lack

AVOIDING NOT ENOUGH

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AVOIDING NOT ENOUGH 

Focusing on what isn’t

Most of us are on a rampage against not enoughness.  We work hard to achieve, prove ourselves, make money, know all the right people, have the relationships, the opportunities and all the stuff of life, in order to avoid not enoughness.  Most often people don’t even know that they are avoiding not enoughness, rather they feel like they are simply living their life in the ways set out by the standards they’ve created for themselves.  In this way not enoughness can be tricky to see as it is such a common, well-believed way of seeing one’s self and the world.  

The perspective of not enoughness can manifest in many ways.  Sometimes it shows up personally, meaning we feel like we are not enough.  This can look like never feeling that what we do is ever quite good enough.  We might do-do-do or over-do in order to attempt for it to be enough, which ends up leaving us feeling stressed and exhausted.  It can also manifest in the other direction of procrastination because we feel like whatever it is we want to share or bring about won’t be good enough, doesn’t matter or no one cares.  Not enoughness also manifests as being judgmental about ourselves, our actions/non-actions, the way our body looks, our position or status, or where we are in our lives.  It can also show up in our experience.  Rather than feeling that we are not enough we feel that there is never enough of something.  Frequently this shows up in the form of money for people.  It can also show up as not having the relationship(s) that we want, not having opportunities that we want or not getting the acknowledgment, recognition, praise or understanding for who we are or the things we do or create.  

There is a predominant tendency among our society to focus on what isn’t.  We could collectively call this focus scarcity consciousness.  If you look around you will see this pretty much everywhere.  It is blasted through marketing campaigns of all sorts, “don’t want to miss this”, “only a few left”, “you’ll get xyz though this”.  These messages are all based on the assumption or threat of lack, and because we want to avoid feeling lack so badly we fall for these messages.  We feel a sense of false urgency, as if we don’t act now all will be lost forever.  Our focus on what isn’t fills our conversations and internal dialogues.  We point to what hasn’t happened yet, where we aren’t yet, or where/what we are hoping to get too.  Consumerism and “getting” is based on scarcity, on what isn’t here yet.  Notice how much you focus on what will happen in the future, and how much you project abundance of self or resources into some future moment or happening, placing your center of attention on what isn’t here now or yet. In this way we create scarcity in the present, moment by moment, and place enoughness at some other moment in time that isn’t this one.     

ACCEPTING NOT ENOUGH 

You may never feel like enough

If we are aware enough to recognize our habitual tendencies to come from the perspective of not enoughness we may have gone on a crusade to dismantle our focus on what isn’t.  We might have taken all the “self-love” classes and “manifest the life of our dreams” courses (we might have even created a few).   Done the coaching, gone to therapy, given ourselves daily mantras that affirm our worth and abundance to ourselves.  We might have cleared out our childhood trauma, wrote all the letters, said all the things, faced our fears head on, yet there is a lingering feeling of not enoughness or that life still doesn’t quite reflect full abundance.  What’s that all about?

What I’ve found is that despite our gallant efforts to transform ourselves and transmute our life experience into one of fullness, what we often neglect to do is accept not enoughness.  We are so busy trying to make it different, to be enough, experience enough, know enough, that we miss this fundamental piece of accepting not enough.  So rather than being able to radically change our belief system about ourselves and what we think is, we are left attempting to paste on top of life, the story of abundance, without believing it’s possible or true.  

See nothing shifts without acceptance.  Yet acceptance of that which we don’t want to be true, or that we don’t like about ourselves or life, pisses our egos off.  We don’t like to feel a sense of failure so we will avoid the obvious thing we are experiencing or feeling by doing all the things to change it.  Yet to surrender to what is, to what we believe to be true, even if we don’t like or fully agree with it, is the only way to find peace inside of ourselves.  It the only way to stop all the avoidance strategies, because once you accept it you can’t avoid it anymore.  You can’t try to deny its presence, you no longer deny how you feel, you are just raw and real even though that rawness and realness is not how you want to be seen or see yourself.  To see yourself and let others see you as not enough, as a failure in your attempts to be enough, do enough or have enough, feels like suicide to our minds idea of what should be.

You may never feel like enough.  You may always perceive that there is not enough resources for you.  But so what.  Live your life anyways.  Be yourself anyways.  Let the not enoughness of self or resources exist and be, because it exists and “be’s” inside of your experience.  I promise if you do you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.  You will find your way through.  You will care less and less about your thoughts and stories of not enough the more you just let them be there.  Stop trying to change yourself to be better, different or more.  Have faith even in the not enoughness.  Enoughness exists inside of not enoughness, but you can’t know this until you accept not enough.  End your avoidance and strategizing your way out.  Rather go towards what is, fully 100% let it be as it is, even if you hate it or it disgusts you, even if you want it to change or be different more than anything else.  Anything that wants to change and transmute will do so naturally and organically once you accept what’s here.  This is the end of controlling yourself and attempting to control life.

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

NOTHING IS LACKING

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NOTHING IS LACKING 

Key to perceiving all as is

We have an almost incessant persistence to view from the perspective of lack.  It appears to us that things are missing, out of place, or somehow not present.  We attempt to create that which we view as not from seeing it as not, which often comes with feelings of frustration and fruitlessness as we work really hard to get nowhere.  We create definitions and meanings about what is not that further reinforce our perspective of not-ness and frustration about what isn’t.  What if not-ness is not?  What if our perspective of lack is actually the presence of something?  Perhaps our focus on what we view as not, blocks our view of what is.  

Where does our desire to create come from?  What is the fuel source of our desires?  Are you motivated to create because you perceive something to be lacking or because it’s simply your joy to create whatever it is you are?  When you create are you creating from the perspective of seeing what you are creating as not, or do you see it as already present?  These are not trick question, nor are they law of attraction, spiritual, new age hogwash.  There is more than semantics happening here.  The truth is most people create because they perceive something to be lacking.  We then take that perspective of lack and attempt to create that which we see not present.  One of the key indicators that you might be doing this is that you are secretly miserable in your creation attempts of whatever it is you are wanting to create, despite the fact that you present good face to your friends, family and social media.  Even if whatever you are attempting to create is altruistic and service oriented, meaning it’s goal is to support others in some way, if you come from the perspective that whatever it is you are wanting to create is lacking, and that the world really needs it because its not present, you will only create more lack rather than than the thing you really want to create.  

The key to know here is that we create with our perspective not with our hands.  That is not to say that we won’t need to use our hands to do things and move stuff around in this material reality, but actual creation comes from how we view.  The perspective of seeing something as lacking creates more of that lacking.  The perspective of seeing what is as already here, actually seeing it here, creates it.  Seeing creates what we see.  Seems obvious, but we often don’t recognize the source of our seeing and rather focus only on what we see.  The source of what we see is the seer, or the perceiver, or you.  It now becomes obvious that you are the creator, and what has been unconscious is the how of how you create and how you’ve been creating this entire time.   

BEYOND DISBELIEF

Getting things to reveal themselves

We are riddled in disbelief.  We use our disbelief to validate our perspectives in order to be right about whatever it is we are insisting on, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in our own foot.  Our “healthy” skepticism keeps the ordinary magic of our everyday reality just out of our reach so that we can keep experiencing our reality in the same rote, lacking, and scarce ways we always have.  As much as we might “believe” that it’s hard to change our beliefs, it’s actually not.  It’s easy as pie.  What’s challenging is letting go of our sense of rightness, or that we know.  The blatant truth is that none of us know shit, even though we really like to think we do.  Pretty much everything is cloaked in mystery, yet that amount of magic (aka present moment spontaneously arising aliveness) is often too much for us to take.  So we find a way to generate certainty for ourselves by creating “facts” of reality, which are really just beliefs that we’ve come fully believe in as law, the truth, or the way things are.  The good news is that we can actually make this work for us rather than against us.

Our “hardcore” belief in lack is really just our insistence, one of the prime ones, of how reality is.  We accept this belief so blindly, meaning most don’t even think to question it.  Reflect on the following example: you look out in front of you and see that there is not a zebra in the room with you.  Let’s say that you take the perspective, based on this tiny little viewpoint of you in a room, that a zebra is lacking in existence because it’s not here in this room with you.  Rather than zooming out (ie. in this example zooming out would be doing something like turning on the African nature channel) you conclude that you must create a zebra because it is lacking.  This becomes very important to you because you view zebras as pivotal creatures to this planet.  You do your best to find all the parts of a zebra in order to create it from scratch, but you find that it’s super hard work, pretty much impossible to create, but none-the-less you persist and devote your entire life to creating zebras.  

Even though this is an absolutely ridiculous example it makes an important point.  What if rather than looking at the situation and concluding that a zebra is lacking because it’s not in the room with you, you set out to find its existence, because you believed, or somehow intuitively knew, that it already exists.  How far would you have to go to discover it?  Would discovering the zebra be more fun than creating it from random pieces and parts that don’t really fit together?  Believing, or choosing to know, that what we want to create already exists takes a tremendous burden off of us, a burden that nearly all of us carry around.  Rather than us having to figure out a bunch of stuff that we don’t know how to figure out, and do the seemingly impossible, we simply get to be in the curiosity of how to find the thing or how to get it to express itself.  We tempt and tease it into existence like a strategic game of hide and seek.  When we realize/believe that it already is, that nothing at all is lacking, it really just becomes a game of discovering how to get things to reveal themselves.  We may midwife them into form, but we are not responsible for the form.  The only thing we are responsible for is that we have fun while we curiously tease life to express itself.

You can exchange the word zebra with any of the following words: partner, business, project, finances, house, car, baby, healthy planet, healthy body, and on and on.  You can see how this becomes relevant for you now.  Just because any one of these things aren’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  If you go about attempting to create them from the perspective of lack, it will be not be very much fun.  You will probably suffer, struggle and cry a lot.  That’s what it’s like to create from lack.  However rather than taking on the burden of creating from lack (which is actually impossible) you choose to see them as already existing, then you get to play the game of revelation.  It is absolutely imperative, critical, crucial and necessary that you have fun playing the game and not get too focused on what the revelations that reveal themselves look like, meaning what form the forms decide to take.  The zebra may be striped purple and black rather than white and black, but it’s ok.  The form is less important than the play of creating from existence rather than lack.  When things are allowed to be themselves they naturally reveal themselves, they naturally express.  The better you are at allowing what is to be as it is, seeing what is as whole and complete, it will show you that, and the more proficient and easeful creator you will be.

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

Our story of complexity

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Our story of complexity 

How we avoid creating and expressing

Difficult resolution of a mazeFor a moment feel into something that you’ve been desiring to create or share in this world.  Find something specifically that feels like you haven’t quite arrived there yet in your ultimate creation or expression of it.  Something that you’ve been pursuing or waiting to have happen fully.  Maybe its a particular skill, something to do with your purpose/business, or maybe its full health or healing, or having a certain kind of relationship or even enlightenment.  

Ok now that you have something in mind notice how you feel about it.  Does it feel simple or hard?  My guess is that something about it feels hard to you or else you would have probably manifested or created it by now.  Notice what feels hard about it.  Does it seem impossible?  Really complex?  Like you don’t know how?  

There is this gap that occurs between things, skills, relationships, or states of being that we really desire and simultaneously don’t have yet.  In that gap lives our stories about why we can’t have or create what it is we desire.  This gap is often a mystery to us.  Most of us don’t even really know what’s in the gap, we just know that what we desire isn’t showing up, and over time we get frustrated and even resigned to it ever occurring.  

So take a moment again now, pause and notice what your relationship is to that thing that you desire.  What feels hard or complex about it?  What is it exactly that you don’t know?  Get really clear about what you feel like you don’t know.  Most of the time we don’t take the time to get really specific about what we think we don’t know.  Instead we hang out in this place of complete uncertainty or overwhelm about what we think we don’t know and we are not even being clear with ourselves about what we think we don’t know.  We live underneath this assumption that we don’t know how to create what we desire and therefore we can’t do it, even though we haven’t investigated what is so complex or hard about it.   Through investigation we can discover our unique story of complexity and see how it interferes or runs contrary to what we desire to create.    

The story continues…

Coming from not having what you need

One of the reasons that we go to complexity is that the mind values complexity more than simplicity.  Complexity seems to have more significance than simplicity.  If its simple than its boring and our stimulation seeking mind wants more activity and drama.  Its like only if its really hard/complex and we overcome that hardness, then its all worth doing.  There is nothing wrong with this, just realize that it creates a gap.  There is also nothing wrong with the gap, its really more about how we show up within the gap.  Do we shut down, go unconscious and assume we simply can’t create what we want?  Or, through investigation, do we see what is our own made up story and also what it is we actually don’t know, getting clear about both, and then seek out support for those things we truly don’t know?  This is the value of diving into the gap.

One other very prevalent thing that lives in the gap is the story that we don’t have what we need to create or do what we want.  We could have done all the schooling and training in the world, or have all the financial resources, or be the most fit/beautiful person and still feel like we don’t have what we need.  We come from a place of lack within ourselves.  When we come from lack inside of ourselves we will always give power to things or other people.  The new shiny object has the power, or the person over there has the power, or the new technique, tool, diet, fad, etc. has the power.  The power never is inside of you.   

Foretelling future from crystal ballA strategy that many people use to not feel this inner sense of lack is that they will tense up, numb or always look to the future for something to happen rather than seeing it right now.  This is one of the primary reasons that our desires do not more instantaneously manifest, because we are always putting them in the future sometime.  Our stories go something like this, “I’ll heal once I get this” or “This will be accomplished once get this one thing” or “It will happen later or next time”.  If we instead allowed ourselves to feel the threat that what we desire might not manifest, that lack of self in someway may exist and be revealed, we would be able to drop the tension that lack produces, be present and bring what we desire into the moment rather than as a future destination.  

Inside the gap lives the stories of complexity and lack.  What if instead you now approach your desires knowing their simplicity and knowing you have everything you need inside of you to create them?  How does that change how you feel and how does it change your relationship with your desires?  Go forth and play!

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

Future date syndrome

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Future date syndrome 

I’ll be complete when…

timelineHow many times today have you said to yourself in some overt or subtle way “I’ll be complete (or substitute the word can relax or be ok) when I achieve/do/finish xyz?”  Many of us have what I call the “future date syndrome.”  What this means is that when you accomplish or check off your external or internal to do list then you can actual stop and enjoy your life.  This way of thinking and being effects pretty much everything in your life from your day to day presence to who and where you feel you are at on your spiritual growth path.

I want to be clear that the “to do” list is not the problem.  There will always be things to do, achieve, and finish and new ways to grow.  Instead what I am pointing to is what your relationship is to yourself within what must be done and the underlying sense of lack that pervades and destroys your ability to show up and be presence.  

Take a moment and think about something that you desire to achieve today.  Maybe its as simple as going to the grocery store and picking your daughter up from dance class.  Its on your internal/external list.  It must be done or else “shit falls apart”, right?  People don’t eat, kids don’t get what they need, etc.  Now lets say that those are the only 2 things on your list.  Seems achievable for most people, but what if there are 6 other things on your list.  Now how do you feel?  The pressure starts to build.  You start to wonder how you can do it all.  Its a lot.  You begin to perceive a lack of time (or perhaps lack of ability to get it all done) and this lack starts to run you.  You start to feel anxious, restless, frantic or what most people label as stressed.  You have now officially lost presence, which means you are not conscious anymore.  You are on automatic pilot just trying to get through it so you can be done.  This unfortunately is not living.  This is being a machine and does not lead to the well-being that most of us desire.   

Beyond stress 

Living well-being

49160020 - businessman has no money. vector flat illustrationAnother way to define the word stress is a feeling of lack.  Lack of energy, time, resources, abilities, skills, money, access, etc.  Lack appears to motivate us as humans.  When we see or feel that we don’t have enough of something (or are not enough as person) it drives us to do shit.  But lack does not need to be our primary motivation, in fact, when it is no longer our primary motivation is exactly when we begin to enjoy ourselves and our life.  

So if lack does not drive us then what does?  What would it be like to be rested in total abundance (what most would describe as heaven on earth) and do from there?  What if you never worried again that you would not be ok or things that needed to be done wouldn’t get done?  What if you could navigate your life relaxed instead of tense?  What if you learned and grew spiritually from an “I’m enough” place inside yourself instead of not enoughness?  All of this is absolutely a possible reality but it takes awareness of yourself to get there.  

Recognizing where these stress/lack/not present pattens are running in your life is the first step.  Not just the recognition that you are stressed, but the bigger recognition of how you are relating to your life and what you are believing to be true that is creating the feelings that you are feeling inside.  You must start to destabilize your belief structures so that new possibilities can enter your awareness.  Sometimes we are very attached our lack beliefs and we will defend them to no end.  We will refuse to see that anything could be any other way.  We believe so strongly that it must be done the way it is and that we must continue to engage in the ways we engage and there are no other options.  Realize this as a part of you that is scared and doesn’t yet know another way and its ok.  Even just your capacity to see it as a part of you and not as all of you will begin to open your awareness to new possibilities.   

When you realize that you have already arrived and you stop waiting for yourself to arrive based on how much you have accomplished in a day or where you are on your life path presence prevails.  Presence is synonymous with abundance.  When you do life in presence, abundance and excitement is now motiving you instead of lack.  This is something that is hard to describe purely with words and must be experienced to be “gotten” and understood.  Start today by noticing when you start to feel stressed, pause and take a moment, notice what you are believing that is creating the stress for you.  Just this simple act will begin to bring you into more and more presence so that instead of future day syndrome you can live present day.  

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

Un-fear yourself!

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Un-fear yourself 

A look at your beliefs

43947471 - fear.If you are human you have experienced fear.  Fear is simply the belief that things are not working or going to work out for you.  It comes with the thoughts that you will be hurt, won’t be taken care of or loved, that you are on your own, separate and isolated.  Fun times🎉, not.

The addiction to believing that things aren’t working out for you is strong and it literally destroys life. Patterns get deeply engrained in your nervous system and cascades of chemicals, like adrenaline and cortisol, get released into your blood stream when you have thoughts that say “things aren’t working out”.  This sets up withdrawal symptoms when you start questioning your fear based thoughts. Who would you be if you believed every situation was working out for you? Crazy? Delusional? Psychotic?  These are the labels we’ve learn to give people who see the light in every situation.

The emotional-chemical cascade will do its best to hijack your system so you continue to feel separate, unsupported, empty and not cared for, as this is what has been the norm for most people’s lives to varying to degrees. This is “comfortable” in that it’s known, and what is known feels more safe than the unknown, even if the unknown is more true.

Life is always working for you 

Shifting perspectives

42024392 - child, excitement, ecstatic.Fear and excitement are the same energy, simply viewed through different lenses. To un-fear yourself you must see how everything is working for you. How the relationship that just ended is working for you. How getting fired is working for you. How the painful sensation in your body is working for you. How your current income and resources are working for you.

This reframes your thinking from a lack-based perspective to a presence-based perspective. It’s much more fun to be in presence than it is lack. There is excitement for the unknown possibilities that are emerging based on your belief that everything is working for you, instead of worry for the unknown possibilities that are emerging based on the belief that things aren’t working out for you.

The catch is you must change your perspective before it will be reflected differently in your life. You can’t wait for your perfect life circumstances to magically arrive and then decide to see that life is working for you. If you attempt to do this, then even when you have achieved your ideal life you will not see it. You will be unable to perceive it because you haven’t shifted your underlying belief from lack to presence

You must see how life is already working for you now despite whatever circumstance you are experiencing. Then as life continues to unfold you will see the perfection of it because you have already changed your belief to align with it.  These patterns are underlying in most people’s nervous systems and sabotage our desires & dreams often silently without us even knowing they are there. They are masters of deception and require commitment, persistence and dedication to bring them to light for the ultimate goal of shifting from fear silently controlling your life, to living your life based in freedom.

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

Lack is imaginary

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Lack is imaginary 

Just because you don’t have something doesn’t mean it does not exist 

14396897 - happy young blonde girl opening a gift boxSay a stranger walked up to you and gave you tickets to watch your favorite musical artist at RedRocks this summer.  Prior to receiving these tickets you weren’t even aware that your favorite group was coming to town.  What a gift!  Later on that day when you get home you look in your bag for the tickets to put them in a safe place and you realize that they are not there.  After searching for hours, retracing steps and going over every possible place they could be you give up and deem that the tickets are lost forever.

The next day you go to your favorite coffee shop and it dawns on you that you took the tickets out of bag when you paid for your coffee yesterday.  When you ask the barista if they found your tickets, the barista says no, but you can feel that there is more to the story.  You can’t prove it, but you have sense that someone in that coffee shop found and took your tickets for themselves.  You feel bummed, a little angry and like you are missing out big time.

In this story it seems that you are now lacking tickets, however if you follow the story you see that the tickets have simply moved from one person, to you, and now to another person.  Before the stranger gave you the tickets you did not feel you where lacking them, in fact, you didn’t even know that your musical group was coming to town.  As you can see lack is simply a story (aka an imagination that you made up) that you don’t have something, not an actual deficiency of it existing.

Expanding your imagination

Moving from lack to always present: “I” to “We”

When something is not in our immediate experience we have the tendency to think that it is lacking, especially if we had a taste of it before and now its not here.  We do this with money, relationships, health, business and happiness.  Perhaps you see other people with the things you want or behaving in the ways you want to be in the world and you feel jealous.  Jealously is simply a desire paired with your belief that you can’t have, get or deserve what it is you want (which by the way is another made up story of lack).

To move from lack to always present (also known as abundance) requires a shift in “I” consciousness to “we” consciousness.  When you believe that you are a separate person, living in your bubble of reality, and feeling that life revolves around your story of it, then you will perceive lack.  Most people are living their lives in this way.  It drives us to protect ourselves, secure our future, and remain in survival mode perpetuating the belief that I must take care of myself to preserve my life and attain the things that I want.  It is why we do things that we don’t really want to be doing and why we suffer so greatly.

Shifting into “we” consciousness means that just because I don’t have something present in my immediate experience doesn’t mean that some other aspect of me doesn’t.  In “we” consciousness there is less distinction between me and you.  There are still two different expressions (you and me), but of one being.  It requires that you put aside your thoughts of what you need to survive or what your family needs to survive, and think bigger, include bigger.  Ask better questions.  What does humanity need to thrive?  How is humanity already thriving?  How can I appreciate that even more?  What can I give to another aspect of me?  In this way you give instead of lose something and perceive lack.  You feel appreciation of what others now have, instead of jealous of what you don’t have.  In “We” you feel intimately connected with everything else.  Your personal self becomes less relevant than your collective self.  You begin to experience love, happiness, purpose and contribution on bigger scales.

Don’t just believe me, experience this for yourself.  Start by seeing something your previously perceived as lost or lacking as a gift to someone else.  Then include yourself in someone else and begin to taste “We-ness”.

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