Just like in our cars, our bodies and states of mind have these different ‘gears’ we shift into at different points in our days and lives. Sometimes we’re in drive mode—otherwise known as ‘get shit done’ mode. Other times we’re in park. We move into and through reverse, often without awareness. Reverse is a useful tool, especially when we come to a dead end or have made a wrong turn. These are all normal states and experiences that we have as beings on this planet. The gear we wish to talk about today is one not frequently used — it’s called Dynamic Neutral.
When we’re in neutral, it’s a place of receiving and experiencing the world around us. In a car, if we’re in neutral and on a hill, we will be affected by gravity and how we are positioned in relation to the world (hill) around us. If we are at the bottom of a hill in neutral and wish to get up the hill, neutral will not serving us very well. We have to move into drive mode and get the inertia moving. Our cars do not have a dynamic neutral, but our human awareness does. And when we shift into it, incredible spaces open up, in both relationships and in societies.
What Do We Mean By Dynamic Neutral?
Dynamic Neutral is a state where you are fully in your body, present and aware of who you are and connected to your personal way that source energy flows through you. If you’re not aware or familiar with this inherent connection, that is the first order of business—to plug yourself in. Plugging in requires awareness and practice. In order to know a territory and state of awareness, it is imperative in our human world to bring it through experience. Theory is one aspect, but is only an aspect of the mind. Experience lands in your body.
Mind and body cannot be separated. Your body does respond to your mind, but your mind needs a reference point in order to bring things ‘home’ to our bodies. For example, if we’ve never experienced ‘elation’ and we wish to bring that into a reality from a mind perspective, it would be difficult. If we’re all theory and we have no direct experience with something, then we don’t know how to bring the vision into a wholeness or fullness in dimensions. So the first thing is to have a method and awareness of how you plug in to your unique way that the creative source of the universe flows through you and create that state. When we create a state for long enough and our bodymind has enough connections with this state, it eventually becomes a stage.
As a quick aside, there are those of us that came into this world with a strong connection to our source. It is simply and naturally something we have always been aware of. For those of us like this, it is still helpful to have a practice where we focus clearly on this channel of connection. It is like our breath. It absolutely is always running through our system 24/7, but we simply cannot pay mindful attention to it every minute of every day. We would get nothing done. The same goes for our source connection. Even if we came in with this strong knowing and connection that is running in the background like a super charged operating system, when we bring our presence to it, our world shifts. With repetition, we bring ourself into different stages of relationship to our source.
Back to Dynamic Neutral. This is a state where if you have your source connection lined up with awareness, your presence (Being/Consciousness) and awareness together offer a wider view. You literally have a wider and broader influence flowing into your thoughts, senses, feelings and words. This place of awareness is not static, distanced or removed. It is right in the center of what is happening around you in the world. It is as if you are having double vision or double awareness. It is a Both-And. You see, hear, feel what is happening around you in physical reality, yet you have the space of neutrality where you are not looking through eyes of right and wrong or good and bad. In this space, what IS simply IS and we come right to ground or relationship where the experience lies. The presence and space that you bring to your relationship with whatever is occurring allows room for movement or flow and the path of least resistance begins to open up once more.
We Are Dynamic Creatures Who Sometimes Get Stuck
The first place I gained a strong understanding of this state of awareness was in my CranioSacral training. Inherently in this system of healing, there is a fundamental trust and understanding that the body has an wisdom and ‘knows’ how to find it’s way back to connection, flow and health. Why doesn’t it happen all the time spontaneously? Because we retain emotions, thoughts or beliefs around an experience that impedes the natural processing of energy and movement through our physical, emotional or mental bodies.
We do this all the time. We get scared, confused, angry, sad — none of which are undesired, really…we just have society and group judgements on them. These are natural transient states of human experience. They are designed to move through us. When we don’t feel them, that’s when things go awry. That’s when we can’t relate to others or society in healthy and connective manners. When we feel them and we try to push them away or shove them down, we also impede the natural processing and flow of energy. These transient emotions are like waves of energy or storms. They often flow right through unless we have something on the inside of us that attracts similar energy, very much like a magnetic attraction. Each time a situation like this occurs, it is an opportunity for this new outside energy to help shift our stagnant inside energy back into flow or balance. If we don’t allow it, we simply add to our blockage and the pressure builds, sometimes most fierce. And most likely, so does our pain.
Being in relation from Dynamic Neutral allows stuck energy to flow once again. To get to dynamic neutral, we must first, ourselves, be in a state of connection with wider vision and experience of ourselves. We could call it wider consciousness. I’m not a huge fan of ‘higher’ consciousness simply because it seems to create a form of ‘consciousness competition.’ There is no ‘right’ consciousness and no end point ‘of’ or ‘in’ consciousness we are attempting to attain. There is no end to consciousness, which can really blow a human, linear, ‘let’s put it in a box and understand it’ mind. There is always more. Which, in our society of achievement and attainment, really can cause a rub.
Emotions are a Natural State of Being
When we’re in this place of Dynamic Neutral, we are connected yet floating, morphing and moving with awareness in a beautiful dance. We are at the same time unwavering AND swaying. We lean in to make connections, then we pull out to create more space for the relationship between and within things. I learned to name this state ‘neutral’ over a decade ago, but in truth, we all have moments of this we do from the day we are born. Babies are really good at it. Then they get pulled out of center. Ideally they have another that can assist them in navigating their own way back to their connection. Mostly we don’t shun a baby when it has experiences. Conversely, we hold them in a safe space, from a place where we know everything is ok. This is a form of Dynamic Neutral. We let them move through their experience with love, connection and allowing and they find their way back to their unique connection with source. We all inherently know this path back, but over time we may have had road blocks, debris, and other people’s baggage thrown in our path.
Dynamic Neutral in Action
There is a way to stay in dynamic neutral and stay in deep relation to the world. This is the path of love and connection. Compassion translates to ‘feels with’ — meaning we actually hold a space to be with another while they are feeling their way through something. If we have the notion that feeling is something bad, or we have an abundance of pain around the same experience or we think emotions and feelings are something to be eradicated, then the translation can be interpreted as ‘suffer with.’
Highly sensitive people are naturally more in tune with the world around them. They feel everything in terms of ‘more.’ So when we witness pain, we feel it strongly; especially if we have a similar vibration or a residual vibration stagnant somewhere inside of us. Also, we naturally have what are called ‘mirror neurons’ which bring us into deep connection with other humans. We mirror what we see outside on our inside, often mimicking it if not taught to restrain ourselves.
With all of these factors, coming into a familiarity with our own Dynamic Neutral becomes even more beneficial. When we are in neutral, we feel with, but are not overwhelmed or overtaken by our own inner experience. We have a wider space that holds both our own self, the other self, and the space in between and around us. This is a much broader state of being. It holds a more potent influence than our everyday narrowly focused understanding of how and why things are as they are and our penchant to solve problems.
When we find and hold our own dynamic neutral, which could be called Center if you prefer, then we are able to relate to the world around us from a deep core of center and space. Here, right and wrong, good and bad are simply two sides of one coin. In Dynamic Neutral, we are aware of the entire coin and possibly even of the energy that formed the coin. This neutral space allows flow to resume, which is our natural state of being. We are dynamic creatures of flow and vibration that are here for many reasons. When we begin to trust this wider space, we open up worlds of possibility that were once only wishes and dreams. First we must get connected, but after we do that, when we reach out and connect in the world from this place, we offer a place for all of us to live in our own unique way.
Our cars are not quite there yet, but they’re developing this new gear, this new state of driving. Once we learn to move in the world from this Dynamic Neutral, this place of connected awareness while ebbing and flowing and relating with the natural rhythms of the universe, maybe then we’ll get to see the mirror reflect back to us from our outside world.
©2016 Christine Morris, OpeningSpaces.com