loving

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE

Ending the chase of what’s next

It is no secret that we live in a near constant state of trying to get somewhere.  We make goals, create plans, and think about what is next.  We measure our progress from start to finish and course correct along the way.  Without some degree of forward momentum, and the feeling that we are creating or accomplishing what we set out to do, we often feel stuck or stagnant.  This itch to be other than where we are creates a gap inside of our experience.  That gap is a self-created illusion where we believe that there is somewhere to get and somewhere we think we’d rather be.  When we place ourselves inside that gap we miss what’s here as we are ambitiously move towards what is next.  

Rarely do we rest into and love exactly where we are.  There are many reasons for this.  Many people believe that what is here is not enough so they constantly strive for more.  The moment they arrive anywhere is the same moment they jump back into the gap between here and what’s next.  That sense of not enoughness can be personal and express as always attempting to make themselves better (self-improvement can fall into this category), or it can be projected onto external circumstances by always finding a new thing or cause that needs to be improved.  This is not to say that things, causes or personality traits can’t be shifted to express in more coherent ways, they absolutely can, but when it comes from a place of scarcity in where you are rather than abundance in where you are, its rooted rejection rather than acceptance.  This leads to a constant chase in attempting to get, rather than devoted service to what you love.

Other reasons people don’t rest and love exactly where they are is because they don’t trust that what’s here is good and right.  They have a belief that something is wrong or bad with what is present and that they must somehow change it in order for it to be good and right.  They bypass the goodness and rightness that’s here for their belief that it lives somewhere else.  In my opinion this is the true spiritual bypass.  People also tend to believe that the conditions of their life are dependent on them being able to fully express and be themselves, but this is backwards.  You fully expressing and being yourself creates the conditions of your life.  Since people believe the other way around they will go about trying to make the conditions of their life match their mind’s idea of what it thinks it needs in order to be rested and in love here.  This chasing of conditions is tempting because it seems to go somewhere and things appear to be happening in a forward direction, however it leads only to continuing your postponement of loving where you are.  Some people postpone in such a way for their entire life. 

MAKING CHANGE IN LOVE 

How you source

We tend to believe that we can’t make change in love.  Historically we have needed to be fed up, dissatisfied and frustrated with what is in order to have the fuel to create change in ourselves or the world.  Can you even fathom what it would be like to love where you are and also create movement or change?  I believe this is how it is done in most portions of the universe, but here on planet Earth we haven’t quite learned this yet.  We still hold strong to states of pain, suffering and dissatisfaction being our primary fuel for change.  Be clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact it is currently required, I’m simply inviting that there is another way.  

In this moment entertain, feel, channel or drop into a state of full love and acceptance.  Do so right now in this very moment.  As you do notice how much energy becomes available to you.  Notice how you naturally overflow and emanate lightness and joy.  Feel the levity and also the fullness that’s here.  This is always here, its simply that you haven’t practiced paying attention in this way.  Instead you’ve practiced paying attention to what doesn’t work or feel good and for lack of a better term, lower states of energy.  You’ve focused on what has to be done, what needs fixed or improved, and how something is better somewhere other than here now.  You’ve created distance, but understand that this distance isn’t real.  Its a concept, a thought in your mind, nothing else.  It has no separate existence outside of your thought of it.  Just as easily as you create that thought of something will be better in the distance, you can create a thought of amazingness of what’s here right now.  

Just through the simplicity of shifting your focus you dramatically shift your energy state.  The more energy you feel the more easily movement and change naturally flow through you.  You don’t need to dislike or feel frustrated about what is in order to find a source of energy to create change.  You can both love what is now and then love what is next when it becomes now.  You don’t have to choose to love one moment over the next moment, you get to love both, and the changes that need to occur will.  The only real requirements are to watch where your focus goes and be in charge of it.  Deliberately choose the focus of your desire and know that it will determine the energy level that is available to you and how change will move through you.

To love what is, is to dissolve your agenda for what must be.  In giving your life over to your mission, to your purpose, to why you are, over and over and over again, you will always find yourself perfectly positioned and therefore life will also appear perfectly positioned to you.  You can’t find anything out there because there is no out there.  Distance is made up by you.  Your sense of location is unreal.  You can never actually move, you can only be.  Choose your being wisely through how you focus.  Know that change will always happen, but how it happens is up to you.  How you source your change makes all the difference.  Change sourced through love breeds more love.  Its silly to think other and yet many do.  Where you start you will end.  Where you create from will determine the creation. 

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

HAVE FUN NOT KNOWING

Dr. Amanda Love Leave a comment

HAVE FUN NOT KNOWING 

Welcoming uncertainty

Know, know, know.  We are eager to know what’s next, where we are going, what’s going to happen and how it’s all going to work out.  In fact we are so eager to know what will happen and to get to it already, that we don’t live in what is happening now.  The focus on the future, what it will bring or not bring, captivates our attention, consumes our thoughts and takes us right out of the present moment.  

We often don’t perceive much fun in not knowing.  In fact not knowing feels downright scary to most people as their sense of security, safety, validation and purpose is wrapped up in them knowing.  If you take a step back, a pretty far step back, and expand your perspective, you will see that everything is truly a mystery.  You’ve created routines, habits and schedules that make life look the same from day to day and give the appearance of knowing what is going to happen, but truly you don’t know.  If you stayed viewing from this larger perspective you would most likely start to notice feeling a sense of uncertainty and fear.  Due to this fear of uncertainty (which we mostly don’t let ourselves feel or even register that we feel) we do our best to create certainty.  Certainty in our relationships, our careers, the place we live, our families, our finances, our community, etc.  This artificially contrived sense of certainty gives us illusionary comfort in feeling that we will be ok because we know.  

So we must ask ourselves the question, how can not knowing be fun?  How can we change our relationship with uncertainty to one that feels good rather than one that feels bad?  If we don’t change our relationship with uncertainty than we will attempt to avoid it all costs because we perceive that it feels bad, and by nature we avoid things that don’t feel good.  However attempting to avoid uncertainty is also attempting to avoid the present since the present moment only reveals itself in the moment and not a single second before.  Trying to create certainty leads to a life that goes by and you don’t even know what really happened or if you even lived it.  You were so busy trying to get somewhere, figure out where you where headed and how to get there that you missed out on your life now.  Your life doesn’t happen in the future it happens now, this is it.   

LOVING WHAT IS 

Coming alive

One of the best ways to make not knowing fun and change your relationship with uncertainty is to love what is now.  To be a full fuck yes to what is here and committed to being here even if you don’t like what is here.  If you are busy living in fantasy land of what might happen, hasn’t happened yet or didn’t happen, you are screwed.  There really isn’t a more eloquent way to say it.  You are living in a made up world of “things will be better when…”, when I know my purpose, when I get a different job, when I have the relationship, partner or family I desire, when I find the perfect home, when I land my next gig or client, when I have this amount of money, when I find my next place to live, when I go on vacation, and on and on and on.  

To love what is stops you in your tracks.  It forces you to be present.  It forces your heart open.  It forces you to wake up and recognize what is here, what is already perfect, where you already are.  It does so really without any force at all, but will the power of love and loving.  When you choose to love what is rather than be somewhere other than you are (which is impossible by the way) you live for the first time.  To love is to live, to be alive.  Love requires that you let all resentments, hatreds, wrongness, failures, mistakes, imperfection, and the like go.  All of those perspectives keep you out of loving and therefore out of the present moment.  

Loving gives.  It gives to life.  It is what makes life come alive and be fun to live.  We all know this.  When uncertainty arises and you feel that sense of not knowing, and you recognize the pressure, stress or anxiety that are the side effects of your resistance to uncertainty, simply pause.  Take a breath.  Notice the feelings of stress, pressure, fear, and perhaps even doom and distress.  Notice that you are trying really hard to fight the feeling of not knowing, which comes with some threats to your sense of self, safety and purpose.  Simply allow.  Allow not knowing.  Open into the curiosity and even eventual playfulness that can arise from the mystery of what is to be revealed.  Don’t try to plan or figure out the reveal, when you will know, when you will get “there” wherever there is.  Just be here in the mystery of it.  Open into the mystery.  Invite it.  Welcome it.  Do not push it away or try to get through it.  Just be inside of it as if there is nothing to figure out and nowhere to go.  You already are where you are meant to be/go.  You already are doing what you are meant to be doing.  Will it change?  Yes it will always change.  

Trying to get (somewhere or something) contracts, tightens, constricts, and closes you off to all communication and information, whereas loving gives and allows for free exchange of energy, movement and information.  The paradox is that inside the mystery all is revealed, all is known.  Each moment fully informed, fully wise, fully self-aware.  That is the gift of presence, of the mystery, of the moment.  You can’t know from trying to know, but only from allowing the not known to be as it is.  In this way you create the space and container for all to be revealed to you inside the playful dance of creation.  

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