self-acceptance

Learning to Love Life

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

LEARNING TO LOVE LIFE 

Logic is not the answer

This life is not always a walk in the park.  In fact much of the time there is challenge, hard work and lots of arduous learning to be had.  Sure there are rhythms when things flow smoothly and all goes according to our desired plan, yet there are many rhythms when things don’t.  Rhythms where we feel lost, confused, bored, restless, stressed, and where we are ready to be off planet in some peaceful paradise where things work easily and we feel good all of the time.  Yet the fact remains that we are here on this planet, with this physical human body and there are things to be learned, shared and created right here where we are.  How do we make peace with being where we are even when we don’t like it?  How do we live in acceptance rather than resistance to our experience of challenge, work and learning?

When things are difficult many of us are good at logically rationalizing the situation.  For example say you are experiencing a tough rhythm.  Something you really want isn’t working out.  You feel confused and lost as to what is going on in your life.  You keep trying to think and find a logistical way out of the situation or something that will make it work out, but you are just spinning.  You can’t seem to find your way through.  You feel stuck, and little hopeless.  This is an incredibly common scenario.  You might logically know that somehow everything is going to be just fine, and while you logically know this you can’t quite seem to get yourself to really believe it because you are still spinning inside of it all.  Utilizing logic is not the solution at this stage of the game.

While logic is not the solution, this doesn’t stop us from trying to use it in order to get out of whatever it is we don’t want to experience in this life.  The reason why logic is not the answer is because from our mind’s perspective it is illogical to accept what we don’t like or understand, and ultimately acceptance is the solution to learning to love life as it is.  Your logic will likely not get you into acceptance of whatever is, but rather will keep you continuing to strategize how to not accept whatever is showing up in your life that you don’t want or understand.  Accepting what is also means that we have to feel what is.  This is again why we default to logic.  Most people prefer being tortured inside of the tornado of their thoughts rather than feel their emotions about what is.   

LOVING WHERE YOU ARE 

Accepting what is

Feeling our emotion about what is, bridges the gap between what we are logically trying to get ourselves to figure out and accepting what is.  When we feel emotion it clears out our resistances.  We stop trying to fight an uphill battle and therefore we can take a breath.  We may still not like, prefer or want what is, but we are no longer trying to deny, escape or get out of its existence.  We are rather just with what is, no longer fleeing from the dangers of feeling our emotions about it.  We’ve felt the thing, or more accurately we’ve felt our emotions about the thing.  We now experience some space, some ease and some peace.  We may not have clarity or know what we need to do, because perhaps there is nothing to do, or maybe there is, but either way we are more embracing of being in this moment rather than trying to get out of it and into the next one where we perceive we will feel more peace, joy or excitement.  

How does all of this lead to loving where you are?  When you are more accepting you are naturally more loving of everything.  You can still not like certain things, but your liking or not of what is, doesn’t touch you loving it.  Yes that’s right you can love what is, and simultaneously not like it.  You can respond with authenticity and grace, receiving what you don’t like and loving it exactly as it is.  But as long as you are in resistance to what is and not feeling your emotions about it, your mind can’t grok how this would be even possible.  Acceptance of what is opens the doorway in your mind so that you can comprehend this.  

Until we reach acceptance of what is no real change can occur in us or in how we perceive or feel about the situations of our life.  Instead we will just keep trying to fight or flee from it.  We won’t find love where we are if we are resisting what’s here.  You can’t escape your resistances.  You will take them with you into your next situation, and your next one, and the one after that, and on and on for eternity.  They don’t just go away because you insulate yourself from them through carefully crafting or controlling your environments.  Rather you only keep them at bay while they lurk in the depths waiting for their next opportunity to present themselves so that you can heal, resolve, and integrate them rather than move away from them.  

To not love where you are in this moment is to reject life and be in a state of unappreciation, and there is nothing more painful than that.  If your circumstances or situations change to your liking and then you decide to love life, your love is conditional.  The condition of your love being that your preferences are met.  This is not the stable, unshakeable, unconditional, divine love that we all seek to know.  To know this love is to become it.  How bold is to love life even when it’s not up to your liking?  How brave do you need to be in order to feel, accept and love life as it is and know that it will work out perfectly for you even if you don’t like it? This is what takes in order to learn to love life and to love where you are in this moment.  

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

True Stability

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True Stability 

Finding the ground of your being

Star explosion with particles and raysIn some way we are all seeking for stability.  A sense of groundedness, hereness and ok-ness.  The search for these things is often sought in external circumstances or situations.  Once we have the job, the money, the house, the relationships, the health, the sense of personal value and contribution, then we think we will feel secure.  But what happens when all of that crumbles?  Who and what are we then?  What stability exists when there are no external structures in place to make us feel safe?  It is truly only when all forms destabilize that the real opportunity to know ourselves arrives.

The root of stability is never found in the forms, it is instead found in your pure essential nature, devoid of all appearances.  What this means is that not until all forms dissolve and all constructs fall away in your awareness can you see the essence of what remains, which is pure being, which is the real you.  The only true stability is here.  It is the pure awareness that never changes, never comes and goes, is always here, always present.  There are no illusions of stability here.  There is only the knowingness of the ground of being or the ground of your self.  This is the pure state of stability itself.  

The path to stability is not by striving, proving and achieving, but instead is through self-acceptance.  Forces of instability which seem to throw you out of your center of stability only throw you out of your delusion of center.  They show you where you are still giving your power away and looking “out there” to feel ok.  Ultimately you cannot leave yourself,  you can only be shown where you still believe that you can leave yourself.  

To fully accept yourself and discover the path to true stability is not as easy as it sounds.  It means that you must face and feel all the places that bring up a sense of instability for you.  Feeling instability equates to feeling those things we fear.  Primarily what we fear boils down to the perception of loss of love, belonging or some other form of death (i.e. something going away).  It is through avoiding the feeling of the loss, separation, and alienation that we perpetuate the loss, separation and alienation and thus the experience of fear.  The magic, the miracle, comes through us allowing the feeling of loss, as through that we make contact with ourselves again and with that sense of stability which never truly left.   

Forces of Instability 

Fuel to know yourself

18291054 - blue ocean waveDue to the fact that we have been largely misinformed or have not realized our true essential nature we have come to adopt less than complete ideas about ourselves.  These ideas are distortions of the truth, not the pure truth itself.  Most people are living with a fragmented perspective of what/who they are without the full realization that they are living in this way.  It is frequently not until something disruptive comes into our lives and shakes us up a bit that we realize that there is possibly something more than what we’ve known.   

If we are too comfortable in our illusions of stability then we don’t have the opportunity to grow and realize more of ourselves and unearth the distortions of truth that we have come to believe about ourselves.  Instead we will just simply live the status quo hoping that not too much changes and fighting tooth and nail if it does because we don’t want our delusion of stability to end.  However I promise you that you don’t let the shake up occur you will never taste true stability or know yourself because you will be too locked into your stories of what you need to be safe.  

Transformation is always about instability.  People often say that they want to transform as if its some popular spiritual thing to do, but people almost never say they want to completely deconstruct all their false structures of safety and support and then actually do it.  People don’t do it because they get caught in the fear of loss of something and rather than move into it, they move away from it. 

Instability is necessary, but it is only necessary because we don’t know the truth of ourselves yet.  When instability arises see it as the opportunity that it is.  The opportunity to taste, know and eventually rest into a true stability that remains despite all of the coming or going of forms.  Do your best not to judge the shake up as wrong or bad, as if you do you will suffer or project your suffering onto others, rather than transform.  Recognize that instability tends to come in waves.  Some waves are more potent than other waves.  See the waves as gifts that you can ride into the truth of you.  

Transformation is simply as process to know ourselves as the true stability that we are.  A stability that is made of love.  A love that is complete, inclusive and which from all coming and goings arise.  Full self-acceptance is your free ticket into knowing this stability.  An acceptance that ends all fear and which absolutely no wave can shake.  Allow the instability, move into the instability, accept the fear that arises as you move deeper into the wave and you will alas be reunited with the entire ocean.  

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

Total self-acceptance

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Total self-acceptance

Why resistance wins instead 

We all know the importance of accepting ourselves just as we are.  All of the self-help, personal growth and improvement books, workshops and programs keep telling us just how essential self-acceptance is for our  evolution.  So why is it that it is so hard?  Why do we continue to resist ourselves even when we know it will not bring us to the place we want to be inside of ourselves?

peace dog heart glassesThe answer may surprise you; it is because we prefer feeling right more than self-acceptance.  Our preference for being right, justified and “legit” is so strong that we would rather suffer, resist, judge and hate, than accept.  And even though this puts us in a miserable underlying state of being (which we often mask with “an everything is fine” disguise that fools even us), it is better than being wrong.

So why do we hate feeling wrong so much?  Why do we create all of this resistance to it that we even allow it to destroy relationships with ourselves and others?  We live largely in a culture of achievement and perceived perfection.  Even if we are rebellious and go against the cultural norms they still influence us whether we choose to admit it or not.  People are generally not out there flaunting or bragging about their imperfections.  Why?  Because they fear that they won’t be accepted by others if they do.  If others see them for who they are, imperfections and all, then they won’t be loved.  Here is the crux of wounding in our culture.  So you seee there is big value and social need on being right, because to be wrong threatens us to be a true outcast when one of our most innate drives is to be included and part of community.

Choosing acceptance

Radical forgiveness

The most important and really only step in choosing acceptance is developing radical forgiveness.  Now what I am about to talk about I don’t recommend doing unless it feels right for you.  There are times to be angry, judgmental and in suffering.  There are lessons our souls learn through those states and experiences as well.  However if you have a perpetual pattern of being hard on yourself unnecessarily, judgmental of yourself or others, find it hard to be around people with opinions other than your own, retreat from any kind of conflict because it makes you uncomfortable, or feel not seen or heard AND you’re ready to show up differently with all of it, then you may want to consider what I am about to say.

hugging selfRadical forgiveness essentially means that you accept everything.  Even the things that people have “done to you” that have felt abusive, hurtful and down right unforgivable or unacceptable.  This also includes everything you have ever done or not done.  What this means is that, say you said something that you felt was really hurtful to another person, you must accept that you did it and not judge yourself for it.  Or say you were really harsh to your body either through physical exercise, strict dieting, compulsive behaviors or mean thoughts about yourself that you aren’t good enough, that must be accepted too.  Or maybe someone did something to you that felt violating or abusive, even that to must be accepted.  This does not mean that you don’t have discernment for what is right/wrong for you or that you are left powerless, instead it means you accept what is as it is and from here you find your true power.

Now this is not easy.  We must go through layers of resistance in the form of feelings, stories, and beliefs that we had previously held as wrong and not acceptable; accepting things, including ourselves, that feel wrong and not ok.  This however is the path towards self-acceptance.  When you develop self-acceptance you are seen, heard, and loved regardless if anyone sees, hears or loves you.  It is total liberation that than allows you to deeply love others and to consciously and deliberately choose your feelings, thoughts, beliefs and how you want to show up in any given moment.

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