self-realization

GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

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GIVE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET

Reversing directions

Nearly all of us, in some way or other, are focused on what we want.   We’ve created our vision boards, completed our intention setting, prayed our manifestation prayers, did our ceremonies and rituals, recited the mantras and affirmations, all to bring about what it is we want.  Always it seems we are asking the inner question “how will I get what I want today” or a more sophisticated version of that is “how will the world and my experiences be how I want them too?”  When we ask these questions, either deliberately or automatically, what happens is that we align our actions around that sole quest.  The quest of what we want.  What frequently comes with the quest of following our desires is an idea or picture of what our desires look like to us when they are fulfilled.  The most tangible example of this would be to say that we want something physical like a house, car or any other physical object.  We typically have a pretty clear idea of what it is we want or don’t want.  An image forms in our mind and we move towards that image.  We may “sacrifice” on some of details, but other things are non-negotiable.  If we really want a convertible car we are unlikely to buy a truck, as it’s too far off from our desires.  

What arises however when what we want isn’t available or not present inside of our immediate experience?  We want a convertible, but there are none available.  The house we want isn’t for sale.  The latest iPhone we want is out of stock.  We could also extrapolate this to less “physical” objects such as relationships, opportunities, health, safety, security, stability or particular emotional states.  When there are no suitable partners, the trip we want to go on is sold out, we don’t feel secure or stable in our life, or we feel sick, angry, frustrated or sad, it seems that what we want is not available.  Where does our focus go?  Our focus is on what isn’t inside of our experience.  We actually lose touch with our true desire because we are so focused on what isn’t here.  Then we have some version of a freak out and we feel anxious or depressed, because that is really the only way to feel when we are focused on what isn’t.  

We internally stir, attempting to figure out how we will get what we want.  We do more to get the things.  Work harder, manifest longer, say our affirmations more frequently.  We can’t seem to figure out why with everything we are doing we still don’t have what we want.  We wonder why isn’t life working for us or with us.  What we want seems outside of us, like it’s something over there, somewhere inside of an object or some other person or place, and if we could just figure out how to get it.   The secret is that our desire is not outside of us.  We are it.  However when we merge our desire with the objects we think possess our desire, we feel helpless, frustrated and confused.   

BE YOUR DESIRE

Shifting focus

Desire steers the ship of this life, but life is not about us getting our desires.  Rather life is about being our desires.  This can seem very confusing to our mind that projects everything onto our experience rather than seeing ourselves as the source of our experience.  This projection is why it seems that what we want is inside of something or someplace else, and why we get anxious or depressed when our experience of life, or the appearance of things, is not how we want it to be.  What appears (ie. our experience) is a reflection of us, and when we feel something is lacking or missing (scarcity mindset) it ultimately seems that something is lacking or missing in us, hence the epidemic of feeling not enough that runs through the human experience.  

This brings me to the most important point, which is to give what you want.  I will repeat again what I wrote above, life is not about you getting what you want, but rather about being it, being your desire.  The only way to experience what you want is to give it, which is the same thing as being it.  Now your mind will want to come in and insist that this is impossible.  How can you give what you perceive to be missing or not present?  How can you give what you want life to give you?  Let’s say that you want to be loved by another person in a relationship, your mind will say that the only way you can fulfill that desire is to be loved by another person. How can you give that, doesn’t that come from someone else?  But does it really?  Is it not you that feels loved inside of you?  Say you want safety or security from another person.  How do you give that too?  Let’s go to the more physical examples.  You might argue that a house, car or any other physical object doesn’t live inside of you.  You are correct, they don’t physically live inside of you, but your desire for them does.  We never want the thing, we only want the feeling that we think the thing will bring us.  Maybe your desire for a house is because you want a feeling of stability.  Again how can you be or give stability rather get stability?  

Simply notice whenever you feel that life is not working out for you or not what you want.  You will always be focused on what isn’t rather than on what you desire.  You must train yourself to find what is it you really want and when you connect with your actual desire you will begin to feel good again.  If you start to focus too much on the forms, appearance or happenings of your experience rather than your desire, you will likely suffer again.  Sometimes the appearance of life will be as we want it to be and sometimes it won’t be.  As far as I can tell this is constant inside of this human experience.  This may feel like a bold statement, but the appearance doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you give to life what you desire too.  That you be what you want to be.  That you are an expression your heart’s desires.  Unlike the mind’s complexity the heart is simple.  It desires only love, connection and bliss.  You must recognize when you stop choosing that, when you stop focusing on that, when you stop desiring that, and instead get lost in what doesn’t seem to be here that you think will give you the experience of love, connection and bliss.  As soon as you recognize that you’ve lost your focus on what matters, you must do everything within your capacity to shift your focus back onto giving that which you desire to be.  Herein lies fulfillment beyond any getting that you can ever get.

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

YOUR BODY IS NOT SEPARATE FROM YOU

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YOUR BODY IS NOT SEPARATE FROM YOU 

The catalyst of bodily symptoms

Most people don’t like it when their body behaves in ways that seem dysfunctional.  People’s relationship to novel or chronic sensations, pains, or symptoms that don’t make sense often throw them into a state of alarm, panic and distress.  The struggle to attempt to change the expression through figuring out and controlling one’s self or environment can become life consuming.  Often the journey can feel exhausting and like it isn’t achieving the desired outcome.  

If you see from the perspective that this entire life experience is about learning, then including the experiences that you have in relationship with your body is no different.  Oftentimes however rather  than viewing from the perspective that life is about learning we attempt to find some solidity or permanence inside of our experience, particularly when it comes to our physical body.  Since most people identity as their body rather than the presence that makes their body come alive many feel intimately threatened by certain bodily sensations or symptoms.  That threat can come in the form of not being able to do things we feel we want to do, loss of certain functions that seem vital to our existence and a general hopeless or powerless perspective towards the body and its expressions.  

First I want to offer the perspective that you are not your body.  Your body is an instrument of you.  It is what you utilize inside of this human experience, but it is not you.  The body also does not function independent of you.  Just like a piano does not play without the pianist, your body does not function without you playing it.  Without you your body does not make a sound, a beep, or a single move.  This is important to fully understand.  See when things go “awry’ in our body we tend to view the body as separate from us and while your body is not you it does nothing without you.  

When we view our body as acting independently from us we disown ourselves in the equation and thus any power we have.  This is why we feel powerless, helpless and try to figure it all out as if it is something other than us.  It is not that we are actually powerless or helpless to our body, but only that we have the perspective that we are somehow separate from our body.  When we see through and dissolve the story of separation we no longer perceive disconnection or otherness.  There is no other thing inside of your body running the show.  It is only you inside your body running the show.  How could there be something or someone else inside of your body?  That one that is you is the one that is playing this instrument of your body.   

EMPOWERED YOU = HAPPY BODY 

You are the Creator

All learning is to help us realize more of ourselves, and the more realized we are of what we are, the more empowered we experience ourselves to be.  To say this another way the more we know ourselves, the more aware we are, and the more resourceful we are in navigating with the forms of life because we see more clearly how we are the creator of them.  The body is one of those forms of life, one in which we are seemingly more intimately connected too.  

In times when we perceive greater separation there is often the feeling that life and our body are against us.  Maybe we see our body’s symptoms, pains and expressions as punishment for something, or as unfair, or as wrong.  However our body is not against us as that would be absolutely impossible.  That would be like saying the piano is against the pianist.  How could that even be so?  Who would be inside the piano to be against anything.  The piano is inherently neutral and so is your body.  What chooses for or against is you.  

What I am pointing to here is a high level of empowerment and knowing yourself.  Not everyone is ready to take full responsibility for knowing themselves and therefore will keep trying to fix and manipulate the form.  The form will change in response to those manipulations, however it may or may not change your experience.  This is why people don’t arrive where they hope to arrive.  They are waiting on the form to inform them.  They are allowing the form to decide for them rather than deciding for themselves.  

The way I see it is that the body’s expressions are catalyst, meaning ways to help us wake up and realize ourselves.  They are learning tools.  They are not meant as punishment, or to harm us, and they are not wrong or unfair.  They are pointers, pointing us to pay attention to ourselves.  To see, choose, act, respond, think, and feel differently then we currently do.  To expand our range of life and possibility and move beyond our current perceptions of limitation.  To ultimately turn our awareness towards ourselves rather than the stuff of life.  To come to know ourselves.  This is how I see all of life.  There is nothing in this entire universe that isn’t moving towards greater self-recognition.  That is the impulse that drives all movement, all energy and all direction.  It drives your entire life even if you don’t yet see it.  

No forms are permanent.  We all know this despite our great efforts to try to make them so.  You are on an epic learning journey with the only destination being greater awareness of self.  The one stable, non-changing element is you.  Not your mind, thoughts, emotions, sensations or ideas about who you are, but your very essence.  Come to know that.  Realize that is all any of this is about.  Find safety in yourself, not in the ever changing world of forms.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & 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

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