Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: self-value

AVOIDING NOT ENOUGH

Focusing on what isn’t

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

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

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

ACCEPTING NOT ENOUGH

You may never feel like enough

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

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

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

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

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

LACK OF PERCEIVED SELF-WORTH

Self-absorption & taking from the field

Not valuing ourselves is a rather common disposition among humans. It tends to be more socially acceptable to share feelings of lack of self-worth than it is to share expressions of worthiness. If someone is confident they are often viewed as arrogant or conceded, and if someone lacks self-worth they are viewed as altruistic or humble. Due to this social conditioning many who are confident don’t share themselves fully for concern of not wanting to “make” others feel bad about themselves or appear non-caring or un-empathetic. Meanwhile those that don’t value themselves set the social bar for the level of self-love that it’s ok to share and express.

Not valuing one’s self is the lowest energy state. It literally takes energy from everything that it interacts with because it never feels like it’s enough. Not only does it perceive itself as not enough, but it views everything else from the same lens that it views itself. It can’t not. It does not give to the field, but rather takes from it. It is the most self-absorbed state. Some people may find this paradoxical because what is perceived as confident or arrogant is most commonly associated with self-absorption. However this is opposite to the energetic dynamics that get played out.

Understand that to not care for yourself or see value in who/what you are is not humble or altruistic. You viewing yourself as less than does not make you more kind, loving or selfless. Rather it makes you more selfish and more wrapped up in your own self-created delusion of inadequacy and lack. This sucks the life out of you, and out of everything and everyone around you. Lack of self-worth is like a black hole that absorbs all the light of the world into it and yet remains empty because there isn’t enough light in the entire universe to illuminate it.

The only thing that can shift this is if that which views itself changes its perspective of itself, meaning you change your perception of yourself. If rather than seeing yourself as lack and valueless, you see yourself as you truly are, which is abundant, complete and full. If that simple perception shift occurs, than no longer does one need to get from its environment or from other people in order to attempt to fill itself up. Only then will you stop sucking energy out of the field and become a radiating stream that gives to the field by its very beingness. Rather than being self-absorbing you become self-emitting, shining light wherever you go. Many desire this, to be a light, and yet simultaneously don’t understand that their perception of themselves and their worth influences all of the energetic dynamics about them.

FUELING YOUR BELIEF IN SELF

Prisoned disempowerment or free will

The larger truth is that its impossible to not be worthy. You can only perceive yourself to be unworthy, and that perception creates the reality you experience, whether it’s true or not. The only questions become, how do you want to participate with/play the game of life, and will you wake up to your choice? See nothing in life happens to you unless you view it as such; unless you choose the victim position. Most people unconsciously choose the victim position because the sea our consciousness swims in is filled with that programming. The whole process and point of waking up is to consciously recognize that you are choosing and also then what you are choosing. In this way you can consciously create your world rather than blindly accept the status quo. Just because the large majority of people choose prisoned disempowerment as their story doesn’t mean that you must as well.

The fuel of the reality of prisoned disempowerment is re-enforcing the belief of non-worth, non-value, and powerlessness. In this reality some people have power and some don’t. Some people matter and some don’t. Some people are valuable and some aren’t. You must ask yourself if that is the reality that you want to fuel, and also be willing to see how you do fuel it though the “innocent” interaction you have with how you see yourself as unworthy. If you desire to create a different reality you will require a different fuel source. The reality of free will is fueled by the belief of infinite value, inherent worth and powerfulness. What is required for you to experience free will is the knowing of your worth. Your power is your worth, your worth is your power. In this reality all have power, all matter and all are valuable.

Its important to know what reality your energetic vote and perception of self, contribute to creating. People tend not to know the power of their inner dialogue and the power of the lenses that they wear when they look at self or at the world. How you view becomes your reality. Even though your power could never be more or less than it is, which is synonymous with saying that your worth could never be more or less than it is, in this relative game we are playing there are two ways to increase power/worth/energy. One way is to control others; the other way is to empower others. If you control others you then gain/take their free will and it adds to your own. You gain power. If you empower others you give free will and it adds to the greater collective all of which you are included. This is essentially your “how to” recipe: view yourself as valuable, help others view themselves as such through your capacity to view yourself as such, create a lived reality where free will is your direct experience.

Understand that to view yourself as unworthy or not valuable is to disregard the beauty of God and it’s creation. It’s to deny the perfection of the creator expressed through you. It’s paradoxically the most self-absorbed perspective through its rejection of self. Its the lowest energy state, which you then experience as your life. Through viewing yourself as unworthy you create a disempowered reality and willingly give your free will, your energy and your power over to it. When will you have had enough? When will you decide you are more then you’ve been perceiving yourself to be? What will it take for you to stop insisting that you aren’t worthy? How much more suffering are you willing to create by holding onto your view of unworthiness?

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