inner freedom

Bound & Unbound Energy

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BOUND & UNBOUND ENERGY 

Intelligence and it’s creations

We have all heard that everything is energy.  It is one of those things that we know conceptually, but perhaps haven’t given much contemplation as to what it actually means and how it impacts our lives.  You might be someone who feels that the world of energy is a bit elusive to you as it is framed in healing and spiritual contexts.  For example maybe you feel like you’ve never felt energy before or at least have never experienced it like other people seem to experience it.  Yet if everything is energy then you’ve undeniable experienced it.  Science tells us energy equal mass times the speed of light squared.  This means that matter and energy are interchangeable.  They are different expressions of the same thing, so if you’ve experienced mass, which again you clearly have, then you’ve experienced energy.

You may then wonder why the experience of energy seems to be different for you then it appears to be for others.  This brings us to the conversation of bound and unbound energy.  Bound energy is energy that is organized into a form.  Forms are both gross/dense in nature, meaning they are physical say like our human body, buildings and mountains.  Pretty much everything we consider to be an object in a dense form.  Forms are also subtle in nature, meaning emotions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and concepts are all forms as well.  If there was no binding of energy there would be no forms at all.  This means we wouldn’t be able to create anything, including a thought, idea, emotion or any kind of physical form. When there is no form to energy, meaning it is not organized into a specific configuration, then this is what is called unbound energy.  You can also think of unbound energy as  the energy of potential.  It is what is available to create or manifest with and from.  

So what organizes unbound energy into forms?  The answer is Universal Intelligence.  Other terms for this are, pure awareness or being.  That which is, knows, be’s and exists, is full of all of the information that creates this entire universe that we experience, including what we experience as ourselves.  Sometimes people will refer to this universal intelligence as the codes for creation, the blueprint of the universe or God/Goddess.  This is why meditators seek to empty their minds out from all concepts, including thoughts, feelings, and sensations, because as we empty our minds out of all of this content we can notice the pure awareness or pure being that remains.  Even though initially this may seem boring for some, or like “nothing is happening”, “nothing is happening” is the gateway into the infinite source of intelligence that creates this universe, and beyond that what you actually are.    

RETURN TO FREEDOM 

Unwinding back into our original state

To recap, bound energy is that which is organized into both subtle and dense forms.  Unbound energy is the energy of potential, which is available for forms to be created out of, and that which organizes or binds energy is called universal intelligence.  Without the binding of energy we would have no manifest creation.  “Creation,” if you will, would just be pure being, there would be no substance to it like we currently experience.  There would be no objects, other people, ideas, thoughts, feelings, sensations, or anything at all.  It would just be being.  Many people say that creation was created so that this original being could experience itself through different expressions of itself.  This is where oneness or primordial essence begins and ends, in pure being, in itself.  Everything is born out of being and will eventually return back to being.  It is also often said that everything is an illusion, meaning that all of creation and the forms that get created mask or hide that which is their true nature.  This is why if we focus solely on the form, like our human mind mostly does, but we don’t see through the form to the essence of what it is made of, then we are lost in the illusion so to speak.  

Let us revisit bound energy again and make some distinctions.  Bound energy can have varying degrees of boundness inside of its forms.  For example if your spinal cord is very tense and tight it contains more bound energy than a relaxed spinal cord does.  This means that your experience of your physical body will seem more dense and solid if your spinal cord is taut than if it is relaxed.  Within subtler forms such as thoughts or emotions, some thoughts are more binding than other thoughts.  Same is true for emotions.  It is quite obvious that emotions such as joy and giddiness feel lighter than anger or sadness.  Joy and giddiness contain more unbound energy and therefore we feel freer when we feel those emotions than when we feel anger or sadness.  It is also obvious that the thought “the world and everyone in it is out to get me” feels more constricting and defeating then the thought “everything is working out for me.”  Again there is more energy available in the second thought, more possibility and more light.  The degree to which we pay attention to these nuances of how we operate will determine the energy and reality we experience.  We don’t experience reality, but rather we experience our interpretation of reality based on the available amount of energy we have access to.  If you aren’t experiencing the reality or the energy state that you want to it’s not because it’s “reality’s” fault, it’s simple due to how and where you place your focus.  

The more unbound we become, the more we feel what we think of as “energy”, both in physical and spiritual ways.  There is no such thing as a person that doesn’t feel energy.  We are all experiencing energy all of the time.  It’s simply a matter of how bound or unbound it is.  Doing practices such as meditation give us an opportunity to completely rest in the unbound nature of the original self, which is limitless, infinite and all knowing.  Then doing the inner work of feeling our heavier emotions (rather than avoiding them or pretending they don’t exist) so that we can unbind the energy of them, and shifting our focus from our denser thoughts to thoughts that feel lighter, allows us to experience those more spiritually free states.  What we call more spiritual is simply less bound.  Those states are even more bright with light and energy, and it is where we feel the most free.  In some way everyone is seeking this.  The return to our original state; perfect, whole and free.

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic, 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

END OF CONTROL

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END OF CONTROL 

Finding freedom through acceptance

The seeds of control and manipulation run deep inside of us.  They are often subtle, elusive and out of our own sight, yet this does not make them any less present.  The attempts we make to control ourselves, control others, control circumstances, control emotions, control thoughts and control sensations is endless.  The way we feel when we aren’t in control or we don’t know what is going to happen next is the paradox of terrified freedom.  Oh how we hunger to feel free and yet the terror of freedom with its constant present moment to moment unfolding and no thing being certain in the future, keeps us locked inside of our self-made prison.  

To state the blatantly obvious, control runs contrary to freedom.  Anything we attempt to control physically, or even just inside of our minds, impinges on the freedom of that which we are attempting to manipulate.  Now if the thing/person that we are attempting to control already knows its inner state of freedom than our attempts will be fruitless, as that which knows it’s already free cannot be controlled, coerced or led to believe other.  Its free will is known and what’s known cannot be unknown.  However if that which we attempt to control is not aware of its free will then it is easily manipulated.  This is why its easier to manipulate a piece of wood, which does not yet know its free will, then say a human being that is more aware of itself and that it has some level of free will. I am obviously speaking from the perspective that everything is alive and conscious in the universe and all is on a path of waking up more and more to its fully conscious and free state.  

I want to bring into the mix here the topic of structures and organizational frameworks that create personal and societal rules of engagement.  Many people may feel that structures or organizational frameworks of any kind impinge on their freedom.  This may show up as simply as having resistance to creating a daily schedule for yourself, or being in a committed relationship with one other person, or even having a single job that you do.  These containers may, on the surface, appear to impinge on your freedom.  The same can be said about larger systems and structures that make up our shared collective experience.  The way that I see it is that structures inherent in and of themselves do not limit freedom.  In fact structures are needed to support freedom and create organization within the creative process.  However when structures are infused with control, rigidity and manipulation, and do not support the awakening to free will, then they will feel limiting rather than freedom enhancing.  The key is the recognition of the consciousness of one’s self inside of or in relationship to the structure.  Does the consciousness know its power and feel that its in choice and can decide for itself at any time, or does it not know its power and therefore feels victimized by the container that is either self-made or collective made.  Through the recognition and knowing that you are always in charge you can come to appreciate and even love the support of structures.  They are simply learning tools that help bring creative impulses into organized beauty.   

NON-SELECTIVE ACCEPTANCE 

Freeing all experience

Now that we have those basics covered let’s come back to the seeds of control inside of your own mind.  There are really two basic paths that you can take in any moment.  One is to control self/other/experience and the other is to accept self/other/experience.  Depending on what you choose you will get a very different experience of life.  I invite you to try to not think of it in terms of positive and negative, but instead of cultivating what it is that you truly desire.  Feel into control and feel into acceptance.  Decide which feels better to you.  There is not a right/wrong here, but only that which you truly desire.  It is different for each person and there is learning in both choices.  I would say for the vast majority of people, particularly if you’ve found and are reading this article, acceptance feels better to you.  From my current level of understanding, at the higher levels of awareness all control must move into acceptance, so in some ways it may be easier to choose acceptance now rather than postponing it for later.  However I want to emphasize it is each beings choice to either control or accept self and other.  

I want to make another side note here that the less empowered you are, meaning the less you know yourself, the more likely you are to desire to be controlled as it provides a sense of external safety.  You are also more likely to go along with other people’s rules, ideas and do as we are told as you don’t really recognize yourself yet.  This makes it very easy for those beings who have chosen the path of control to manipulate you.  This is different than being controlling yourself.  It is instead a disownment of your power, an unconscious giving away of it where you haven’t even moved to the point of conscious choice yet.  When you are inside of this perspective there is just life happening as an “independent from self phenomena,” and it feels like you and the world are separate.  Many people that have a innate tendency towards the path of acceptance are still asleep in their consciousness, so their choice for acceptance is not yet actively engaged.  Due to this they passively submit, which is a very different energy than active acceptance, even though on the surface they may look similar.  The true power of active acceptance does not arrive until you wake up and choose it.  This how you come to learn that you can move mountains through acceptance, and that force, control, and manipulation are not needed to create powerful change.  

We are at a point in our evolution where its vitally important to be aware that we have choice and to make it consciously.  Again many beings that are more acceptance oriented are not aware of the level of control and manipulation that they are creating on a day to day basis inside their life and psyche.  Its time to wake up and see yourself.  Illuminating yourself is what gives you the capacity to consciously choose.  Notice any tendencies you have to cling to outcome, to try to make yourself or things/people different than they are, to manipulate others through kindness or doing certain things so that you feel safe, ok and accepted by them.  Also notice where you to want people to be a certain way, perhaps think like you, behave like you and where you think you are right and they are wrong.  Notice where you want to get something from someone or from a situation and the tactics you use to get that thing.  Getting something from any situation or person can be as simple as wanting a person to feel differently than they do so that you feel better about how they feel, or trying to get attention or love so you feel better about yourself.  Most people are doing this stuff all day long and then wonder why they are sick, exhausted and in pain.  They are because all day long they are engaging in the mostly unconscious patterns of manipulation and control which is incoherent with their true nature of acceptance.  

This is not selective acceptance.  To choose the path of acceptance is to accept all.  This means you will be required to accept things that you think are wrong, that you despise, that every ounce of your being resists.  All I can say is that that is the path of acceptance as I’ve come to know it.  It is also the path to total freedom of all and the lived energetic aliveness of love.  When you accept that which you previously held in non-acceptance you come into alignment with yourself and with the universe.  Your power is infinite and your touch is magic.  You recognize yourself more fully and come to know that nothing is separate from you.  

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

FEAR

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FEAR 

Perception of powerlessness

What is fear?  Fear is the thought that something bad might happen or the perception/belief that something bad is happening in this moment.  Fear often comes with a cascade of emotions and bodily sensations such as panic, powerlessness, unsteadiness, tension, pain or uneasiness.  Fear is almost always found right along side of uncertainty, where the uncertainty is undesirable by the perceiver.  The hallmark of fear is a sense of unavoidable, uncontrollable doom of which you can do nothing about.  A sense of powerlessness to circumstance floods your mind.  The typical reactions to this powerlessness are to brace yourself for potential impact, become apathetically detached or fight it all costs.  

You have all heard the saying that “what we fear controls us” and it’s true.  We give our free will or our power to whatever it is we fear.  It then decides for us rather than us being the decider.  We forfeit our chooser-ship-ness and allow ourselves to be chosen for by the thing out there or over there that we deem as frightening or unwanted.  We do this blindly.  In a way you could call it an act of faith.  Faith in our conviction of powerlessness in which our blind act of handing over our power reinforces.  

Why do we so blindly and obediently give away our power?  Partly because we don’t actually know that we have it.  Your free will is your power.  They are synonymous.  Most do not know or are unfamiliar with their own power, meaning they don’t realize themselves as having free will.  There are no classes in our early educational system that talk about that fact that you are free being, that you have free will or that focus on simply allowing you to be yourself.  Rarely are your natural impulses allowed to be expressed, but instead the opposite is the case.  We are told what to do, where to go, when to be there and how to conform.  Very little if any attention gets placed on the inherent nature of our sovereign, free self.  No wonder we are such a lost and confused society.  We don’t realize our free will because it has become so entangled with the culturally accepted norms of our society.  Often to be in your power, or choosing for yourself rather than based on what others may view as right, gives the appearance of being set apart from them.  There are certain others that may want nothing to do with you if you decide for yourself and it is contrary to how they view.  You may view some of those others as being very important to you.  They may provide for you physically or emotionally, and since our most basic need is connection we will do whatever it takes to not lose connection with others less we feel isolated, alone or unsupported.  This is how we innocently give away the power we didn’t even know we had.   

FEAR’S REMEDY

Knowing your inherent freeness 

Yes you are already free.  In this moment you have all the freedom and free you will ever have, no matter what the circumstances are that are currently showing up on your screen of life.  Your free will has always been intact.  The fact that this has probably not felt like the experience you always have is only simply because you have not realized this basic truth, that you are already free.  You still believe part of you to not be free yet, which means you don’t experience seamless freedom.  You believe you need this thing or that thing, this person or that person, this situation or that situation, and so you manipulate yourself (which includes conforming, compressing or not being yourself) in order to try to get what you think you need or want.  You develop strategy, sometimes very efficient and effective strategy, but there is no trust, only reliance on strategy.  This means you can never truly relax or rest, hence the tension, unease, pain and discomfort of fear prevail in your experience.  

People often view freedom as external, meaning being able to do the things they want to do, live where they want to live, be in relationship with who they want, have their body function in a particular way, etc.  Inner freedom has nothing to do with this idea of external freedom or being able to do what you want or have the things you want.  See if we view freedom as an external phenomenon than all the ducks always have to be lining up in the right rows, and if one one duck falls out of alignment then the system crashes and we are not free again.  This is not true freedom.  Even though many people think that they want freedom, and that they will be free when their circumstances of life line up with their picture of what they think they want, most people don’t actually want inner freedom.  Instead they want the external picture of what they think freedom is. I am not suggesting that you should not have preferences or desires and not move towards them.  I personally believe you should follow those impulses.  Instead I am simply pointing to the fact that freedom does not live inside of them.  Freedom lives inside of you.  How can you be in the worst, most undesirable situation and still recognize that you are free.  That’s true inner freedom.  What would that take?  What would it take to simply be yourself?  It takes only one ingredient.  That ingredient is trust.  Trust in yourself.

I’ve noticed an interesting dynamic over the years.  Despite the fact that many people think that they want to be free, sovereign and realized in their power, in actuality most people really don’t.  They want someone to tell them what to do because they feel so lost and uncertain inside.  They want someone else to direct the ship, to support them, to take care of them, to provide certainty for them so that they don’t have to decide for themselves. They want an authority figure so they can just rest already because they are so tired of being scared and lost.   So much so that they are willing to give their free will up and over for it.   What lays underneath it all is that ultimately people don’t want to be wrong, alone, unloved or unsupported.  These are our greatest fears, and because we are unwilling to face their potential and see through them, we live in the dark and lack trust.  While in the dark we grip to anything that we can, anything that seems to maybe know, because we feel we do not.  Self-doubt is the story we hold dear and remain steadfastly devoted to our conviction in our powerlessness.  To wake up from this all, to stop blindly giving over your free will, you must directly plunge into what you fear most so that you can experiential develop the trust that comes through doing so.  This is not something that will just automatically occur.  You must take an active role in this process to wake up to the truth that there is nothing to fear.  That fear is only a perception, a story and that you can find your way through it to the other side.  

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

Taking responsibility for others

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Taking responsibility for  others

Why we do this…

Responsibility a cloud word on skyLast week I talked about the importance of taking responsibility for ourselves and how it is pivotal if we are to grow up and evolve individually and collectively.  Today I would like to talk about a similar yet different topic of taking responsibility for others.  There is a subset of the population that has learned to take responsibility for others even when it not their responsibility to do so.  

I find that taking on this role of responsibility for others has many faces.  We can most clearly see this in the parent-child relationship.  When a child is young, we do have responsibility for their well-being, however as they become adults that responsibility is no longer ours.  I often see however parents continuing that role past the time when it needs to be played, which effectively doesn’t allow the child to grow as an adult and take responsibility for themselves.  

Another way this can be seen is in the opposite dynamic from above.  What happens is that the parent is not taking responsibility for themselves (or the child) and so the child learns how to tend to the parent’s needs to ensure that they (the child) are taken care of.  When this is learned early on in our life we have the tendency to continue this pattern as adults.  There is an underlying feeling that if everyone else is happy then we will be safe and have our needs met.  This often leaves us feeling much internal “pressure” as we are constantly attuning other people’s states of being to make sure they are ok, and often times we are not even aware of the pressure we feel as it has become so much a part of who we are.  

If we have this pattern of taking responsibility for others then seeing others display intense emotions or upset is very uncomfortable for us.  Our tendency is to shy away or try to make peace.  In that “making of peace” we often take responsibility for how the other person feels, even when it has nothing to do with us, just so that we alleviate the discomfort and uncertainty that we are feeling.     

Finding inner freedom

How to stop taking responsibility for others

The first step in learning how to stop taking responsibility for others is of course awareness of yourself.  You must become aware that you are engaging in this pattern.  Some ways to notice this are if you tend to shy away from direct confrontation, or if you find that you don’t speak up and share your thoughts and opinions easily (mostly because you don’t want to ruffle feathers), or if you are the one always “taking care of things” at a party or in a group rather than letting others tend to you.  

Often those with this pattern have an easy time organizing things, making sure things are in order, multitasking and taking on more than it seems should be possible.  They are often successful in relationships or business because of these skills so it can often be deceptive to unearth this pattern because it just seems like “we are doing a good job at life”.  The down side to this is those with this pattern feel so much internal pressure that they are ready to explode and they don’t even really know it.  There is often terror of others reactions to them and so they don’t share or express themselves authentically, but instead if ways that seem more acceptable or “kind”.  They may use rationalization or logic to calm people down or explain themselves rather than sharing or feeling their feelings.  Underneath it all they feel unseen and unheard because they are not allowing themselves to be seen or heard for fear it will upset others.  Being safe and things being in order and control are more important than their self expression.  

To not take responsibility for others, for how they feel or what they think, and even for how they feel about you, takes tremendous courage for these individuals.  It can feel like a threat to their survival, like their needs won’t be met by the “universe” and like they won’t be accepted by others.  If you have this pattern you must get to the point where the pain  and pressure of trying to hold it all together gets to be too much and where you refuse to tolerate it any longer.  You must realize that it is NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MANAGE OR CONTROL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE FEELING.  

Try it today.  Notice where you are holding your breath or holding back for fear of how someone else may respond to you.  Take the risk to not try to make someone else “ok” when they are feeling something intense.  Instead just be with them in the fire, in the intensity and don’t try to make it better.  This is where your inner freedom starts and where you can simply focus on taking responsibility for your self, your feelings and your life.  

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