surrender

Moment to Moment Surrender

Dr. Amanda Love 1 Comment

MOMENT TO MOMENT SURRENDER 

Nuanced subtlety

What does it mean to live surrendered?  We often speak of surrender as something we do in situations where we are relinquishing the outcome of anything happening in a particular way.  For example we might find ourselves intensely desiring or holding onto a specific thing occurring or not occurring.  We mentally regurgitate it over and over and create tension in our body as we attempt to control the unfolding of it with our mind.  Often we will reach a point where we simply can’t try to control it any longer and we let go.  This is what we refer to as surrender.  We let the outcome be the outcome even if it is an undesirable outcome.  Our attachment dissolves.  We feel the release of trying to impose our will on the situation and we simply let it be.  We’ve surrendered.  Now we can just be and allow the movements of life to move about.  

When there is a situation that feels big to us, it is easy to see how this process works.  There is a build up of tension to the point where we simply can’t take it anymore and it seems that the only choice is to let go.  But what about all of the space in between, the small tensions that arise in our day to day living that we just live with, that we’ve accommodated to tolerating as our baseline for existing?  We often wonder why we don’t always feel flow, or why some days seem easy and others so challenging?  It seems that our stable base of goodness comes and goes, and that it isn’t in our control.  We don’t realize that what seems to interfere with our stable base of flow and ease is our tolerance for small little tensions that we hold onto without really knowing that we are.  We may notice tension in our body, or that our breath doesn’t feel as full, or we may feel the clunkiness of the day or week, but it’s a mystery to us why we feel this way and why we can’t just get back to flow.  We can get back to flow, but first we must realize what small little tensions we are tolerating in our life.

Recognizing what we are tolerating and holding onto requires subtlety.  We must become more subtle and nuanced in paying attention to ourselves in an inquisitive way.  Often this means slowing down for moments throughout our day so that we can pay attention.  As soon as we notice effort, pushing, non-presence, or trying to just get through, we need to use this as a signal to ourselves to pause and inquire as to what we are feeling below the effort.  Diving in and bringing to awareness or light whatever subtle thing(s) we are trying to manipulate, control or manage.  Once you identity it, you can, just like that let it go.   

FINDING FLOW

Knowing what you are holding

The flow we desire is here now inside the same moment where we feel effort, strain or tension.  By recognizing the subtle little tensions you hold and being willing to let go of them as you notice them, you come into moment to moment surrender.  This is living surrendered.  It doesn’t mean that you are passive to life, but rather that you allow life to be as it is in response to you.  You take action on life in the ways you desire and then you allow life to give you the fruits of those actions in whatever ways it will.  You detach from insisting that your desires should manifest in any particular way.  If you do this you will experience the freedom that is always here, but which you simply are not attuned to when you are bound inside of your tensions.  

You might wonder why you tolerate a bunch of little tensions throughout your day or why you indulge in being non-present.  It’s this.  We tend to think that all of the things we hold onto are important.  Somehow we perceive that it’s vital that we hold on to say a certain perspective we have, a feeling we are feeling, or a thought that we are mulling over and over.  There is some value we find in not letting go of whatever it is we are holding onto.  Some of it is habit, meaning we are unconscious to what we are holding so we just hold it, but as soon as we are aware of what we are holding onto it is no longer a habit, but rather a choice.  When we bring into awareness our tensions we make the them conscious.  Once we are conscious we are in charge. 

We may or may not like being in charge of ourselves.  We may not want to have as much power over ourselves as we think we want.  Regardless the power is yours.  There is nothing you can do about the power that you are/have except give it away to circumstances, events, situations or other people, or claim it as your own.  Either way it’s still yours.  You are free to do whatever you’d like to do with your power.  If you choose to claim it then you are able to let go of whatever you’d like to and also hold onto whatever you want to hold onto.  It’s now what you are choosing rather than it seemingly being the random state of being that you are in.  You now know why you feel effort or flow, and you realize that you can shift whenever you want to.  

Each time you notice that you are not in the state of being that you desire, you can check in and discover what little tension is interfering and let it go if you want to experience flow again.  It’s this commitment that creates a stability in your state of being because now you recognize that you can consciously choose your state.  This is moment to moment surrender.  It’s the giving away of what your mind thinks is so important and opening into what is instead.  At our core we all want to be open into the presence of being and the aliveness of this moment.  It’s where all the richness resides.  We hold on because we somehow think that through holding onto whatever we are holding onto, that we will arrive in this richness because we will get what we want.  Surrender allows us to receive what we truly want which is often beyond what our minds can perceive. 

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

RESOLVING CHARGE

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RESOLVING CHARGE

Depolarizing our perspectives

Most people are familiar with charge.  Charge is polarization or activation in a particular perspective or way of thinking about an experience.  People deal with charge in different ways.  Some people get reactive and justify or defend their perspective, while others withdraw, become apathetic or move away from their experience.  Whether or not a person chooses to react or withdrawal, the charge remains unresolved in their system.  Unresolved charge perpetuates tension, irritation, restlessness and disconnection.  

Charge occurs because we have certain beliefs, perspectives and preferences about our experiences.  When our preferences or perspectives of an experience don’t match with what is actually occurring, we build up charge or resistance.  Another way to say this is that when we don’t want to accept what is occurring, because we want something else other than what is revealing itself to be happening, we create resistance.  Resistance is our attempt to not fully feel what is actually happening because its doesn’t feel good to us and it doesn’t align with what it is we think we want.  

Charge creates the experience of disruption to our sense of stable, rested beingness.  This means that it creates disruption in our capacity to be present and be of service in a way that supports others and supports interconnectedness.  So frequently people say that their desire is to be centered, unswayed, and rested in themselves no matter what is occurring.  Yet most people allow themselves to get pulled out of center by their very own perspectives and preferences.  There is nothing wrong with this, it’s simple that it creates an experience of being caught up in one’s own thoughts, rather than present to what is.  

In general I find that most people aren’t really aware of themselves in such a way to notice how they are creating their own experience of loss of centeredness or stability in self.  They don’t see that how they perceive an experience is what creates resistance, not the actual experience itself.  They also don’t want to feel how what is showing up is undesired or undesirable.  This creates the postponement of change in one’s life because when we are unwilling to feel what is, and that it is undesirable, then we don’t have the fuel to move on from our perspective and create the changes we desire in our state of being.  This keeps us in mental loops, which come with the feeling that we are stuck or can’t move on.   

FINDING YOUR WAY THROUGH

Death of your dreams

In order to resolve the charge it typically means that you must die to something.  That something is usually an idea, hope or desire you had about how an experience in your life, or life in general, would go or turn out.  This is often experienced as the death of a dream(s).  It is also referenced in spiritual circles as ego death, which is death of the individual purpose driven life.  As unappealing as this may sound, and as contradictory as it may seem to the self-empowerment movement, it is the portal to peace.  It is how you come to resolution, and become once again available to what is rather than what you’d hope was.  

It makes total and complete sense that we don’t want to feel death.  Death tends to not feel good to most of us so we move away from the experience of it.  We are not so willing to just plunge into death, so instead resistance to what is, is created.  We may find ourselves trying to tell ourselves we are ok with whatever is, but underneath it all we really aren’t.  We know we aren’t because we don’t feel absolute, total peace and resolve.  Rather we feel tense, but don’t know why.  We feel disconnected, but can’t figure out it logically.  We try to move forward, but feel we don’t know how.  Life seems to not be opening up for us because we aren’t opening into the death that needs to occur before rebirth can find its way through.  

By going into the portal of death you come to experience true surrender.  Surrender of your insistences, surrender to seeing your preferences being played out in the world, surrender to trying so hard to make things happen in a particular way, and you find yourself in a state of openness.   Open receptivity is our natural state of being minus all of the personal preferences and desires we create along the way of this human journey.  You become available to and for life, rather than to and for your own agendas, and the sense of untethered-ness to your own preferences is liberating.  To the person that you believe yourself to be this seems stupid and devastating, and yet only once you go through the portal of death of your dreams can you discover the freedom that lives here.  The freedom to simply be present with what is here, to be an open vessel of energy and information to give to life, to others and to other aspects of creation.  This is the only true fulfillment.  All else is only temporary gratification.  

To resolve charge is to be at peace and to be stably rested in yourself no matter what is occurring.  As you die to what you think you want and open to what is, you become harmony.  Though becoming harmony you share that frequency with all that you interact with in this world.  All then gets the opportunity to see, feel and find harmony within itself.  This is 100% within your capacity and ability.  It takes only the willingness to move towards what actually is and let it crack you open in whatever ways it does.  The heart then finds its expression and is your lived experience.  

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

NO WHERE TO NOW HERE

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NO WHERE TO NOW HERE 

Stop trying to go somewhere

It’s curious where we are all trying to get.  Seems like there is always somewhere to go, some other destination to arrive at and some other experience to be gotten to already.  We live in this forward trajectory of next and next and next, while never realizing that we are living our former next now and that the nexts will keep coming indefinitely.  To pause our focus on what’s next and be where we are now seems trivial, mundane or as if its lacking something that we must get.  

One must wonder what fuels this quest to get something or somewhere other than where we are.  If we really just cut to the chase here, all trying to get somewhere other than where we are (which is impossible by the way) is rooted, fueled and motivated by a perception we have of lack.  We believe that something is not in our experience that should be or that we want to be in our experience.  So we attempt to fulfill that seeming void that we perceive.  That lack could be of anything.  Perhaps it’s lack of happiness, lack of feeling good, lack of freedom, lack of movement, lack of connection, lack of resources, lack of money, lack of love, lack of purpose and on and on.  

I promise you that however tempting and true it may seem that what you are looking for exists somewhere else, it does not.  There is nothing that exists “over there” that doesn’t also exist here now.  If we take it a step further there isn’t even really an “over there” or anything other than now.  Try to find proof that something outside of now exists.  To find proof you would somehow have to prove that you could be other than existence, essentially that you could not exist.  Try to not exist, to not be, to not is, to not be here and let me know how it goes and if you find success.  

There is only now happening and now is all that ever happens.  To live this is to be in eternal peace.  This is the end of resistance and of all getting, striving, attaining, moving towards, and progress.  To not fight with where you are, which is now and to not fight what is, relaxes everything inside of you and therefore your experience relaxes as well.  When now is recognized and received you work inside the moment, with creation, with the unfolding, rather than as a separate object that is trying to get somewhere else or to the next thing.  Experiences and appearances continue to move and change, but there is no more trying to get things to change.  You are, all is, and this moment which is all moments, can be nothing other than fully perfect and complete.  No lack.  Nothing missing.  No where to go or get.  All remembers and sees what it is and that nothing ever left itself.   

LETTING EVERYTHING GO 

Release all wanting of things to be different

Let everything go.  Let everything be.  Want nothing from anything.  This is the way to know freedom.  This is the way to be at peace forever.  This is the way to have everything you truly desire, which is everlasting presence.  To want something or someone to show up differently, act differently, be differently than they are, is to attempt to control life or control others and not allow them to be themselves.  When we hope, pray, or plea that things will be different than they are, we lose our center and act in ways that are not in alignment or integrity with who we are in order to get what we think we want.  We then doubt, question, over-analyze, lash out, withdraw, react and endlessly stir in the thoughts of our mind.  The result of this is that we feel stuck, trapped, lost, powerless and at the mercy of others or to our experience of life.  

Our attachments to our ideas of what we want and the forms that those ideas take, steer the boat of our life if we let them.  In fact most people spend their life trying to get all of their desires to manifest so that they can give themselves the permission slip to relax and feel good.  Our desires are the guiding light, the spark that fuels the choices we make and the directions we choose, however when we attach to the outcome of our desires in order to get a perceived need or want met that we feel is missing, we have a recipe for suffering.  

In letting everything go we are open to receive everything as it is.  We allow our desires to take on whatever forms and shapes that they want to take on rather than the ones we think they should take on.  In this way we let the mystery of what will be reveal itself to us here now rather than fixating on how it will turn out, which puts us in the “next” mode.  This frees us from having to control life or others.  For most of us controlling isn’t our most natural state so it feels bad to us yet we continue to do it because we perceive lack.  Letting everything go means letting go of our control, letting go of our insistences, letting go of our rights, wrongs and and injustices, and letting go of our ideas and perceptions of lack.

To let go is to live love.  It is to be love, to be your natural state, to receive everything as it is.  It is to be here now, to be present and experience the bliss that is presence.  It doesn’t mean that you will never have painful sensations, intense emotions, unpleasant thoughts or challenges.  It doesn’t mean that you will never experience discomfort or dis-ease.  It doesn’t mean that all of your dreams and desires will be made manifest.  It only means that you will be present, you will be awake, you will be here.  You will stop trying to get anywhere and you will be where you are.  You will learn-share everything you are meant to learn-share.  You will stop missing out on your life because you realize you can’t miss out.  You will stop resisting, pushing away or forcing anything.  Instead you let whatever comes to you come.

The thing about now here is that it never leaves.  There is no situation, circumstance, event, activity, or experience that is separate from here now.  This means that presence is all pervasive.  There is no anything that needs to push you into next mode.  Full permission to be here, just as it is and find peace inside of now.  

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

DESIRE WITHOUT ATTACHMENT

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DESIRE WITHOUT ATTACHMENT 

Coming back to love

Oh the conundrum of desiring without attachment.  The wanting, the hunger, the joyful moving towards the heart’s desire without any supposition or assurance for the fruits of your labor to be experienced or made manifest.  A seeming almost impossible feat, to stay desirous and unattached, and yet the possibility is ripe inside each and every moment. In fact, if the ripeness of possibility of unattached desire is chosen, the experience is unconditional love, or just actual love as love has no conditions.  

Why do we make conditional or bind that which is free and unbound at its very nature?  Because we want certainty.  We want safety in knowing that something will be, look, feel or show up in a particular way.  That image we have of what we want seems to be linked to us getting it, as without the getting of it we feel unfulfilled or empty of it.  However as soon as we try to get the thing or experience, we become laden with agenda and utilize tactics of manipulation to get or keep what we want.  Now there is no problem in getting what you want, of receiving the fruits of your heart’s desire, it’s simply that it must not be required in order for you to be fulfilled, joyful and feel complete.  There must be no need to have it inside of your desire for it.  The completion is in the desiring not in the getting.  

To have your focus on the desiring rather than the getting often leaves you with feelings of vulnerability, uncertainty and exposure.  There is the wide open mystery in front of you, in which you have no idea what it holds, and yet you continue to keep your heart open in desire, in love.  You let the mystery give you whatever it does without you insisting or holding onto a single way in which its supposed to look or feel.  Inside of this is the death of your insistences, of your limited perspectives of righteousness and thinking you know what is best from your egocentric mind.  It is you saying “I love, I want, I desire and I’m yours” to the mystery “do to me, with me, through me what you will”.  This is surrender.  It is rapture with the divine.  It is where my will and thy will merge into one.   

COMMITTED TO LOVE 

The way to surrender

In order to get to the point of surrender you must have one hell of a commitment to love and loving.  Even though surrender is glorified in spiritual communities and people loosely use the term like its some walk in the park, it is not easy.  It is not easy for your mind to give up getting what it wants or trying to figure out how to get what it wants, truly.  For a moment activate feelings of deep want and desire in your current most intimate relationship while simultaneously not needing to have the experience of being with that person.  Feel deeply wanting all the nice things that you surround yourself with without needing them to be in your surroundings.  Try feeling your passion for all the causes you feel passionate about without needing any of them to change from their current state.  You can see now that without your full on devotion to loving, the lure of getting the objects or outcomes of your desires will sweep you in, captivate you and you will be powerless to it.  The only thing that will pull you out of your self-indulgence is your steadfast, ruthless, total and complete devotion to loving no matter what.  

Loving no matter what is a muscle worth building.  I’m not sure why there aren’t more gyms that cultivate this type of workout, but I suppose its because life just naturally gives us plenty of times in a single day to stretch, firm and bulk up this muscle.  Any time you notice tension, resistance, non-acceptance, holding your breath, or turning away from something or someone you have an opportunity to build your love muscle.  If you start a practice of coming back to love over and over and over again then you will begin to know what surrender is rather than just talking about it.  Once you taste surrender you realize that none, and I mean none, of the objects and outcomes of your desires are “supposed to happen.”  You realize how little you see and know, and that you have no freaking idea what is supposed to happen from and through your desire.  This may sound a little depressing at first.  I get it.  But what it actually is and feels like is a true, sincere humility.  All of your pride, arrogance and needing to know or get, goes out the window.  

Yet the wanting, the loving, the desiring that you feel continues if you let it.  That desiring is the creative impulse of the creator moving through you.  That impulse is love.  Your mind tries to distort or condition that impulse (i.e. condition love) by making images, stories, and ideas about what that creative impulse is supposed to create and look like in the manifest.  It then attaches the impulse to the picture it created and insists that the two go together when in fact they may or may not.  Your job, if you so choose, is only to remain open to what your desires want to look like rather than insisting that they fit into your original image. 

Feeling, following and acting on your desires is key to you expressing the gift of the creator through you, but it is not for you to determine the fruits of that desiring.  This is desire without attachment.  This is what it is to love.  The art of loving is an expressive adventure indeed.  It is a full playing of the game of life.  A welcoming invitation to what is in every single moment.  The willingness to prioritize, commit, and devote your life to loving opens you into a life of ecstatic surprise and mystery, filled with a richness that you could never fit into any image you could imagine.

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

LET EVERYTHING HAVE IT’S EXPERIENCE

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LET EVERYTHING HAVE IT’S EXPERIENCE 

Ending the battle of proving your worth

Imagine what it would be like to not interfere with experience whatsoever.  What I mean by this is to allow whatever shows up to show up without you medleying, intervening, changing, or improving it at all.  Having zero thoughts about it and instead just simply experiencing it.  For some of you this might feel impossible, like a fantastical dream that no one can possible live in.  You might also notice that you have judgments or stories about what living in such a way would mean about you, such as that perhaps you don’t care, you’re lazy, you’re not in reality, too many things need you to show up in a certain way, nothing will get done, no progress will be made, etc.  

The truth is that until you can get to the point where you can simply allow everything to have its experience, even if it feels devastating or someone is freaking out about something, you don’t actually know what its like to be present and truly be of service which is a natural expression of presence.  It is not until you get to this place that you know what rested freedom is and the awareness that you know everything you need to in any moment reveals itself.  It is also through landing here that you are finally rested in your own self-worth which arrives through the humility of ending your projected agenda onto experience.  

If this is all indeed the case then why do we not end our efforting with experience right now.  Why do we continue to feel that we must do something to what already is?  The number one culprit is our feelings of lack of self-worth which come with attempts to prove our worth through shifting experience.  Due to the fact that putting on the cloak of perceived lack of self-worth is one of the human garments we tend to cloth ourselves with when we incarnate, we find strategies (consciously or not) to prove that we are worthy and to have personal purpose, value or meaning.  This most often comes through accomplishing something, making something different, or getting someone to feel a certain way in which they approve of or like us for.  Through this we give ourselves the permission slip to feel good about ourselves and we get a sense of individual value or worth.  The downfall of this strategy is that when we don’t accomplish, make different, or people don’t feel good in their interactions with us or we perceive we can’t make them feel a certain way, then our self-worth again plummets.  True self worth cannot be found through interfering with or manipulating experience no matter how well intentioned it may be.  It can only be derived through the full acceptance of the experience just as it is and the recognition that what you think about it doesn’t matter one bit.  This opens you into humility where you can actually see what is rather than your projection of what you think is.  This enables you to be of true service, and the humility that is a natural effect of suspending the significance of your own thought projections is the birthplace of unconditional, inherent worth that requires nothing of you.   

SURRENDERING TO NOT ENOUGH 

Death of the ego

How ok are you with not needing to do anything, or be anything in particular, or having any particular outcome appear?  Most people are not very comfortable with this, with simply being without agenda.  Though they might enjoy it for a weekend retreat or workshop, when they come back to their everyday life, being is viewed as a luxury and not a priority.  And truth be told even if we are at a weekend workshop or retreat we are often trying to get something out of the experience rather than simply be and experience.  We compartmentalize doing from being because it comes back to this fundamental issue of self-worth and feeling like we have to earn our keep somehow.  Deserving to be without anything, without progress, without accomplishing, without change, is simply not in our vernacular.  

I have found that there is no real way to get the ego to accept its worth.  Even all of the achieving, production and glorification in the world won’t do it.  Its entire premise is built upon this core underlying lack belief, that somehow it is not enough.  When we misidentify as the ego it then means that we perceive we are not enough and hence the strategy of not allowing experience to be as it arrives on the scene and we can only feel good if we are doing something about it.  The only way to end this battle of lack of self-worth and resistance to certain experiences is by surrendering to your own feeling of lack of self-worth.  Accepting that this is so, that you feel like you are not enough.  It is the only way to get over yourself.  If you do not accept this you will continue to attempt to fight it by finding all the ways to prove that you are worthy through manipulating experiences (which includes other people’s reactions to you), while underneath it all continuing to feel unworthy, and your life will feel effortful as you swim upstream.  

I will just say that your ego will hate this like nothing else because it means game over for it.  To surrender to not enough means that most everything you think is so important is not and every way that you derive self-worth from your experiences comes to a screeching halt.  In accepting your own sense of unworthiness you’ve taken away the fuel source for the ego to perpetuate itself along with all of its compulsory actions to prove itself.  The more identified you are as your ego-personality the more this will feel painful and like you are dying, because in a way you are.  However do not fear as it is only the illusionary self that is dying and through this death process you come to know the real you that is beyond this made up you.  The real you is the you that is inherent worth in and of itself.  With nothing any longer to prove, you are free to just be.  To just be you without having to make anything different.  You are free to be present to experience just as it is.  Now you are in true service, true alignment, with everything that is and with the creator, God, Source, Love.  

No longer perceiving error, wrongness or lack is now the natural way that you see when die to trying to make experience different than it is.  Your vision opens for the first time and everything looks glorious even if the same appearances are in your visual field.  Action still arises, naturally, organically and effortlessly.  Each movement, behavior, thought, feeling, sensation and impulse being informed as directly from God, Source, Love.  There is seamlessness.  No you and other, just one continuous awareness.  One indivisible, unified is-ness, beingness.  Your experience is simply beingness in action and you find there is nothing to do about it, but only to be and play within it.  Play in the natural expression and reflection of Love in its infinite myriad of forms.  

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

Opening into Nothingness

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Opening into Nothingness 

Going beyond thought

Stars and material falls into a black holeWhether you are aware of it or not opening into stark nothingness is terrifying for most.  We both hunger to feel emptiness and instantaneously grab onto the next thing or thought the moment we taste even the slightest sliver of nothingness.  We are so bound up in our thoughts, worries, ideas, activities and the like that few of us even get a glimpse of what it feels like to experience total emptiness.  The irony is that emptiness is our natural state of being and yet most of us have never experienced it.  

Emptiness or nothingness is what is prior to or before thought arrives on the scene.  When thought does arrive it creates and colors the world that we see and what we call reality.  Reality for most people is just a conglomeration of their thoughts.  True reality however is completely without thought.  It simply is.  Pure beingness.  Awareness itself.  Why is it that we are so terrified of our natural state of pure beingness?  Well firstly it is because there is no separate, individual self in nothingness.  This means that the you that you think is you, let’s call this the “thought” you, dissolves into nothing.  There is no you in the traditional sense that you’ve come to know.  This feels completely destabilizing to the one you think you are (often people describe it as the feeling of death) and so the reaction-response is to fuse back with thought to feel a sense of stability again.  

Secondly in order to even taste nothingness we must be in a state of total openness and acceptance.  We cannot be attempting to make something happen, figure anything out or control something with our head/thoughts.  All of these put us in a state of resistance or closure, which equates to creating the experience of separation or otherness.  You cannot know nothingness from a state of perceiving otherness.  Many people however try to do this and nothingness becomes another box or container for their mind to explore rather than directly know.  In order to truly experience nothingness you must fuse with it thus becoming it rather than continuing to fuse with thoughts.  

When you make the commitment to open your system and let go of thoughts rather than continue to use your thoughts to figure out how to open your system, you will begin to know the beingness and the world beyond thought.  You cannot get beyond thought through using thought.  You must relinquish the thoughts altogether less your awareness will habitual continue to latch onto them out of familiarity and comfort.   

The End of Otherness 

Surrender into the Self

relationshipsAs we approach nothingness from a still separate point of view some of the experiences that we have are centered around feeling like we won’t know, that we will be totally useless, that we will be completely exposed or vulnerable, that if our mind/thoughts don’t inform us then what will, and above all we doubt because we don’t yet know what is on the other side of our thoughts.  We don’t perceive that we can trust that nothingness will provide and contains everything that is known and needed.  

The only way to really work with this is to allow yourself to feel the energy of all of these states of being that arise.  That means allowing the feeling of not knowing what is or will happen next which brings in the felt experience of trust, feeling exposed and vulnerable which brings in the direct experience of openness, feeling the spacious empty nothingness that is without thoughts which brings in the direct knowing of yourself.  See we often say we want to trust, or we want to be more open, or we want to more clearly and directly know ourselves and we think that we have to do something or figure something out in order to do it.  The truth is that trust, openness and knowledge of self come through you staying with those feeling experiences that you keep trying to avoid which just happen to be trust, openness and knowledge of self.  The direct path to what we desire is always inside of what we are currently experiencing.

To know ourselves, which is the final destination of the spiritual journey, is really just the beginning of life.  Before we know ourselves we are just trying to survive because all we perceive is separation and the fight for our physical needs, desires and existence.  If we have something than it means someone else does not have it and vis versa.  When we perceive otherness someone or something always wins and the other loses.  We fight to save live from the perspective of our eminent demise as we believe death of the body means death of us.

The end of otherness and the bridge into totality is the surrender into nothingness which is the true self or the true you.  This is to walk willingly into our own personalized ego death.  Ego being that perspective which believes itself to be a part, and apart from, rather than the whole.  This is the end to personalization of our lives and the unbending trajectory of the individual needs, wants and desires.  To be clear this does not mean death of the body, but to the perspective that body means separate from.  There is no separate you.  There never has been.  There has only ever been the thought of a separate you.  Separate you is just a thought.  When you relinquish all thought, even for a moment, you immediately realize this.  This is the direct experience and knowledge of self.  This takes you beyond the concept of you to where you no longer perceive other and the will of this body-mind instrument is divinely inspired and moved.  Personal insistences have dissolved and all that remains is God/Love/Spirit of which these vehicles are gladly utilized.  “Your” will becomes Love’s will as there is but one will.  

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

Giving Everything Back to Source

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Giving Everything Back to Source 

Tendency to hold on

Studio shot of worried and upset caucasian woman holding hands in pray near chin, squeezing it tight and begging for something, smiling nervously and standing with closed eyes over gray backgroundAs human beings we tend to hold onto everything.  This perpetual holding on gives us a sense of security and like we can somehow manipulate our external reality if we just hold on a little bit tighter.  Holding on is our attempt to control the spontaneous, unpredictability of life so that we are not caught too far off our guard where we perceive that things might get or go “bad”.  This holding onto life keeps our life looking a particular way and provides us with the illusionary experience of consistency and sameness.  While a part of us feels better when this illusionary experience of life appears to be intact, another part of us feels stifled and like it can’t breathe inside of delusion we are perpetuating.  

We not only hold onto material things like homes, jobs, relationships and such, we also hold onto thoughts.  In fact we are almost never entirely without a thought.  For many people to open into the spacious, emptiness beyond thought is terrifying.  I believe that most have never done it for much longer than a second or two, if even that, which means that we are always holding onto something.  Why the terror to let go you may ask?  Perhaps we fear that this world that we live in now, with all the things that we know, will disappear.  Perhaps the tastes we’ve had of freedom have felt “too free” and we prefer some constraint and limitation over our freedom.  Maybe we’ve created the story that we don’t know how to let go, or maybe we don’t even know that we are holding life in the grips of our own mind.  

Regardless of our reasoning or our lack of awareness into ourselves as to our patterns of holding the result of holding is the same.  Holding on always creates some level of tension in our body-mind.  That tension then becomes the filter with which we interpret and experience everything and with which we come to believe what is.  Tension patterns also create disconnection from source or from the larger organizing principle of creation.  This is the inherent function of tension patterns, to be self-protective of this individuated body-mind organism that we call ourselves, and yet simultaneous with this comes reinforcement of the illusion of perceiving yourself as separate from the rest of creation.   

Reconnecting with Source 

Its easier than your mind thinks

Happy girl jumpingRe-establishing connection to source is always easier than our mind thinks that it is.  It is the job of our mind to make things way more complicated than they are in actuality.  People’s minds like to talk about how they have to do this or that, change this or that, or how they just have to surrender and let go already.  Yet for most this simply stays in their mind as another thought or idea that takes up space inside of the infinite spaciousness of ourselves.  I find if people are talking about their need to surrender and let go they are quite far from actually doing it.  Why does letting go or surrendering stay in the mind rather than become our direct experience?   It is because ultimately we don’t really want to let go of what we say we want to let go of.  We prefer our uncomfortable (or unnoticeable for some that have less awareness of themselves) tension patterns and delusional stories of reality over ease and truth because more than anything else we fear what we might lose.  

So fear of loss runs the show of our lives until we boldly and courageously decide to no longer let it.  Not until we are willing to lose everything can we truly experience surrender.  Few people arrive here without exhausting every other possible route first.  We quite literally exhaust ourselves into the truth.  Our beliefs in scarcity, lack, and wrongness, that we won’t have enough, be enough, achieve the right things, things won’t last or turn out, that we’ve failed, will be alone,  etc… triumphs.  

How do we walk this path towards surrender step by step?  I have found that to give everything back to source is the quickest route.  This means making the commitment to first tune into yourself and develop awareness of your patterns of tension and disconnection.  As tension patterns arise at the body level immediately release them.  Don’t try to figure them out or process them at length, simply just drop the tension.  Rather than continue to hold on to it, let it go, just like that.  You will notice instantly more ease and breath in your body.  You will also begin to realize just how powerful you are and how you are the creator of your own tension patterns.  Second is the willingness to let go of your thoughts as they arise.  This will take consistent practice for most.  If you get fixated on a thought recognize the fixation and then let the thought go.  This is important particularly for thoughts that really grab you and bring you into a less resourced and often fearful state.  

As you do this more and more you will be developing your skill set in giving back to source rather than taking from or holding on as if nothing else will ever come your way.  Whenever we give back we are instantaneously rewarded with more energy and aliveness.  What we hold onto we maintain.  At best our energy state stays neutral which means life looks the same and feels mundane most of the time.  However what we give back to life, to source, frees us up and thus we become available to exponentially greater and greater states of energy.  This also means that we almost never know what will happen.  We are in the moment of ever present aliveness, trust, and knowingness in the perfection of it all.  This is what at our heart of hearts we all desire and seek no matter how much our minds want to interfere.  

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

Power of Love

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Power of Love 

Infinite Life Force

16152518 - beautiful lotus backgroundMost all of us make claims to the power of love.  On some level we know that love is the ultimate everything and yet when things get “serious” or when we get caught up in our emotional or thinking bodies the power of love is forgotten.  Why is it that we drop love or downplay its position as the grand orchestrator of all of life when things get messy, unclear or uncertain?  Why does our thinking mind along with its linearity and rationality become the prime ruler rather than the heart?  

First of all let me just say that love is the source of infinite life force.  Life force is love, love is life force.  Life force is what makes everything come alive.  It is the breath of the universe and everything within it.  This is why when we feel like we are in love we feel alive, awake, alert and juiced up, because we actually are.  Love, whether for self, other or just as a state of being, brings with it infinite, inexhaustible life force.  It can not because love and life force are one and the same.  

Life force, energy and love are terms that can be used interchangeably.  Life force is the quite literal energy source that powers everything in the universe including your physical body.  It is fairly common knowledge at this point that everything in the universe is energy.  When all matter is broken down into its most basic components all that remains is vibrating energy.  That vibrating energy is life force/love.  Patterns of thoughts, beliefs and perceptions then give shape to that energy and the world of forms that we see with our eyes.

As powerful as our thoughts are in their ability to bring forms to life, they are nothing without the energy source of love to back them up.  Pure, unconditioned love is the most coherent, whole energy source that there is.  When we have thoughts that are fueled by less coherent states of energy, such as fear, rage, or rationality, they are much less efficient or effective and therefore the forms they create are not as optimal, complex or productive.  Less coherent states of energy are simply states of energy that are not as aware of their inherent wholeness.  Love knows it wholeness which is where its extreme power arises.   

Fall from Grace 

Perception of Wrongness

Spiritual conceptual image of a female angelWhen we think about the power of love without being connected with the knowingness of love our power is greatly diminished.  True power does not come from thought alone, but from the intimate acknowledging and resting into love so that its power naturally expresses.  The primarily perception that keeps us disconnected from knowing love intimately is the perception of wrongness.  

When we view through the perception of wrongness we create separation where there is none.  Separation creates a less coherent state of energy because within separation implies a lack of wholeness.  Wrongness means that something must be thrown out of the whole and when that occurs there is less energy/life force available to the system (individual or collective).  Say for example you (or your culture) judge multiple things about yourself, another person, or the environment as wrong.  The more you judge the more you shrink your perspective.  With this comes a sense of confinement and limitation.  Simultaneously the less innately good you feel and the less energy you have available to you.  Manifestation feels more effortful and there is greater disorganization in what gets created. This is a state of decreased coherency where your knowingness of love and ability to utilize the power of love is diminished.  This does not mean that love is actually diminished, but only your perception of it.  Again this happens at individual and collective system levels.  

Perceiving wrongness also brings on both sides of it righteousness and shame.  To defend one’s rightness or hide in one’s shame birth the entire gamut of defensive patterns of self-protection.  This is our fall from grace or love.  This is the imposition of limitation on life force.  This is the disconnection from our power, which is the power of love.   To restore connection and remember the power of love we must dismantle our belief in our own or others wrongness.  To know love rather than think love requires this.  

Love has no boundaries, it penetrates all.  Love brings light to even the darkest dark, to every recess of unconsciousness.  Nothing is brighter than love.  To stand in the radiance of love is to illuminate the entire world.  All healed, all whole, all intimately aware of itself.  From here the purest and most efficiently organized forms of creation are created.  Life force vitalizes all.  This doesn’t happen independently of you, it happens because of you.  At some point we must all surrender to love.  It is inevitable.  We must give away our addiction to less coherent thoughts of wrongness, missing and lack of wholeness, and open our system into greater coherency, full force life force and the power of love.  

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