energy

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

Power of Love

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Power of Love 

Infinite Life Force

16152518 - beautiful lotus backgroundMost all of us make claims to the power of love.  On some level we know that love is the ultimate everything and yet when things get “serious” or when we get caught up in our emotional or thinking bodies the power of love is forgotten.  Why is it that we drop love or downplay its position as the grand orchestrator of all of life when things get messy, unclear or uncertain?  Why does our thinking mind along with its linearity and rationality become the prime ruler rather than the heart?  

First of all let me just say that love is the source of infinite life force.  Life force is love, love is life force.  Life force is what makes everything come alive.  It is the breath of the universe and everything within it.  This is why when we feel like we are in love we feel alive, awake, alert and juiced up, because we actually are.  Love, whether for self, other or just as a state of being, brings with it infinite, inexhaustible life force.  It can not because love and life force are one and the same.  

Life force, energy and love are terms that can be used interchangeably.  Life force is the quite literal energy source that powers everything in the universe including your physical body.  It is fairly common knowledge at this point that everything in the universe is energy.  When all matter is broken down into its most basic components all that remains is vibrating energy.  That vibrating energy is life force/love.  Patterns of thoughts, beliefs and perceptions then give shape to that energy and the world of forms that we see with our eyes.

As powerful as our thoughts are in their ability to bring forms to life, they are nothing without the energy source of love to back them up.  Pure, unconditioned love is the most coherent, whole energy source that there is.  When we have thoughts that are fueled by less coherent states of energy, such as fear, rage, or rationality, they are much less efficient or effective and therefore the forms they create are not as optimal, complex or productive.  Less coherent states of energy are simply states of energy that are not as aware of their inherent wholeness.  Love knows it wholeness which is where its extreme power arises.   

Fall from Grace 

Perception of Wrongness

Spiritual conceptual image of a female angelWhen we think about the power of love without being connected with the knowingness of love our power is greatly diminished.  True power does not come from thought alone, but from the intimate acknowledging and resting into love so that its power naturally expresses.  The primarily perception that keeps us disconnected from knowing love intimately is the perception of wrongness.  

When we view through the perception of wrongness we create separation where there is none.  Separation creates a less coherent state of energy because within separation implies a lack of wholeness.  Wrongness means that something must be thrown out of the whole and when that occurs there is less energy/life force available to the system (individual or collective).  Say for example you (or your culture) judge multiple things about yourself, another person, or the environment as wrong.  The more you judge the more you shrink your perspective.  With this comes a sense of confinement and limitation.  Simultaneously the less innately good you feel and the less energy you have available to you.  Manifestation feels more effortful and there is greater disorganization in what gets created. This is a state of decreased coherency where your knowingness of love and ability to utilize the power of love is diminished.  This does not mean that love is actually diminished, but only your perception of it.  Again this happens at individual and collective system levels.  

Perceiving wrongness also brings on both sides of it righteousness and shame.  To defend one’s rightness or hide in one’s shame birth the entire gamut of defensive patterns of self-protection.  This is our fall from grace or love.  This is the imposition of limitation on life force.  This is the disconnection from our power, which is the power of love.   To restore connection and remember the power of love we must dismantle our belief in our own or others wrongness.  To know love rather than think love requires this.  

Love has no boundaries, it penetrates all.  Love brings light to even the darkest dark, to every recess of unconsciousness.  Nothing is brighter than love.  To stand in the radiance of love is to illuminate the entire world.  All healed, all whole, all intimately aware of itself.  From here the purest and most efficiently organized forms of creation are created.  Life force vitalizes all.  This doesn’t happen independently of you, it happens because of you.  At some point we must all surrender to love.  It is inevitable.  We must give away our addiction to less coherent thoughts of wrongness, missing and lack of wholeness, and open our system into greater coherency, full force life force and the power of love.  

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

Inter-dimensional Seeing

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Inter-Dimensional Seeing 

Sight between worlds

A crystal ball in the smoke. A magical accessory in the woods onSeeing in between worlds isn’t something that is just some new-age spiritual idea or concept that only a select number of “psychic” people can do. Seeing in between worlds or what I will call inter-dimensional seeing, is as tangible as seeing with your physical eyes, though in my experience it is a very different type of seeing.  It is like an expanded, more inclusive seeing or a seeing through and beyond just the physical 3D world.  It is just as clear as seeing with your physical eyes, but not necessarily visually clear (I will explain that more below).  These other dimensions don’t just magically appear and disappear, they are always there, it’s simply that most of the time people are not placing their focus onto them, which makes them either seem non-existent or like they are coming in and out of reality. 

As strange as this may sound inter-dimensional seeing does not occur with your physical eyes, again at least not in my experience.  We are so used to ascribing the idea of seeing to our physical sense of sight and yet we can see without our physical eyes.  Take dream time for example.  Have you ever pondered how you see in your dreams when you are not using your physical eyes to see what you see?  This is because awareness sees, not the physical eyes themselves.  Due to the fact that you are awareness and not your eyes this means that wherever you choose to place your focus and attention is what allows you to tune into and notice what is there.  For this reason it is evident that awareness is not limited by physical sight (or any physical sense for that matter) and this requires us to expand our definition of sight.  

Our physical senses are wired to pick up sensory information.  For the eyes that information is a very narrow frequency range of light waves.  These light waves, plus the the meaning that we give to them, is what we call our world or our reality, and most people stop there.  However information comes in many ways that are 1) non-sensorial, meaning not sensory oriented and 2) there are “normal” ranges of frequencies that our sense organs attune to, however these ranges can be expanded.  Simply because our physical senses “can’t” pick up a particular type of information, does not mean that that information cannot be known in other ways or that sensory input beyond our normal range cannot be experienced.   

Seeing without Sight 

Learning to increase your energy state & focus your awareness

Woman with third eye, psychic supernatural sensesMany people try to expand their perceptual abilities through trying to see or feel harder with their physicality, as if more effort will help them see or feel more.  The truth is that the fastest way to stretch your sensorial range or to tune into information beyond the senses is to relax the body-mind as much as possible.  It is through relaxing physical and mental tensions that information can more easily be accessed.  This makes logical sense and yet we so often want to “do” something to make things happen, and as crazy as it sounds, to be still and allow is often hard for us.  If we do allow ourselves to relax and get still we often will get impatience or bored because we want immediate gratification or “proof” right away less we give up.  We also tend to get easily distracted by thoughts, feelings and ordinary physical sensations which don’t leave us much space to tune into anything else.  In a nutshell most people are undisciplined in what they give their awareness and attention to, which makes going beyond into new territory challenging.  Due to this most people call inter-dimensional seeing simply new-age mysticism or deem it as made up stuff or something that is impossible for them.

You might be wondering what it is like to receive information that is non-sensorial or expanded sensorial.  I’d imagine that it is different for everyone, however I do believe that there are particular patterns to it and experiences that are similar for most people.  For me it is like tuning into a wider energetic range or broadcasting system.  The more deliberate, intentional and clear I am in my focus the easier it is to receive information here.  My physical senses have very little to do with my ability to receive this information.  It is as if I am using something beyond my senses to know.  I still see the physical world with my eyes and hear the physical world with my ears, and simultaneously there is a going beyond the physicality.  For me the actual physical world doesn’t change much when I am receiving information at this level, meaning appearances with my physical eyes look exactly the same.  I don’t see the formless or another dimension suddenly appear into form, but instead a greater level of energy and activity becomes available.  That energy and activity is sometimes visual, sometimes auditory, sometimes felt and sometimes it’s none of those things.  

That increase in energy, along with your capacity to focalize your awareness, is what I have come to find increases your capacity to see inter-dimensionally.  Ironically enough emptying yourself of internal content is what allows you to increase your energy state as you become less bound and more free in your state of being.  Deliberating tuning your awareness on what you want to access is the next piece and is dependent on you disciplining your mind to focus on just one thing.  As you do its as if the brightness increases on just that one thing and things come into “form” that were previously unknown to you.  At first you may just get glimpses and tastes and with more practice entire worlds or dimensions may come into view.  Just like everything else it is up to you to see more, to perceive beyond the ordinary and begin to know a larger reality than the one you’ve known.  

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

Collective Responsibility

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Collective Responsibility 

A step beyond social responsibility

earthMany people are talking about social responsibility, meaning distancing yourself to not harm yourself or others, and I would like to move that conversation even a step further and talk about collective responsibility,  Collective responsibility is an entirely more active process than simply keeping yourself physically separate from others.  It points to how to effectively use this time as a catalyst for collective awakening rather than merely as personal resting time. 

People, particularly in spiritual circles, talk about us in general being in a “time of awakening.”  We often think that awakening means happiness, butterflies, and bliss.  What we often don’t include in our definition of spirituality is that destruction or destabilization must occur before new awareness is realized.  This is the un-fluffy side of spirituality as it often feels painful or bleak, and when it arises even the most “spiritual” people want to look away or retreat from it.  

From how I see it we are currently experiencing a collective purge.  Purging is what occurs naturally as part of a healing process when the body relinquishes that which no longer serves it.  The purge is what we often call illness, but if we did not purge, just how sick would we be then.  To hold onto things which don’t serve us is even more toxic than the purge appears to be.  

Historically we attempt to control and contain the purge because we are uncomfortable and fearful in regards to the uncertainty of it and how messy it feels and looks, yet if we don’t allow the body to purge it will get sicker than ever.  The body of humanity is undergoing this process now.  Many bodies within the one body of humanity are purging.  Purging from systems, ideas and thoughts that don’t serve it and it is manifesting as what we call illness in our bodies.  Recognize that systems that are ill must purge and our body is a cell in a much larger system.  This is part of the healing process that is required for us to be healthier, stronger and more whole than ever before. To allow the impact of what is currently taking place rather than be in a state of vigilance and self-protection will aid you deeply in through this process.  It is when we don’t allow what is occurring that we truly suffer.   

Active participation 

Your personal actions matter

Whether or not this virus directly impacts your body, I invite you to do your part to actively participate with this collective reorganization that is taking place rather than passively wait to see what happens.  The most collectively responsible thing that you can do in my opinion is to use this time to deepen your self-awareness, personal awakening and add as much energy as possible to the collective field.  

What does that look like?  First and foremost, where you can, serve others.  Help out and support.  There is nothing that brings more energy into a system than serving others and right now we need to access all the energy we can to vitalize the body of humanity as its been drenched in fear and scarcity.  Even if you can’t be in physical contact with others you can still creatively find ways to serve.  Second meditate for as many hours a day that you can, at a minimum at least 4-6 hours/day.  Purify and empty your mind so that you can recognize the empty spaciousness of awareness rather than be consumed by thoughts.  Don’t watch a bunch of movies and spend hours on social media.  Disengage from distraction.  Use this as an actual time of awakening rather than finding things to do to “waste time until this thing passes.”  Third clean your own body out.  Eat healthy and stop consuming crap.  I get that most everyone has stock piled cabinet food, but I invite you to eat as fresh as you can to detox your own body.  What you consume doesn’t just effect you, it effects us all.  This is true for food and also what you put into your mind.  

If we all do this, and really take on this collective responsibility, just how much more awake and aware will our collective consciousness be.  Its not even really that hard.  Just takes discipline.  

We are not really individual beings.  Now more than ever we have been given an opportunity to directly know this as lived reality rather than just spiritual concept.  For those who have been on a spiritual path for a long time I invite you to use this as your time to fully awaken to interconnectedness, and beyond that, oneness.  How I see it is that this first big wave of instability is really to help those of us that know ourselves to be light workers or who incarnated to up-level the consciousness on this planet, to more fully awaken so that we can live our purpose here at this time.  The waves yet to come will help more and more of the masses to awaken, and us paving that path right now will serve those to come. 

Though many may actually need to use this time to decompress, relax or have a mental check out from their stressful lives, there are others that know that these scenarios are exactly the reason why they are here and feel the hunger to use the catalyst of this virus to further expand and grow.  To those of you I speak.  Do not waste this precious and rare opportunity that we have right now to collectively awaken.  While the external is quiet I invite you to actively serve, clean out your body-mind, and deepen and expand your consciousness to new levels of awareness that will serve our one body for all future generations to come.  

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

Group Consciousness

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Group Consciousness 

Group field effect

The atomic nucleus. Abstract representation. Image molecules and atomsWe are all impacted and influenced by one another.  Never is that more apparent then when collective instability arrives.  For example someone is scared or upset and we begin to notice how it rattles something inside of our being.  We can find ourselves listening to someone speak or reading a piece of news and find ourselves caught in a fear loop, when just 5 minutes earlier we were going along happily without a fear in the world.  The opposite of this is true as well, meaning we can hear someone speak something inspiring or motivational and shift into joy and bliss in a single moment.  This impact on us, dreadful or joyful, can spread if we let it and if it spreads enough, meaning impacts a certain number of people, it creates a group field or group consciousness.  The more energy that is given to a particular thing or idea the larger it grows and the more opportunity it has to impact and engage more consciousnesses into it.  Group fields make information more accessible to more people and with that more people being influenced by the information that is contained within that field.  

Due to the fact that we are all humans, experiencing this reality together, we each feel the effects of group fields to varying degrees.  Our beliefs and perceptions filter how we will experience the information that is contained within a group field.  If we have a belief or perception that is incompatible with the information in the field than that information will not really land anywhere in our system.  However if we have a belief that is compatible or in resonance with the information contained in that group field than we will be influenced by it.  This is neither bad nor good.  Its is inherently neutral.  It really is simply a resonance game.  We are energy beings, being impacted by larger energy fields (group consciousness) and energy either finds resonance and amplifies or finds dissonance and cancels itself out.  For those scientifically inclined we see this in physics with wave interference patterns that are either constructive (increase the amplitude of the wave) or destructive (cancel out the wave).  

When we are talking about group fields it really is about what do we want to amplify (bring more energy too) and what do we want to cancel out (i.e. not add energy too).  Each point within a collective field (being you or I) has an impact on the overall field and how much energy that field will contain.  We often don’t realize that we matter and make a difference to the collective overall experience, but indeed we do.  In fact it would be impossible for you not to have an effect, unless you had absolutely no energy to you at all, which would mean that you were not embodied.  But the hard cold fact is that you are indeed embodied, therefore you have energetic influence that is filtered and directed by your thoughts and beliefs.   

Collective purging 

Embracing instability

Office chaosThe energy with which we give things has an effect.  Not only a collective group field effect, but also a physiological effect on our own nervous system and thus the functioning of our body.  We are all familiar with this through the stress response.  When we perceive a threat, we go into “on-guard mode” also known as self-protection or stress, and our bodies produce chemicals aimed at immediate survival.  This is a healthy response when its warranted.  Its our body’s way to keep homeostasis, self-regulate and purge what is no longer needed or working for the system.  We typically don’t feel well when this response is activated.  Our perspective is also narrowed and focused only on immediate survival.  No energy is available for anything else.  This response is what most people call sickness, though its really just the body purging to keep itself well.  

Purging occurs at the collective level as well.  Times of collective instability such as wars, pandemics, economic crashes and like are the ways in which the larger societal or group system that are no longer working optimally deconstruct in order to reorganize into a more energy efficient configuration.  Nothing is more unstable than collective fear and chaos.  Almost no one would argue that our world is in need of some massive upgrades, that many of our systems need a complete reboot, yet when the waves of instability come crashing in we may not always have the insight to see how what is currently happening is part of what will enable necessary change to occur because we are fully in the “sick” phase where the energy for such insights is not available to us and our perspective is narrowed.  Also although most wouldn’t argue that world change is heavily needed, simultaneously people like their sameness, consistency, and external stability.   Most also dislike putting energy into rebuilding, so when the waves of instability come, we activate our stress response in attempt to keep everything the same and hopefully prevent “bad” change, and then add that energy of frozenness to the collective field.  A frozen collective field will need more waves of instability (meaning more chaotic events) to eventually allow reorganization and change to happen, as change will always happen.  

So what can we do?  Learn to ride the waves of instability rather than being submerged underneath them.  Embrace the constant ever present change that will never stop coming.  Relinquish your attachments to things having been a certain way and invite the novelty of what will arise on the other side.  Discern your fear from your intuition.  Follow your intuition in taking action in whatever ways you need to and that you feel will best support the collective field of humanity.  Meditate and activate love through your entire field adding that to the collective mix; it is more far reaching than you may know.  Realize that your energy will effect the outcome, as well as the learning and change that becomes available to humanity through this global destabilizing force we are collectively experiencing.  Allow any emotions that arise to be felt permissioning your heart to open even more deeply and transmuting fear into love.  Lastly Be well no matter what.  True well-being is independent of any and all circumstances.  It arises as a knowing in you that no matter what you and all are ok.  This knowing and the emanation to it through your field allows you to be a guiding light in the midst of darkness for many.  

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

Destruction

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Destruction

Tides of transformation

Hot fires flames in round shapeMost of us fear destruction.  Yet destruction is an inevitable aspect of growth. Things can not stay the same and simultaneously look or be different.  When we allow our fear of deconstruction (i.e. what we think we will lose) to reign we feel stuck, frustrated and powerless. These feelings are simply the postponement of change that must occur.  The only thing that shifts frustration is forward movement. The tendency for most is instead to move backwards into the same habituated thinking patterns because they are known rather than to push forward into the unknown.  Growth does not occur in the known.

What it boils down to is that people want to feel different or have their life be different yet expect that they can remain the same.  They project that they want the situation or circumstance to change, but deny their participation in that change. They fail to see that in every moment life (including their body) responds to them, not to some mysterious, outside, unknown force.  They avoid and deny their power rather than own their power.  The building up of frustration and stuckness rather than the alleviation of it, is what provides the energy for forward momentum.  Due to the fact that we avoid feeling uncomfortable we don’t allow the build up of tension that is required to make change.  Instead we find the most accessible ways in which we can to alleviate it.  Frequently that involves dropping into a lower state of awareness or consciousness where we feel like things are continuing to happen to us, that we are powerless, and that someone or something must fix us rather than us recognizing ourselves in the equation.

If rather than running from our uncomfortable sensations and situations we learn to move towards them, not in a way to fix or get rid of them as if they are some separate object from us, but instead to make contact with ourselves through them, we will be able to harness the energy of stuckness to move forward.  This will begin to expand our perspective of our current situation or circumstance.  The moment that we move towards rather than away from, is the moment that we stretch ourselves beyond our known.  This stretching expands our view of what we can see and allows us to revisit that which previously felt separate to us with new eyes. It allows us to see our patterns and how we are creating the circumstances and situations we’re experiencing, including what’s happening within our body, so that we can make necessary changes that are required. It is at this point that the inevitable destruction that was always eminent is now so clearly in the forefront of our awareness.  It is now no longer a choice that we can grapple with, but instead a must that we must do. 

Destroyer 

Recognizing yourself in the equation

Female with Indian feather hat and colorful makeup.Ultimately destruction is about the dissolution or breakdown of aspects of our self that no longer serve our highest good and don’t allow for optimal function of our bodies and lives.  These parts of us, or more accurately these patterns which we have identified as who we are, are often mysterious to us in the early part of transformation. We can’t yet see that we are the ones creating the circumstances and situations because we are so fused as being the pattern or part.  However when transformation moves to mid phase we begin to gain insight into what is occurring and more importantly our participation with it.  At transformation’s end phase we clearly see how we have been in charge all along and that it’s never been about the situation or circumstance, ever. 

I invite you to see from the perspective that stuckness and frustration is a gift. It is a gift from you, to you, that is showing you that some aspect of your consciousness must be made more aware.  It is the way in which you are teaching yourself to wake up.  Rather than keeping the perspective that tension is a problem or that the circumstance is a problem, see it as an opportunity for growth. Accept that destruction and change is a part of growth.  As you move into the frustration and wake up to seeing your contribution to what is occurring, you will be required to change.  Recognize your own resistance to this.  Recognize your desire to maintain sameness or perceived safety and stability rather than instability and change.  Recognize that things will come and go as required whether you like it or not.  Know that some of those things you will want to hold onto for dear life and yet they remain incompatible with who it is you are waking up to be.  To continue to hold onto those things and attempt to control external circumstances will keep you in a state of suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness until the point where you have finally had enough. 

Some of us will tolerate suffering and stuckness for such a long time because we are so afraid of change, growth and what we think we will lose along the way, but change and growth is the nature of this universe. To remain the same or in resistance/fear to change when change is eminent, is nothing short of a miserable life experience as the soul cannot express through you in the ways that it desires due to your persistent attempts to try to control it.  

Nothing remains the same.  Nothing.  You can hold onto absolutely nothing. The deeper that you can accept this the more easily you will allow the process of destruction and transformation to run its course in whatever ways are needed. This will accelerate your journey as a soul who’s sole function is to expand and express.  Ultimately you are the destroyer/changer.  Destruction and change do not happen to you, you are not a victim of them, instead you initiate them because you realize that you must.  This is the realization and actualization of your power. 

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

Catalyze into Love

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Catalyze into Love 

True currency of creation

road to loveYou’ve heard me say many times that everything is love and that love is energy.  In fact love is the brightest, most coherent and densely packed with light, energy source that is.  It is the purest, cleanest and least distorted truth or version or yourself that exists.  Love is the mover, generator and currency of all creation.  We are approaching the space-time where we are beginning to understand that to generate love and know love as the creator of all things is how this universe functions and works.  Love is the law of the universe.  Love is not the name we give things, or the actions we take or a feeling that we have, it is a knowingness of aliveness, it is the knowingness of what we are.  From the knowingness of what we are, feelings are experienced, actions are taken and things are given names, but understand that love is not in the things, but is the very essence of all things.  

To generate love is simply to realize what you are.  The dismantling of everything that you are not reveals love, which reveals you to you.  Using everything that arises within your experience as a catalyst, an igniter, or even an excuse/opportunity to turn whatever you are experiencing into love is making good use of everything that you are given.  In this way you see all as the truth of what it is rather than what you’ve learned or think that is.  

Just as we work hard to make money because we think it is what keeps us taken care of, even greater we should work hard to make love.  Even though making “love” is an illusion as all that is is love, from the standpoint of separation, we must generate it, and again that generation is simply the recognition of our true self (it is not an action or something we must do to generate).  We have overlaid money on top of love and have thought erroneously that money is what takes care of us thinking it is the currency of life.  Money however has never been what drives the boat.  Most people’s focus has been on the appearance and not what drives the appearance, thus we have felt scarcity, lack and not enoughness because all appearances, including the appearance of money, come and go.  When your sense of ok-ness is wrapped into an appearance you will always feel powerless to it.  Because most people are disconnected from what actually drives the boat, that being love, their experience is feeling at the whim of life rather than the generator of it.  When you realize love, the true generator, that is always present because it is what you are, abundance and resourcefulness never go anywhere no matter what appearances come or go.  This is the recognition of the true currency of creation. 

Energy transfer 

Exchanging beyond the physical

fire and ice abstract backgroundThrough the recognition of yourself as love, the true currency of life, you begin to see the nature of energy transfer rather than the pure focus on exchange of physical goods or the exchange of your physical self (i.e. ways you behave, do, speak or act).  This moves us into the realms of the nonphysical rather than being so physically focused.  These are the realms of lighter and lighter bodies of being, which many of you are already beginning to experience more and more.  

Remember love is energy, so the more deeply and deeply rested you are in/as love, the more you understand that the purest exchange, support and service of each other is through the knowingness of your self in your more formless nature.  The more you know yourself as love, the more energy you have available to you and therefore the exchange of energy with life is greater.  You are in a much larger pool of knowing yourself, so more energy can be experienced and transferred.  With this you also recognize that the give and take, which is felt at the more physical level of our being, shifts into more of a feeling of give/take simultaneity.  This is particularly true if you are around beings that know themselves more as love.  In this way the transfer of energy (rather than give and take) between beings that know themselves as love feels energizing and uplifting for all beings involved within the exchange.

Do not fret, for you are all already love.  You don’t have to achieve something or arrive somewhere beyond yourself.  You don’t need any special experience or gift.  You only simply need to recognize what you already are.  In that recognition your energetic exchange with life will be greatly enhanced. 

All of this which I am pointing to takes us beyond the purely physical nature of this world.  This is already here and yet we can accelerate this integration beyond the physical through catalyzing ourselves into love.  Use everything, and I mean everything, that arises within your experience of life, to more deeply know yourself.  Insist that somehow, someway you will transform and transmute all that you experience into love.  This is the process of alchemy.  Its the revealing and transmuting into gold that which at first sight seems like a dull metal.  It is taking all that you perceive to be ordinary, physical, separate, wrong or incomplete and seeing it as non-ordinary, energetic, perfect, complete and one.  You are the sole one, the sole being, that must make this transformation occur within your own mind.  No one and no thing can do this for you.  There is no external magic wand or person that can do this for you.  You have the capacity for this.  We all do.  Turn everything into love and you will for the first time experience and know yourself as you truly are.  

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

The Dynamic Principle of Awakening

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The Dynamic Principle of  Awakening

Ingredients of the Universe

Illustration man sitting in pose of lotus. Meditation on outer sWe are all awakening.  Every being, human and other, within this universe is waking up to more and more of itself.  Awakening is the blueprint of creation.  It’s written in the fabric of the cosmos and intelligently informs all expressions of life, including you. What does it mean to awaken?  Awakening is the process of becoming increasingly self-aware.  As you become more and more aware of yourself, the self that you once identified or thought of as you begins to dismantle its ideas, boxes and containers of what/who it thinks it is, so that a greater experience of your self is revealed and known to you as you.  Meaning what you once identified as you changes and you re-identify as something beyond what you previously did.  In a nutshell that is awakening.  The final identity, if you will, is an identity of pure being, or what people describe as oneness or God. 

Often when people think about awakening they think about meditation, silence and inner contemplation.  While these are aspects or modes to assist in awakening they are not awakening itself.  What awakens is consciousness to itself and this can come through many different modes and look a lot of different ways outside of these traditional ideas.  

For simplicity consider that there are two primary ingredients to this universe.  There is consciousness/awareness (these terms mean the same thing) which is still, unmoving, intelligent and unchanging.  Then there is energy/movement, which is dynamic and always changing and making new configurations of forms.  This energy/movement is the dynamic principle of creation and it is how things come into existence.  This energy/movement is at its core, Love.  In this way Love is the substratum of all of creation.  It is the matrix with which everything gets built from and on. Ultimately love is informed by awareness/consciousness.  So awareness (pure being) intelligently moves love.  This is what we call creation.  A blend of awareness and love.   

Active Love 

Coming into expression

statue golden girl doing yoga at sea 3d illustrationYou can think of love and awareness as two sides of the same coin.  They are inseparably one yet seemingly different aspects of creation from a relative perspective.  Awareness knowing itself as intelligent pure potentiality and active love making the pure potentiality of awareness come alive through light and the myriad of expressions and forms.  Our soul/higher self is an expression of this intelligent aware love that has more remembrance of what it is then say our human minds know us to be.  Our souls are each expressing a unique aspect of awareness/love while simultaneously knowing that they are that one awareness/love.  As human beings we too are expressing a unique aspect of awareness/love yet we don’t remember that we are that one awareness/love.  This is the difference between the human perspective and the soul perspective of ourselves and hence the “need” for a path of awakening, back into this remembrance of ourselves.

This brings me to the dynamic principle of awakening which is love.  Many beings awaken to and through this active principle of love and into increasingly subtler and subtler aspects of it.  In essence all that is, is an expression of love and yet we can increase the brightness of our awareness to realize it (aka ourselves) at more refined levels.  The most dense or grossest level is physicality.  As the brightness of our awareness increases we are able to tune into, realize and experience the more subtle aspects to our beingness, first realizing our energy body, then our soul body and eventual back to the one pure beingness body.

When our awareness wakes up to our soul body we have dismantled many of our identity boxes that have kept us as being a separate being.  This is the level of being or identity in which there is no longer a separate person moving this form we call a body.  Instead because that story/idea of being a separate person has dismantled, at least to some degree, awareness/love moves through forms much less impeded or distorted.  This is when people begin to experience spontaneous or non-planned/non-thought movement and energy course through their physical form.  At first it can be surprising and the “person” identity can come back in and feel like its being moved by some outside force or energy.  However with further awakening one comes to realize that it is the prime mover rather than the one being moved.  

For many this is their path to awakening.  Rather then a purely meditative/awareness path it is a path that includes energy and the dynamic love aspect of beingness.  Both are the one simultaneously.  It seems in general that people tend to gravitate towards one aspect more than the other.  Meaning some focus strictly on the pure awareness aspect (more meditative) while others focus on the love/movement aspect (more energy).  I have found that there are different phases and rhythms where the focus on one aspect rather than the other is of benefit as a being awakens.  I personally do not believe that focusing one aspect is superior than the other (though some will definitely disagree with me), instead I find both mutually beneficial to the journey.  Always follow your own resonance as it is your best guide to what you need to awaken.      

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

Body-Mind-Spirit

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Body-Mind-Spirit 

Where’s Spirit? 

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

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

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

Bringing spirit into greater awareness

Beliefs, worthiness and self-commitment

Man with conceptual spiritual body art

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

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

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

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

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

Everything is energy

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Everything is energy 

Beyond perceiving meaning

Sacred geometry symbols and elements background. Alchemy, religiEverything is energy.  We have all heard this, but what exactly does that mean and how do you perceive it?  Well the truth is you are already perceiving energy everywhere.  Even though things may seem solid, physical and real to you as you look at and feel them, the truth is that you are really just looking at and feeling energy.  Its simply that you have been taught labels and given things meaning so what you perceive is those labels and meanings rather than what is actually there.  If you suspended all of your labels and meanings all you would see is light (aka energy) because that is what everything is.

Due to the fact that we have all been conditioned to death with meaning since the moment we were born, and most of us seek more meaning because that’s what we been taught to do, we are constantly creating separation where there is none.  Any time that you create meaning you create distinction and thus separation.  Separation equals suffering.  Ultimately nothing is inherently separate, you just keep creating that illusion in your own mind through your incessant meaning making, and thus create suffering for yourself.

Many times when people get interested in energy, healing or subtle energetics, they try to see something other than what is.  Like some other magical thing is supposed to appear to them.  Typically, at least in my experience, this strategy is not helpful.  You are not trying to see something other than what is there, you are just seeing what is there by forgetting what you’ve learned to see.  This may seem like semantics to you, but I assure that it is not.  When we believe appearances we are lost to seeing what actually is, as appearances are simply things we’ve labelled as something in particular.  

I have found frequently that as people go through this awakening of sorts of beginning to perceive what they label as “energy”, that they make it another object.  Essentially what they have done is given some meaning to the “energy” they are now sensing/perceiving and this births a whole set of ideas of good/bad energy or trying to avoid, move, or manipulate energy somehow.  They’ve taken that same meaning based strategy and pasted it onto the more formless aspect of being that is coming into their awareness.  So even though they may be learning how to perceive beyond certain meanings that they have given to things, their stage of developmental consciousness progression has not yet shifted beyond separation.  What I’m saying here is that being able to perceive “energy” in a more formless state does not make you more evolved than some other person who does not yet think that they perceive energy.   What really matters is making the shift in your awareness from perceiving separation into perceiving inseparable unity.    

Your energy bodies

Unwinding and unbinding

Outer space. Meditation.This brings us to your energy body.  We all have multiple layers to our energy body.   The first layer, if you will, is the physical body (which we are most identify as), then a subtle body (which is associated with our emotional body), beyond that a mental/wisdom body, beyond that a soul/bliss body, and beyond that the one body/being or pure awareness.  All of these bodies are accessible and perceivable to anyone, each one begin more expansive and formless then the one previous to it.  The degree of relevance for your journey at this time, and your desire to perceive the various level of your bodies, will determine your experience of them.

The subtle body, which again is related with the emotional body, is often what is waking up into awareness when people talk about being able to perceive energy as if its another object out there.  People often report seeing colors or visions, feeling vibrations or densities, hearing things and the like.  Essentially we might put all of this into the category of extrasensory perception.  It is also not uncommon that as people’s systems unwind tension that they begin to perceive in this way.  The more that we perceive and create meanings and labels, the more our spinal cords and nervous systems respond to those perceptions, and develop spinal distortion/tension/twisting patterns through which then experience the world through.  Those patterns become the filters through which we perceive everything.  We often simply experience this as tension, pain or the inability to fully relax and we really don’t know what else is going on underneath it all.  

Tension patterns keep us more bound, and thus perceiving only the physical appearance/label of things.  As we unwind and unbind, things begin to lose some that seeming solidity that we once thought that they had.  The less that we can create the tendency to label things the more our awareness will be able to progress further into our more expansive bodies.  Its important to remember that no awareness of self or of your various bodies is necessarily better or worse, its all inclusive of the previous layers.  It is however helpful to cultivate a desire inside yourself to experience yourself beyond and beyond and beyond if that so resonates with you, as it is through that desire that the path of further awakening will reveal itself to you.  

So I invite you to explore meaninglessness.  See what it is like to not know what it is you are looking at or touching.  Begin to empty yourself out of all your learned content about what is, who you are, and appearances.  Expect nothing, and that which is already, always there will be seen.  Remember energy/light is all there is, but don’t hold onto that as a concept, simply remember it and let it go.  Recognize that distinctions are illusionary and separation has never existed and you will begin to directly experience and know that world of inseparable aliveness of which you are.    

Dr. Amanda Hessel, DC, Network Chiropractor Boulder Colorado