giving

LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION

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LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION 

Our love of consuming

Being a consumer of life is the natural way of living for most people.  We love shopping and get excited when we have a package waiting for us at our front door.  We look forward to going to our favorite restaurants in order to eat and drink all of things that we enjoy.  We can’t wait to watch or read that new movie or book we’ve been waiting for to come out.  Scrolling our preferred social media apps to see what’s going on with our friends or in the world around us in one of our most preferred activities.  We are nearly constantly taking something in.  Whether that something is food, information, or tangible objects, we tend to like the feeling of things coming in.  In fact for many people this is how they relax.  In contrast, when it seems like life wants or demands something from us, even if we are the one creating that want or demand, we feel tense, vigilant or like we need to perform or show up in some extra alert way.  Sometimes just thinking about what we will have to give makes us tired.  

In a lot of ways consuming is easier.  We just sit back and let life in.  It doesn’t require any real effort on our part, except for perhaps deciding if we want to buy the shoes we like in brown or black, or choosing if we want to go with the fish or steak dinner at our favorite restaurant.  It’s low demand, not that complicated and in the end we feel some kind of satiation.  Our new outfit arrives, we get loaded up on information from our new book, or we get the latest news about our “friends” on social media, and we feel full.  Why does getting full feel so good?  It feels good because most people operate from a belief in scarcity and therefore any attempt to give feels like fuller depletion.  At least when they get they can momentarily not feel lack.  

Yes there is the obvious fact that we need to food to survive, albeit much less than most of us would like to think we need.  We also need clothes, but probably not near as many as we buy.  Information is helpful to make informed decisions about things we don’t know about it, but many of us are addicted to consuming information without taking any real action on the things we learn.  Social media can provide us with some sense of connection with others, but most people are just mindlessly scrolling to see if they are missing out on anything.  While most people probably wouldn’t fully admit it, they just want life to happen to them without them having to do much work.  This means that rather than creating we would prefer it be given to or have things done for us.  An example of this would be if someone gave you the option to either work your way to $1 million dollars or be given $1 million dollars, nearly everyone would opt for the later.   Case in point, most of us would prefer to receive support and care rather than give it. 

WORKING, CREATING & GIVING 

Stopping the consumption cycle

Giving is work.  It does require something from us, namely our time, energy, and focus, which are, our most precious of resources.  Because they are our most precious resources, we tend to want to conserve them, not use them up or give them away too readily less we run out of them.  But what are we really saving them for?  Do we think that if we don’t use them then we can store them up?  Are we afraid if we give our attention to one thing then we won’t have the energy, time or focus to give to another thing?  Perhaps you are ambivalent about what we want to give too.  Maybe you have difficulty making a decision about what is important to you.  Perhaps you just feel like you don’t have enough time, energy or focus and are living in scarcity about your state of inner resourcefulness.  We are always plotting in our mind what we think we have the inner resources for and therefore how willing we are to show up to life.  I am not denying that rest is important, it is, however most of us are way underestimating and underutilizing our capacities.  Why?  Because we think our inner resources are going to run out.  

I could tell you that there is no such thing as time, that it is simply a made up construct, but it’s likely that you will keep operating as if there is time.  I could tell you that you are the source of energy itself, but you will probably continue to feel like you don’t have enough of it.  I could tell you that you’ve got nothing but focus, yet you will claim that you get easily distracted.  These ways of thinking and believing are just habit.  In some ways you know that timelessness, infinite energy and inexhaustible focus are true, yet they aren’t true for your experience of life, at least not yet.  If you really embodied that there is a surplus of energy, no time and that you could focus on whatever you wanted to for however long you wanted too, what wouldn’t you do?  I imagine that your relationship to work, giving and creating would be mighty different.  I would think you would stop living by the clock in your head, your stories of limited energy and your distractible focus. 

Consuming is not the only way to live.  It’s not negative to consume.  We all need to consume some.  We need food, rest, nourishment, information, education, and social connection.  However when we are coming from scarcity of our inner resources of time, energy, and focus, with the fear that they might run out, then our consumption levels increase.  Sometimes to the point where we never feel satiated no matter how much we take in.  To remedy this we need to clearly know when we are full and stop consuming.  At that point rather than taking in more we need to switch to giving through work or creation.  That is the natural cycle of giving and receiving.  

Some people might say that they don’t know when they are full because they have overridden their fullness levels for so long.  If that is you I recommend this, when it stops feeling good and begins to feel bad, or like an addiction or obsession, or you find yourself becoming less present or more checked out, you know you’ve reached the fullness point.  So rather than watching another movie, reading another book, eating another piece of chocolate, having another drink or scrolling another social media app, stop in that moment and find a way to give, work or create instead.  This is when you move beyond a life of consumption.  The secret is that this is where energy, focus and timelessness live.  Never again will you fear them running out because you are living inside of them.

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

FROM CONSUMPTION TO CREATION

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FROM CONSUMPTION TO  CREATION

Life is not ours to get

As much at it might seem that we are here to consume life, we are actually here to create it.  Due to the fact that most people are disconnected from the awareness of themselves as a creator, there is a tendency to experience life as an effect, a destination or something to consume.  Our minds like to generate trajectories of getting.  Getting to the next location, the next exciting opportunity, the next moment when we can relax, the next meal, or getting any one of our million perceived needs and wants met or fulfilled.  Consumption, or getting, is so natural to us that we don’t even notice that is how we are operating.  We might think that we are completely without agenda, yet if we investigate ourselves a bit deeper we will find where and how we attempt to manipulate life in order to get or consume for ourselves.

Consuming life comes from an attempt to create safety and pleasure, through and in, your outer experience.  Most look to find ease, stability and comfort through sensation, feeling and getting what we want or need.  This comes in a multitude of forms from what you put in your mouth, what you purchase, the thoughts you think, the motivation behind your actions and the structure of your life.  We attempt to feel satisfaction and fulfillment by what we consume, as if somehow consumption will make us feel permanently good, even if we know it is only temporary.  We must keep getting our fix so that we can maintain feeling good, relaxed and safe.  This becomes a chase.  A chase to keep consuming life.

Recognizing yourself as a creator has nothing to do with creating stability in the picture of life and safely consuming it so that the illusion of all of your needs and wants is met.  Rather it is about moving with life and what you are inspired and excited to bring forth.  Not for your own individual pleasures and safety, but simply because it’s fun for you to create.  Creating for nothing more than the action of creating itself.  A response to an impulse or a call that moves you.  Not creating to consume it, but rather to give your creation to life as your offering, your sharing, and your contribution of the impulse of excitement and desire that runs through you. 

Many create in order to consume.  We build businesses, buy things, create a family, plan trips, develop community, etc. in order to consume it, rather than giving it as a gift to life.  When was the last time you looked at your life and all you’ve created so far and saw it through the lens of what you are giving to life.  Your home, your car, your belongings, your business, your children, your family, your partner, your community, and on and on, are not yours.  They are not things or stuff you have, but rather they are what you can offer to life.  How do you use what you’ve created to give it to life rather than relate to it as something that is yours? 

GIFTS OF CREATING 

Magic of giving

There is an energetic reward of sorts for creating or giving to life.  The more we give to life, rather than attempt to get from life, the more energy we feel.  You might even say that our vibration, or state of being, elevates.  This comes with a sense of levity, spontaneity, aliveness, and excitement.  Things seem to flow and move together even if we don’t know or see how it’s all related and connected.  Giving to life, or giving to the things in our life, brings us into greater energetic coherence.  Asking how or what can I give to this will instantly align you with how you can serve in any moment.  Rather than feeling lost, confused, frustrated or hopeless, you will feel the inspiration of the impulse of giving and sharing yourself.  

For some people this might all sound exhausting.  All this giving.  A part of you might say, what about me?  How am I going to be ok?  Another part might insist that it doesn’t have any extra time or energy to give or create more.  You might feel or find yourself wanting to conserve what little energy you have, so you limit or cap your creation and fall into consumption.  Believe it or not, it actually drains our energy and lowers our state of vibration to simply consume life.  A life of consumption is kind of like a bottomless pit that can never be filled.  It feels heavy, tired and doesn’t have much motivation or desire.  It keeps getting and taking yet never feels full.  It only experiences temporary fulfillment.  Motivation and desire comes from creating and therefore the only way to fill this pit is to give to life.  

There is a magic that happens in creating that you don’t experience until you shift from consuming life to creating it.  See creating is the same as loving.  To create is to love.  When you create or give to life you are instantly included in all of it.  When you follow the call or the inspiration to create, you are taken care of.  Somehow, someway life will always support you.  You likely will not know how it will happen, and you might fall into doubt from time to time, but with continued focus on creating simply to create you will come to see that this is the case.  

There is nothing to grab and hold onto in this life.  You are a creator not a getter.  You are not a passive recipient or an effect of life, you are the creator of it.  When we try to stabilize life, or stabilize our outer experience so that we can consume it, we stagnate and feel lifeless.  We feel lifeless because we aren’t utilizing our life giving potential.  We focus on what isn’t, what we don’t have that we want, and feel powerless to our circumstance.  When instead you see that everything inside of your current experience is something you can ‘give life/love to’ rather than something you ‘have or get’, you activate and utilize your creator power.  When you ask yourself in every situation, what can I give to this, you come to life.  You feel energized.  You elevate.  It doesn’t even matter what you do or the things you create.  It matters only that you come from being the creator, from giving, from loving.  

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

THE GIFT OF YOURSELF

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THE GIFT OF YOURSELF 

You are the gift you give

For many people there is an innate drive to give to others.  To serve, help, and support others generally generates good feelings inside of us as long as our giving comes from a place of true desire rather than obligation or agenda.  We are taught early on that we must learn skills, trades or other tools and means in order to have something to give.  Those things become our contribution to others.  This is the whole idea of work, and of trading services and resources.  

While our skills, services and abilities can add value to people’s lives and create ease, flow or greater efficiency in the world, they are not the gift that we give.  Two different people can have similar skills, services or abilities and yet they give an entirely different gift.  Sure on the surface it may seem that two architects can write up similar plans for a building, and yet they produce very different feels or results with their plans.  You may wonder why this is so.  It is so, because it is the energy of you that brings the gift of what gets produced.  It is the heart, the core of who you are, that is the actual gift you give.

Now this may seem very obvious to you conceptually.  Of course you understand that it’s you and the not the thing, but also notice how much of your mental and physical energy you spend on searching for the next cool thing you are going to create, the next career you will have, the next relationship you will start, all the while thinking that it will be your new purpose, the new thing that will define you and give you some sense of contribution.  It is very easy to pin the thing, meaning it is very easy for us to say “oh there is this thing that I can do or give to others and that makes my existence worthwhile.”  To say to yourself “I created this product, shared this service with others or did this thing and it changed people’s life, it’s so amazing!”  It is innocent enough and perhaps even true that your skill or ability did change their life and yet it is still not the gift you give.  

See in order to recognize the gift, you must be able to recognize and see yourself.  We are quite blind and distorted in our perspectives of how we view our own self.  We are not very clear mirrors for our own reflection.  We tend to not view ourselves as very worthwhile in general and therefore it’s easier to project our goodness on things we do rather than on our own selves.  We project our worth onto things.  Then to top it off the world reinforces all of our do-gooding all the while also telling us that if we think too highly of ourselves we are selfish and arrogant. Oh the conundrum! 

BEING WORTH 

Self-gratitude

Unless you know your worth you can’t give, because your giving is giving you.  If you see nothing of value in and of yourself, naked and without skills, abilities and stuff, then nothing will radiate out of you.  Sure you will still do stuff, create stuff and function in the world, but you will grow tired because you are running on empty inside trying to generate worth through what you do.  Until you know how worthy you are you will always have agenda, because you will always be trying to get love rather than realizing you are it.

Your radiance is your gift.  How you shine is your gift. It is really, really simple.  You could never attain worth or get more worthy and valuable based on any skill or ability that you may have or acquire.  Again it doesn’t mean that your skills won’t help out the ease and flow of this human existence, but they are not your service.  You are your service independent of anything that is done.

Since it is impossible to increase our worth this begs the question of how do we elevate our sense of self-worth.  Our sense of self-worth and our actual self-worth are two very different things.  The journey is in how we bridge the seeming gap in between without it being based on things that we accomplish or do.  Since most of our confidence comes through feats of walking into the fire of our own fears and limitations it is based in accomplishment or doing.  

There is one fast and short easy way to elevate our sense of self-worth and that is gratitude.  Gratitude for ourselves just the way we are in any given moment.  Appreciating the quirks, oddities, subtleties, nuances, particularities, and the way that we are exactly as we are.  Ending the desire to change ourselves or make ourselves different in any way brings greater and greater self-acceptance.  

Anything other than total gratitude for self is self-absorption, self-denial, self-hatred and the true selfishness.  It’s the true selfishness because when we don’t feel amazing about ourselves then we focus on ourselves.  We focus on what’s wrong with us and how to be different or better.  When we are focused on ourselves our energy goes in rather than radiating out.  The result is that we feel depleted rather than energized.  Giving/being ourselves is energizing because it’s effortless.  It doesn’t need to be more or less.  It is complete in and off itself.  None of this means that we won’t grow or change, but instead simply that growth will come through acceptance of self rather than through non-acceptance.  

Develop a daily practice of self-gratitude, not for what you do, but for who you are.  Nothing added, nothing subtracted.  Just you as you are.  This will be your portal into a sense of stable, infinite self-worth where you will naturally radiate the gift that you are.   

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

LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T

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LOVING WORKS, DOING DOESN’T 

No moment is better than another

We are all over conditioned to do.  Something must be done, we must accomplish and finish, get it done, check it off, do, do, do.  If we aren’t doing we tend to feel purposeless.  Doing provides the meaning for our existence.  Each day we wake up and think about what we must do that day.  Our day revolves around our doing.  We do our morning workout, yoga or mediation, we eat our breakfast, we work, we run errands, we make dinner, we do our hobbies and then we “relax”.  So often we are trying to get to this place where we can just relax, but we have to finish all of our doing first.  This is the pretty typical day to day human existence, thinking there is somewhere to go, something to get and some place to arrive.

Doing is so close to us that we often don’t see that we are in a state of constant doing.  We might not even think to think that there is another way of living other than doing.  Pause for a moment and ask yourself what would happen if you stopped putting any focus at all on doing, accomplishing or getting things finished or done.  The most common answer is that nothing would get done.  However do you know this to be fact?  Have you ever stopped focusing on getting something done while engaged in doing and noticed what happens?  The experience tends to be what people call a flow state, which is one of the most desired states for many.  

Why do we get so trapped in doing?  The primary reason that I’ve discovered is that people tend to perceive that one moment or experience is better than another moment or experience.  It is easy to fall into flow and joy while hanging out with friends, being on vacation, playing your favorite sport or eating a decadent meal, but less easy to fall into flow while exercising, working or running errands.  These are aspects of experience that many try to get over and done.  When you stop trying to get an experience over than there is nothing left but to be in the experience that you are in.  

The judgment, preference or bias for one thing or experience over another thing or experience puts us into doing mode as we attempt to get where we more desire to be, which is frequently other than where we are.  Doing mode takes us out of presence and is mechanical in nature.  Mechanical because it is work that is disconnected from aliveness.  It takes effort and is hard.  Its focus is only on something physically shifting or changing and does everything from a physical perspective to shift a physical thing.  It gives the appearance of getting somewhere or something happening when there is no where to get and nothing to happen.  If you were to instantly realize that you can never get somewhere other than where you are and nothing can happen other than what is, you would see how preposterous all of the doing really is.   

FOCUS ON LOVING 

Work through giving & receiving

What if rather than focusing on doing, getting it done or accomplishing something, you instead focused on loving?  What if you stopped all the incessant brain activity and brought your awareness into your heart and just left it there?  How different would your life be?  How different would you feel?  How much more would you overflow with radiance and serve?  From my experience doing doesn’t really work.  Its tiring, its hard and oddly at the end of the day I don’t feel like I did anything except make myself really tired.  Maybe actions occurred that gave the appearance that stuff happened, but nothing really changed.  The only thing that occurred was movement from place to place to place or moment to moment to moment, and while movement happened there was nothing there doing the movement, no real conscious one home inside.  This is quite honestly the state of most of humanity.  It is not bad, it just asleep, disconnected, and not aware.  

If we are to live more awake then we must realize that we are in this perpetual doing mode and wake ourselves up out of it.  This requires being more attentive to self and to your patterns of doing.  Learning to refocus your focus from the linear projected course we all believe that we are on into the present moment heart.  The heart equally gives and receives.  It is through receiving that it gives and through giving that it receives.  This is how doing or work gets done.  Work by and through radiation and invitation.  Actions still occur when you are loving, it’s simply that you are not focused on the actions themselves or trying to make anything different.  Instead your focus is on loving and that is it.  Change effortlessly and instantly occurs.  This is because that natural state of love is recognized and seen by you and through you.  

The change that occurs through loving is an opening into more.  It is through opening into more that our perspectives widen.  How we see changes what we see, not because the actual object, person or thing changes, but because we see it differently.  This is how you begin to really get that trying to shift or change an object by physical means from a physical perspective is really hard and actually maybe even impossible.  Instead loving melts, molds, and reshapes everything into its original forgotten nature. 

Doing is an elementary step in the evolution of remembering what we are.  You realize at some point along the journey that the doing mode is optional.  The more you bring into focus loving and drop into your heart the more you increase your awareness of yourself and your energy becomes more coherent.  Magic occurs, and its not even really magic, its just the way it is when you live loving rather than doing, but it seems like magic to the ordinary mind.  As always please don’t just take my word for it.  Try it out.  Experiment.  Try only focusing on loving all day long no matter what actions you are engaged in or what experiences present themselves.  Stop trying to get anything done and just love and see how you experience life.  

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

Giving Everything Back to Source

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Giving Everything Back to Source 

Tendency to hold on

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

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

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

Reconnecting with Source 

Its easier than your mind thinks

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

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

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

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

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