Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: heart open

OPEN TO RECEIVE

Re-finding our natural state

Most humans are living as a closed unit or entity, perceiving themselves to be separate and distinct from others and life. This closed-off-ness is elusive to most, but that doesn’t make its existence any less present. Closed-off-ness is akin to protection. A way to keep things, people, pain, pleasure or support out or away. When our system is closed our ability to take things in or receive is impaired. Even if all the love in the world showed up on our doorstep we aren’t able to perceive or receive if our system is closed.

A closed system leads to a experience of disconnection. That disconnection can be felt as disconnection from ourselves, from others, from support, from guidance, from spirit or God, from abundance, from partnership, from love, from anything and everything we desire. We might wonder why we don’t have or experience the things that we want and yet can’t see how we aren’t open to receive them. Closed-off-ness is hard, tough and pushes away, while receiving requires softness, invitation and welcoming in.

It isn’t hard to be open and receive, in fact openness is our natural state. The investigation or work is in discovering where we are pushing out or away rather than including and inviting in. There are many reasons why we don’t receive or why we close our system off. At some point we might have felt pain or hurt that our tender heart didn’t want to feel so it turned in or cold, and never or only selectively reopened. We may feel we don’t deserve or aren’t worthy to receive because we learned somewhere that we have to earn everything and nothing can simply be given to us. We might feel that it is selfish to receive. We may have had experiences of people not showing up or being there for us so we learned that we had to do everything ourselves and became doers rather than receivers.

You can see that breaches of trust, no one being there, disappointment, reaching without return, and not having our inherent worth reflected to us all create situations where we make a decision (conscious or not) to close ourselves off to others, ourselves and the very life force that keeps alive. We then struggle with a sense of darkness, disconnect, and powerlessness. This state of being is so “normal” to us that we actually think it to be normal when it’s not.

UNSELECTIVE RECEIVING

It’s worth it

In order to have an open system we must receive all things fully and equally. Selective receiving, while a step, still lends to only a partially open system. If we desire to dissolve our bubble of illusionary separation and distinction, and participate with the one field, the one being that we are, then partiality won’t cut it. This means we have to receive the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, the attuned and the mis-attuned, the hard and the soft. This is the real work. This is the opening of your heart to all it.

How do you open your heart this wide? The truth is your heart is already infinitely wide and includes everything inside of it. There is nothing you need to “do” to open it wider. Instead you only need to accept, allow and feel everything that is already contained inside of it. Your unwillingness to feel and accept what is contained, held and living inside of your own heart will keep you from experiencing loving in your every day moment to moment existence. There is nothing else that will keep you out of the experience of love except your own unwillingness to receive everything equally.

I invite you to investigate your relationship to receiving. Notice where you are willing to receive and where you are not willing to receive. Notice where you push away and where you allow in. Notice where you feel in the dark or disconnected and where you feel illuminated and connected. Notice where you do and where you be. You must develop awareness of where you are not open in order to be able to recognize where/what you are not willing to receive.

Receiving is a gift. When you receive others you receive the gift of them. When you receive yourself you recognize the precious treasure that you are and your worth can never be questioned again. When you receive support and guidance you learn through others learning. When you receive yourself you teach others what you know yourself to be. You come to recognize that there is nothing you need to protect yourself from because everything is you. The only protection needed is to love, to receive what is exactly as it is.

To be open is to be in communication with all. While there are times where doors are to be closed, or communication is to be lost, at some point all must come back into communication along the journey. Nothing is or could ever truly be disconnected, no matter how dark or distorted it seems. To recognize, to see, to receive the essence of what is allows and invites it back home into its remembrance. In time everything and everyone remembers what it is, that it never left home and was never apart. The journey of peeling back your layers of closed-off-ness and seeming separation is worth it. Even if the journey seems long, treacherous, never ending and impossible at times, it is worth it. To return to your natural open state of total and complete union with all is worth it.

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

BEING DIRECT

Showing up for what you want

So often we beat around the bush of life, holding our breath, hoping no one gets upset and that everything magically works out. Rather than be direct, upfront and approach things face on we attempt to see what we can get away with in saying or doing as little as possible. When we don’t face things head on we tend to experience a lot of anxiety. We get caught up in thoughts about how things will turn out because we’ve left so much unclear and unattended too. This is a main source of confusion for most, not the external situation but our own ambiguity.

Why do we choose confusion and ambiguity? Primarily because we don’t want to the lose the thing that we think we want. The fear of loss of the desired object is greater than that of clarity and knowing and so we often choose confusion over clarity. Let’s take relationships for example. Say that you desire something from your partner, maybe its more affection or intimate connection, yet you are afraid to ask your partner for this because you don’t want to rock the boat. You are afraid of their response, and beyond that, that their response will create greater disconnection or separation, which is exactly the thing you don’t desire. By not rocking the boat your resentment over not asking for what you want starts to build and build. The distance in your relationship grows greater even though you might still be together and your true desire for more connection remains unmet or un-actualized. You get opposite of what you truly want, and what’s worse is that you have prolonged it. You’ve stayed stuck for fear to move forward and be direct.

In being direct you must be willing to let the thing that you think you want go. If you can’t let it go, then you will not be free in your actions or words to move in the direction of your true desire. Instead you will be guarded, full of agenda and trying to preserve what is, which again is what you don’t actually want. Simply notice where you hold back, where you don’t speak up when you have something to say, or where you feel anxious in uncertainty. These are all indicators of indirectness and of choosing ambiguity over clarity. When you let go of the things, all the things you think you need or want, a lightness opens up in you. It’s like the sky of your mind becomes clear again and whatever actions need to be taken reveal themselves to you. Fear of loss is what cripples us from taking action and moving forward in our lives. It creates missed opportunities, postponement of true desires and mixed frequencies of intent. It’s what we call stress, but really it us not being direct with ourselves and others.

LETTING OUTCOME GO

Desiring & not expecting

Not wanting anything from anything or anyone is the way to be the clearest, most direct version of yourself and have everything in your life be a mirror of this clarity. Not wanting anything from anything or anyone is not opposite to being direct and asking for what you want even though it seems paradoxical. It’s being direct about what works for you and doesn’t work for you, what you want and what you don’t want, without needing the person or thing you are being direct with to respond or react in any specific way. Instead you remain open. Open to whatever the response, reactions and results are and then you take your next actions from there. This is love, transparency and being true. Your wants and desires drive you into a particular direction (that direction is the fulfillment of your purpose or service) while simultaneously not mattering at all what outcomes come as a result.

As a collective we are very outcome driven. We are conditioned to think that only the results matter. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact I would suggest that the results matter not at all, not even the ones you think you want really badly. That might seem crazy and contradictory to some. See its not the thing, its never the thing we want, ever. Not the relationship, the person, the car, the house, the connection, the job, etc. Its the state of being or feeling that thing seems to give us that we want. That state of being typically has something to do with clarity, presence and love. At the core that is what most everybody wants, but we project that onto people and stuff and then think it comes from them and that it looks a specific way.

Not wanting anything from anything or anyone while still moving in the direction of your wants and desires is being in love. We’ve all tasted this before. It’s especially easy to experience this in the beginning of a new relationship where you simply enjoy the person without wanting anything from them. As soon as we expect or want a certain outcome to occur the relationship feels tougher because we are no longer operating honoring the freedom that each person is. Instead we are trying to get our needs and wants met. For a moment simply entertain this- having wants and desires, moving boldly, at all costs and with your heart fully engaged in the direction of those wants and desires, while simultaneously not needing any of them to be met in any specific way. If I had to give love a definition that would be it. It is to be in full alignment with yourself, to be direct, to be clear, to allow the impulse of your desires to move you forward and guide your actions and direction, and to give all the rest of it away.

Don’t back down, don’t be shy, go for it. Be willing to keep your heart fully open and engaged as your guiding light and let everything and everyone have their experience. No need to manipulate or control it at all. Not even a little bit. No need to dumb it down by being indirect and creating ambiguity. No need to hold your breath and hope it all works out. This is ease and flow, but not the light and airy kind, instead the fully open and committed to life, self and service kind. Be bold. Be courageous. Let your heart speak. Risk vulnerability. Risk it all.

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