faith

Attitude of Gratitude

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE 

When life does & doesn’t go our way

We’ve all heard and we all know it, gratitude is the key to happiness.  When we are grateful for what is then there is no fear, no anger, and no despair.  Rather we feel relaxed, energized and at peace.  We invite whatever is present to be present.  We stop trying to get out of life and rest into it.  Yet even though we conceptually know that having an attitude of gratitude is the most important to our overall well-being and experience of life, there is a gap in our embodied, moment to moment willingness to live in gratitude.  Why the gap you ask?  Because 90% of time we would rather choose our perspective of what should be rather than the perspective of gratitude as to what is.  We are so fixated on wanting what we want, that as soon as we feel our desires, needs or wants be threatened, even a little bit, we shift out of gratitude and into tactic, strategy and manipulation in order attempt to get or keep what we want.  There is nothing more depleting to our energy state and our overall health and vitality then this.  There is equally nothing more energizing and resourcing to our overall health and vitality than gratitude.

Gratitude is super easy to feel when life is going the way we want.  In fact this is the state of well-being that we are always seeking.  The state we are always trying to get too or maintain.  Life is going great, just as we hoped and desired it would, and we feel amazing.  Things are up and we are in agreement with life as it is presenting itself to us.  Then alas something goes awry.  Something isn’t working out how we want it to, we don’t have the thing we want, people aren’t cooperating how we hoped they would, an unexpected surprise turns the course of our plans in a direction we don’t prefer, or something is not happening fast enough, in the pacing we want or at all.  Here is the birthplace of our biggest energy drain.  We start to feel tired and we don’t know why.  We are irritated and feel blah.  We get anxious or depressed.  We feel this low energy state when we enter disagreement with life.  When we are trying to get somewhere else, be other than where we are, or we want something else to be showing up rather than what is and we are simultaneously actively resisting what is.  This is our recipe for misery.  

Just to be clear, there is nothing wrong with wanting to grow, change things up in your life, or having desires.  This is natural.  Rather it is when we fall out of gratitude for what is or where we are, and into resistance, which lowers our energy state.  We get depleted and it becomes much harder to create changes or see things through novel perspectives of possibility, when you are coming from resistance rather than gratitude.  You can be grateful for what is and simultaneously be creating massive change in your life experience.   

CHANGE THROUGH GRATITUDE 

Following natural impulses

While it’s true that when you are in a state of gratitude there might be less you perceive as needing to change, we are still creatures of growth and evolution.  We like to explore, have different experiences, create new things, learn skills and develop.  Think about when you were a baby and you were learning to walk.  There were natural impulses that moved you from rolling over, to sitting up, then crawling, standing and eventually walking.  Growth, movement and change happened organically.  You didn’t have to get pissed off at sitting in order to start crawling.  Equally you didn’t have to resist standing in order to beginning walking.  No, no, no you didn’t.  You simply followed an impulse to change, evolve, expand your world and grow.  You didn’t’ resist anything about where you were and yet you still made changes to grow.  Ahh, so yes you see it is possible, and even the natural way.  

So what’s up with our self-centered way of seeing the world?  Why do we insist that life should be different and freak out when it’s not going as we think it should be or how we planned? Why don’t we trust the natural impulses inside of us and that they are taking us where we need to be/go in the perfect timing and rhythm for our development?  Why do we focus on what we don’t have or what isn’t happening rather than working with and adapting to what we do have?  At some point early on we experienced not getting what we want.  This creates frustration, anger, sadness and a sense of powerlessness for many of us.  Later on we learn the concept of scarcity or not enough of something (or of ourselves).  We begin to compare and contrast ourselves with others.  We focus on getting what we perceive we don’t have.  On top of this we create a disgruntled attitude with where we are at.  It’s never quite right.  It’s not quite enough.  We are irritated by what we don’t have and feel heartbroken that our dreams are not here now.  We feel it unfair that others have the things we want.  We fall out of trust with ourselves and the natural timing of our progression, and out of faith with the flow of life.  From here gratitude seems like a joke.  Gratitude for what?  A life that isn’t what you want and feels like it never fully will be.  It’s hard to muster the energy to shift our focus because our state is so low.  If only something or someone could magically fix it.  

The thing is that nothing can fix it except your shift in attitude.  You can’t expect your experience of life to change without first changing where you are coming from.  People often don’t realize themselves in the equation.  They discount the power and creation capacities of their own thoughts, feelings and emotions and assume their state of being is dependent on circumstance.  The thing people truly want is a state of being change, they just don’t know that’s what they want.  They think that if the experience changes then they will be happy and feel how they want to feel.  This is temporary fulfillment.  It is constantly chasing experiences in order to arrive at where you want to be.  The only way to have sustainable fulfillment and be in a high energy state that is full of health and vitality, is to come from gratitude, and to stop trying to get to it.  

Life is an abundant stream of never ending giving, but when you are focused on what isn’t you never experience what is.  The key to happiness is being grateful for everything that is.  Are you willing?  The degree to which you are is the degree to which you will experience happiness. 

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

SET YOUR LIFE DOWN

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SET YOUR LIFE DOWN 

All is taken care of

Whether or not you are aware of it you are most likely holding life.  What I mean by that is that there is some level of managing, controlling or attempting to keep all the parts in place.  There is frequently a feeling like we can’t stop holding or set things down, or else we won’t be in control of all of the pieces.  We fear that if we aren’t in control then things will go wrong, badly or just simply feel uncertain, which we tend not to like.  The paradox is that if we do find a way to set the things of life down we feel more ease, yet getting to the point where we feel like we can is the tricky part.  Probably the even bigger paradox is that ultimately we don’t have control over all the pieces and parts that we hold onto so tightly yet we illogically hold onto them anyways.

The effects of not being able to set life down are many.  At a body level we feel tension in our head, jaw, muscles, chest and belly, our breathing is not as full as it could be, we feel fatigue, there can be difficulties with sleep and digestion.  Beyond that we may experience things like pain or other various bodily ailments that are the result of life force not being able to efficiently flow through and fuel our bodies.  On an emotional level we may feel anxiousness, irritation, frustration, impatience, annoyance, restlessness, and general vigilance.  At the mental levels we can have ruminating or repeating thoughts, feel unable to turn our thoughts off, be hyper-focused on what we think others are thinking of us, or constantly be trying to figure things out in our heads.  For most people all of the things I just described are their “normalized” state of being, meaning people throw all of those things into a basket called “stress” and assume that this is just the way life is.  They don’t see how they are creating this experience of life for themselves.

In order to even begin to entertain the idea, and beyond that the actuality of setting our life down, we must know one fundamental thing and that is that all is taken care of.  If we don’t know this then we will never set things down because we will always feel like we are somehow in charge of it all.  Knowing that all is taken care of requires a hefty dose of faith that something that is more aware or intelligent than our individual limited minds, is running the show of this cosmic dance of life.  We must move past our egocentric view of ourselves and our lives as being the center of everything and realize that they aren’t.  We are part of a much larger orchestration of things occurring, most of which we are completely unaware of.  Yet as obvious as this is, we tend to think we know what is going on, what should or shouldn’t be happening and how things should turn out or be.  This is the root of all of our stress.   

NOTHING CHANGES IS-NESS 

Being always is

Setting your life down takes faith and also courage.  Courage in knowing that you are important, valuable and an indispensable part of creation even when your individual life isn’t the center of it.  Though you don’t have awareness of the entire cosmic game, you are perfectly positioned to be playing whatever part that you are, and that requires a bit more faith.  When you trust and believe in yourself, in who you are just as you are, knowing that you could be nothing and no one else, you come into agreement with life.  You stop self and other judgment, you stop hating yourself and others, you stop disagreeing with or opposing what is.  Another way to say this is that you accept yourself and in doing so you realize you can’t be other than you are, so you whole heartedly accept the position you are currently playing in this game of life seeing that it could not be other than it is.  With this a whole new perspective or view of life emerges.  You see through different glasses.

This new set of glasses sees what is without trying to figure it out, make it different, manipulate it some how or change it.  You come to know and rest in being, rather than stuck inside of controlling, managing, fixing or doing as if there are separate objects doing onto other objects.  A shift in identity also starts to occur from the one that does all the stuff and thinks a whole bunch of thoughts, to the one that just is.  The being from which doing or activity arises.  This enables us to set life down as we move from “do”-er to “be”-er.  

When we recognize that we be or that we are, we can see movement or activity occurring, yet we know that we aren’t the activity itself, but rather the source of it.  Activity happens, emotions continue to occur, there are sensations and thoughts, but none of them affect or change the fact that you are, that you continue to be.  Another way to say this is that as you recognize yourself as being, you are unaffected by the things that are occurring.  You also don’t see yourself as a separate person/object from the stuff, but rather as the source of it.  The experience of this is that you feel stable, rested, and at ease regardless of how the parts and pieces of life are moving about.  You are no longer concerned with trying to control them, but rather recognize them as expressions of you.  

Nothing can change is-ness.  Being always is.  It is the source of all expressions.  The light behind the forms.  When you recognize that you are not the stuff of life, you can put the stuff down and rest back in yourself, into being.  Nothing could ever not be taken care of because all is included in being, all perfectly playing its part, in this infinite celestial soup of light.  Start by being courageous enough to know you are a valuable part and set the luggage that you carry around on your back down.  The luggage that is always trying to make sure that you are ok.  Have faith in being and come more and more into knowing yourself as that, that you are.  If you do you will become increasingly more sourceful and rested in your actual self, and your experience of life will match your newfound glasses.

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

HAVING FAITH

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HAVING FAITH

Moving beyond the doubter

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

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

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

LEAPS OF FAITH 

Past the edge of fear

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMING FROM ABUNDANCE

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COMING FROM ABUNDANCE 

Lessons in trust & faith

Abundance is the natural of being or is-ness.  Abundance is what is.  In truth lack does not exist because it would be impossible for existence to be lacking.  What is can’t not be.  What gives the appearance of lack is not the appearance itself, but our perception of what appears.  This may seem a bit tricky to understand, but if you sit with it for a few moments the truth of it will begin to reveal itself to you.  

We are conditioned in a perspective that says when I don’t have ‘xyz’, it means something is, or might be, lacking/missing from my experience.  This perspective of lacking/missing is what causes suffering or our sense of disconnection.  It also perpetuates the illusion of our separateness, or independence from the larger existence.  Viewing through the lens of lack means something is not enough, we might not have enough, and often we feel like we are alone in our quest to be enough or get enough of what we need or want, whether that be resources or experiences.  There is no trust in the orchestration of life, but instead fear of how we will make it work or get what we desire or need.  

Why do we so often blindly and unconsciously choose this lens of lack or scarcity?  What purpose does it serve us?  I think largely we choose it because it is the most accessible to us, to our psyche, and to the lessons we were born to learn.  One cannot learn faith and trust, which are the primary lessons of the human incarnation, if one sees the natural state of abundance.  For inside of abundance one knows entirely that they are supported so there is nothing to help us learn faith.  The conditions on this planet and the perspective of lack are prime for helping us learn trust and faith.  

For centuries we have been playing out the game of lack.  Fighting or attempting to manipulate life, ourselves or others, so that we have enough or more of what we want or need.  Manipulation that is often disguised in a multitude of ways, many of those being service or caring, but really its just about us doing and getting what we think we need or want.  Our lives for the most part are entirely self-centric and about gain even if they appear altruistic.  This isn’t bad or wrong.  It’s simply important to know where we are coming from and why we are coming from there.  With this understanding we can more consciously choose what serves now rather than sleep walk our way through our life.   

LIVING IN AGREEMENT  WITH LIFE

To know abundance

Part of viewing from the lens of scarcity means that we tend to not live in agreement with life, or with what is.  Rather we wish, dream, or envision it to be more luxurious, glorious, radiant or just better somehow.  We “miss” what’s here by wishing or hoping for something else to be here.  We fail to see abundance of what is because we are focused on something else being in our experience.  This is the recipe for living continually unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and chasing fulfillment inside of the promise of whatever is next.  I am not suggesting that you don’t dream or envision beauty, glory or your desires, but rather that you see it here now in your current moment experience rather than at some future date or time when things look different and there are different people, objects or experiences in your life.  To view this way would be to see the truth, which is abundance, rather than your perspective of not good enough somehow now.  This would be the equivalent of dreaming awake or seeing what is now.

While we wait for life to look different so that we can say it’s better is to negate the abundance of this very moment.  That future moment where you perceive perfection or better-ness will simply be another moment of perfect abundance that will be followed by someone else who wants to make it better and on and on.  On and on that is until we stop projecting into the future what is already here now.  No matter how shitty it seems or appears to us, if we don’t see that it is currently abundant we suffer, and through our perception of suffering we continue to create it.  Through how we see, we create the very thing we are attempting to make better.  

We have responsibility of how we see.  I think this is our one and only true responsibility.  Though this might seem trivial or not really that impactful or important, I’d argue that nothing else is more important than this.  See no one can really see how we see.  There are no outward signs to cue others to the lens we look through.  Only we know how we see; what lens we choose.  There are no accolades or external praises for choosing the perspectives we choose.  They are silent, quiet and only those that are also silent and quiet can see where you come from.  To them there is simply an internal recognition and gratitude for where you come from.  Yet even though our lens are unseen by most, they create the entire world.  Everything that is, is born from this lens from which you choose to come from.

Coming from abundance won’t necessarily make you materially rich.  It won’t necessarily give you all the things you want or think you need.  It won’t always provide the picture of life that you hoped for, however there is a silver lining.  That lining is that you will now live in agreement with life.  You will experience the peace that passes all understanding.  Your being serves despite whatever it is you do or don’t do, or create/don’t create.  It also allows you to be a conduit for life to move through you rather than you being the chief decider of all things that the mind then tries to figure out, manipulate and grasp.  You are free to be and to allow all the experiences of life to be as they are.  It is the end of resistance and the end of suffering.  This is to live/know abundance.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor Boulder Colorado

Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration

Your life is not your own

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Your life is not your own

Existence beyond being a body

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

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

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

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

The Grand Orchestrator 

Coming to know your true self

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

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

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

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

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

Living Surrendered

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Living Surrendered 

Distinction of acceptance & surrender

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

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

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

True surrendered-ness 

Working as intelligent energy

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

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

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

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

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

The veil of forgetting

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The veil of forgetting 

Perceived separation from our essence

Curtain from the theatreOne of the prime aspects of being human is that we have forgotten who and what we truly are.  By definition being human in a way requires us to forget our essence so that we can have a particular set of growth experiences that can only be experienced through forgetting.  As frustrating as this feels for us at times, it is part of the grand design of this universe. 

In the “Law of One”, which is a channeled text by a group called Ra, they discuss this as the the veil of forgetting.  All beings who incarnate as humans come underneath this veil so to speak.  So what exactly is this veil?  Essentially as I experience it, it is a veil of separation.  It comes with the experience that I am a separate person, with my own feelings, thoughts, and ideas and because I am separate I must protect myself from other beings.  Now when I use the word “other being” I am not only talking about other people, but I am also talking about sensations, emotions, thoughts and ideas.  Beingness consists of all of these aspects, but generally we ascribe “other being” as another person.  I use a much larger definition here.  We are often protecting ourselves from others emotions, thoughts, sensations, ideas and actions that we perceive could be threat, and when we feel separate, threat is a persistent undertone to all of our experiences.

Within this veil there are also often feelings of being alone, cut off, disconnected, now knowing and wanting some external proof that something larger is orchestrating this universe, call that God or whatever you would like too.  Due to this veil of forgetting or separation we do not know what we are, that our very beinginess is the proof of God’s existence, as we are that.   

So we have this veil of forgetting our essence, so we thus feel like separate individual beings and we perceive threat from other.  This perceived threat, that is based on feeling separate, activates the fight/flight response in our nervous system.  When this get activated all of our resources go towards survival, protection and maintaining safety of our individual self.  The experience of having the fight/flight system activated is often reactive, defensive, anxious and overwhelmed.  

 

Our agreement to forget

The lessons of separation

Believe it or not, ultimately some aspect of your beingness agreed to have this experience of separation here now on this planet called Earth.  I’ve heard that being incarnated here is described as one of the richest and most sought out opportunities in the universe. Many beings want to come here to accelerate their souls growth and journey as one of the fastest ways is through this forgetting and the intensity of polarization of energies that are present here.  So you are quite fortunate to be here!  

So what are these lessons and why must we forget?  The lessons are unique to each being, but one of the primary global lessons is learning faith and surrendering what we think we know so that we can remember who we truly are.  We have developed these personalities that are very convinced of what they think they are (separate individual beings with names such as John or Mary) and what they know (the labels they have learned for things in the external manifest world).  At some point we come to a place where we realize that most of what we have been taught actually isn’t true and that we really don’t know shit.  We’ve learned to describe and give meaning to things and our sense of self and safety is reliant on those definitions and meanings since we perceive ourselves to be separate beings.  When we can suspend those definitions, even momentarily, we get a taste of truth.  

To have faith and surrender means that we must give up our own agendas, meaning what we think is supposed to be for instead what is to be revealed, the mystery, the unknown.  Now having faith doesn’t mean that you lose your free-will or that you no longer have intentions.  Faith and free-will exist simultaneously, even though they appear to be opposites they are indeed complementary.  You use your free-will to create and dream into being this life you desire and simultaneously let go of what you think it looks like in the manifest form.   

50013666 - girl opening curtains in a bedroomIt is through this learning that you begin to know your connection to something beyond your separate sense of self.  It is through this direct experience that you taste that which orchestrates all of life.  Without this veil of forgetting you would not be able to learn this lesson because you would already know what you are.  Here on this planet is the epic opportunity to learn this thing called faith and surrender.  

Through this learning you begin to penetrate this veil of forgetting and separation and experience your interconnectedness.  Your nervous system is now in allow mode rather than protective (fight/flight) mode and you begin to experience what I call the intergalactic nervous system, which is the way we are all connected through this intricate matrix-web-field of light-love.  

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

Operating in the mystery

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Operating in the mystery 

The truth of the moment 

32702468 - young woman with lantern walking in dark forestEvery moment is a total mystery.  Whether or not you think you know what the next moment will bring, the truth is that you really don’t.  The mind likes to plan, organize, and structure what will come next.  This gives us a false sense of stability, safety and okness.  In some ways this is important because to live in total not knowing is too terrifying and destabilizing for most people.  While in other ways, to not operate in the mystery at least some of the time, is detrimental to your growth and evolution.

Operating strictly in the mind’s need for sameness, security and stability keeps you rather confined, rigid, and overtime feeling stuck and not present in your day to day life.  When this happens your mind is running its own script over what is really true, which is the unknown or the mystery.  You can identify if your mind is running its own script if you find yourself not in the moment of what you are engaged in doing and instead thinking about what happened yesterday, when your “day will be over”, what you will have for dinner or the plans you have tomorrow, next week or next month.

Even if your past experiences or future plans excite you, your focus on them can rob you of the present moment that is here and now and also create the illusion that things will happen in a specific sequence or certain way.  What you think does become your reality, even if that reality isn’t necessarily the truth.  One of the many pitfalls of this “mind created reality” is that you get so fixated on what you’ve planned that you actually begin to believe that that is the way it is supposed to be.  Then when things don’t turn out how you believe they were supposed to turn out you feel upset, sad, angry, bummed, frustrated or like something is out of alignment.  None of those feelings are bad, in fact they are normal, but what often happens is people turn to blame or shame and get fixated on what they think should have happened instead of what IS happening.  In that moment you lose your connection to the mystery, synchronicity and wonder of life and momentarily stop seeing the magic of the moment until you can rest in and embrace the mystery again.

Finding comfort in the unknown

Requirements for living in the mystery

There are a few skills to learn that are pivotal for being able to operate in the mystery and getting more comfortable with the unknown.  Those are the skills of faith/surrender and not knowing.

The first skill is “not knowing”.  So much throughout our ordinary life we are taught to know things.  We label, define and giving meaning to everything we perceive.  These are skills we learn starting the day we are born and they fall under the category of “knowing”.  Not very often do we practice “not knowing”.  To practice not knowing means that we have to momentarily suspend our thoughts, meanings and definitions of things that we perceive.  For example instead of opening your kitchen cabinet, looking inside of it and saying in your mind “these are dishes”, allow yourself to not define or label what you see.  You can do this with people in your life as well.  Instead of looking at your spouse and saying/thinking “this is Tom or Jill” and laying on top of them all of the qualities you think they possess, allow yourself to simply see them without any labels or definitions.  You may be surprised to see how things and people begin to seem and respond  differently when you stop defining them in a certain way.

The second skill is faith (aka surrender).  Yes faith is a skill and one that we are running out of time to learn on this planet.  The veils that separate us from source, love, or our inseparability-oneness are becoming thinner and thinner, and soon our full connection will be re-established.  Once those veils are lifted the lessons of faith will become obsolete as we will be in full remembrance, but until then faith is essential to learn.

Faith is trusting in something bigger than you that you have no proof exists; the unknown and unseen.  To some this may seem religious, but faith does not need to solely fall underneath religion.  It is simply trusting in the support that something is orchestrating and intelligently designing life, so you don’t have to call every single shot.  You develop faith by loosening your grips of control.  This could look like making a “hard” decision, perhaps one that you have some doubt about, and instead of thinking about all the possible scenarios that could or could not happen from having made this decision, you let go of the mental constraint, and trust that it will work out perfectly no matter how it works out.

Faith/surrender and not knowing are in some ways the easiest skills to learn because instead of requiring us to DO something to learn them, they require us to STOP doing, thinking and allow.  This is contrary to what most of us think as “learning”.  Someone once said that “all learning is unlearning” and that couldn’t be more true than here now and in learning how to operate in the true mystery of life.

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