.  We typically embark on this search because something inside of us hurts physically or emotionally and/or we know that there is more to life than what we are currently experiencing.  The healing journey is thus the search to somehow feel better and make our experience of life fuller, easier or more enjoyable.  

The thing about the healing journey is that often we seek outside of ourselves to find it.  It is one of those human tendencies to look for things out there rather than inside of us.  As such we expect to find healing in an answer, an insight, another person, a tool, a technique, a being from another planet, something we ingest, something we wear or breathe, a trip or adventure, a relationship, and the list goes on and on.  On the surface we measure success by seeing an external change, meaning our body changes its sensation patterns or a situation in our life shifts.  This is the example of someone who has a particular body symptom or condition whose pattern changes and they exclaim “I’m healed”, or a person that was desiring a certain situation in their life to change and it changed and now they feel whole.  However a sensation/symptom pattern shifting in your body or a situation in your life changing, in and of itself is not an indication of healing.  Not to say these things don’t occur along with healing, but as a stand alone they have nothing at all to do with it.

So what is healing if it’s not a change in external conditions (your body is also a condition) or circumstances, and how is it measured?  A true measure of healing is your state of being or identity.  The most healed state of being/identity is “I am” or just the pure recognition that you exist, nothing else added.  Your state of being informs the perspectives you are looking through.  Do you perceive life happens to you or do you perceive you are happening to life?  Do you feel powerless, like you have to wait for life to change or do you see that you are in charge?  Do you perceive things as right or wrong, good or bad or do you see the absolute perfection in everything?  These are very different perspectives informed by your state of being/identity and a much more accurate measure of “healed-ness”.  

If I was to sum up what healing is with one word I would choose the word remembering.  All healing is remembering.  Remembering who you are, remembering what you are, remembering the perfection of all.  It is quite literally that simplistic.  Yet what that remembering takes and our willingness to accept what we remember is the entire reason healing seems to be a process rather than just occurring in one full swoop.  In and through remembering everything returns to its original state, its original knowing, and all distortion corrects itself.  Said another way, all that was forgotten is remembered so distortion simply cannot be created because distortion is only created by not seeing or remembering the truth.   

INFINITE MIRRORS 

The how of healing

This brings me to how we heal.  For a moment imagine an entire dimension of infinite mirrors.  Everywhere you look all there is are mirrors and you can only see the image of yourself reflected back.  Who or what is seeing the reflection and what does that seer or perceiver project onto the image that it sees?  What gets projected or what you see depends on your perspectives, thoughts and beliefs.  Those are what filter or color the picture or image of you that you keep seeing everywhere in this infinite mirror dimension.  If you pause for a moment you can see that you are in a ocean of your own projections.  Inside this ocean it is very tricky to see anything other than what it is you keep projecting.  However an opportunity arises when one of your mirrors disagrees with what you are projecting onto it.  This becomes the how of healing.  

A healer is not one that does anything in particular to you (because truly that would impossible), but instead a healer is one that provides an opportunity for you to remember yourself as the truth of perfection so that you can align your perspectives accordingly.  The role of the healer is really singular; it is to help you remember.  The healer does this in a few ways.  One way is to disagree or create waves inside your incomplete or distorted projections of yourself.  This creation of waves or insertion of a new image inside of your ocean of projections is your carrot or golden healing nugget.  A moment of clarity.  A lightening of load.  An effortless breath.  Your only task is to accept this new reflection.  It is outstanding how relieving this new reflection feels and simultaneously incredibly ridiculous at how adamantly we refuse to accept it for much longer than a second or two.  However when we can unwaveringly accept this new image (some people call this embody) healing has occurred as we’ve shifted state of being (identity) and perspective.  

Other ways that healers help you remember is simply by resting in the truth of infinite complete perfection and emitting that through all their modes of expression.  Movement, words, sounds, touch, etc.  The importance is not on the expression or the form that it takes but instead on the awareness or knowing from which it comes.  For those that can see, or are open through their hunger to see, will receive that awareness broadcast just like an antenna receives waves.  Its like a meeting or a matching.  Awareness meeting itself through the projection of you and the projection of healer.  It is a transcendence of form and a knowing of the knower of form. Life then effortless moves itself, does itself, and there is no doer of it and no one done onto.

It should be evident by now that healing is an inside job.  No one can heal you.  Healers simply provide opportunities for it.  Healing occurs through you remembering and accepting the truth of you.  A different image then appears on your screen, meaning you see the world and yourself differently.  The projection is simply what the senses can perceive, but it is not real.  You are real, the projection is not, however you can use the projection to mirror yourself back to you.  You can use it as a measure of progress, but remember it is you that shifts not experience.  Experience, imagery, projection, and appearances all respond to you, they take their cue from you.  You heal, you remember yourself and then your body changes, and your circumstances change.  It is also important not to get caught up in trying to make circumstances change through your healing.  When you are truly healed you realize the simultaneity of it all and also that whatever circumstances are arising they are perfect as they are.  You are less concerned about trying to create or make the perfect life or world and instead you are waking up and realizing the already perfect world.  It is through your realizing of it that it instantly becomes lived reality.

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

Abundance as the Natural State

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ABUNDANCE AS THE NATURAL STATE

Focusing on what is

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

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

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

COMPLETENESS OF ISNESS

Want nothing to be different than it is

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

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

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

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

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

Being Forgiveness

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BEING FORGIVENESS 

Resistance, wrongness & righteousness

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

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

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

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

KNOW THYSELF 

Free will to forgive

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

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

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

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

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

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

Linear & Nonlinear Reasoning

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Linear & Nonlinear Reasoning

Stages of development

The next stage of development we move into as older children and adolescents is that of analyzing, reasoning and trying to make sense of things that we perceive.  For many this comes in the form of logical and linear reasoning as this is what is mostly reinforced in our schools and culture.  It is black and white and views progress as moving from point A to B without deviation from the line.  It is focused on finding cause and effect relationships in which 1+1 must=2.  While others develop abstract or nonlinear reasoning.  In this type of reasoning things don’t move in a sequential fashion or progress on a straight line from A to B, but instead may move from A to P to O to D.  There are infinite shades and dimensions of all colors and things move out in many directions from one point.  A singular cause and effect relationship is a mute point as everything is influencing and effecting everything else, 1+happiness+an apple might=2.  People often categorize this into left brain vs right brain activity, where left brain is linear/logical and right brain is nonlinear/abstract.

Anyone who has spent time with a young child knows their insatiable hunger to know why things are the way they are.  This is rooted in a fundamental curiosity to know the outer world with which we find ourselves abiding within.  As young children we are little explorers with awakening mental capabilities that we use to make sense of what we see, feel, hear, taste and touch.  Developmentally we move from putting things in our mouth and touching things with are hands when we are infants and toddlers to using our mind to ask questions about things and formulate thoughts about what we sense.  Once we think we know our outer world well enough we stop asking so many questions with that child-like curiosity and we now have many developed assumptions based on what all of the adults in our lives have told us about the world.  We are not really aware of these assumptions as we’ve simply absorbed the information given to us and made it into a concrete and factual world which we now live in.  

While many people have a higher tendency towards logical, linear reasoning as that is what we are taught as primary, most people have aspects of both types of reasoning.  However as a collective we tend to lean towards what the culture accepts and expects and find ourselves locked into linear reasoning even if that isn’t our natural default or tendency.  We go for what “makes the most sense”, “is logical”, which is implied to be the “higher, more prestigious order”.  Whether or not that is actually true or valid is up for debate, but the logical mind tends to be quite rigid, singularly focused, at times righteous and has a hard time coloring outside the lines.  For it to see itself, and for you to see it in yourself, can be challenging because it must be proven to with facts, data and direct cause and effect or else it remains closed, skeptical and judgmental.  

Addiction to Reasoning 

Shifting into presence

While reasoning, linear and nonlinear, are fundamental developmental milestones to this human experience many people get locked into and addicted to reasoning, especially linear reasoning.  We tend to need to know why things are they way they are rather than simply experiencing them.  We feel a compulsion to figure things out particularly when undesirable occurrences are showing up in our lives or bodies and we feel frustrated when we can’t make sense of it all.  We think if we could just figure it out, have some reason or answer be revealed to us, then everything would be ok again.  

While linear reasoning absolutely has its place say for example when organizing your house, structuring your day or creating an action plan for something very specific that you want to achieve or create, in the realms of healing it often gets in the way.  Our near complete obsession with thinking and figuring it out postpones our healing like nothing else.  Why is this so you might ask?  It is because all healing happens in the present, in fact healing is a return to the present, and when you are thinking you are not present.  Our minds have a really sneaky way of convincing us that if they can just have a few more thoughts or think about something for a little longer than they will get closer to some kind of knowing that will benefit them.  This is why we develop an addiction to our thoughts in the first place.  We think that our thoughts and reasoning will benefit us more than simply being present to our experience.  That somehow our thoughts have the answer separate from our direct experience of whatever it is that we are experiencing.  We have learned to become so reliant on our thoughts that we can’t even imagine or trust that there is another way.  We often perceive being present to our experience as inactive and being in our thoughts/head as active and productive.  As long as our minds are active we feel success or as if we are moving towards success, but to still our minds and experience simply being with feels boring or empty, unproductive, or like a waste of time, especially when we want answers.

The other piece to this is that our minds have agendas.  When life isn’t looking/feeling like we want it to the mind looks for a way out rather than a way in.  Getting out of our experience is impossible and yet we will try at all costs to do so when we don’t like what we are experiencing.  Getting into our experience is the process of presence.  To feel and see what is here without turning away from it is what allows for healing and eventually transformation to occur.  We are so busy being in our heads avoiding the aspects of our lives that we don’t want to feel and yet feeling them is the key to healing them.  Remember avoidance is simply a protective mechanism, a way that we can check out of our experience rather than into it, because sometimes what is here is too uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than our continual avoidance of it.  

Being in your experience provides all of the energy and information that you will ever need.  Your capacity to feel the emotions and sensations that are present in any moment, particularly the ones you resist or don’t like, is what allows them to be part of the whole rather than separate in a concept or thought.  This integrates them back into the unified whole of which they never really left, only your thoughts kept them separate.  It is from this place that you can see a larger perspective.  This is where the energy and knowingness for actions, transformation and change occurs.  There is no more figuring out.  There is simply knowledge of how to proceed and what must occur now.  If you find yourself “not knowing how” then you’re not present yet because when you are present you always know.  Here self-doubt ends and self-knowing is inherent.  

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

Inauthenticity: The Biggest Energy Drain

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Inauthenticity: The  Biggest Energy Drain

Identifying your fake self

Business Executive and His Energy Level Concept Vector Cartoon I

Being someone you are not is absolutely exhausting and yet we attempt to do this all of the time.  Whether its in a social setting, work setting, or a one on one interaction with another person we find ways to filter, tame or ignore our true nature rather than just be ourselves.  Why is it that we pretend to be other, different, better, kinder or more amiable than we actually are?  It mostly comes down to wanting approval and acceptance by others and our fear of rocking the boat and creating a messy or destructive splash.  

When we choose approval or acceptance by others over our own natural impulse or nature we drain our own energy and dim our inner flame.  We literally become a shell because we’ve lost connection to our essence.  We are gone and only the outer clothing of the image we project remains.  We have all had this experience.  Perhaps you’ve found yourself in a conversation with a friend, client or co-worker and were completely drained afterwards. Or maybe you were in a social setting not speaking or engaging at all, yet feeling like you should be interacting in someway and find yourself similarly exhausted just being in that setting.  In these scenarios the ideas that we have about what and who we should be and how we should interact dominate our inner environment and take over our person.  This is the birth of the inauthentic version of ourselves that we think that world wants more than the authentic version.

The disappearance of the real you and the presentation to the world of the fake you gives you the illusion of safety and security, which is why you choose it over the real you.  This illusion of security provided by the acceptance of you by others temporarily feels safe and reassuring yet has significant long-term costs.  The costs are a drain to your life force which has physical effects on your body and its capacity to heal, rest and regenerate.  There is also a dimmed down expression of yourself that often comes with a sense of either not knowing yourself, liking yourself, valuing yourself or a lack of self-confidence.  Lastly there can be the experience of frustration that comes from not listening to or following through on your natural impulses or excitements.  In these ways your inauthenticity and choosing safety and security over your own beingness becomes the biggest energy drain.  The greater your inauthenticity the more lethargic, moody, tired and eventually sick you will feel.  These are the effects of disconnection from ourselves.   

Your Inner Fire 

Inviting the messy, destructive & chaotic

the burning woman head profile

Due to our conditioned propensities towards organization rather than mess, constructive rather than destructive, and calm rather than chaotic we live within a limited range of ourselves while attempting to control and manage life so that we experience more comfort rather than discomfort.  Our often complete aversion to discomfort makes us a planet of people pleasers and do gooders that jump to immediate alleviation at the first sign of upset or distress while simultaneously feeling suffocated, constricted and tight as we keep ourselves confined to expressing only that which is pleasing and containable. We wonder innocently enough why it is we feel so tense and why its feels hard to breath while not allowing ourselves to feel a grain of discomfort and thus only allowing a fraction of our expression.  

To invite the entire range of ourselves to play we have to be willing to feel the burn from time to time.  Not everything we say is nice and not everything we do is kind, nor is it always supposed to be.  Sometimes the most loving way to be has nothing to do with niceness, kindness or making sure others are ok with our expressions.  This isn’t a permission slip to be belligerent, but rather a permission slip to be authentically you.  We each are and have access to every characteristic and aspect in existence.  We are all parts and all parts are us.  To only play with or express a few parts is what gives us the experience of limitation.  

Your inner flame or fire is your source of passion and life force.  It is lit when you are simply being you.  There isn’t anything extra or added that you need.  In fact it is quite the opposite.  It is the dropping away of the added or extra, which are the filters and layers of falsity, allow your fire to burn effortlessly and as brightly as you are.  This is when you feel the most alive, energized, and vital.  Fire also has the capacity to burn away that which is false or inauthentic to you.  The more you allow the flame of your authentic self the clearer you become in yourself.

What then is required of you is simply to be yourself.  This is the experience of being rested and energized simultaneously.  To have the ability to respond, act and be in accordance with your true nature and not be dependent on other people or situations that you find yourself in to give you an external sense of comfort and safety.  This is the expression of confidence and self-worth.  To no longer compromise yourself at the expense of other peoples thoughts, opinions and perceptions of you.  To value your expression enough to simply be it no matter what.  This is what it is to be authentic.  

Inviting the sometimes messy, chaotic, destructive and uncomfortable is a good practice as it will stretch you out of your safety nets and help you drop the filters you have up that you don’t even know you have.  Moving towards your aversions of discomfort rather than away will liberate you from them.  Your freedom lies within being able to be with all expressions of you and not just picking and choosing the select few that you like or feel good to you.  When you can be with all of you, you are free.  

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