transformation

CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

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CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY 

Creating a new experience of life

It can often seem like we are not choosing who we are, but rather that we simply are who we are.  You might wonder what it even means to choose your identity.  To begin with your identity is made up.  It is composed of a slew of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions, many of which you might not even be aware of, which is why it seems that you are not choosing who you are.  However if you take just a little bit of time and come up with a handful of words or phrases that currently describe you, then you will start to get a clearer picture of how you see yourself.  This is important to do if you would like to see that your identity is in fact made up by you (consciously or not) and become more deliberate in the choosing of it for yourself.

Why is your identity so important anyways?  Your identity dictates what actions you will take or not take, what emotions you will have or not have, how much risk or safety you need, how you relate to other people and yourself, the information your body will receive or not receive, what you belief is possible or impossible, and how you view the world and all of its happenings.  I hope you can see that identity is a pretty big deal.  It influences your entire experience of life.  Good news is you are not stuck with the one you have!  Identity in indeed malleable, but you must first realize that it can be changed by you if you so desire.  

Just to be clear there is nothing wrong with any identity.  Choosing one identity over another identity is not better or worse, but rather only provides different experiences for you.  Ultimately you are not any of the identities that you conjure up.  You are that which is before all characteristics and qualities, but that is another conversation.  So make that list of qualities and characteristics that you currently feel like you possess.  What are the primary thoughts and emotions that you experience on a regular basis?  What beliefs do you have that inspire those thoughts and emotions?  How do you imagine other people see/view you?  What do you present to others or the world and how is that different than when you are by yourself?  Get as clear and concise of a picture of who you currently believe or know yourself to be.  Now ponder if there is any way in which you would like to experience something that you are currently experiencing differently.  Would you like to feel different, see yourself differently, relate to others differently, have different opportunities, feel different in your body, make more money, impact others more, etc.?  If the answer is yes then it all begins with a shift in identity.  We can’t experience anything differently until we first become different. 

A NEW YOU 

Bridging the non-real gap

Now that you have gotten clearer on who you currently are, you must also create what you would like your new identity to be.  If you came up with some ways in which you would like to experience life differently than you must ask yourself, “who would I need to be in order to have those experiences?”  What type of person would experience life in the ways that you want to experience it?  Write down whatever those characteristics, qualities, thoughts, and emotions are for someone who would experience what you desire to experience.  Then notice the gap between your current sense of self and the sense of self you need to have in order to experience life in these new ways.  That gap, which really isn’t a gap, but rather only a set of habits based on assumptions of who you are and who you aren’t, and a doing of yourself one way versus another way.  

To bridge the non-real gap we must do, feel and think ourselves like the version of ourselves that we now desire to experience.  We must break the habits of our previous self by laying down the habits of our next self.  This is where people often drop the ball because this takes work and effort.  It will take energy, determination and discipline in order to make the shift because your old way of doing yourself is effortless, routine and predicable.  It takes very little energy.  Building a new self is like a baby building its body.  It takes a ton of energy.  In a way you do become like a baby again.  You are learning and laying down patterns that you have not learned or laid down before.  There will be uncertainty or lack of clarity, a sense like you don’t know where you are going or how to get there.  That is all normal.  You don’t know yet because you haven’t traversed this terrain before.  If you already knew then it wouldn’t be a new version of you.

As always your desire is the guiding light.  The more clear you are in your desire of what you want to be now, the more clear the path will seem to you even if you don’t know what direction is up/down or right/left.  Turning the light up on your desire is also your source of energy.  Without desire we don’t feel much motivation to create or bring new things to light.  With desire we are lit up.  We are motivated, inspired, and take action in the direction of our new found dreams.  Along with creating new behaviors, habits, thoughts, feelings and emotions, there will be a letting go of the old ways of being.  It is like a sweet good-bye.  A good-bye that is done in gratitude for who you’ve been and everything you’ve created from this sense of you.  It’s kind of like selling a car you really love, but you know it’s time for an upgrade because the old one just can’t do all the things you need it to anymore.  You want to have new experiences so it’s time to upgrade, it’s time for a change.  

We are by our very nature creators.  We are the source of our creations.  How do you want to play with the toys in your sandbox today?  How do you want to experience life?  You are the source of it all.  Turn the light up on yourself, see who you are now and create who you need to be in order to experience life how you desire to now.  

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

LEARNING WITHOUT FAULT

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LEARNING WITHOUT FAULT

There is no self-deficiency in learning

Learning is the natural rhythm of life.  From my perspective everything is learning.  Many of you have heard me say this time and time again.  All too often we get caught up in what is occurring, meaning the content of what is happening and what we think it means, and we forget that there is a bigger overarching learning at play.  We lose sight of the learning and begin to take the content of what’s happening seriously, as if we are going to lose something valuable if we don’t.  We think we somehow need to grasp onto the content, rather than recognize all as learning and not as something to hold onto or keep in place.  As I see it, the intention of life is learning and sharing.  There isn’t anywhere in particular to arrive or any place to get that is better than where we are now.  There is only learning at and in, each stage of our development.  

When we take the content of life seriously and forget that all is learning we tend to live in scarcity, fear, blame, fault and self-hatred.  Our life becomes a series of subtle control and manipulation attempts to make sure that we feel ok.  We compromise ourselves in order to feel safe, and escape from learning because we see it as too threatening to what we have and who we are.  We attempt to hold onto the stuff of our life, particular our identity, at all costs because we perceive threat rather than learning.  When we are confronted by learning, but choose safety instead, we walk with our guards up and defenses engaged, ready to protect ourselves from learning which we perceive as threat.  

When you remember that all is learning you instantly stop creating fault, because there is no fault in learning.  Learning does not imply deficiency, even though we relate to it as if it does.  We believe that if we don’t know or haven’t learned something then we aren’t meeting the mark, something is wrong with us, or we are behind.  We create all kind of stories that we are never going to get it, that we are bad or that no one will love us because we are undeveloped in such or such way.  We traverse the pathway of self-hatred believing that we are somehow not enough or unworthy because of the learning that is presenting itself and that we don’t already know it.  We really must stop and ask ourselves the questions: how did we become so defensive to learning and why do we have such resistance to growth, change and seeing ourselves in novel ways?  When you realize that all of your defensiveness is really just protection, protection from learning, it starts to all seem quite silly.  When the very thing we say we want is healing and growth, and yet we shut ourselves off or down from learning, we find out just how absurd all of our protection really is.   

LEARNING IN INNOCENCE 

All learning is remembering

There is an innocence, a rarified purity, at the core of each and every one of us.  It’s that which is untouched even by our own self-critical and judgmental mind.  That innocence knows only itself and its self is love.  It is the bliss that passes all understanding.  That essence so fully knows itself already because it remains untouched by all of experience.  Yet the you that you currently know yourself to be has been immersed in experience for many, many years.  Experience is content, and when content fills the screen of our awareness we lose sight of ourselves, of the pure, innocent, fully awake being that is who/what we are.  This is not a problem, but it does create the necessity for learning, for remembering ourselves.

How I see it is that all learning is remembering.  We have simply lost focus of ourselves, and therefore we get to have experiences that point us into the direction of remembrance.  Experience is learning, and all learning is remembering.  If you can grok this you can see that learning can never be based in deficiency, but rather only in forgetting or having lost focus of your essence.  There is no fault in this, there is only the game of finding your way back to yourself.  The moment you take yourself or your experience seriously, as something that needs to be fixed or solved, you’ve stopped forward momentum towards your self on the game board of life.  This is often experienced as feeling lost, stagnate, stuck, depressed, anxious, and tense.  

Innocence and purity is what you are.  Bliss and love are the core flavors or your being.  All else is experience/content that is placed on top of that.  Don’t confuse yourself for the content of your life.  Don’t misidentify yourself as the labels you or others have given you.  You are without labels.  This does not negate self-responsibility.  In fact it does the opposite.  It makes you fully responsible to your own remembering of yourself, which is the prime impulse of this entire creation.  The desire to remember ourselves is what drives this entire universe back towards itself, towards its primordial knowing.  This is what is called awakening.  Your remembering, your awakening, is not outside of your reach.  It is inside of experience.  It is the core of all learning.  If you push away learning, or you push away yourself because of learning that presents itself, than you push away your awakening of remembering more of you.  

Learn to welcome learning.  Stay in open invitation to the mirrors that show themselves to you.  They are your allies, your guides, your messengers from you to you.  They will guide you home, to yourself.  It’s impossible that any aspect of life, in its infinite expressions, could ever not be included in the all that is.  That means that all forgetting, all learning, all remembering, all of what we are now, is part of the perfect orchestration of creation.  There is no fault in your forgetting.  There is no fault in your learning.  It is as it should be.  Recognize and play the game.  Have fun.  Embrace yourself as you are now.  Nothing is lost.  All is fully complete and abundant.  Radiate and be who, what and where you are now and for eternity.  

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

STOP WAITING

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STOP WAITING 

Your life is happening now

How often do you wait?  Wait in line, wait for a package to be delivered, wait for a new relationship, wait for a relationship to get better, wait for your body to heal, wait to feel good… just how much of your life do you spend waiting?  If you do a thorough self-analysis you might surprisingly discover that you spend most of your life waiting.  Waiting for things to get better, waiting for them to be different, waiting until you are clearer, waiting until things open up, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Why do we wait?  To the mind there appears to be this mysterious future where everything arrives that we have been waiting for and then abracadabra we stop waiting and live.  We all know it doesn’t actually work that way, but that doesn’t stop us from living that way anyway.  Crazy I know.  Another way to say waiting is to use the word postponement.  When we wait we postpone life.  Why would you postpone your life?  Perhaps you think you can’t have what you want now or you think its not possible or available.  You might think that what you want isn’t here or isn’t incompatible with what is here.  There is also the possibility that you don’t really want what you think you want or that you think you aren’t ready for it. 

The next question is do you even know what you are waiting for?  We often think that we are waiting for the thing to arrive.  The package, the relationship, the house, the healing of our body, the healing of our trauma, but we are not waiting for those things really.  What we are waiting for is the feeling that those things give us.  Get that.  It is not the thing or result, it is the feeling that the thing/result permissions us to feel.  If you get this you will instantly see that there is never again a reason to create waiting or postponement for yourself.

See the entire gestalt of life that you desire can be experienced now in this moment.  I know you think you want the picture, but the moment the picture arrives in the next it will change again.  The picture is not stable.  It is ever changing.  It is a temporary illusion of movement and energy configurations made up of gives, takes and energy exchanges.  None of them static.  What is stable, non-changing and eternal is you, and you are in charge of you.  You is under your control.  You are the decider, the chooser of you.  You are the seat of all of your waitings and non-waitings, living and not livings, you.   

CHOOSING LIFE NOW 

Life happens through you

You might wonder what it takes to choose life now rather than wait for life to happen in a future moment.  Really all it takes is for you to see that your life is happening right now.  Perhaps not all the things you think you want are in your current view, but that in no way stops, prevents, interferes or slows down what is here.  This also in no way negates that there may be things that want to shift in the appearance of your life.  Often simply in the noticing of what is things move and reconfigure themselves into new configurations.  

One of the most fundamental aspects to keep in the front view mirror is that all of the changing that may be occurring in the picture of life that you see in front of you is reflecting you.  Its reflecting your perspectives.  Everything that you look out at really is just an external representation of you.  You masked as a multitude of infinite forms constantly fluxing, changing and shifting in response to you.  You are not the forms themselves, but the architecture of your perspectives builds the representations that appear.  In this way you can use what you see as information about your state of being, what you are aligning with and attracting to the canvas of your life.  

These reflections are valuable as they can show you your impossibility beliefs, your perceived cant’s, and also quite clearly what you want and don’t want.  What you actually want is what you will see in the reflection of the appearance.  What you think you want but don’t really want you won’t see appear even if its there.  In this way you will be able to tell where you are full of shit about waiting or being ready or not ready for what you think you want.  I also invite you to play with replacing the words ready/not ready with the words want now/don’t want now.  In this way you can more clearly see that you are the one in the driver’s seat of your choosing and can instantly stop waiting if you so choose.  

Remember what we want is to feel amazing and allow life to flow through.  From this flow we serve, we contribute, we give to life.  This is the fuel of creation.  Our state of being paints the picture and that state of your being is your one and only true responsibility, your one and only true choosing.  No matter what appearance appears right now on the canvas of your life start to see how your view and feeling state of it changes it.  Be bold enough to see the beauty, love and joy in all, that is if it excites you to do so and if that is how you want to experience life.  Don’t wait for the picture to change first.  Don’t wait for your body to heal, to heal your trauma, for all the money, or the relationship to arrive.  Feel amazing no matter the appearance.  

Life doesn’t happen to you, as you aren’t the appearance.  Instead life happens through you, through your awareness of it.  There isn’t a destination.  You don’t arrive.  You are.  That is it.  Stop trying to get somewhere else by waiting for something to arrive.  Just be, already here, already perfect, already love, now.

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

SECURE DESTRUCTION YOU CAN TRUST

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SECURE DESTRUCTION YOU  CAN TRUST

The healing shake up

Earlier this week I was sitting in my car while stopped at a traffic intersection.  There was a large cargo truck in front of me that had the words “secure destruction you can trust” written on it.  I found this to be a very interesting and slightly comical phrase.  As I further looked at the truck it became evident to me that this truck belonged to a document destruction company, which clearly is an appropriate tagline for such a business.  However I also thought what an appropriate slogan for the healing process!  Healing is indeed a process of secure destruction that must be navigated through trust.  

Many people in the general public don’t perceive the destructive or destabilizing aspect of healing.  In fact most look for “healing” because they want more stability or less perceived uncertainty.  Often what these people are really looking for is not healing, but instead something to return them to a previous state of being or functioning that has been disrupted by a set of conditions in their body or life.  Returning to a previous state of functioning is not healing, it is a temporary bandaid.  Its buys you time until you are ready to actually heal.  Healing is a deep remembering of self, of what you are beyond the conditioning, a return to unshakable and undeniable love.  What I have found is that when our life gets shook up in unfavorable ways (what we might term a crisis of sorts) this is prime fertile ground for healing.  In fact little to no healing happens without the shake up.  

You might wonder why do we need the shake up?  Why don’t we just heal without things, including our bodies or lives, needing to fall apart?  The reason is that most people are not motivated in comfort.  When we feel comfortably stable there often isn’t momentum to grow.  When we are in comfort we may not even recognize that there is more to explore, share and know about ourselves.  Also we may not be able to see some of our limiting patterns and beliefs that keep us trapped in boxes inside of our own minds without the shake up.  

So the shake up, the destabilization and destruction, serves.  It serves our remembrance of ourselves, which is our healing.   Its serves by breaking down that which no longer serves.  Even though we often don’t like it and would rather be anywhere else then inside of massive instability, it is required which is why it is present.   When it no longer serves it will no longer be necessary and therefore will not manifest itself, but until then it is part of the way we grow.  One of the main reasons that we suffer inside of the destruction phase of a healing process is because we don’t trust it.  We don’t trust the intelligent process of life and therefore attempt to fix it so that we can return to our previous sense of self and stability.  But what if you aren’t meant to go back to who you were before?  What if you are meant to instead recognize a new version of yourself entirely?  That is after all what healing, growth and evolution is all about.   

CONSCIOUSNESS & PHYSICAL HEALING 

Spirit-matter

Consciousness is a state of wakefulness or awareness.  The brighter your wakefulness or awareness is the more you recognize yourself.  This is healing.  It’s healing because to see, recognize, or remember ourselves aligns our individual perspective with the larger, more encompassing perspective that we are.  We are often looking through this tiny pinhole perspective and extrapolating it to be the ultimate truth of all that we are, when in actuality we are much, much, much more then what we see through our tiny little viewpoint.  The wider our lens becomes, the more inclusive it becomes, the more allowing we are of life and the less we attempt to control and manipulate it.  We learn to love and accept what is just as it is.  This means accepting what we don’t understand, what we don’t agree with, often what we don’t want and discovering that this is what heals us.

One might say that everything in the universe is consciousness.  That all forms that you see, feel and touch are simply awareness.  I find it interesting that there is still a deep non-recognition of this.  We attempt to manipulate forms while not paying any attention to that which is awake, alive and the essence of the form.  We are deeply unaware of ourselves.  Even when we do begin to recognize and metaphorically taste, touch and smell ourselves beyond the forms we tend to externalize or make our essence other.  In fact we put it into this fancy category that we call “spirituality”.  Spirituality or spirit is none other than you.  It is inescapable as you cannot be other than you.  Spirituality is not reserved for some people or some times or places.  It is all that there is.  You could never leave it.  You can only not recognize it.  

Consciousness is not separate from matter.  It is matter.  It is simply vibrating at a slower wavelength than say thoughts or emotions.  Other words for consciousness are awareness, intelligence or information.  Awareness is intelligent.  The more your individual awareness recognizes itself the more intelligent you become.  I don’t mean the kind of mental intelligence that most of us think about as intelligence, though that is included as well, but instead I’m talking about self-organizing, self-healing, self-knowing intelligence.  This is the intelligence that organizes every single detail and moment in the universe.  Call it universal intelligence if you prefer.  This universal intelligence is in total and complete charge.  This intelligence is you.  

This is why all healing is remembering.  A remembering that you are this intelligence.  The focus on consciousness knowing itself turns the brightness knob up.  More brightness means more resourcefulness, more knowing, more intelligent navigating, and better listening and attuning to self.  Seeing and hearing the lessons you are learning more clearly and feeling less like a passive victim of circumstances and conditions.  At first you become co-creator, an active participant in the unfolding of each lesson and moment, until ultimately separation ceases to be perceived and you recognize the one creator as your true identity.  

Forms (including your body) are simply mirrors, pictures, reflections of consciousness, of you.  When you realize this inseparable nature you stop seeking outside of you for a magical pill or answer.  You are the magical pill and answer.  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements inside the seeming form mirage that will be supportive to you, as there most likely will be.  But do recognize their function as consciousness illuminators, permission slips or pathways that carve the way inside your own awareness to more deeply know itself and it’s inherent self-healing, self-organizing and self-knowing power.  

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

End of Avoidance

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End of Avoidance 

Leaning into your discomforts

avoidance 2There is an overarching tendency to push away parts of our experience that are unpleasant or that we don’t like or prefer.  Many of us are not even aware that we are pushing away certain parts of our experience instead we just know that we don’t like what is and that we are in some way uncomfortable, whether physically or psychologically.  This tendency to avoid, push away or get rid of certain parts of our experience makes for a state of inner resistance also known as suffering.  Some of us suffer loudly while others do so silently, so silently that they hardly even notice it themselves.  

Most people have a belief that when all of their experiences are pleasant or their personal preferences are all actualized then they will experience peace and happiness.  The thing is that experiences constantly change and come and go.  In one moment all of your preferences may be actualized and in the next moment you may find yourself not preferring what is happening at all.  Due to the fact that nearly all people base their state of being on circumstances this means that you feel happy and peaceful when your life experiences line up with what you prefer and unhappy when they do not.  

Your experiences only determine your state of being in the ways that you allow them to, but in order for you to consciously choose your state of being you must first be in full acceptance of what is.  If you are pushing any aspect of your experience away you are not in the driver’s seat of your life.  Instead you are victim to that which you refuse to accept and your creative options for moving with or adapting to life are extremely limited.   

Remember what we refuse to accept is often subtle or completely unseen by us.  These blinds spots are often experienced as a sense of disconnection, lack of presence or energy,  or seeking out distractions without the seeming ability to refocus.  Other ways in which our blind spots are experienced are through rationalization or making logical that which is happening or attempting to turn our experiences into something pleasant or pleasurable.  One way of doing this is by pasting something on top of our experience while still not being in full acceptance of what is underneath.  When you are in full acceptance of your experience as it is there is no need to paste anything on top of it or make it different in any way.  This doesn’t mean that your experience won’t change, it may or may not, but your inner resistance will have ended and you therefore feel a sense of inner peace no matter what the circumstances are in that moment.   

Beginning of Peace 

Embracing of all

Newborn Baby Boy Floating on a Swim Ring

The fastest way to peace is radical acceptance of what is.  Peace does not mean all external things (including your own body) are pleasant, kind, and quiet.  It simply means that your mind is.  This is how you come to know the unshakable, undisturbed nature of your very own beingness.  There is also a distance of sorts that gets created between you and your experiences or circumstances.  You are no longer fused or merged with them and due to this your perception is expanded and you are able to see that which you were previously blind too.  It is only here that we can gain true clarity.

Another thing begins to happen at this point of un-fusing or un-merging with our experiences; we realize that our preferences are not so important.  This doesn’t mean that it isn’t still nice when our preferences are what we are experiencing, but we also realize that they don’t have to be, and either way whatever shows up we are happy and peaceful.  

When we sink into discomfort the rewards are so great.  We liberate ourselves.  We become autonomous.  We come to know our true self.  There really is no reward greater.  The nature of love is all embracing and all including.  When we resist or push something out of love’s all embracing nature we suffer because we are going against the fundamental truth of our nature as we are love.  I know it seems hard at times to accept those things (experiences, sensations, feelings, etc.) which we don’t prefer or that we even judge as wrong, bad or should be different than they are, but the larger truth is that everything should be exactly as it is.  When you fully get this you embody your power and you embody love.  

What is also realized at this point is that your truest preference is not to have all the external situations or circumstances turn out or be a certain way, including the sensations and experience of your body, what your true preference is, is to know yourself and be yourself.  In knowing yourself and being yourself you express love perfectly and can’t help see the perfection of the divine folding and unfolding all around through your circumstances and experiences.

Know that at times we forget this.  Also know that all experiences are intentioned to bring us back into this remembering.  If you find yourself in resistance, not wanting to feel the discomfort of something or a lack of your preference being experienced, remind yourself that you can use this very experience to remember your true nature as love.  Know that just as easily as you can resist an experience you are having you can equally accept it.  There is no special skill you need to learn in order to accept, you just simply do it.  You stop insisting on wrongness, badness and your personal preference for something else, and you drop into what is here now.  In that moment connection is re-established.  You find and feel home inside of you again and just like that you begin to have a different relationship with all of your experiences that show up thereafter.  

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

True Stability

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True Stability 

Finding the ground of your being

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

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

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

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

Forces of Instability 

Fuel to know yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

Destruction

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Destruction

Tides of transformation

Hot fires flames in round shapeMost of us fear destruction.  Yet destruction is an inevitable aspect of growth. Things can not stay the same and simultaneously look or be different.  When we allow our fear of deconstruction (i.e. what we think we will lose) to reign we feel stuck, frustrated and powerless. These feelings are simply the postponement of change that must occur.  The only thing that shifts frustration is forward movement. The tendency for most is instead to move backwards into the same habituated thinking patterns because they are known rather than to push forward into the unknown.  Growth does not occur in the known.

What it boils down to is that people want to feel different or have their life be different yet expect that they can remain the same.  They project that they want the situation or circumstance to change, but deny their participation in that change. They fail to see that in every moment life (including their body) responds to them, not to some mysterious, outside, unknown force.  They avoid and deny their power rather than own their power.  The building up of frustration and stuckness rather than the alleviation of it, is what provides the energy for forward momentum.  Due to the fact that we avoid feeling uncomfortable we don’t allow the build up of tension that is required to make change.  Instead we find the most accessible ways in which we can to alleviate it.  Frequently that involves dropping into a lower state of awareness or consciousness where we feel like things are continuing to happen to us, that we are powerless, and that someone or something must fix us rather than us recognizing ourselves in the equation.

If rather than running from our uncomfortable sensations and situations we learn to move towards them, not in a way to fix or get rid of them as if they are some separate object from us, but instead to make contact with ourselves through them, we will be able to harness the energy of stuckness to move forward.  This will begin to expand our perspective of our current situation or circumstance.  The moment that we move towards rather than away from, is the moment that we stretch ourselves beyond our known.  This stretching expands our view of what we can see and allows us to revisit that which previously felt separate to us with new eyes. It allows us to see our patterns and how we are creating the circumstances and situations we’re experiencing, including what’s happening within our body, so that we can make necessary changes that are required. It is at this point that the inevitable destruction that was always eminent is now so clearly in the forefront of our awareness.  It is now no longer a choice that we can grapple with, but instead a must that we must do. 

Destroyer 

Recognizing yourself in the equation

Female with Indian feather hat and colorful makeup.Ultimately destruction is about the dissolution or breakdown of aspects of our self that no longer serve our highest good and don’t allow for optimal function of our bodies and lives.  These parts of us, or more accurately these patterns which we have identified as who we are, are often mysterious to us in the early part of transformation. We can’t yet see that we are the ones creating the circumstances and situations because we are so fused as being the pattern or part.  However when transformation moves to mid phase we begin to gain insight into what is occurring and more importantly our participation with it.  At transformation’s end phase we clearly see how we have been in charge all along and that it’s never been about the situation or circumstance, ever. 

I invite you to see from the perspective that stuckness and frustration is a gift. It is a gift from you, to you, that is showing you that some aspect of your consciousness must be made more aware.  It is the way in which you are teaching yourself to wake up.  Rather than keeping the perspective that tension is a problem or that the circumstance is a problem, see it as an opportunity for growth. Accept that destruction and change is a part of growth.  As you move into the frustration and wake up to seeing your contribution to what is occurring, you will be required to change.  Recognize your own resistance to this.  Recognize your desire to maintain sameness or perceived safety and stability rather than instability and change.  Recognize that things will come and go as required whether you like it or not.  Know that some of those things you will want to hold onto for dear life and yet they remain incompatible with who it is you are waking up to be.  To continue to hold onto those things and attempt to control external circumstances will keep you in a state of suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness and suffering and stuckness until the point where you have finally had enough. 

Some of us will tolerate suffering and stuckness for such a long time because we are so afraid of change, growth and what we think we will lose along the way, but change and growth is the nature of this universe. To remain the same or in resistance/fear to change when change is eminent, is nothing short of a miserable life experience as the soul cannot express through you in the ways that it desires due to your persistent attempts to try to control it.  

Nothing remains the same.  Nothing.  You can hold onto absolutely nothing. The deeper that you can accept this the more easily you will allow the process of destruction and transformation to run its course in whatever ways are needed. This will accelerate your journey as a soul who’s sole function is to expand and express.  Ultimately you are the destroyer/changer.  Destruction and change do not happen to you, you are not a victim of them, instead you initiate them because you realize that you must.  This is the realization and actualization of your power. 

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

Becoming

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Becoming 

Making the shift into who you desire to be

VanityYou have all probably heard the phrase: think it, feel it, become it.  Its often used to reference a process of transformation in becoming something that what we desire to become.  We use our thoughts to think it, then our feeling bodies to feel the qualities we want to become, and through feeling it we become it.  When we want to become something anew there is often also a process of simultaneously undoing who we have previously thought ourselves to be as frequently who we desire to be now is in conflict with what we currently think we are.  

Most of us aren’t even really aware of who it is that we currently are and even beyond that. that who we are is a choice.  We don’t realize that we carry many underlying assumptions and hidden beliefs about ourselves that are based on our life experiences.  If fact most all of who we think we are has been based on our life experiences.  How frequently does it seem that our life experiences have just happened to us, particularly early on in our lives when a large portion of our identity is formed, but even continuing through into the present?  Therefore how much do we just assume that this is “just who I am” and not question it or think that we could ever be different?  This is one of the conundrum’s of having lived disempowered and not realizing that we have always been in the driver’s seat.  If we begin to see/accept that we have chosen every single one of our life experiences (this occurs through acceptance of what was/is) then we can begin to see how our identity has been chosen by us.  This is a breath of fresh air because that means we can also choose anew at any moment.

The assumptions we have about who we are also come with a lens of perception.  That lens of perception becomes the filter with which we then view ourselves through.  Meaning say that we have an assumption that we are weak, strong, cold, warm, unloving, loving, kind, unkind, likable or unlikeable, etc. then we experience ourselves as those qualities and we also view our world from that perception of ourselves.  This is quite literally how we “create our reality”.  Our reality is created by who it is that we think we are and that lens of perception than filters everything we see.  This is why if we want to change our reality (i.e. experience of life) we must actually just change ourselves, as reality follows our perception which comes from our sense of identity.  

Final Becoming 

Relinquishing our role identities 

Surreal portraitOne of the ways to bring more awareness to the self-discovery process of who it is you believe yourself to be is to take a look at your roles, and the responsibilities and activities that come along with them.  These are often indicators as to who it is we think that we are.  Perhaps you are a business man/woman, a scientist, doctor, community leader, a father/mother, daughter/son, wife/husband, an organizer or planner, an athlete, outdoorsy, indoorsy, a reader, an adventurist, etc.  Looking at your roles provides insight into who it is you identify yourself as being.

Again who it is you identify yourself as being is how you will experience yourself and the world.  Let’s say for example that you have the role of being a “wife” or an “athlete”.  Often when we take on a role, we identify as being that role.  You think that you are a wife or an athlete and therefore that role becomes part of your identity.  Every role always comes with some level of expectation of how we must show up within that role.  That expectation could be created by us or have been created by others.  Either way if we’ve agreed with ourselves that a particular expectation lives within a certain role, and if we don’t fulfill those expectations, then we take it as a personal deficit.  

The truth is that we are not our roles, nor the responsibilities or activities that come along with them, but because we are merged as the role then when we don’t meet those role’s responsibilities or perform the activities associated with the role we feel bad about ourselves.  The self that we feel bad about is not our true self.  The self we feel bad about is only the one with which we’ve come to identify ourselves as through becoming the role.  To relinquish being merged with our role’s identities doesn’t mean that we can’t/don’t still participate in the responsibilities and activities that come along these roles.  It simply means that we don’t identify ourselves as the role.  The falling away of being merged with any and all roles is what allows you to taste and know your true self, which is beyond any and all roles.  This is the final becoming.  

Simply put the process is this.  Fully accept yourself as you think you are right now.  Investigate your roles and decipher who it is that you’ve created yourself to be.  See how that has filtered your entire perception of life.  Recognize the power of think it, feel it, become it.  Who is it that you desire to be now?  Through full acceptance of who you’ve been there is no longer resistance or incongruence with who you are wanting to become.  Think and feel your current desire of who you want to be often.  Realize that the final becoming is the embrace of all the things you have thought that you are not.  This allows you to realize that you are all and ultimately that you are the chooser/becomer of whatever becomes and not the becoming itself.

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

Claiming what you want

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Claiming what you want 

Finding the fuel for change

28365465 - fictional forest hunter girl with bow and arrowThere are a thousand million reasons why we don’t claim what we want.  We think we aren’t worth it, can’t have it, don’t deserve it, are incapable of it, don’t know how to claim it, aren’t qualified, and on and on.  In fact frequently we keep our desires hidden even from ourselves.  We don’t want anyone to see what we really want because we feel shame, inadequacy or unworthy of what we desire.  Often underneath it all we feel that what we desire might un-include us from our groups, friends, families or society.  If we really investigate our relationship with desire we might even find that we have a negative relationship to desire itself.  As if desire is something bad or sinful.

We aren’t really taught to focus on what we desire.  Instead we are taught to “do the right thing”.  Meaning to do what everyone else does and what has been culturally agreed upon and accepted.  Most people are living in this way and they don’t even fully realize that they are not living in alignment or connected with what they desire.  If fact they’ve deluded themselves to whatever degree they’ve been able to that they actually want what they’ve been told they want without ever investigating for themselves if its actually true.  So it gets really tricky to see the truth of ourselves and sometimes the only way that you can notice that you aren’t living connected to your desire, but rather to simply “do” this thing called life, is a subtle sense of low energy.  Other signs are not feeling an aliveness inside, not feeling your heart open, noticing a flatness or dullness or feeling unable to connect to yourself or others fully.  

Really what needs to happen is that you need to begin to see how the activities you are currently engaged in, people/groups you hang out with or ways in which you spend your day to day activities don’t resonate for you.  It may not be that all things, people or activities fall into that category, but if you begin to really honestly take a look you will find some that don’t resonate and yet you are continuing to engage with them. 

Committing to yourself 

Energizing effort

warriorIf you are really honest you should begin to feel a sense of frustration with engaging in those things which don’t resonate for you.  Often what happens is people get to this point of feeling frustration (or sense of feeling stuck) and perceiving the frustration as bad, so they look for ways to alleviate this tension that is building.  They might watch a movie, play a video game, eat some food, drink some wine, have sex, scroll Facebook, etc.  They now feel less tension, but they also have less energy for change.  Alleviating the build up of tension will always drop the energy that is available to you to move towards what it is you truly desire.  

With this drop in energy your consciousness also drops into a state of powerlessness or helplessness to be able to do anything about your own life.  You actually believe that you can’t do anything.  That its just hopeless and quite possibly will just always be this way.  Essentially that you can’t change, and you really feel that you changing is not up to you.  That its up to some external circumstances or forces, and that unless the circumstances (which include your body) somehow magically changes, you’re doomed.  This is disempowerment.  This is disconnection.  This is lack of awareness of your self.  And it fucking sucks.  

Moving from perceiving powerlessness to realizing that you are the one with the power is a tremendous shift in consciousness and energy.  When you are brutally honest with yourself and claim what you want the power arises, the energy arises, the determination arises.  You become unstoppable.  Its going to happen.  There is no longer any doubt or question about it.  Yes there is work, yes there is stuff to be done, but rather than it feeling like draining effort it becomes energizing effort.  Effort which produces what you desire, which is always fulfilling rather than depleting even if the physical body gets tired.  This is the difference between acting from your alignment/desires versus working from a place of nonalignment with self.  When you are out of alignment everything will feel like massively hard work even if its just cleaning out your refrigerator or taking a shower.  When you’re in alignment the focus is no longer on the activity, but on your desire and alignment.  The activity itself becomes a non-issue and your desire the only thing that matters.

Discover what you truly desire.  Bring it into focus multiple times a day.  Speak it out loud.  Share it will people even if you feel timid or unworthy of it.  This will bring it more and more into the field of your awareness and strengthen your commitment to you.  

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

True healing

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True healing 

Learning how to un-control your experience

healing and transformationOften when we experience some type of dysfunction in our body our first response is panic or fear as we feel the threat of how things have been functioning being compromised.  We may feel the fear of loss of a certain way of living or being in this world, which is currently not acceptable to us.  Our ideas about ourselves and who we are get shaken up as this force of instability that we call disease, pain and dysfunction arises in our experiencing.  

In response to this potential loss of ourselves as we’ve known ourselves to be we often go into management mode in order to make sure that we can keep the sense of self that we’ve learned ourselves to be.  In this phase we look for the modalities, treatments and people that will fix us so that we can return to the life and who we knew ourselves to be before this situation arose.  Sadly many people stay in this phase of trying to control and manage their experience of themselves for the duration of their lives and never truly find acceptance for themselves as they are now.  Instead they stay stuck in an outdated version of themselves that has come and gone.  

Due to the fact that many people stay here trying to live as this past version of self, controlling and managing every aspect of their life, they don’t transform and come to know the new self that has emerged.  Their focus is in the rearview mirror so to speak and they keep looking backwards rather than seeing where they are at right now.  With this they will often feel sad, like they aren’t making progress, and like it takes so much effort to maintain everything.  They may frequently feel low energy, be resentful of all the compromises and the degree of vigilance that they have to have in order to maintain their previous sense of self which they are still holding onto as who they are.  They simultaneously continue to fear the unknown, fear who they would be if they accepted what and who is here now.  This is often too destabilizing for our sense of self and so we will fight tooth and nail to keep who and what we’ve known ourselves to be.   

Beyond controlling

Mastering healing & transformation

chain disconnectedWhat does is take to get beyond controlling your experience?  The first step is full acceptance of what is here now.  Zero transformation can occur if you don’t do this first fundamental step.  You will always feel like you are fighting something and “transformation or healing” will feel effortful because you are literally in a state of resistance to what is.  Acceptance is often the hardest because it will feel like defeat to your mind.  Like you are losing and something else is winning.  Again this is only because you have been holding onto a previous version of yourself that is no longer really here or relevant for you anymore.  You may still have attachment and desire for that previous version of yourself, not ready to let it go, even though its already gone.  It only stays “alive” through your mental clinging to it.

Once you accept what is, healing and transformation can now effortlessly occur.  This does not mean that there is lack of activity or doing, its simply that it becomes very clear to you exactly what you need to do, what methods will support you as you embrace this new version of yourself that is here now, and what changes you need to make in your life.  It becomes crystal clear because you are no longer in resistance/control mode.  There is no longer this aimless searching where you keep hoping that the next thing you try will fix you and you will feel like your previous self again.  The resentment and effort is gone and you are simply doing what you must do.  

What I’ve discovered through all my years of healing and transformative type of work is that when disease, pain and dysfunction arises it is always a source of destabilization to help us wake up to more of ourselves.  We live in these limited bubbles of knowing ourselves and when we come to edge of a bubble that we’ve been living in that bubble needs to somehow burst.  If we are really comfortable in our bubble it is harder for us to want to deliberately pop it and so life gives us situations (disease, pain, accidents, etc.) to make us a little less comfortable so that we will pop that limited bubble that we were previously living in.  In this way we go beyond, stretch into more of ourselves, and into a range of ourselves that we previously weren’t experiencing.  

This process is typically never comfortable.  I believe that is done purposely.  One of the gifts of having this human incarnation is that there is often a massive amount of discomfort that comes along with it.  This discomfort gives us the opportunity to accelerate our soul’s journey at exponential rates, but this requires that we walk towards the discomfort rather than palliate or try to get rid of it.  The more willing we are to let go of what is gone and accept the new, the more versions and flavors of ourselves we will get to experience and play with in this single lifetime.  Healing and transformation will be a game that we master.  We will become adepts of listening, moving with life, learning what we came here to learn and embodying the range of who and what we are.  

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