inner alchemy

NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE

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NEUROLOGICAL DEFENSE 

Moving away from pain

Much of how we operate, move, behave, perceive, think, feel and sense is learned and habitual.  We develop strategies, patterns and ways of being through our experiences.  We learn to perceive and move about our world based on internal and external cues.  If we do the same thing over and over, or see something the same way over and over, we learn to create wiring or neurological patterning in our nervous system based on our perceptions or behaviors.  If we repeat the same thing enough times then the way we perceive something or how we move about becomes automatic or habitual.  This means that there is very little “registering” or conscious awareness that happens as we engage with life.  Life is simply a series of habits and reactions, that is unless we create novelty inside of our perceptions. 

If something hurts we instinctually move away from it and if it feels good we move towards it.  Hurt can be physical such as if we place our hand on a hot stove, or it can be emotional or mental such as feeling rejection or like we aren’t good enough.  Regardless of where the hurt hits us we learn early on how to protect ourselves from the pain of feeling it.  We might flee or run in order to move away from it.  We might fight back in order to push something away from us.  We also might freeze in place or go numb in attempt to avoid the hurt or pain.  On a neurological level there is a response to this avoidance of pain, which is commonly known as the stress response.  Most people are quite familiar with the terminology “stress response” yet most people don’t really get what it means for how they experience their life on a day to day basis.  

When we are in protection (i.e. avoidance) mode our nervous system wires and fires pathways that create various messages throughout the body.  These messages gear us up for fighting until we eventually burnout and the effect of this is what we call adrenal fatigue.  These messages also put us on alert, or in a hyper-vigilant state.  They get us to focus on what’s wrong or what might be out to harm us.  They create tension in the body so that we don’t feel the impact of harm or pain.  They effect our sleep cycles making it hard to feel rested or get good sleep.   They make it harder to digest our food, and they move energy out of self-healing and into self-protection.  This state of being is called neurological defense.  At any point in our life we can have experiences that don’t feel good to us and we activate these patterns of defense rather than feel the impact of pain or harm or potential pain/harm.  There is intelligence in these defensive patterns, however they greatly limit our experience of life.  We cannot move into healing and neurological openness unless we are willing to move towards that which we avoid feeling.   

NEUROLOGICAL OPENNESS   

Moving towards life

While there is intelligence to our defensive reactions and patterns in the body they also create great limitation in our experience of life.  They allow us to experience only a limited range of feelings, sensations, and thoughts.  They limit our behaviors, perceptions, and our relationships with self and others.  They cap the amount of energy we have access to receiving, giving and sharing.  They keep our bodies running in suboptimal energy conditions effecting our health and overall well-being.  They keep us from fully experiencing the range of our hearts and the hearts of others.  There is great cost to our avoidance of feeling pain.  

When we stop avoiding pain and allow ourselves to feel and be with it, some pretty amazing things happen.  First is that you can no longer be angry.  Feeling the pain we’ve experienced softens us.  Some people don’t even know just how angry they are because they’ve adopted other strategies of self-protection such as always being positive, people pleasing, or the more quiet version of anger which is self-hatred.  This can manifest very subtly as negative self-talk or simply not feeling yourself to be great.  If you don’t unequivocally know that you are fucking amazing then you probably have some work to do here.  Second is that your neurological, and thus physiological state, shifts.  All those messages that your nervous system sends out change in nature when you move towards life experiences.  Rather than messages gearing you up to fight, flight or freeze, it sends messages of relaxation and ease.  Food can then be digested, sleep happens naturally, and the self-healing mechanism occurs unimpeded.  Muscles relax, the posture becomes more upright and open, and your focus shifts onto what is here, what’s working, and on how life is supporting you.  Nothing is out to get you anymore.  You look for invitations and openings.  More opportunities seem to be available to you.  You feel more confident in yourself.  This is what I call neurological openness.

In neurological openness we participate more fully with life.  We perceive things that we didn’t perceive before, and we sense, feel and think differently because we are more open to life rather than in protection from it.  We become more awake or aware of our impact on life, others and ourselves.  We recognize more and more that we have choice.  This recognition of choice is the beginning place of novelty.  We start trying on new feelings, thoughts, behaviors and perceptions, which create and lay down new patterns in our neurology.  We become different and therefore experience life differently.  

The more we lay down the patterns of openness in our nervous system the more we move into the field of our heart.  The yummy bliss of yes.  Beyond participation with life we move into oneness with it.  We see that nothing in not us therefore there has never been anything to protect from.  This is the awakened stage of the healing journey.  From separation and self-protection into unification and love.  It is all available to you as you are ready for it.  

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  

ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF

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ENTRAIN TO YOUR HIGHER SELF 

Your high self is here now

Entrainment is a process of two independent systems or frequencies coming into alignment or phase with one another.  We can see this in biology as our circadian rhythms (i.e. light/dark sleep cycles) come into alignment with the seasons or time changes.  We also see this in physical systems such as when two individual pendulum clocks that are sitting on the same surface become synchronized to each other in their movements.  Energy gets transferred between the two independent moving systems and eventually they get locked into phase or frequency together for the period of time that they are interacting.  

Our individual physiological, psychological and I’ll even say our spiritual frequencies or rhythms can respond and lock into phase with other frequencies or oscillating bodies.  This in fact how spinal entrainment works when you are laying on the table receiving Network Care.  One spinal segment or oscillator interacts with another spinal segment or oscillator and they entrain to each other, hence why we call the sessions entrainments.  Entrainment is happening all of the time though it’s mostly unconscious to us.  Individual cells in our body are entraining to rhythms or frequencies put out by master gland or organ systems.  If we are around one person a lot we will start mimicking some of their behaviors or even moving or sounding like them.  When we attend a retreat or healing program we will start entraining to the field that is created there with the intention that is set by those who are running the program.  This is why we might have access to different thoughts, emotions or spiritual frequencies that we don’t typically have access to when we are there.  

To me the process of entrainment clearly demonstrates that everything is vibrating/oscillating energy or frequency, and when we come into different environmental conditions, energies will vibrate or oscillate together.  In the process of entrainment, whatever energy or vibration is stronger or more coherent, that is the one that the two will come together and oscillate as.  If you have followed this so far then you could extrapolate that your higher self, which is that self that knows, understands, and sees from a much wider vantage point such as like the perspectives of an eagle to an ant, is also energy or frequency.  It’s simply vibrating at a different frequency than the one that your conscious mind is vibrating at right now.  Energy can never be created or destroyed which means that the frequency of your higher self is here now in existence.  Even if you don’t have conscious awareness of it, it is here among the frequencies of creation and is part of the cosmic environment.   

UTILIZING FOCUS 

Becoming in phase with your higher self

I often talk about focus and where we place it.  Our focus, meaning our awareness, will only notice what we choose to tune into.  For example if we are not at all interested in basketball we will probably never see a basketball game.  We know it exists, but we place no awareness or energy into noticing its existence.  If however you are incredibly interested in chocolate you will likely seek out chocolate wherever you go, meaning it will be inside of your experience a lot of the time.  Even though it seems like “spiritual” things are more elusive than say basketball or chocolate, using your focus or awareness works the same way.  If you have no interest in seeing angels you will likely never see one, however if you have an intense desire and love of angels you will more likely interact with them because your desire, focus and love brings them into your environment.  I see this the same as for your higher self.  

You might ask yourself how much energy, time or focus you give to your higher self?  Equally you may ask yourself how connected you feel to it?  You may even have to ask yourself if you believe in it.  If not that is totally ok, however you will likely need to shift that belief if you have desire to make contact with it, as our beliefs generate our experiences.  Imagine for a moment what it would be like to feel clear, confident, easeful, peaceful, rested, vital, aligned, fearless, abundant, blissful, wise, loving, compassionate, discerning and endlessly energized.  These are some of the frequencies that your higher self is constituted as.  What if connecting to these frequencies is the equivalent of entraining to your higher self?  What if as you use your focus to tune into these qualities of higher self you entrain or become more and more in phase with the frequency of your higher self?  It is after all just physics and biology at play in the realm beyond our ordinary visual sense awareness of what is.

Focus is one of those things that is not very natural for most.  Most of us can’t choose to one-pointedly focus on whatever we choose for as long we want.  We will get distracted nine hundred billion times by thoughts, feelings and sensations.  So if we want to use focus then we must train it just like we would train any other muscle.  In my humble opinion training your focus is probably the most worthwhile muscle to train because your ability to focus is your power.  Focus can activate every single super power that currently lays dormant in the infinite field of vast consciousness.  It is the attractive force of the universe.  It is what allows instant manifestation to occur.  Meditation is probably the best tool currently in existence to help you build your focus muscle.  

Entraining to the frequency of your higher self locks your current state of being into phase with your higher state of being, meaning your current state entrains to your higher state.  For as long as you maintain your focus on your higher self you will create the environmental conditions for entrainment to happen.  As soon as you lose focus, you fall out of the conditions required for entrainment and begin operating as a separate independent system again, entraining to your ordinary state of being and knowing.  Focus is the key, which is fueled by practice and your desire to live a more magical experience of existence.  

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

PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION

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PEAK EXPERIENCE INTEGRATION 

Going beyond the known

Many of you have had those experiences of pure bliss or ecstatic rapture.  Moments of profundity and transcendental insight.  Where you experienced or knew something beyond what your ordinary senses and mind experience on a day to day basis.  Something that left you feeling touched, moved, alive, open, integrated and whole.  Words often cannot describe these experiences.  In fact when we use words to explain them, the words tend to make the experiences seem more ordinary than they are.  Yet often we want to share something of these moments with others so we do our best to translate them into mental thoughts and ideas, even though they will never truly fit inside of them.  

Peak experiences are gateways for waking up our awareness to the fact that there is more than what we’ve been experiencing life to be.  They stretch us beyond our known world into something more expansive and inclusive.  They often show us that there is indeed something behind the appearance of solid matter and physicalness, and beyond the ordinary thoughts we think.  If we’ve never had a peak experience it’s hard to believe that there is anything more to existence than what we experience as our everyday reality.  We simply have to take it on faith that there is something more, that is until something pops us out of our ordinary experiencing.  Even if we had 1, 2, 10 or a 100 peak experiences it can still be easy to fall back into our normal, habituated way of seeing reality as a physical machine devoid of spirit or essence.  

Peak experiences can occur at any moment and don’t necessarily require anything on our behalf in order to “make” them happen.  There are however certain conditions that seem to make the probability of them occurring more likely.  One is an earnest and sincere desire to know one’s self or know the true nature of reality even if you don’t fully know what that means.  Our desire for this creates the internal conditions along with an attractive force that set the stage for extrasensory or beyond sensory peak type of experiences.  Any type of inner or somatic work that you do, which helps dismantle your physical and mental defenses, increases your receptiveness to these types of experiences as well.  Other activators can be near death experiences, traumatic experiences such as car accidents or other physical/emotional threats, consuming psychedelic substances, meditation, lucid dreaming, sweat lodges and other healing work, particularly when there is a group field effect in place that supports going beyond the known.   

FUNCTION OF PEAK EXPERIENCES 

Bring the extraordinary to life

The function of the peak experience seems to be to give us a new or wider perspective on what is, viewing life in a different light than how we’ve been seeing it.  They also tend to increase our hunger for truth, knowing more of what is, and bring us more into alignment with ourselves and the larger organizing principles of life.  We get to feel what it’s like to vibrate at a higher energetic state with more awareness, openness and inclusion.  I find that it’s fairly natural to desire more of these experiences once you begin to taste them, yet the peak experience without the integration of it, is simply chasing pleasure and in the longterm is not fulfilling.  It’s like sex without love.  It may feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t have any lasting ripples on your state of being or what you create as your day to day reality.  

For many the desire for these experiences is to help bridge the so called gap between what is experienced on the more ordinary levels of reality and what gets glimpsed, tasted and known as reality through them.  Our minds may not believe that the essence of those experiences can really become our day to day reality, and that is the very debris that we need to clear.  Sometimes peak experiences are not “pleasurable” in the ordinary way we think of pleasure, but rather they are uncomfortably revealing.  They reveal where we have thoughts and beliefs that don’t support a more alive, rich and expansive way of being.  It’s like interference in the system of naturalness or our natural state of being.  That interference is made of up of stories and perspectives that we’ve created about our experiences that are distorted or not in alignment with the truth of what is.  Even though we might be very convinced of our perspectives and feel that they are all very accurate, our conviction doesn’t make them true if they are not in alignment with how the larger organizing principle views life, which is always love and acceptance of all.  

The desire to hold anything separate decreases as we open into more and more.  As our rigidities soften, our dissociations land home, and our completeness is accepted by us there is less and less that we can even perceive as separate.  This is the perspective you taste during peak moments, and yes for the most part it feels good, or better stated it feels like unified ecstasy that is grounded and all pervasive, that knows without figuring anything out, that loves without thought, and that is without anything.  Integrating these experiences is work.  It’s the core reason why we do any of this inner work to begin with.  To live the truth of our being, which is free, boundless, unified, whole, in love and at peace, that’s why we do it.  

There is infinite oneness from which infinite possibilities are birthed and brought into expression.  The deeper you know this infinite oneness to be the truth of existence and the source of all, the more available and capable you are to bring these possibilities to life.  Beyond ordinary, non-ordinary and extraordinary is increasingly and increasingly more probable to be your lived experience as you commit to integrating and bringing your peak experiences to life.

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

UTILIZING IMAGINATION

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UTILIZING IMAGINATION

Giving non-reality form

Our imagination is the most potent creative tool that we have.  It far surpasses any mechanical device or conceptual knowledge we have in regards to bringing forth our creations into this world.  Without utilizing our imagination we simply create the same things that are known to us over and over again.  We then wonder why things look, feel and behave the same way and/or why our own patterns seem to never change.  What we often fail to recognize is that everything that is created has been imagined by someone at some point in time.  Imagination is the birthplace of all creation and the seed to transformation of all existing forms.  Part of what caps our imagination is that we have beliefs that say only x, y or z is possible.  Anything outside of our current beliefs is deemed impossible by our mind, and if we stretch too far, it’s just called fantasy or “made up non-reality.”

But what if made up non-reality is just the future of what is to come into creation.  I’d imagine that the person who created the airplane, the first MRI, the cell phone, the computer and on and on, had a hell of an imagination.  They would have to because they brought into existence creations that previously where uncreated.  Whether we are tapping into the collective unconscious and connecting with information contained there, or if we are simply making it all up in our own minds, we are bringing forth novelty into form.  This is the power of imagination.  Now it doesn’t stop at imagination.  If you want to make physical your imagination then there is work to be done.  Without the work imagination is just wishful thinking.  Physical manifestation requires output.  It requires taking action on what you envision, desire and dream of. 

I find that people are often either wonderful imagineers, but lack follow through in bringing their creations to life, or people are great doers, but don’t feel like they have much creative potential.  It can be easy to fall into thinking about stuff incessantly without following through on it, and equally easy to constantly be doing stuff without any time given to imaging new possibilities.  However both of these qualities are necessary in order to bring imagination to life and new and exciting manifestations into form.  This is after all how we up level our human experience.  The most important and key ingredient here is that you have to believe what you imagine is possible.  You don’t have to know how to do it, you just have to believe that it can be done.  I find this to be the bridge between imagination and action.  

IMAGINATION & SELF-DEVELOPMENT 

Creating new patterns

One of the overlooked areas is how we can use our imagination for self-development.  The same principles from above apply, however we utilize them in a more internal way.  Rather than focusing on something we want to create in our outer environment the focus shifts to our inner environment.  What new aspects, patterns or ways of being do we want to bring to life?  We can develop and recreate ourselves over and over again.  It’s unlikely that you possess all of the same characteristics that you did when you were 6 or 16 or 26.  Perhaps some things feel the same, but much has been altered, added or upgraded.  How we most often change aspects of ourselves comes through experiences that we have.  We learn through experiences and overtime we develop different ways of thinking, seeing and behaving.  For most people it seems that this process “just happens.”  What I mean by this is that most people are not actively pursuing change just for the sake of it and because they see everything as already perfect in themselves and their existence.  Rather life seems to give us experiences and then we develop through those experiences.  One of the cool things about imagination is that comes prior to our experience, not after it.  Imagining ourselves in novel ways, and changing our identity and the ways we engage with life can come before we have an experience that kind of “forces” us to change.  We don’t have to wait for life to hand us experiences (ie. opportunities) in order to up level ourselves.  We can simply choose to do it through using our imagination.  Once again there will need to be follow up with actions, and the fundamental belief that we can change is the foundational block that allows the entire picture to be built.    

You might be wondering what does all of this look like?  Well it’s really not that complex.  It starts with imagination.  What do you desire, envision and dream of for yourself?  How would you like to feel?  How would you like to be perceived or seen?  How would you like to behave, act or be?  Some of us are very good at doing this and for others it feels more challenging.  The challenge comes because we often feel like the same person because we are generating the same thoughts and feelings about ourselves.  This gives us the illusion of sameness and/or solidity in our identity.  However nothing is solid and everything can reorganize the energy of its form, therefore your identity is malleable.  As you begin the process of envisioning your most optimal configuration of self see where your impossibility beliefs arise.  Maybe you come up with a few things that feel alterable, but some that seem unalterable.  Simply take note.  Go to the edge of what your mind will still accept as possible.  This is where you can play.  If you perceive it to be impossible then you will have nowhere to go and you won’t take action on it.  Therefore go the edge of possibility and then start taking actions in alignment with whatever it is you come up with.  For example maybe one of things you desire is to feel joy.  The obvious action to this would be to activate more joy daily in your life.  Perhaps you want to become more intuitive.  Take actions that align with you in ways that you feel would help you bring your intuition to life.  Maybe you want to be seen as powerful, take actions that align with you feeling powerful.  This might mean changing the way you dress, how you drive, the places you eat, where you shop, the tone of your voice, the things you have in your house, and on and on.  This is a process, but with imagination and action you can become anew over and over again.  You can recreate yourself and all of your patterns.  Nothing is solid or fixed no matter how long you’ve been operating that way.  Nothing is irreversibly engrained.  

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

GOING WITH LIFE

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GOING WITH LIFE 

Separation to liberation

We spend an awful lot of energy keeping ourselves separate from life, understandably so.  We are given a name, develop characteristics, preferences, likes, dislikes, roles, habits and patterns of thinking and behaving that create an identity of who we come to know ourselves as.  An identity that seems like a separate person who is distinct from other persons.  We have functional control over this physical body, we sense through it, and we assume that we are located inside of it.  We believe the information that our senses give us and what our thoughts tell us as fact.  We don’t recognize that we are what is aware of the sensations or thoughts, and not the sensations or thoughts themselves.  Said another way we become our experience rather than recognizing we are what is aware of our experience.  All of this reinforces our sense of separateness from awareness rather than one with it.  We feel powerless to something that seems other than us and find ourselves kind of at odds with life.  

When we feel at odds it’s like we are always working against something and there is a sense of hardness that comes with it.  It’s the feeling that there is you and then there is this other thing, object, or person, which you have to work with to do something to.  Like this other thing, object, or person is separate and you have to maintain that separateness.  If you decided to make a bold move one day and didn’t maintain that separateness, all of life would flow and you would recognize that you can pay attention to content (i.e. sensations & thoughts) or you can pay attention to the fact that you are aware while all the content comes and goes.  What is important here is that you would get that you aren’t what you experience, but rather you are what is aware of the experience.  You would feel freedom instantly rather than the bound-ness of maintaining separation, but this freedom of rejoining yourself feels chaotic, destabilizing and unknown to your current sense of being a separate person with the identity that you have created as yourself.

To go with life rather than feeling at odds, or like you have to go to work on it by attempting to do something to it, is to stop fighting anything.  It’s to end the thought that anything needs to be different.  It is the cessation of the idea that there is somewhere else to get to where you will feel amazing and where all of your prayers are answered.  There is no location that exists other than where you are.  The freedom you seek is contained inside this moment and every moment.  You will not ever arrive somewhere other because there is no other and there is no out there.  At some point we must stop running from thing to thing to thing hoping to find relief and answers.  There is nothing out there. 

ENDING NEEDS 

Arriving in the present

Part of maintaining separation is the illusion of needs.  When we believe ourselves to be a separate person we feel as though we have a lot of needs and that we somehow we have to work to get them met.  However as we merge back into ourselves, into non-separation, we realize that all needs are met because everything is gotten.  Meaning life has its own back.  It’s completely taken care of.  It’s fulfilled and all set.  When we are in contact with ourselves we know this, and when we are disconnected we don’t know it.  To be free of needing anything is to be truly free.  You lose all agenda that might have subtle underpinnings in your subconscious.  You can just be because there isn’t anything pulling you out of yourself to go and get or figure out.  Everything is also known even though paradoxically your mind knows nothing.

There are a few fundamental points to emphasize here in arriving where you are and the cessation of needs.  One is a foundational acceptance that absolutely nothing needs to change or be different than it is.  Along the same lines it would suffice to say that all is well just as it is.  Creating this as the container for your mind allows your mind to relax its incessant attempts to hook into thoughts in order to do or figure out something that it perceives to be other than itself.  There might still be thoughts, but you simply notice them rather than become them.  The next piece is giving yourself permission to not have to know and be in the space of the unknown, which is another term for the present moment.  When we arrive here to the present moment nothing is known and everything is revealed.  Our minds tend not to easily surrender themselves because the job of our mind is to maintain “known-ness”, identity and separation.  To give away what we think we know renders our mind useless and minds like to be used.  From the perspective of our mind “unknown” equals the experience of confusion.  This is one of our least favorite states of being, however learning to be good with confusion without attempting to get rid of it by making something certain again, is the gateway into now and to going with life.

To go with life is to know your freedom and experience it.  It’s to no longer be at odds with anything.  It’s to no longer perceive separation.  It’s to no longer control the happenings of life.  It’s to no longer insist that anything, including yourself, be any certain way other than what it is.  The experience of this is rested while awake.  The experience of this is peace.  It is not an outside job, it’s an inner one.  It’s not far fetched or out of reach, it’s all already here.  There is no distance to traverse, no progress that needs to be made, and there’s nothing more that you need to get or figure out first.  Available in this moment is liberation.  It requires nothing to be different than it is right now.  You don’t need to be more worthy than you already are.  You don’t need to love yourself more first.  Stop trying to get somewhere so that you can arrive and be where you are already.  You will not recognize wholeness and perfection somewhere out there at a future date if you don’t recognize it now.  Liberation is available, “achievable” and is the natural state.  It requires nothing to be done in order to “get” it.  The only sacrifice, if you want to call it that, is giving away your current state of everything you think you know.  What we think we know is actually confusion and what we perceive to be unknown and therefore confusing is truth and freedom.  

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

LETTING PEOPLE HAVE THIR EXPERIENCE

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LETTING PEOPLE HAVE THEIR EXPERIENCE

Ending control

We tend to be really good at trying to control life.  One of our most favorite ways to do this is through attempting to control ourselves or others in effort to make things amiable and peaceful.  In part this tendency is born out not wanting to see, or be the elicitor, of suffering and distress in another person.  The other part is that it creates a sense of external safety and security for us when everyone is happy.  As an effect of this we learn to not fully express ourselves, make things ok that really aren’t ok, not say or do what is true for us, and walk on the eggshells of life trying not to create too much distress or suffering in the experience of those around us.  This helps us feel like a “nice or good” person and like we won’t be left, abandoned, cast out or hated by others.  It keeps us feeling like we belong and like we will have our basic human needs met for survival and connection because people will like us.  This however comes at tremendous cost.  Cost to our own energy system because it’s draining to not be ourselves, and this drain on our energy system effects our physical, emotional and mental health.  That equates to not being able to maximally utilize your body, mind and life to play and be of service.  There are also costs in terms of learning for self and others.  When we control ourselves or try to control another person’s experience, we delay or lose out on development steps or stages in our personal and soul evolution.  We also don’t get to be mirrors for others assisting them in their growth.  

There is no denying that feeling bad at any level of our being sucks.  Suffering and distress is not a walk in the park.  It makes sense that we want to avoid and move in any direction but towards it.  While I believe that we can learn and grow without suffering, it currently tends to be part of the experience of learning for most.  Many of us will choose our own suffering over seeing another person suffer.  We will mold ourselves any which way we need to in order to try to take away, or not be the seeming source of suffering from someone, particularly someone we love.  Even though this seems incredibly honorable and kind, it robs people from fully having their experience.  Our addiction to fixing, alleviating or avoiding suffering and distress does not allow people to have their experience, whatever that experience might be.  This doesn’t in any way mean that you don’t lend a helping hand or words of kindness to someone who needs it, but rather that you don’t try to control their experience of their experience.  When we can fully be with our experience, liberation ensues.  We don’t end suffering by trying to manipulate people’s experience of it, but rather by helping to usher them through it.  Assistance and support in the ways that feel authentic and true are always in alignment, but it is not your responsibility to fix how someone feels.  It is not your job to make people feel differently than they do.  Notice where your own uncomfortableness with other people’s uncomfortableness comes in and runs the show of your words, actions and the ways you do or don’t express yourself.  Recognize where you might feel threatened if someone doesn’t feel good around you.  These are the indicators that you are hijacked by your own emotions, and whatever your actions are in the moment are not from coming from alignment, but rather from your own uncomfortablenesses and sense of threat. 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CARE ABOUT OTHERS? 

Moving beyond manipulation

This might all create some sense of confusion for you around what it means to care about others.  We are quite conditioned to believe that caring about others means that we help them feel a certain way about themselves or have certain experiences.  This assumes that we have some type of control over others, their free will in choosing their state of being and that somehow we know best.  It creates a power dynamic, which typically goes unseen, but can be felt as a subtle tension in the field of you and them.  It may also show up as a feeling of disempowerment, inferiority, distance or uncertainty that is is temporarily satiated externally by another, but isn’t sourced from your own knowing and therefore comes with subtle feelings of mistrust or instability.  

What if caring about others simply meant that you are without agenda in relationship with other.  To be a container of acceptance and love for whatever is present.  To not take anything as a personal insult or threat.  To not run or move away from anything and also not fix anything.  To not hold on or insist that anything stay, go or change out of your own desire for it be a certain way.  What if this is what it means to care rather than trying to make people happy and give them what you think they want so that they feel good and un-triggered, and you feel safe.  That, by the way, is a recipe for stagnation, lack of intimacy, and suffering if you ask me.  Again I am not suggesting that you not do or say things that are authentic acts of caring for you and that you desire to do, but rather that you stop protecting yourself and others in order to avoid unpleasantness.  What if transmutation of suffering occurs through allowing it rather than trying to get rid of it?  I get this is radical for most people and yet this is what healing (i.e. wholeness) is.  In order to come to know our wholeness we must include all, allow all and be with all, even the unpleasantries that we try to ignore, smash or manipulate out of existence.  

You could say that we live in a sea of manipulation of sorts.  Manipulating ourselves, others and buying into all of the manipulation of media, schools, healthcare system and such in order to feel as good as possible.  Not all manipulation is negative, but I do believe that it’s important to be intentional in its use.  Is it used to help one know that one is the source of all experiences?  That one is in charge of one’s own self?  If not you become reliant on external sources of manipulation to feel certain ways rather than moving through all of your life experiences that are there to guide you into greater self-knowing and self-sourcing.  

Letting people have their experience is caring about them even if that means that they will experience things that don’t feel good.  It’s ok to not feel good sometimes.  It’s ok for others to not feel good sometimes.  There is so much rapid learning that can occur when we stop trying to control life.  When we simply allow the truth of what is in our experience to be expressed we create liberation for everyone even if it doesn’t feel like it right away.  It’s ok to feel shaky, scared and frightened that you might lose something you love dearly if you be yourself and act authentically.  However you might also be surprised at how your fears don’t always live themselves out how you imagine they might.  The path takes courage and trust that all is well despite our experience of it.  

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

WHAT DO YOU SERVE?

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WHAT DO YOU SERVE?

Living devoted

So much of our lives we live on automatic pilot.  We go through the motions of our days without much thought as to why we are doing what we are doing.  We simply do the things we think we need to do in order to make life happen.  By the end of our day we only hope that we got everything done just to wake up and do it all over again.  In this way we aren’t living intentionally, but rather only to survive.  While this is valid, it doesn’t do much for us in terms of feeling soulfully aligned, fulfilled and like we are completing the mission for our existence.  Instead we feel like we are on a treadmill that we can’t get off of because the stuff of life doesn’t stop happening.  Eventually we get tired, then exhausted, yet we continue to focus on the stuff of life rather than on why we even exist in the first place.

What we serve is what we focus our time, energy and attention on.  Most of us have aspirations to serve something great.  Examples of something great would be serving love, joy, freedom, truth, peace, or unity.  While many of us might have the aim to serve these things, what most of us end up of serving is our to do list, our emotional states, our frustrations, our limitations, our judgments, our preferences, and our pleasures or comforts.  We make these things primary in our life rather than what it is we say or think we desire to make primary or serve.  For example say we feel frustrated about something.  We tend to focus our energy on the state of being frustrated and what we are frustrated about, rather than on being or feeling peace, which is what we might ideally like to think that we serve.  Or say we have 30 things on our to do list for the day and feel overwhelmed.  We then keep our feelings of overwhelm in the forefront, rather than focusing on joy.  One more example is that we might lose ourselves inside of pleasurable sensations or comfort that may actually be limiting, rather than conjuring up the energy to focus on freedom.  

In order to live intentionally devoted to what it is you consciously want to serve requires that you give away your own personal life with all of your preferences and the ways you think/want life to be.  99%, or maybe even 100% of our frustrations have to do with life not looking, feeling or being the way we want it to look, feel or be.  However if it is no longer about us, but only about what we serve, it cuts out all the b.s. and confusion.  Life becomes very uncomplicated when it is no longer about all of your personal preferences and desires being met, but rather it’s about the reason why you exist, which for most people is lives along the lines of serving love, joy, freedom, truth, peace, or unity, and helping others know or experience this too. 

GIVING AWAY YOUR SELF

Moving beyond self-indulgence

In order to move beyond our constant self-indulgence in our own preferences, needs, wants, desires, emotional states and thoughts, something has to be even more important than us.  This isn’t to dismiss our own inherent value or worth, but rather to make it not so important.  There is a development move, stage or step so to speak, from making your self value important, to simply accepting it and understanding that it is.  See the paradox is that when we understand, know and accept our own inherent value or worth, all of our own “stuff” doesn’t really take up space inside of us anymore.  We don’t need to focus on ourselves.  This frees up our internal space to align with our mission, why we exist, and serving that which we desire to serve rather than our own little personal world stuff.  

Some people might call this ego death, but it really isn’t as dramatic as spiritual people tend to make it out to be.  It’s just a shift in focus.  That focus is from your personal life and all of its details and perceived demands being central, to making what you serve to be central.  It’s also easy to know your purpose, mission or what you really want to serve.  It’s not something that you do or even what you are doing now, but rather it’s what you want people to get by your existence.  It’s what you would want everyone in the world to know if you died tomorrow.  You can ask yourself the question, “If I died tomorrow what would I want every child, woman, man, animal, etc. to know, experience or feel?”  What imprint, information or feeling do you want every person that you interact with to get from you?  What quality or energetic vibration do you desire that everything in creation experiences?  What kind of world do you want to live in?  You must be what you want yourself and others to experience.  

In giving away yourself you might be a little cranky and put up a bit of fight.  You might feel sad or like a death of sorts, as the focus on your personal dreams perishes.  However you will open into something more magnificent that it will be easy to forget your crankiness.  Be clear though that what you open up into is not finally getting what you want, which is often what people think is the spiritual reward for surrendering the self.  Rather you open into the larger mission of which you are a part of and for which there is so much more support for, than whatever it is you are trying to do on your own, but again it’s not about you.  One more time be clear this is not a recipe for things happening how you prefer them to happen.  There will still be hard work and showing up, probably way more than you currently do.  It also doesn’t mean that your body changes, sensations go away, or that situations or people in your life change.  Those things might happen, but this isn’t about them happening.  It’s only about you aligning with why you exist and opening yourself to serve that.  While you still may not have what you want, living aligned and serving what you desire to serve is actually a 1000 times more rewarding than serving yourself, and a bit relieving because it’s finally not about you.  

There is a choice to make and it’s one that you must consciously choose, and continue to choose over and over again until you’ve got it.  That choice is what you serve.  This is what you focus on, what you tune your self to, what you put in the forefront over anything that appears in your experience.  That choice creates a developmental shift from what we might call a pseudo self-empowerment into the dissolution of self, and thus self-importance.  Said another way it’s simply growing up.  While it’s an important development step to become a self, it’s also important to realize that you’re not.

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

UNIQUELY YOU

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UNIQUELY YOU 

You are a gift

Each of us is unique.  An expression of the one infinite that no one else can be.  While in essence we are all the same, each of us carries  a unique flavor or frequency, which we share by being who we are and taking action in ways that excite us.  You are ok just as you are.  There is no one else that you need to be, or even that you could be for that manner.  There is nothing you need to do except that which feels resonate with you.  Yet we spend much energy thinking we must be like so and so, and that we must do more or do differently than what we desire to do.  We create negative meaning about ourselves based on arbitrary stories of who we think we should be and what we should be doing.  We then of course feel bad about ourselves, unworthy, not good enough and like we are failing our purpose.  We don’t appreciate who we are or the flavor we express, which results in us not taking actions in ways we desire.

Why do we see others and appreciate or “envy” them while not appreciating or envying ourselves? Perhaps you think it’s self-absorbed to appreciate your own being.  Maybe it feels awkward to you to like yourself and acknowledge how you contribute.  Perhaps you’ve confused loving yourself with arrogance.  Regardless of what it is for you there is likely self-denial of your own worth or refusal to see yourself as a gift.  Imagine a world where we all saw ourselves as a gift.  Since giving is inherent in being a gift, life would be an abundant resource of available energy for exchange with no depletion.  By not seeing the magnificence of your own being you actually take energy out of the field of life rather than contribute to it. Seeing yourself as a gift is the least arrogant way of viewing.  

Unwinding the story of arrogance and relaxing into yourself is not difficult.  It requires no special skills, knowledge or profound healing experience, but instead requires only the inner permission to do so.  There is no outside person, situation or force that will make you ok as you are.  Only you can decide to be ok as you are and come to appreciate and like your own self.  Seeing value in the unique expression that you are without adding anything to you is key to feeling like you are fulfilling your purpose for existing.  The reason that so many feel lost without clear direction is not because there is a lack of guidance, but rather because there is a lack of self-appreciation and love.  How on purpose you feel is directly related to how you feel about yourself.  If you turn the pressure down on trying to be or do something other than you are and turn the appreciation up on yourself as you are, your calling or purpose will be clear to you.   

CLEARING JUDGMENT  

No right or wrong

There is no right way to do life. There is also no wrong way.   This is challenging for most people to accept.  Regardless of how spiritual or evolved we think we are, most of us have judgment of self or others.  What if you radically realized that you really don’t know either way or any way, what is really right or wrong.  That your conceptions of rightness and wrongness are based only in what you’ve been conditioned to believe.  If you cleared yourself of all beliefs there would only be pure meaninglessness or said another way, there would only be what is without thought about what is.  Many will argue still that there is right and wrong, better and worse, good and bad, but what if there just is what there is.  If we stopped judging what is and instead saw what is, we may surprise ourselves as to what it is we see.  This state of clearness, of non-bias, is the essential ground from which you can effortlessly be and share the gift of you.  Where you know how to serve, share or express the gift you are and participate with what is rather than think, strategize or attempt to figure things out.

Giving yourself the permission and freedom to stop judging life frees you up to be of service to it.  When you no longer need to make a difference, only then can you actually make one.  This is when simply being you, as you are, makes the difference.  There is nothing out there, added or extra needed.  There is only the unique expression of what you are to share without agenda of what will come forth from your expression.  When you appreciate and know enoughness of what you are then enoughness is the result, but because we come from incompletion and attempting to get something to happen or to get somewhere, we never quite arrive.  

All of this to say, and to give you permission if you so need it, to feel amazing about yourself.  To embrace the unique expression of the one infinite that you are.  The only things to clean up are those things in your mind or life that are inconsistent with you feeling amazing about who you are.  You don’t have to clean up to be better, you don’t have to heal in order to be more, there is no more or better to get too.  Dispel any of the beliefs that you have that this may be arrogant, dismissive or prideful.  To feel bad about yourself and/or your expression is the true pridefulness.  Recognize that where you are trying to ‘get’ to is simply to feel good, love/be yourself, and share your unique expression with others.  There is also nothing others need to get or receive from you other than what you are.    

Everything you could ever need will be met and taken care of once you embrace you.  It’s the end of trying to get things, accomplish stuff or be loved by others in order to be ok.  You will have all things you need, accomplish what is yours to accomplish and be rested as love when you accept your own inherent uniqueness as you are.  No one else can be you.  No one else can serve as you do.  No one else can fulfill the that purpose you are.  Be done trying to be or do something other than what you are.  Discover the joy, freedom and love in being you and the wonder, awe and gratitude of what naturally expresses through.  

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

ALL IS ENOUGH

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ALL IS ENOUGH 

Shifting perspectives

Imagine what it would be like to look out at all of life and see it as enough.  To see nothing lacking, nothing missing and nothing that needs progress or change.  For a moment to be content with what is.  Notice how you feel when you look out and see enough.  Now share this same outward perspective of enoughness inwardly.  See yourself, your body, your inner journey, and wherever you are in life at this moment as enough.  Again notice how you feel.  Recognize the ease and sense of calm rested-ness that becomes instantly available when you see this way.  Notice how your entire system relaxes and you become present and available to whatever is here now.  This enoughness is what most all of us crave.  Many of us are tired.  Tired of feeling like life is scarce, like we have to work hard to survive, that we must stay vigilant, can never relax, or that something must change.  It’s exhausting to view from the perspective of not enough.  Yet most of us don’t realize that it is simply a perspective.  We believe scarcity to be reality.  

Enoughness is always present, always available, and always here.  It requires only that you bring your focus on it.  What we focus on we experience.  It’s challenging for the mind to accept this and to change its beliefs in this way.  We really want to keep believing what we believe even if what we believe doesn’t feel good.  We think that it’s the only option.  We don’t see ourselves in the equation as the source of our experience.  Due to this unawareness of ourselves as the source of what we experience we often feel powerless to our beliefs rather than in charge of them.  Until we see ourselves and simultaneously really, really want to believe something different, we won’t.  We will choose the same beliefs that feel bad, that generate the same feelings of fear, lack and scarcity, that is until we are truly fed up or things in our life or body break down.

It’s a bit of an interesting paradox that we have to really convince ourselves to want what we want.  We all want to feel abundant and in the state of enoughness, yet we must be really tempted to make that choice in perspective.  We will come up with one hundred million reasons why we can’t choose it, one hundred million ways to disbelieve that it’s possible, and one hundred million insistences why we must keep our old belief system of scarcity, lack and not enough.  Life will give us challenges where it will feel hard to choose the perspective of enoughness and yet that is the inner work required to make the change in belief.  The challenges are the perfect gift, the most pristine catalyst, that you need in order to choose the perspective of your true desire.   

INNER BOOTCAMP 

Choosing enough

Choosing the perspective you desire is not always easy.  When the experience of life appears empty of things you desire, or it feels like life is not working for you and you can’t make sense of what appears to not be inside of your experience, doubts arise.  When doubt is present you default to your habitual way of perceiving life, which for most is through the lack and scarcity lens.  Fear arises based on how you are perceiving things to be and you find yourself stuck.  Stuck in nothing more than a perspective, yet it feels like so much more than that.  You might wonder how things can just be a matter of perspective, perhaps it seems too simple, yet how could they be anything else?  Two people could experience the exact same situation or conditions, and experience them very different based on how they perceive the experience.  

Living from enoughness or completeness is entirely possible.  It is not fantastical to entertain this as your lived experience.  You must first start seeing the challenges that seem contrary to enoughness in your life as opportunities to learn it.  What this means is that when situations arise that seem to activate your lack, not enough, or scarce thoughts, you must see these situations as opportunities to choose a new perspective, and then you must actively choose to see abundance where you previously saw it as not.  Again your mind will likely resist this at first.  It won’t want to make the change in perspective because it doesn’t yet believe it.  That’s ok.  Choose it anyways and then notice that you begin to feel better.  You might oscillate back and forth between choosing lack and then choosing to see enough.  You might go back of forth 15-100 times for just one situation or challenge that presents itself, and that’s ok.  That oscillation back and forth is building a muscle, you inner muscle of enoughness.  

Lack perspectives can just be tricky to see.  They can come dressed up in a strong need to make progress or make something different.  Though this might seem very natural to you to want to make progress, because it is quite engrained in us that this is what we are supposed to be doing as humans, you must recognize what your need to make progress is rooted in.  Do you feel that there is somewhere better to get too?  Do you feel where you are is not enough?  Do you feel there is something wrong with what is happening now and you need to make it different?  All of that is rooted in lack and not enoughness.  

When instead you choose the perspective of enoughness and become rooted in it, life still flows, and there is still projects, activities and happenings.  The difference is that you play in the unfolding of life rather than try to make stuff happen to it.  It quite a bit more easeful even though there is still activity and doing occurring.  There is nothing to fix so you have less attachment to any outcome and your only purpose in doing is to have fun and because you enjoy it, not because something more or better must occur.  This is what is to come from enough rather than to try to get to enough.  If you keep trying to get there you will never arrive.  If instead you simply choose it, over and over and over again until you are rested there, then and only then will you experience it.  

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