Alignment. When I asked what the word alignment means to you, most of you replied standing straight, upright, or vertical. Only one person mentioned a word I was thinking of: Flow. When I talk about being in alignment, I’m not talking about spinal alignment, standing upright, or being in a vertical position (although those are all valid responses). I’m talking about being in alignment with yourself.
As I explore human consciousness and development, the concept of alignment bubbles up in many different ways. When I first heard the term, it was explained as a state of emotional positivity and feeling good. If you follow Abraham Hicks, you’ve heard about alignment, and living from your vortex.
But ‘feeling good’ is a really vague description, and a lot of us have subconscious barriers and beliefs that say ‘feeling good’ is wrong. In an effort to really understand alignment, I wanted to find as many possible explanations as I could. So today we are going to cover five different ways to look at alignment and explain why it is so important.
(If you don’t want to read all the different perspectives, please at least scroll down to ‘Why This is Important’). Alignment is a word I’m going to be using a lot, so if you’re ready, let’s get started!
What is Alignment?
Simply put, alignment is being aligned with yourself. Alignment as defined in the dictionary is “an arrangement in a straight line, or in correct or appropriate relative positions”. Using this definition, I invite you to think of a cross. The horizontal line of the cross represents time. One end of the line is the past, the other end is the future, and the middle of the bar is the present moment. The long, vertical post represents you.
When you are living in alignment, your post is straight up and down. You aren’t leaning too far into the future, and you aren’t hanging back in the past. You are fully upright, here and now, in the present moment. This means that you have moved past mental urges to stress about the future or worry about what happened in the past. It means you are fully embodying yourself, who you are, here and now, in this present moment.
Easier said than done, right?
The good news is, there is more than one way to bake a cake. Let’s look at some other ways of thinking about alignment that may hit home:
#1: Reconnecting the Wires
A few weeks ago, I shared a post called Reconnecting the Wires, which you can read here. In this post, I explained how we have three distinct entities within our physical bodies- our minds, or egos, our souls, or intuition, and then ourselves, the observer of both mind and soul.
I shared in the post that I like to imagine myself as a spark situated around my heart area. My soul resides in my stomach and my mind resides in my head. In this visualization, there are two wires, one connecting me to my mind and one connecting me to my soul.
When these wires are straight and connected on both ends, energy flows freely, I feel free to act authentically, and I am connected with a higher power. In a word, I am aligned. When those wires are straight and connected, I am able to fully be myself, both grounded in the world and connected with Divinity.
To read more about the concept of the mind, the soul, and you, read this post. But for now, think of this as Alignment #1- when you connect the wires, you allow energy to flow through you, mind, soul, and self.
#2: Living Your Values
Living from your values isn’t something I’ve shared about on the blog, but it will be a big topic very soon. Really understanding ourselves through our values opens doors to a whole new way of life. When we know our values, we can understand our priorities. And when we prioritize the things we truly value, our life begins to look a whole lot like it does in our dreams.
Living life in alignment with your values means committing, every day, to live life the way you feel it should be lived. It means to honor your values, in every moment, and use them in all of your decisions and actions. Living in accordance with your values really means living in alignment with yourself. Your values are a part of you, and the more you understand yourself, the more you are able to live an ‘aligned’ life- a life that resonates with who you are and what you want.
Living in alignment can mean living in accordance with your values. Living a life that reflects who you are, at your core. Discovering what your values actually are is the tricky part- but I encourage you all to try. In the coming weeks I will be sharing some journal prompts and other exercises to help you determine your values, but for now, try to discover them on your own. What are your values and how can you live in alignment with them?
#3: High Vibes
At the beginning of this post, I explained that alignment means feeling good. A lot of us, including myself at times, may have some limiting beliefs around feeling good. Maybe it feels selfish, or maybe it feels like we aren’t worth it. Whatever it is, I want to share a different way of looking at feeling good.
We know that energy makes up everything around us (If you aren’t sure about that, read this post). We also know that everything, including our organs, thoughts, emotions, words, everything, has a unique vibration. Using the concept of vibration, Dr. David Hawkins created an emotional scale that lists emotions in order of ascending emotional frequency. You can get his book, Power vs. Force, here.
The idea behind this is that some emotions are ‘lower’ on the vibrational scale- like depression, fear, and doubt. These emotions don’t pack as much of a vibrational punch as emotions like joy, love, and peace. This isn’t to say that they are ‘bad’- they just aren’t as energetically productive as the ‘higher’ emotions.
So on this scale, if we picture enlightenment, or being one with the Divine, at the top of the spectrum, we can see how happiness, joy, peace, love, etc. will bring us closer to ‘enlightenment’. Emotions like anger, depression, and fear create more of a separation.
Using this perspective, alignment means aligning yourself, as much as possible in the present moment, to the vibration of the Divine. Alignment means attaining the highest possible emotional state that you can, in this moment. This means that if you are depressed, and the highest emotional state you can get to is anger, that’s okay. It is still higher on the emotional scale, and therefore closer to the Divine (and your inner being, which we will talk about in the next perspective).
When you work your way up the emotional ladder, you come into ‘alignment’ with the Divine. When more of your being is closer to resonating at the frequency of all that is, you are more open to Divine inspiration, intuitive knowings, and, of course, emotions like love, joy, and peace.
If you follow the law of attraction, you’ll know that when you feel good, your life reflects those good feelings back to you. So, another way of looking at alignment is being in the highest emotional state you can be, so that you can be both aligned with the Divine and open to living a life that matches your high vibrations.
#4: Connection to Your Intuition
We all have experiences of intuitive knowings. Times when we thought about someone and then they called, or we knew something bad was about to happen and it did. These are what we call ‘gut feelings,’ but I believe there is more to it.
We all have a part of ourselves that is connected to the Divine. A part of ourselves that resonates at the frequency of All That Is. If you use the term God, or Source, or Universe, or anything else, insert it here. This principle applies to all ways of thinking. If we are all created from, or manifested by, a divine source, then it stands to reason that part of us must be one with that divine source. Enter intuition, or your inner being.
For many people, intuition lives in their guts, which makes sense if you look at ancient teachings. For the Hindus, the sacral chakra represented the chakra of life and creation. This chakra holds the ‘waters of life’ and is the equivalent of the Holy Mother or the Divine Feminine Creator. In Reiki, a major energy center, or Dan Tien, resides here, and represents where new energy is created by and flows into your body. In fact, the Dan Tien translates to ‘Sea of Qi’. Japanese culture knows it as the Hara. Essentially, the importance of your gut has been spoken about for thousands of years.
But what does this mean for us? It means that we all have access to Divine intuition. The sacral chakra, Dan Tien, and Hara all represent the point where we connect with creation. The point in which we ourselves become creators.
For me, I visualize a bridge, with myself on one end and the Divine on the other. The intuition is the bridge itself, connecting me to All That Is. Because the intuition resonates at the Divine frequency, it always exists at the level of solution for all problems, joy in all situations, and peace over all worries.
When we are connected to this intuition, we are called towards our highest selves, our most effective way of life. Don’t worry if this is confusing- we are going to have a whole blog post (and podcast) dedicated to this. So for now, just know this- following your intuition, and dedicating yourself to trusting it’s wisdom, is one way to get into alignment.
#5: Being a Clear Channel
Reiki teaches us, as practitioners, how to be clear channels so that Divine energy can flow through us. There is a great explanation of this in our recent podcast episode on Reiki, which you can listen to here. Essentially, being a clear channel is like being a straw.
Imagine that you have a glass of water, and you want to drink it with a straw. You don’t want to use a dirty straw, right? No! You want a clean straw. Being a clear channel is the same way. You don’t want your own emotional and spiritual dirt getting in the way of the Divine energy that is flowing through you.
For those who aren’t Reiki practitioners, think of the chakras (which you can read about here). When our chakras are all balanced, energy can flow freely through us, from the Divine down to the Earth and back again. This clarity grounds and centers us while opening us to inspiration and creativity.
When we think of alignment in this way, we can see that it means being a clear channel that energy can flow through. This energy might take the form of inspiration, or healing, or creativity, or nature, or anything else. But alignment is the ability to be clear- living as the clean straw, not the dirty one.
We could say that we are in alignment when we are open to the energy that is coming our way, both from the Earth and from the Divine. Alignment occurs when you have cleared out your own spiritual gunk and emotional dust, allowing yourself to be who you are, here and now, centered and open, ready for energy to flow through you.
So, why is this important?
We’ve looked at alignment as reconnecting the wires, living your values, having a high vibration, connecting to your intuition, and being a clear channel. But what do all these things have in common?
When we look at all these different perspectives, three main themes emerge: 1. Being centered in the here and now moment, 2. Connection with the Divine, and 3. Feeling good while being authentic. Those three points summarize why finding alignment in your day-to-day life is so important. Not only does it help you to be more present, which benefits everyone, but it will also help you to connect more deeply with yourself and with the Divine.
Living in alignment means discovering every day, every moment, who you are now, and now, and now. Alignment means honoring who you are in that moment, no matter if it is different than you were five seconds ago or if you might be someone different in an hour. Honoring who you are and where you are now, in this present moment, opens you up.
Opens you up to what? Opens you up to the Divine. When you are open to all possibilities, both of yourself and of life, and you are fully living in the present moment, you are available for Divine connection. When you are living in alignment, you are in line with your highest self, your truest self. The self that was created, and the self that can create.
When you live in alignment, you are on the right path.
Alignment is something I have been striving to cultivate in my own life, and it will be a recurring topic here at Collectively Quantum. For now, I encourage you to sit with these perspectives for a while. Do they resonate with you? Do you want to learn more? Are you curious what happens when you live an aligned life?
Living an aligned life leads to a state of what I call flow, but that is a topic for another day. For now, ask yourself: How can I be more aligned today? What actions can I take to get into alignment?
If you want me to post my favorite ways to get into alignment, or want to hear more examples of alignment, let me know below!
And be on the lookout for this week’s podcast- we will be deep diving into alignment again, and I will share some personal experiences with it.
Until next time, beautiful people. Let’s walk this journey together.
Much love,
