magic

INTENTION & FOCUS

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INTENTION & FOCUS 

A dash of magic

Intention guides life.  Life follows focus.  To some degree we all know this yet most of us aren’t really utilizing the power of it in our day to day life.  Rather we are often unfocused, scattered and distracted.  We decide for a moment or maybe two, that we want to feel a certain way, walk in a particular direction, or take hold of our state of being, but in the next moment we forget it.  We then wonder why we can’t seem to have the healing, life or state of being that we desire.  Then, on top of it all, we have a long list of impossibility beliefs to add into the mix.  If we muster up our will and utilize our focus, then this or that impossibility belief rears its head.  Feeling overwhelmed by it all, we stop in our tracks and give up.  We return to distraction because we can’t seem to find a way through.  We find ourselves feeling stuck, like we (or things) will never change and we feel resigned to life the way it is.  

I think the prime difference between people who feel like they are living aligned and those that struggle to stay aligned is harnessing the power of intention and focus, along with not being afraid of a little magical thinking.  If you’ve ever spent any time around a baby you know that they see the world through the lens of magic.  Something appears in front of their visual field and they get absolutely ecstatic.  They have no idea how it arrived or even what it is.  They are simply enamored and in a state of bliss by whatever it is they see.  They attempt to interact with it however they can, having no idea at all what to do with it.  This is what we call playing.  Then due to the fact that they have no label, definition or meaning, all they experience is magic.  Magic being the essence of the thing and not the thing itself.  As soon as we give names to things we no longer see the magic, and rather see only what we’ve decided something is.  All other possibilities flatten.  

The other thing to notice is that when babies are playing they are totally focused.  They quite dislike it when you remove their “object of magic”, which they are entirely engrossed in.  Their attention might move from toy to toy, but they are just as present with the next non-labelled, no meaning magical thing that arrives into their sensory experience.  As we become toddlers and begin to develop our analytical thinking mind we want to know what everything is and what it all means.  We start to get lost in the world of concepts rather than in the pure potential of what is.  Our minds learn to multi-task and focus on facts, details and the like.  We lose connection to the essence of things and begin to focus on the things themselves.   We move out of present moment and into thought.  

IMAGINATION & REALITY 

Increasing will

And well who doesn’t love thinking?  To just let your mind wander from this thing to that thing.  To be lost in thought.  To contemplate.  To imagine.  It’s fun to imagine, yet for many it stops here.  You might think that imagination is just imagination, not reality.  You may even be very good at imagining, yet if you don’t have any intention or focus behind your imaginations they remain formless.  This is not a problem, again it’s great fun to imagine in our minds, it’s only that you will not have a different human world life experience.  You will be living in thought or concept.  There will be a disconnection between your imaginal world (you could also say your desired world) and what you actually experience.  We are at a stage of human development, in this space-time nexus, where there is massive disconnection between our desired realities and the ones we are living in.  It doesn’t need to be that way, however it does take a heap of intentional focus in order to bridge the seeming gap.

Intentional focus might not be as hard as it seems, but it may appear to come at some sacrifice.  See when we align ourselves with our intention and focus we have to let all of the other stuff go.  That other stuff consists of a lot.  It includes, but is not limited to all of our divergent or distracting thoughts, all of our tendencies to avoid what we think can or can’t be, our habits of comfort, our low demand energy states, our pictures or ideas of what our intention is supposed to look, be or feel like. We have so so so so many ideas, and while ideas are great for imagining possibilities, they can also get in the way of letting the picture of it all reveal itself to you.  Our desires or imaginations are like the seeds, our intention and focus the water, and the sprouting flower just sprouts as it does.  We don’t get to decide it’s appearance.  We can guide and set conditions for it, but we can determine its expression.  We can only nurture it’s becoming and then let it be what it will be. 

If we are too fixated in our analytical mind then we will overly focus on the form of what is.  We will perceive disappointment if the form doesn’t match our desire.  If we return to our infant pre-mind state, we can see only the essence, the magic, the seed, the desire and then accept the form, the picture, the image that is the result.  This acceptance is very different than resignation.  Acceptance sees the beauty in the appearance regardless, where resignation sees only what is doesn’t want in the appearance.  The distinction is the seer (ie. you).  From where do you see?  

Harnessing the power of intention and focus is learning to increase your will.  To be determined without attachment.  This is the dance of will and surrender.  Coming from and with everything you’ve got and then with full embrace letting it be as it is.  Giving or aligning your whole self to your intention in any given moment is magic.  Essence is seen and the forms naturally reconfigure in response.  This is not a forceful or manipulative will, but rather a sacrificial will of sorts.  A will that will give away all of its petty distractions, impossibility beliefs and preconceived ideas for its true desire or intention.  A will that aligns behinds itself and that is self-generative.  A will that takes all of you, but of which you can find absolutely nothing better to give yourself too.  A will that eventually becomes much bigger than you.

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

BELIEVING IN MAGIC

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BELIEVING IN MAGIC 

Possibility, imagination & creation

Most of us love the idea of magic, but few of us actually believe in it.  It seems that magic is reserved only for small children.  Once we reach the age of “logical” brain development, magic becomes silly fantastical play that only little kids do and since we are becoming a “big” kid, magic goes out the window for us.  Why do we stop playing and believing in magic?  Why do we get so serious and realistic?  It’s really all about what we value as a society and what gets reinforced.  We get acknowledgment and praise for getting good grades, excelling at math and science, and for doing our school work well.  We don’t get acknowledgment for how well we play, the worlds we create with our imagination or how much we believed in magic today.  Since there is an innate human need to belong and be part of the group, we follow what the collective agrees to value even if it isn’t in alignment for us.  Despite our best efforts to stay connected to our steam of magic and all of its infinite possibilities, we often lose connection to it our mid-late childhood development.  

What is magic?  Magic is the space of possibility, imagination and creation.  What we often fail to realize is that we are imagining our entire reality.  We each are already master magicians (ie. creators).  The world we create/are creating is flat, mundane and logical because that is what has been reinforced to us as what’s real and important.  Therefore that is what we see and continue to create through our seeing.  In this way reality appears to be devoid of magic, but rather it’s that we’ve used our magical powers to create this seemingly ordinary experience.  Inside of this experience we pretend to know what is going to happen next, we create plans, schedules and routines that give us a sense of familiarity, and the world of infinite possibilities gets scaled down into just a few known potential outcomes for how things can be and operate.

You can see that regardless of whether or not you believe in magic, you are utilizing it everyday.  It’s simply a matter of tuning in, paying attention and inquiring into what it is you are creating.  We create with our imagination and our seeing.  Whatever you can imagine is possible you can create.  Again you are already doing it all of the time, it’s only that your range of what is possible is likely quite narrow and your active imaginative qualities are somewhat off line.  You keep creating the same reality because you aren’t conjuring up anything novel from the well of your creator powers.  The question then becomes how do you get yourself back on line, activating your imagination and making magic that makes your reality feel alive, invigorating, exciting, mysterious and blissful.  

GETTING TO THE HEART 

The well-spring of magic

The portal into our active imaginative qualities and creating a more magical reality experience for ourselves is finding our way into our heart.  We are born open and in the state of love.  This is why a young child’s heart is naturally open and why they have access to the world of their magic.  Even if you don’t perceive what they perceive or join them in their creations, they are in their own magically reality all of the time.  That is until they learn the seemingly “fixed and solid” natural of reality that we condition them with and they start to believe that they are a product of creation rather than the magician/creator of it.  This is when the world of infinite possibilities becomes only a small handful of options and we forget, lose touch or disconnect from the fact that we are the ones doing all of the creating.  

As time goes on, and we have more and more experiences of being human, we move further and further away from the source of ourselves.  This means we forget ourselves more and more with time.  In addition, many of the experiences that we have being human don’t feel good and we learn to protect ourselves from physical, emotional and mental pain.  Protection means that we shut down, close off and become less open and available to participate with creation.  Since we’ve forgotten that we are the magician/creator we feel powerless to the circumstances of life, and helpless to how we feel, sense and relate to life and others.  In essence it’s kind of big, confusing mess.  

Finding our way back into our heart often means feeling the things that shut it down in the first place.  When we feel the pain it breaks our hearts back open.  We move through the feelings rather than stay closed down and shut off.  We open into the pain rather than protect ourselves from it.  This is healing in a nutshell.  It’s not complicated, but it’s also not necessarily easy.  It takes quite a bit of courage and ginormous heap of trust in ourselves to reopen.  Well it might seem easier to stay closed and continue life as the mundane status quo, you will feel unsatisfied and non-magical.  Your experience of life will be functional, but it won’t necessarily be fun.  

Your heart is the well-spring of magic.  It makes everything come alive.  It allows all possibilities to emerge.  It activates your imagination and helps you remember that you are the magician of this creation.  The reward of feeling the pain becomes clearly evident as you embark on the journey.  Your commitment and devotion to the path is key.  Some days it will feel hard to find your heart, but your desire to do so will be your guiding light.  If your level of commitment or devotion is high then before you know it there will be nothing that doesn’t fit inside of your heart.  You will have engulfed all of creation in love.  This means you will undoubtedly experience magic as your lived reality moment to moment.  As always the choice lies in your hands, your heart and your desire.   

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

MAGIC OF THE HEART

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MAGIC OF THE HEART 

Lived Remembrance 

The birthplace of all magic, mystery, fun and play lives within the heart.  Heart is not outside of you.  It lives and breathes you, and everything else in creation, into form.  Heart is that essence of which you are, of which we all are, yet remains unseen to the physical eye and unknown to the physical senses.  Heart is all pervasive and yet illusive to our ordinary reality and ordinary minds.  To reconnect and re-find our heart is to reconnect to the magic that lives inside of all things.  

The channel to heart is always open.  We must only tune ourselves to it in order to discover it.  The frequency of our unique soul essence is the gateway into the remembrance of what we are and the knowing, seeing, sensing of the love that simply is that primordial substratum, matrix, and information behind all things we perceive.  Even though sometimes heart seems distance and hard to find, in truth it is always here, present and ready for us to realize it.  Part of participating in this human experience is the forgetting of ourselves, of our essence, of love, and the unification of all in love.  We come to experience separation and forgetfulness and to find our way back into ourselves.  There is no right or wrong on this journey.  There is only the following of the breadcrumbs of excitement that guide your unique path.  

Tuning yourself to the frequency of your soul is the work.  It is the work of this incarnation if you choose remembrance as your intention for being here now.  For many this is relevant and desired.  There comes a time when one must stop talking about all things spiritual and instead live their essence.  Rather than think about what they want to be true or what they want to be their lived experience, they must simply live it.  This is the magic.  This is the alchemy.  Lived remembrance.

To live intentionally, devoted to why you are, is the only real tuning you need.  To run that pathway over and over and over again until it becomes the default program in your consciousness.  Until all you know and all you be is why you are.  This is the end of getting anywhere.  You’ve arrived.  There is simply the being and sharing of your arrival.  It is the air you breathe and the water you swim in.  No longer do you perceive separation of you and your purpose.  You are your purpose.  You are your intention for existing.  You know yourself.  Love is.  Love remains.  The channel is open and you have tuned to its frequency.   

YOUR HEART FREQUENCY 

Sound of Love

Heart could never not be yours.  You are not undeserving or unworthy of it.  You do not need to earn it or meditate your way into it.  You can’t be separate from it because it’s impossible for you to be separate from yourself, and heart is what you are.  Just try for a moment to be separate from yourself.  You can create content such as thoughts, feelings or sensations that seems to interfere or stand between you and heart, but there is not two of you.  You can’t exist over there and over here.  You can only exist, you can only be, there is just one.  Therefore its impossible for anything to be separate from anything else.  This is the teaching of the heart.  This is what the heart reveals when you tune yourself to why you are.  In that tuning you come into the knowing of the unity that is.  The one that expresses itself in a myriad of forms, some of which you have mistakenly identified yourself as.  

In the subtle, quiet stillness you can more clearly hear yourself.  You can hear the frequency of your heart, the sound of love.  Even when your thoughts, feelings and sensations appear to disrupt your frequency, in truth they really don’t.  While you are having the experience of disruption or interference, you still are, you still exist, and therefore love still is.  Untouched, unwavering and present.  It really is as simple as shifting your awareness to that knowing that love still is here now.  You can focus on the stuff, the thoughts, the story, the feelings, the sensations, the content of your experience, or you can focus on the fact that you are existing, being, and that love is what is present in being.  

Peace really is much closer than you think.  You can experience it in an instant.  That dropping of tension, of weight, of pressure, of constraint, is available just as soon as you stop focusing on the content of your experience.  Being is rested in love.  Love is, when you are.  This is when magic becomes your experience.  Rather than logic, linear awareness with cause and effect, black and white, and matter of fact thinking ruling your experience, you experience the dance, the flow, the rhythm and movement of intelligence at work, of love at work.  Synchronicity is the norm, life unfolds nonlinearly, and while the mind can’t make sense of it, the heart giggles in delight.

The frequency of heart is pure delight.  It naturally gives without doing.  It is so totally and completely energized.  It needs nothing from anything.  It knows how to move itself.  The body and mind obey the intelligence of the heart when you tune to the frequency of your soul.  Open into that channel of love over and over and over again, as much as you possibly can, each and every day.  Find whatever excuses, whatever reasons you can, to tune to your heart’s frequency.  Make it your number one priority no matter what experience is showing up, no matter what thoughts or feelings or sensations you are having.  Tune to love, to bliss, to God, until you remain rested there, until you no longer ever leave again.  This is the completion.  This is everything I know.

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

EVERYTHING IS MAGIC

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EVERYTHING IS MAGIC 

Waking up to reality

Most people are excitement chasers, chasing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing that seems to promise a sense of aliveness inside of it.  Little time do most people want to spend in the grunt work, or in what they perceive to be ordinary or dull.  Most people have a fundamental and often elusive belief that some things are magically and others aren’t.  Due to the fact that most people have this belief, they end up polarizing themselves inside of their experience and make the assumption that some experiences or states of being are better than others.  When they find themselves in an undesirable experience or state of being they attempt to find the quickest route out.  

The thing with attempting to find the quickest route out is that we don’t give ourselves the experience of going through.  Therefore when we find ourselves in a similar experience or state of being in the future we don’t have the capacity to be present inside of it and continue to find ways to escape or withdraw from it.   We then wonder why we aren’t stably rested and centered in ourselves and can’t figure out why we don’t seem to be in control of ourselves.  You can’t expect to be stably rested in yourself if you avoid, push away, judge or make wrong certain states of being, experiences or aspects of yourself.  Anything that is pushed away creates a ripple or distortion in the coherence of your beingness.  That distortion then becomes a filter through which you experience life.

Filters taint, dim, and skew what you see.  You see what you think rather than what is actually present.  You project an incomplete picture from a limited perspective.  You make judgements about what is rather than seeing what is.  Another way to say that is you experience your thoughts or your perspectives, and not what is really present.  See, what is present just is.  The present is inherently neutral and the substratum of presence is love or bliss.  This is the natural state of everything.  This is why everything is magic.  However when we place our judgments, ideas, and perspectives on top of what is, we get to experience life through the lenses that they are filtered by.  If instead we remove our filters (i.e. our judgments, beliefs and biases) then the lens gets cleared up and we perceive reality rather than our thoughts and perspectives of it.   

LIVING MAGIC  

Magic can’t not be

There is really two ways to approach living magic.  One is to stop giving anything labels, and with practice, start seeing the true nature of reality.  The other way is simply to decide with conviction to change your belief that some things are magical and others aren’t.  With as much conviction you have that some things are better than others, you can have as much conviction that they are not.  You really can in one full swift moment simply change your mind.  It doesn’t have to involve some big process, ah-ha or breakthrough.  You can just do it now.  Nothing is stopping you except you and your insistence to believe otherwise.

In this way the mud sparkles even if it remains looking like mud.  The uncomfortable conversation you need to have with your partner, friend, boss, parents or kids is complete with bliss even if it comes with uncomfortable sensations in your body.  Your emotions, even the ones you label as bad, are welcome because you understand that they don’t mean anything about you or anyone else.  They are just emotions, no more, no less.  The intense sensations that come at times from having a human nervous system are waves of energy organizing and moving themselves around, no more, no less. The grand significance you give some things diminishes and the grand insignificance you give other things also neutralizes, and it is anything but flat.  The dissolution of charge doesn’t equate to bland, nothingness, but rather total peace and presence.

While people desire peace and presence, they tend to desire their judgments more.  It is quite logical, the path to peace that is, but we are not logical nor do we decide from logic no matter how level headed we think we are.  We decide from our beliefs and conditions, and what we think is right, which is massively deluded.  Most of the time we don’t even know what the heck we believe or what conditions we live by and under.  So we are left with chasing what seems most magical and avoiding what doesn’t and holding our breath while hoping for the best.  This is circumstantial, disempowered “well-being”.

True well-being lives inside of your capacity to be willing to be present with whatever is present.  To not turn away.  To put your fingers in the mud and find how through doing so the mud turns into clay from which you create some piece of creation magic.  You can’t not create magic.  You can only think that it is possible to create something other than magic.  You also can’t not be or live magic.  You can only think you aren’t magical.  Your thoughts aren’t true.  What’s true is magic.  This can only be directly experienced to be known.  Dismantle your concepts, let go your judgments.  Nothing is better than the other.  No emotion or state of being is better than the other.  No appearance is better than the other.  It’s all magical creation created by a magical creator, which is you.  

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

BE USED

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BE USED 

Merging your will with Source

There is a divine, perfect intelligence that orchestrates this entire universe. From the rotation of planets and galaxies, down to the minuet aspects of your daily life, all is precisely positioned.  It seems like we are making choices, and yet even the decisions we make, no matter how hard or easy they seem, are sourced from a source that knows.  Whether we are aware of that source or not doesn’t matter in relation to what occurs.  What occurs will occur, the decisions and choices we make will be equally informed.  The only difference is our experience of what occurs, not in the actual occurrence itself.

This is not to say that all is preplanned or predestined.  Rather it is to say that in each moment there is an intelligence that knows and it is constantly informing all that occurs.  When I say that it is only our experience of what occurs that differs, is to say that how we view, perceive and respond to the appearances of life is our free will.  Our free will isn’t necessarily in the deciding or choosing of what occurs (though it seems that way), but rather how we decide to participate with what shows up.  In this way it is not a “separate from” or “life happening to you” experience.  Instead you are moved by this intelligence that knows in a symbiotic way where you are one with the occurrences and the intelligence.  

In order to know life and experience it in this way, your will must be one with the will of the creator of this orchestrated dance.  That means that what you think should happen or passionately desire to happen in your personal life or in the larger collective, must be surrendered to what is happening.  This is really a very easy thing to do outside of the fact that we attach greatly to what we think should be, what we perceive to be better or best, and to what we want.  It’s not the thoughts or the desire for what we want to experience that create the obstacles for us, but rather our attachment to them happening.  When our attachment to them happening supersedes our capacity to be present with what is actually occurring we suffer.  Even our suffering is perfectly positioned, part of the cosmic orchestration, of the creator expressing itself in all its various flavors, with the intention of knowing itself and purifying its perspectives into it’s own original source.   

THE CREATOR’S WILL 

Magic & love for whatever is

It is first important to remember that nothing happens outside of the creator’s will.  When I use the terms: creator, source or intelligence, I mean them to all point towards the same “thing”.  Pointing to that which knows, that which is, that which is aware.  Nothing can happen outside of awareness, therefore nothing happens outside of the creator’s will.  This is why surrendering to what is, which is a giving away of all of your insistences, preferences and righteousness, aligns your will (your awareness) with that of the creator’s will.  You know you have arrived here when there is no longer any charge left in your body-mind about anything that is occurring.  This is the first state of being where you can actually be useful and be used.

To be useful or be used is to be of service to the creator’s will.  Many people have a negative relationship to being used because they feel disempowered or less than.  However the only aspect that “gets disempowered” when you surrender is your own personal agendas and perceptions of what should be.  Not until you surrender can you participate with more awareness, with this larger source or intelligence that guides all of creation and life.  Until you arrive in surrender there will be fight, push/pull, attempting to figure it out or conquering energies.  This is all a result of your own (and the collective’s) resistance with what is.  If we all dropped our righteousness instantly, no charge would remain and the experience of life on this planet, with this collective beings, would be harmonious.  

Some of you might think or say: what about all of the stuff that is wrong, could be better or needs to be fixed?  What I would say to that is that the creator knows all, sees all and creates all.  To surrender your personal opinions, ideas and judgments of what is best, to an all knowing source of infinite intelligence does not make you more stupid or less useful.  It does the very opposite.  It gives you access to wisdom and resourcefulness that would otherwise be unseen by you.  As we clear out our own vessels we are better able to listen and follow.  We can more readily take action where the creator’s will moves us to take action.  When you realize your life is not about you, but rather that there is a much bigger game being played, you willingly take your position as a pawn on the board and let yourself be played.  

The result is magic and love for whatever is.  You get to fully participate in the present with what is.  You stop living in ideas and story, and open yourself to the mystery of creation happening now and now and now.  There is never dullness.  There is still feeling, desire and passion.  There is lots of movement.  There is clarity in not knowing, but in being moved, guided and used by that which does know.  There is deep satisfaction and fulfillment because you know nothing else more perfect could ever be other than what is now, and you share that knowing with every energy and person you meet.  You are in love and connection, and that love and connection consciously brings the will of the creator through you, and happening for all.  This is the creator’s will. 

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

Living Surrendered

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Living Surrendered 

Distinction of acceptance & surrender

34683163 - beautiful young woman jumping on a giant flowerMany people talk about their “need to surrender” as if its another thing on their to do list to get done that they keep procrastinating.  There’s an idea that surrender is this thing that you do once, or maybe a few times, in regards to a particular situation you find yourself within.  Most think that if they could just surrender or let go then their torment will end.  Within this mode of their thinking there is an inherent sense of powerlessness.  “If I could just let go” implies feeling choice-less and thus disempowered.  What many people are pointing to when they say that they need to surrender is really that they want to feel empowered and realize their choice in their situation rather than feeling like a victim of it or like its just happening to them. 

This above described situation is really a call for acceptance rather than surrender.  These terms mean different things though many people use them interchangeably.  Acceptance is accepting what is present.  This means accepting rather than fighting or resisting a situation that is currently present.  Acceptance is accepting what is known, what occurred, or what is here.  If we find ourselves in situations that we don’t fully like, that seem like something we don’t want, or that feel overwhelming or jarring to us, we typically don’t want to accept the situation as it is.  The reason for this not wanting to accept what is, is because underneath all the competent facades and masks that people wear, they feel largely disempowered and incapable of being able to work with what is present.  Due to this underlying feeling of disempowerment there develops an unwillingness to want to accept what is and instead we go into trying to manage or control the situation, or we feel collapsed and helpless about it.  This is how the traditional fight, flight or freeze protective/fear responses show up in our lives and keep us defensive rather than empowered.  

Learning acceptance of what is, is fundamental to feeling empowered and recognizing your choice in whatever situations you find yourself within.  Acceptance, will in a way, force you into experiencing your power.  It opens the door into your capacity to see your choices.  With this we often find ourselves stepping into situations needing to show up differently rather than expecting the situation to change.  This can be uncomfortable, which again is another reason we don’t want to accept what is, but ultimately it is what helps us realize our power and shift our underlying baseline feelings of disempowerment and victimhood.  

True surrendered-ness 

Working as intelligent energy

glittery lightSurrender has become such a popular term yet so few are actually experiencing what it is to live surrendered.  Surrender is not just this thing you do when you are at your whits end, feeling helpless and you don’t know what else to do.  In fact in my experience you must feel pretty empowered and know your worth in order to begin to truly taste surrender.  Surrender is an entire way of being and living.  As acceptance is an end of resistance to the known, surrender is an end of resistance to the unknown.  As acceptance is often a doorway into self-empowerment, surrender is a doorway into self-realization.  Self-empowerment is owning your personal value and worth, where self-realization is knowing yourself beyond the person.  Both self-empowerment and self-realization are important in terms of knowing your ultimate self and being able to live that here in this physical-relational world.  

Surrender requires that we use something beyond thought to navigate life. Rather than think-doing, which is how most people operate, surrendered living requires that we open into emptiness of thought, or empty the known.  Not being in resistance to the known is quite helpful for this and is why acceptance is often a preliminary skill set to living surrendered.  When we empty the known, yet simultaneously have unwavering confidence in the unknown (some people call this faith), then rather than thought moving you, soul moves you.  You could also substitute the words love, light, or god for soul.  It is an essence that is beyond what you as the identified thinker/person know.  In a way that thinker/person gets dis-abled, or unable to be used in its traditional mechanism, and something beyond what you’ve identified as you takes the reigns.  It moves your body-mind, it knows.  It knows exactly what to do without it going through your thoughts to figure it out first.  Your mind is still present its just not running the show in any way whatsoever.  

Living surrendered is to be overtaken by soul, by that intelligent energy-awareness that knows, which is really just you from a wider perspective.  Not everyone truly wants this now, nor is it relevant for everyone at this time.  Yet it is part of the developmental progression of beingness and at some point along the path its relevance will find everyone.  It is ultimately inescapable.  When its relevance does find you and you begin to taste surrender its like living magic.  The need for your mind to figure it all out decreases dramatically.  You realize the limitations of the mind and that you are not it.  You feel less and less separate.  There are no more boxes.  Being with another is like being with yourself.  Your body-mind is just moved.  The more and more your soul consumes you the more you realize that you are it and that you’ve never been this mind-personality-body ever.  You re-identify as soul, light, love, god.  

Things still happen, movement occurs, it is incredibly active and simultaneously still.  The perfect orchestration is revealed moment by moment as there is nothing that has to be other that what is.  There is full relinquishment of any personal agendas or will as you see yourself and know yourself, as soul, as Creator, as the One.  You are submerged in the mystery; willingly, gracefully and lovingly, dancing and moving to its rhythms.  

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

Embracing Magic

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Embracing Magic 

The seeming void

Beautiful, young elf, walking with a unicorn. She is wearing an incredible light, white dress. The girl lies on the horse. Sleeping Beauty. Artistic PhotographyWe all want magic.  This is evident from the time that we are little kids loving superheroes, “fiction”, and fantasy.  As adults we continue this love affair with magic seeking it through healing, spirituality, books, movies, relationships and various other pursuits.  Whatever form magic takes it entices us into it.  The yearning is that the mysteries may be revealed to us, that we may feel powerful, knowing, and connected, that we may have abilities to do and be beyond the physical sensibilities and that there is an ease, effortlessness and playfulness to life.  We are truly hungry for this underneath all of the things we think life is about and all of the things we think we have to do.  Yet magic seems to be missing for most.  Even those that are “tapped in” beyond their everyday ordinary mind are not always experiencing magic.  Where does the magic go?  Why is it not always 100% our experience?  

As a little girl pretty much the only thing that truly excited me was sensing beyond what was here and expanding my abilities to perceive beyond the ordinary senses.  I remember being as young as 8 or 9 years old diving into the paranormal section at the local library reading books on ESP and clairvoyance every chance I could get.  All of the TV shows I watched had something to do with the main character being seemingly “normal” while having some special power that she kept secret from everyone.  All of these things simply found me and I kept this intense curiosity and passion to myself as I did not perceive that other people in my life would either get it or share the interest.  

As I got older in my teens and early 20s a deep interest in energy work arrived and with it this feeling of being extremely limited or cut off from something.  It was as if I was navigating in the dark, walking around with a blindfold over my eyes and thick mittens on my hands not being able to see or feel what was there.  The awareness of limitation of the senses became screamingly evident.  By this point in my life any direct connection to the spirit realm that I had was long forgotten and otherwise non-reinforced by my experiences.  The seeming void of disconnection felt real along with the illusion that this physical world was the only reality.

You all have your own versions of this story.  It is the story that most all of us learn in one way or another.  A world void of magic and spirit.  We think that only what makes sense to our minds is true and only what we can experience with our physical senses is real, and we believe that story even when we don’t want to and even when something inside of us knows that there’s more.   

Magic comes alive 

From denial to embrace

48105490 - blue sparkling background with stars. vector illustration.This denial of spirit that we learn and adopt as our own belief allows us to fit into this world experience that we are currently having.  Friends, family members and society accept our rational choices and ordinary lives.  Anything beyond that makes them feel uncomfortable.  Many people live their entire lives not knowing anything beyond the physical world that in and of itself is void of magic.  Even if people do have some experiences of magic they can’t always perceive it because it doesn’t fit within their structures and stories of what is.  I’ve seen this occur many times over the course of my life where spirit directly moves through a person so profoundly and palpably and yet the person denies having had any experience of it.  This continues to baffle me to this day and yet I’ve come to realize that denial can be very strong and when something doesn’t fit into our mind’s boxes we simply don’t know how to process or place it, and therefore can’t perceive it even when we experience it.  

Even with all of the denial and disconnection from the world of magic and spirit some people have a deep knowing of something beyond the physicality of this world.  Its a knowing beyond just mind knowing.  Call it intuition or heart knowing or even faith.  Its like an inner compass that guides despite what our rational mind and beliefs tell us.  This was the case for me.  I always had a deep knowing of something beyond and a nearly complete devotion to expanding my perceptual abilities in order to be able to experience it.  This is the case for many who have penetrated the veil of the illusion of pure physicality into the world of magic and spirit.  

What makes magic come alive?  Ultimately love.  Love is magic, magic is love.  But let’s back it up a little bit so we can track how we get to love.  First is the letting go of the need to fit into this world.  Not from a place of resistance, hatred or unhappiness, but from a place of realizing that you can’t serve this world and perceive the magic beyond it if you are attempting to fit into it.  So its really a love for this world that inspires you to move beyond the need to fit into it.  Second, is the questioning of everything you’ve been told about this world.  You must dismantle your own beliefs about solidity and physicality being the only reality.  Next you must dismantle your beliefs about what you think you are and through that develop an intense hunger to know yourself beyond, to know spirit, as that is what you are beyond this physical body-personality.  This opens you into the heart and into the world of magic.  Your heart is the gateway into perceiving beyond the senses, to accessing infinite energy, to capabilities beyond your current capabilities, to greater ease, effortlessness and playfulness in the world of magic.   It becomes harder and harder to deny what you are, to deny spirit, to deny the aliveness that makes up the world.  You embrace and accept more and more this aspect of creation, and as you do it reveals itself and you directly experience it more and more as your everyday reality.  The key is love.  Nothing more than that.  Everything which you need is already here.  May the revealing of spirit and magic become the ever present reality within with you experience all of life.  

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