spiritual

LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION

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LIFE BEYOND CONSUMPTION 

Our love of consuming

Being a consumer of life is the natural way of living for most people.  We love shopping and get excited when we have a package waiting for us at our front door.  We look forward to going to our favorite restaurants in order to eat and drink all of things that we enjoy.  We can’t wait to watch or read that new movie or book we’ve been waiting for to come out.  Scrolling our preferred social media apps to see what’s going on with our friends or in the world around us in one of our most preferred activities.  We are nearly constantly taking something in.  Whether that something is food, information, or tangible objects, we tend to like the feeling of things coming in.  In fact for many people this is how they relax.  In contrast, when it seems like life wants or demands something from us, even if we are the one creating that want or demand, we feel tense, vigilant or like we need to perform or show up in some extra alert way.  Sometimes just thinking about what we will have to give makes us tired.  

In a lot of ways consuming is easier.  We just sit back and let life in.  It doesn’t require any real effort on our part, except for perhaps deciding if we want to buy the shoes we like in brown or black, or choosing if we want to go with the fish or steak dinner at our favorite restaurant.  It’s low demand, not that complicated and in the end we feel some kind of satiation.  Our new outfit arrives, we get loaded up on information from our new book, or we get the latest news about our “friends” on social media, and we feel full.  Why does getting full feel so good?  It feels good because most people operate from a belief in scarcity and therefore any attempt to give feels like fuller depletion.  At least when they get they can momentarily not feel lack.  

Yes there is the obvious fact that we need to food to survive, albeit much less than most of us would like to think we need.  We also need clothes, but probably not near as many as we buy.  Information is helpful to make informed decisions about things we don’t know about it, but many of us are addicted to consuming information without taking any real action on the things we learn.  Social media can provide us with some sense of connection with others, but most people are just mindlessly scrolling to see if they are missing out on anything.  While most people probably wouldn’t fully admit it, they just want life to happen to them without them having to do much work.  This means that rather than creating we would prefer it be given to or have things done for us.  An example of this would be if someone gave you the option to either work your way to $1 million dollars or be given $1 million dollars, nearly everyone would opt for the later.   Case in point, most of us would prefer to receive support and care rather than give it. 

WORKING, CREATING & GIVING 

Stopping the consumption cycle

Giving is work.  It does require something from us, namely our time, energy, and focus, which are, our most precious of resources.  Because they are our most precious resources, we tend to want to conserve them, not use them up or give them away too readily less we run out of them.  But what are we really saving them for?  Do we think that if we don’t use them then we can store them up?  Are we afraid if we give our attention to one thing then we won’t have the energy, time or focus to give to another thing?  Perhaps you are ambivalent about what we want to give too.  Maybe you have difficulty making a decision about what is important to you.  Perhaps you just feel like you don’t have enough time, energy or focus and are living in scarcity about your state of inner resourcefulness.  We are always plotting in our mind what we think we have the inner resources for and therefore how willing we are to show up to life.  I am not denying that rest is important, it is, however most of us are way underestimating and underutilizing our capacities.  Why?  Because we think our inner resources are going to run out.  

I could tell you that there is no such thing as time, that it is simply a made up construct, but it’s likely that you will keep operating as if there is time.  I could tell you that you are the source of energy itself, but you will probably continue to feel like you don’t have enough of it.  I could tell you that you’ve got nothing but focus, yet you will claim that you get easily distracted.  These ways of thinking and believing are just habit.  In some ways you know that timelessness, infinite energy and inexhaustible focus are true, yet they aren’t true for your experience of life, at least not yet.  If you really embodied that there is a surplus of energy, no time and that you could focus on whatever you wanted to for however long you wanted too, what wouldn’t you do?  I imagine that your relationship to work, giving and creating would be mighty different.  I would think you would stop living by the clock in your head, your stories of limited energy and your distractible focus. 

Consuming is not the only way to live.  It’s not negative to consume.  We all need to consume some.  We need food, rest, nourishment, information, education, and social connection.  However when we are coming from scarcity of our inner resources of time, energy, and focus, with the fear that they might run out, then our consumption levels increase.  Sometimes to the point where we never feel satiated no matter how much we take in.  To remedy this we need to clearly know when we are full and stop consuming.  At that point rather than taking in more we need to switch to giving through work or creation.  That is the natural cycle of giving and receiving.  

Some people might say that they don’t know when they are full because they have overridden their fullness levels for so long.  If that is you I recommend this, when it stops feeling good and begins to feel bad, or like an addiction or obsession, or you find yourself becoming less present or more checked out, you know you’ve reached the fullness point.  So rather than watching another movie, reading another book, eating another piece of chocolate, having another drink or scrolling another social media app, stop in that moment and find a way to give, work or create instead.  This is when you move beyond a life of consumption.  The secret is that this is where energy, focus and timelessness live.  Never again will you fear them running out because you are living inside of them.

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

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

CLEAR YOUR SH*T OUT

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CLEAR YOUR SH*T OUT 

Be a vessel for source

We all have shit.  Lots and lots of shit.  We are full of it.  Most are solely consumed in it and don’t even know it.  It is the source of our dissatisfaction, our disempowerment and our suffering.  So what is all of this shit and where does it come from?  It is all of the stories, beliefs, opinions, ideas, judgments, and everything we think we know about stuff and life.  Essentially it’s everything we make up about who we think we are, what life is and the rightness or wrongness of what’s happened or is currently happening to us or in the world.  The source of all of our shit is our own thoughts and beliefs about stuff and the societal conditioning and norms that we learn from others and take on as our own.  We are often extremely convicted in our shit.  It gives us a sense of personal individual identity.  To let go of it means that we have to admit defeat to the fact that we actually don’t know and accept that which often feels unacceptable to us.  For many this is a tall order and most would rather keep their experience of dissatisfaction, disempowerment and suffering than dismantle their personal ego.  

Outside of the obvious, and perhaps it’s all obvious, you may wonder why anyone would want to clear out their shit and give away everything they think they know about life.  Well besides knowing your power, feeling fulfilled and ending suffering for yourself, it is also the gateway to being a vessel for source and living joyfully in levity and service.  When we empty out all of the shit inside of us, our mind and body become a clear container for life to be as it and move through us in the most precise, gracious and graceful ways.  It is only from this state of emptiness of self that we can truly be of service to others and life without any personal agenda whatsoever.  It is a state of true allowance and a giving to, rather than attempting to get anything at all to happen or be any way other than it is.  To our minds this might feel or seem like lack of progress or forward momentum, but to all of our souls it’s a welcome home.  

All progress is to get to better or get to perfection, but when you accept that as the current state then all of the sudden there is no where to get.  You’ve instantly arrived where you have been trying to get.  Again most people’s minds will fight this tooth and nail because it means that whatever you’ve thought about something, some injustice you feel you’ve seen or experienced, something you’ve perceived as not right, must be forgiven and allowed to return to its natural state of wholeness within your mind.  Our minds experience this as failure and yet paradoxically we become more free and in connection with all of life when we stop fighting.  This is healing, and beyond that, this is healed.   

THE JOY OF BEING A VESSEL 

Surrendering self

There is tremendous joy in surrendering to what is and becoming an empty vessel of pure service.  To give your life over to that sourceful intelligence that created the entire universe, that put galaxies in place and planets into orbit, which sees and knows way beyond what the human mind does, relieves so much pressure on your system.  For some this might not seem all that exciting on initial thought.  To give away our agendas of all the things we think we want, that feel important to us, and simply be moved by the source of life itself can feel scary to the mind.  We may feel loss of control.  We might have thoughts that we will be purposeless if we don’t have a clear trajectory of what is next.  We often fear the quiet, the silence or non-activity because it seems to threaten our worth and sense of contribution, safety or survival.  Most people lack trust in the silence so they fill up the spaciousness of their mind with as many thoughts as possible about everything that has happened, is happening or might happen.  In this way we can’t hear in the silence, and feeling nothing is there, we busy ourselves as much as they can so that we don’t feel the uncomfortableness of the fertile spontaneous present arising of the mystery of silence.

Much to your surprise you might discover that on an appearance level your life doesn’t look that much different when you give away all the stuff inside of you that keeps you full of your own self.  You may live in the same place, have the same job, be engaged in the same relationships, yet even though things look the same on the outside, where you are coming from on the inside is completely different.  Coming from your current thoughts and beliefs about stuff versus coming from pure emptiness that remains when you give away all of that stuff, generates a completely different experience even it looks the same from the outside.  The level of presence, connection, ease, purity, depth of impact and non-attachment you feel is worlds different than what most people are experiencing inside of their minds in their day to day experience.  

There really is nothing greater that I’ve found than giving away the personal mind stuff and being open to whatever is present.  To be available in this way allows you to feel rested inside of every single moment.  There is no time or place where you need to leave this rest to go outside of yourself and meet something other than you.  All of you is included inside of the moment when you drop all of your ideas, thoughts and agendas about what’s happened or is happening.  Here you experience magic in action, because your mind doesn’t have it figured out yet, but somehow that which knows all moves through you.  What comes through is stuff you wouldn’t have even been able to figure out or make up.  You know, but don’t know how you know.  You do, but don’t really know what you are doing.  Yet eternal yumminess is all you ever experience no matter how things unfold and you realize your tiny little person mind could never take credit for it all.  This is mastery of the yourself to the point where you are willing to surrender yourself completely to all of you rather than just what you think you are.  This brings an indescribable peace to your experience because you no longer have any personal attachment to anything that happens, and paradoxically in giving yourself away you finally experience the freedom you’ve always innately longed for.

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

ALL IS ENOUGH

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ALL IS ENOUGH 

Shifting perspectives

Imagine what it would be like to look out at all of life and see it as enough.  To see nothing lacking, nothing missing and nothing that needs progress or change.  For a moment to be content with what is.  Notice how you feel when you look out and see enough.  Now share this same outward perspective of enoughness inwardly.  See yourself, your body, your inner journey, and wherever you are in life at this moment as enough.  Again notice how you feel.  Recognize the ease and sense of calm rested-ness that becomes instantly available when you see this way.  Notice how your entire system relaxes and you become present and available to whatever is here now.  This enoughness is what most all of us crave.  Many of us are tired.  Tired of feeling like life is scarce, like we have to work hard to survive, that we must stay vigilant, can never relax, or that something must change.  It’s exhausting to view from the perspective of not enough.  Yet most of us don’t realize that it is simply a perspective.  We believe scarcity to be reality.  

Enoughness is always present, always available, and always here.  It requires only that you bring your focus on it.  What we focus on we experience.  It’s challenging for the mind to accept this and to change its beliefs in this way.  We really want to keep believing what we believe even if what we believe doesn’t feel good.  We think that it’s the only option.  We don’t see ourselves in the equation as the source of our experience.  Due to this unawareness of ourselves as the source of what we experience we often feel powerless to our beliefs rather than in charge of them.  Until we see ourselves and simultaneously really, really want to believe something different, we won’t.  We will choose the same beliefs that feel bad, that generate the same feelings of fear, lack and scarcity, that is until we are truly fed up or things in our life or body break down.

It’s a bit of an interesting paradox that we have to really convince ourselves to want what we want.  We all want to feel abundant and in the state of enoughness, yet we must be really tempted to make that choice in perspective.  We will come up with one hundred million reasons why we can’t choose it, one hundred million ways to disbelieve that it’s possible, and one hundred million insistences why we must keep our old belief system of scarcity, lack and not enough.  Life will give us challenges where it will feel hard to choose the perspective of enoughness and yet that is the inner work required to make the change in belief.  The challenges are the perfect gift, the most pristine catalyst, that you need in order to choose the perspective of your true desire.   

INNER BOOTCAMP 

Choosing enough

Choosing the perspective you desire is not always easy.  When the experience of life appears empty of things you desire, or it feels like life is not working for you and you can’t make sense of what appears to not be inside of your experience, doubts arise.  When doubt is present you default to your habitual way of perceiving life, which for most is through the lack and scarcity lens.  Fear arises based on how you are perceiving things to be and you find yourself stuck.  Stuck in nothing more than a perspective, yet it feels like so much more than that.  You might wonder how things can just be a matter of perspective, perhaps it seems too simple, yet how could they be anything else?  Two people could experience the exact same situation or conditions, and experience them very different based on how they perceive the experience.  

Living from enoughness or completeness is entirely possible.  It is not fantastical to entertain this as your lived experience.  You must first start seeing the challenges that seem contrary to enoughness in your life as opportunities to learn it.  What this means is that when situations arise that seem to activate your lack, not enough, or scarce thoughts, you must see these situations as opportunities to choose a new perspective, and then you must actively choose to see abundance where you previously saw it as not.  Again your mind will likely resist this at first.  It won’t want to make the change in perspective because it doesn’t yet believe it.  That’s ok.  Choose it anyways and then notice that you begin to feel better.  You might oscillate back and forth between choosing lack and then choosing to see enough.  You might go back of forth 15-100 times for just one situation or challenge that presents itself, and that’s ok.  That oscillation back and forth is building a muscle, you inner muscle of enoughness.  

Lack perspectives can just be tricky to see.  They can come dressed up in a strong need to make progress or make something different.  Though this might seem very natural to you to want to make progress, because it is quite engrained in us that this is what we are supposed to be doing as humans, you must recognize what your need to make progress is rooted in.  Do you feel that there is somewhere better to get too?  Do you feel where you are is not enough?  Do you feel there is something wrong with what is happening now and you need to make it different?  All of that is rooted in lack and not enoughness.  

When instead you choose the perspective of enoughness and become rooted in it, life still flows, and there is still projects, activities and happenings.  The difference is that you play in the unfolding of life rather than try to make stuff happen to it.  It quite a bit more easeful even though there is still activity and doing occurring.  There is nothing to fix so you have less attachment to any outcome and your only purpose in doing is to have fun and because you enjoy it, not because something more or better must occur.  This is what is to come from enough rather than to try to get to enough.  If you keep trying to get there you will never arrive.  If instead you simply choose it, over and over and over again until you are rested there, then and only then will you experience it.  

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

SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT

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SPIRITUAL ALIGNMENT 

What it is?

Most all of us desire spiritual alignment.  We may not call it that exactly, but the essence of it, is that we want to feel soulfully connected with ourselves, have purpose, be contributing to life in meaningful ways and feel as good as possible while engaged in this thing called being human.  Many people have the misconception that being spiritually aligned means that everything is easy, you get what you want, and you never struggle, have painful sensations or feel bad.  In fact people think that if their life is not the idealized picture they have in their head of what their life should be, then they must not be spiritually aligned.  

I’d like to make two distinctions.  The first is that on an absolute level there is no such thing as misalignment or being out of alignment.  Every single aspect of your experience is perfectly orchestrated for every learning and expression that you are participating in and creating.  Rest knowing that all is well regardless of whatever your thoughts and feelings are about your current experience.  The second distinction is that on a relative level, which is the level of this dualistic human playground, there is the experience of misalignment or being out of alignment.  Part of the learning here in this human game is how to refine ourselves to become a closer and closer reflection and expression of our complete self.  Since nearly all of us are living as a twisted or distorted fragment or version of ourselves, this refinement is a necessary process in coming home or remembering who we are.  

Back to spiritual alignment.  What blocks or seems to interfere with our experience of it?  The biggest obstacle is our definition of what it is and what it’s not.  The second is our lack of passion or intensity of desire for it.  Lastly is our avoidance of un-pleasurable sensations, feelings or experiences.  The combination of these three things makes for the experience of living spiritually unaligned.  It takes redefining, intensifying and moving with un-pleasurable experiences in order for us to have a new experience of alignment.  One that feels soulful, on purpose, and gives to others and life.  As you move up the developmental levels of your being you start at your root where the focus is survival, then moving up to having personal, emotional and social needs met or achieved.  The next level after that is the heart.  Once you reach the level of the heart, living spiritually becomes the central focus of your learning, sharing and expression.  Aligning yourself with the bigger picture of why you exist is fundamental to your growth as the spiritual being you are.   

LIVING SPIRITUALLY ALIGNED

Redefining, intensifying & moving with un-pleasurable experiences

Let’s start with our definitions.  We all have ideas and pictures in our minds of what living spiritually means.  Take a moment to ponder, investigate and explore what your particular ideas and pictures are.  Maybe there is a certain way you imagine it feels to be spiritually aligned.  Perhaps you see yourself having certain financial resources and being at a certain “place” in your life.  You might see that you have some special gift, knowing or intuitive abilities that you’ve harnessed.  Maybe you have specific relationships, partnerships, or connections with people.  Perhaps there are projects or work that you are doing that is more “spiritual” in nature.  Most often we have many of these ideas running in the back of our mind as to what it means to be spiritual.  Yet none of these things, ideas or pictures equals living spiritually aligned.  These are all simply preferences and appearances.  To live spiritually aligned is all about where you come from in your moment to moment experience and has nothing to do with the experiences themselves.  Where you come from is an intention or vibration of beingness.  Orienting to that over and over and over again is spiritual alignment.

Next is intensifying our passion and desire for orienting to our intention for existing.  We are mostly distracted by the experiences of life and what we are getting from them even if we think we are altruistic and spiritual.  We often don’t have much inner driving force beyond basic survival needs and personal and social validation.  Once our needs are met and we feel validated in our existence, meaning we’ve proved to ourselves and everyone else that we are worthy and valuable, we often lack drive and intentionality.  We’re lazy.  We don’t have much self-discipline.  Truly who can blame us.  The experience of a human life is not exactly a walk in park and if we aren’t literally “forced” (i.e. perceive a strong need) to make something happen then we typically won’t bother.  To be moved or driven, not by need, threat, loss, lack or what we think we will get, but rather moved only by our intention for existing is to live devoted.  Devoted and committed to the sole purpose of our existence.  This too provides the direct experience of spiritual alignment.

Lastly is our avoidance of uncomfortable sensations and feelings.  Whether or not you are aware of it your life is likely focused on how to increase pleasurable sensations and feelings, and how to avoid the un-pleasurable ones.  We tend to categorize unpleasant sensations and feelings as less spiritual than the pleasant ones.  When we feel bad we like to blame the circumstances, conditions, people, our body, ourselves, and on and on.  Through our blaming we hope to feel better so that something can be responsible for how we feel, rather than allowing ourselves to feel what is present.  I will simply say that life is full of un-pleasurable sensations and feelings.  If you just accept it rather than avoid it, you can include all of your experiences inside of your spiritual alignment rather than push some of them away.  Unpleasant sensations and feelings are not bad.  They are just part of the experience.  Suffering occurs only when we are in opposition to what is occurring, meaning when we resist it.  Painful sensations and feelings do not equal suffering when we unwind our story about what they mean.  

I invite you to play with these 3 ingredients of living spiritually aligned.  Redefine your definitions, intensify your desire and accept all the sensations and feelings that come with your experience.  Recognize that perhaps living spiritually aligned is different than what you thought it was.  Explore where you need to clean up or elevate your perspectives.  Be surprised and surprise yourself.  You might even find that you already are living your highest alignment.  

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

BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

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BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

Get to give

Most are in a constant strive to get.  Get possessions, get relationships, get money, get fame, get love, get safety, get healthy, get enlightened, get well.  Getting seems to be the only way we experience what we want, or at least we think it is.  Many of our social and cultural structures are built around getting something or getting somewhere.  School, competitive sports, the right job, the creative business, even vacations, meditation, and leisure activities can become sources of getting for us when the intention is to get something out of them even if it’s relaxation.  

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with getting.  It’s simply that getting is an outsourcing of our own power.  It is also a never-ending, scarce way to approach life because it seems as though there will always be more that you need to get.  The perspective that drives this approach is rooted in a sense of lack of a self.  When there is not recognition of a self, of a you, that has impact and is a creator, than the source of creatorship or power appears to come from the things we perceive to be around us.  This is classical projection or disowning one’s power or self.  

While many people in spiritual circles and communities are busy attempting to dismantle their sense of a self, or ego identity as a separate individual, you must first discover that there is a self to dismantle.  If you don’t you will continue to come from disempowered views even if you occasionally experience high states of energy or have spiritual insights and experiences.  From a developmental perspective there is first non-awareness of self (or a pre-self) in which it seems life is randomly happening and there is a getting to survive.  Secondly there is development of a self, of a person, that has impact, that can do stuff and where there is a you that is happening to life.  Here we get in order to validate that we are a self and that we are important.  Thirdly there is non-self or transcending the sense of a separate individual person self into a unified sense of one self.  To develop from the second to third we must transition from getting perspectives to giving perspectives.  Here to give is to get as all is one being, yet that is only realized through first making the shift from get to give.   

GETTING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO RECEIVE

The frequency you choose

As much as we might believe that getting is the only way to receive what we think we want or need, it’s only because that is the prime way we’ve been operating.  We think we need to get something in order to experience what we desire.  For example if we don’t feel relaxed we think we need to do something or find someone to “give” us relaxation. Hence we need to get relaxation from somewhere. This can go for anything we are attempting to get like wealth, relationships, love, safety, health, enlightenment, wellness, and on.  Most people think they need to get these things or how else on earth will they ever experience them.  

Like everything else getting is simply a frequency.  When we vibrate with the frequency of “get” then we are vibrating with a sense of what we want isn’t here and that we must somehow, someway get it.  Essentially we are vibrating with the frequency of “not” or “lack.”  Nearly everyone is doing this, but they are unconscious to it, and even beyond that they don’t realize that they are in charge of their frequency to begin with.  The way I see it, the only true responsibility any of us has is to our frequency.   Though we might think we are responsible for all the comings and goings of life, of people’s reactions and feelings, and on and on, the only one real responsibility we have is how we choose to vibrate.  Yet we must recognize our choosing and that it is our choice first.  This is where that second stage of development comes in, the recognition of a self, a self that does onto life, prior to merging into the one self. 

In the recognition that we choose what we vibrate as you see that how you vibrate is what you give.  You give your vibration.  It’s natural and effortless regards of whatever vibration you choose to be, whether it’s lack or abundance, or getting or giving.  What you give is also what you then experience.  This is how you experience all things you want to experience without trying to go out and get them.  You must ask yourself what is at the core of everything it is that you want to get.  When you find the core of it, whether its love, safety, supported, nurtured, cared for, vital, free or well, decide to choose that vibration to be.  This is the only way you actually experience it.  Even if you continue to believe in the getting path, many of you know that you will get things that you think will give you what you want, but sooner rather than later, you feel not how you wanted to feel or how you hoped the thing would make you feel.  It’s because you never owned, you never became it.  You never became the vibration of what you wanted, you only temporarily projected it onto something, but then realized that all something’s change, and with the change so did your feeling state of what you desired.  

In order to not be shifted by all the changing of things you must be in ownership of what you vibrate.  Not in a sort of, sometimes way, where you are still trying to get what you want, while pretending to be spiritual.  Rather this is to be the source of wellness, after all you are it.  It is the end of using permission slips and projections.  To own that you are the source, is to be fully responsible for how you experience everything inside of your experience.  You are not responsible for the experience, rather only what you give to it, what you be, what you vibrate.  It is the end of the chase and of the never-ending experience of scarcity, but only if you so choose.  The projection, the appearance, the experience, won’t change until you do, or better said the projection, appearance or experience will mirror whatever it is you vibrate.  

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

Trusting the Timing of Life

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Trusting the Timing of Life 

Scarcity of time

19563913 - hands holding sand flowing down on a clock covered in sand

What is time?  Who set the clocks and put the hands where they reside?  Who decided how many days make up this thing we call a year?  Why is it that we never feel like we have enough time, or sometimes too much of it, or that things aren’t occurring in proper rhythm within it?  Time is but an arbitrary construct that we’ve created in our mind and yet we allow ourselves to feel controlled, confined or ruled by it.  We tell ourselves that such and such (i.e. a project, the trajectory of a relationship we are in, something we want to buy or create, the healing of our body, our healing process in general, our spiritual evolution, etc.) must be completed or accomplished within a certain time frame or else it means xyz.  Xyz is “I’ve failed”, “It’ll never happen”, “I won’t make it”, “Its hopeless”’ “Everything will fall apart”, “I won’t have enough money, love or support”, “I’ll die”, “Things won’t work out for me”, “I’ll hurt or suffer forever”, and the like.  You can see there is a lot of pressure we place on ourselves and life all due to the stories that we create about what the timing of things means.  

There is also an overarching tendency for us as humans to rush things and make them occur as fast as possible.  We have very little tolerance for a slower pace particularly due to our increasingly fast paced world.  Advancements in technology have allowed communications to happen nearly instantaneously that used to take a week or month to occur.  We are learning to expect that everything move at this instantaneous pace less we get impatience or start to think that something is wrong with us, others or the world if it doesn’t move quickly.  This expectation for immediacy along with bombardment of the senses has placed our nervous systems into sympathetic dominance (active mode) and has left us challenged in our capacity to relax and be present.  Instead we are easily distractible and have trouble maintaining our attention in the present which is here now because we think that what is here now should include something else or more and we can’t pause ourselves long enough to even see what is here.  

Our story of scarcity of time has its foundation in our lack of trust of the natural unfolding.  Our perspective of not enough time, things not occurring fast enough or not happening now when we want them be happening now leaves us feeling victim to time while doing our best to try to beat time.  We focus on what we feel we will lose, what we will have to shift and all the things that will occur that we think we don’t want to occur because the timing of life isn’t working out for us.  We think that we know what is the best unfolding of everything and forget that we actually don’t.  We truly don’t have a clue what or when things are supposed to happen.  Things occur exactly at the pace they must whether or not we are personally in agreement with that timing.   

Being in the Present 

Stably awake

hourglass angel wingsBeing present brings with in a sense of wakefulness and aliveness that we all hunger deeply for.  To be stably present or awake is the goal of all healing and of the spiritual path.  Get that.  The goal is not that you feel different, have different sensations, achieve certain things, succeed in finishing projects, get the relationship you want, have connection to your higher self, experience all the mystical inlays and outlays of universe, etc, but instead the only goal is that you arrive to now.  Not replaying the past, not focused on the future, but here now.  No matter how comfortable or uncomfortable the here now is, it is the only place that life occurs.  To not be here is to be lost in thoughts or other distractions.  This is the place of wishful thinking and hoping things change, but not being able to make any impact because you aren’t present and are stuck in your head/thoughts instead.

This goal of presence if you will must be realized in the moment rather than one that occurs in the future or “in time”.  When you are fully present you then realize that there is no time, but until you arrive here in this moment life will seem like a constant linear progression with past and future.  Presence is key so that we are awake to whatever wants to unfold in this moment, rather than what our mind tells us should be happening in this moment.  To be focused on our minds timeline will produce suffering each and every time.  To instead be present is to know everything that is needed in this moment and to move perfectly with it.  

Humility is the number one required ingredient when you arrive at the door of the present moment.  Humility means that you drop all of your insistences of what should be here now and accept that you don’t know the timing of things.  Your mind simply does not know.  You have access to one perspective that you call you within an infinitely large mind that is communicating with itself in ways that are currently unfathomable to your one perspective.  Its like being the letter “A” on a computer keypad that has infinite letters and although you know all about the letter “A”, what it feels like to be it, how the world looks from the letter “A”, you have no awareness of what it is to be another letter or even what occurs when you combine with different letters, you become something else completely when you do.  You lose your identity as A and therefore your perspective changes.  

When we have enough humility to say that we don’t know we allow a larger perspective to reveal itself and we come to know ourselves as something different than we thought we were.  It is here that we can perceive an orchestration of timing that we could not perceive before.  The timing of events, situations, circumstances, feeling states, sensations, the body’s healing and more reveal themselves.  We see how not a single strand of hair, a single breath, or a single event or situation has ever been out of place or out of timing.  This is the process of transformation from scarcity of time or fighting the timing that what is occurring into being rested, present and in sync with the larger organizing principle of life.  

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

Collective Responsibility

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Collective Responsibility 

A step beyond social responsibility

earthMany people are talking about social responsibility, meaning distancing yourself to not harm yourself or others, and I would like to move that conversation even a step further and talk about collective responsibility,  Collective responsibility is an entirely more active process than simply keeping yourself physically separate from others.  It points to how to effectively use this time as a catalyst for collective awakening rather than merely as personal resting time. 

People, particularly in spiritual circles, talk about us in general being in a “time of awakening.”  We often think that awakening means happiness, butterflies, and bliss.  What we often don’t include in our definition of spirituality is that destruction or destabilization must occur before new awareness is realized.  This is the un-fluffy side of spirituality as it often feels painful or bleak, and when it arises even the most “spiritual” people want to look away or retreat from it.  

From how I see it we are currently experiencing a collective purge.  Purging is what occurs naturally as part of a healing process when the body relinquishes that which no longer serves it.  The purge is what we often call illness, but if we did not purge, just how sick would we be then.  To hold onto things which don’t serve us is even more toxic than the purge appears to be.  

Historically we attempt to control and contain the purge because we are uncomfortable and fearful in regards to the uncertainty of it and how messy it feels and looks, yet if we don’t allow the body to purge it will get sicker than ever.  The body of humanity is undergoing this process now.  Many bodies within the one body of humanity are purging.  Purging from systems, ideas and thoughts that don’t serve it and it is manifesting as what we call illness in our bodies.  Recognize that systems that are ill must purge and our body is a cell in a much larger system.  This is part of the healing process that is required for us to be healthier, stronger and more whole than ever before. To allow the impact of what is currently taking place rather than be in a state of vigilance and self-protection will aid you deeply in through this process.  It is when we don’t allow what is occurring that we truly suffer.   

Active participation 

Your personal actions matter

Whether or not this virus directly impacts your body, I invite you to do your part to actively participate with this collective reorganization that is taking place rather than passively wait to see what happens.  The most collectively responsible thing that you can do in my opinion is to use this time to deepen your self-awareness, personal awakening and add as much energy as possible to the collective field.  

What does that look like?  First and foremost, where you can, serve others.  Help out and support.  There is nothing that brings more energy into a system than serving others and right now we need to access all the energy we can to vitalize the body of humanity as its been drenched in fear and scarcity.  Even if you can’t be in physical contact with others you can still creatively find ways to serve.  Second meditate for as many hours a day that you can, at a minimum at least 4-6 hours/day.  Purify and empty your mind so that you can recognize the empty spaciousness of awareness rather than be consumed by thoughts.  Don’t watch a bunch of movies and spend hours on social media.  Disengage from distraction.  Use this as an actual time of awakening rather than finding things to do to “waste time until this thing passes.”  Third clean your own body out.  Eat healthy and stop consuming crap.  I get that most everyone has stock piled cabinet food, but I invite you to eat as fresh as you can to detox your own body.  What you consume doesn’t just effect you, it effects us all.  This is true for food and also what you put into your mind.  

If we all do this, and really take on this collective responsibility, just how much more awake and aware will our collective consciousness be.  Its not even really that hard.  Just takes discipline.  

We are not really individual beings.  Now more than ever we have been given an opportunity to directly know this as lived reality rather than just spiritual concept.  For those who have been on a spiritual path for a long time I invite you to use this as your time to fully awaken to interconnectedness, and beyond that, oneness.  How I see it is that this first big wave of instability is really to help those of us that know ourselves to be light workers or who incarnated to up-level the consciousness on this planet, to more fully awaken so that we can live our purpose here at this time.  The waves yet to come will help more and more of the masses to awaken, and us paving that path right now will serve those to come. 

Though many may actually need to use this time to decompress, relax or have a mental check out from their stressful lives, there are others that know that these scenarios are exactly the reason why they are here and feel the hunger to use the catalyst of this virus to further expand and grow.  To those of you I speak.  Do not waste this precious and rare opportunity that we have right now to collectively awaken.  While the external is quiet I invite you to actively serve, clean out your body-mind, and deepen and expand your consciousness to new levels of awareness that will serve our one body for all future generations to come.  

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