Heart Alignment and the Grievance Layer
Two AMP sessions for releasing old hurts without turning the people you love into an enemy
If you’ve been following this “Unwinding Us vs Them” arc, you already know the pattern is not just political. It’s personal. It lives in the nervous system. It shows up in families, workplaces, friendships, and in the private stories we keep replaying.
Here’s where I think we are now.
We’ve named the pattern.
We’ve practiced self love so we stop outsourcing our worth to winning.
We’ve loosened the reflex to get even.
We’ve looked at fear, the fuel underneath so much reactivity.
And now we reach what I’d call the Grievance Layer.
This is the part that can quietly run a life.
Grievances take a shocking amount of energy to maintain. You have to keep the file cabinet organized. What happened, when it happened, why it mattered, what it cost you, what it says about them, what it says about you. And because the body doesn’t know the difference between a memory and a present threat, the moment can get replayed again and again as if it’s still happening.
Everything on the planet dies. But grievances do not die on their own. They can outlive the event, outlive the relationship, outlive whole seasons of our life. They freeze in the body and keep shaping our choices long after the original wound.
So this post is not about “getting over it.”
It’s about getting free.
Not quick fix free. Not spiritual bypass free.
More like relief. Like an exhale. Like the first deep breath your body did not realize it was allowed to take.
Heart Alignment is the opposite of brainwashing
I’ve been looking for language for what AMP actually does when it works.
It does not recruit you into an ideology.
It does not tell you what to think.
It does not ask you to demonize the other side so you can feel righteous.
It helps you return to center. It helps you align with the heart. It helps you notice what you are carrying, and choose what you want to carry next.
So let’s call it what it is.
Heart Alignment.
And if you want a clean definition, James Baldwin gives one of the clearest descriptions I have ever heard of why change can feel threatening inside a family system or any “tribe.”
He describes the kind of person who “really does believe” a challenger must be insane, “to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity.”
That line stops me every time.
Because it names what so many of us have lived. When you start changing, some people do not experience it as growth. They experience it as betrayal. Not because you are attacking them, but because the system that formed them feels like self.
This is why forgiveness work can feel like leaving the tribe. It is not melodrama. It is relational. It is neurological. It can be profoundly lonely.
And still, the invitation remains the same.
Become more fully yourself without turning the people you love into an enemy.
That is Heart Alignment.
If you’re willing to proceed, you are strong
I want to say this plainly, because most people avoid this work.
If you are willing to look at your grievances and release even one of them, you are courageous. You are doing the kind of inner activism that actually changes the field. You are interrupting a pattern that gets handed down through families, communities, and generations.
If you are still in the camp that says, “No. We have to fight the good fight,” you may not enjoy this post. It might irritate you. If that’s where you are, start with my post “Everyone’s in Fight Club Now” That is a better entry point.
But if you are tired, if you are ready to stop living on adrenaline, if you want to keep your heart open without becoming naive, keep going.
The story that carries this layer: August: Osage County
I’m using two sessions for this layer, because they work together.
The first is an AMP session built around August: Osage County.
It is a brutal film. It is also strangely honest about what family pain looks like when nobody is metabolizing it, when everyone is managing wounds instead of healing them.
One character in particular becomes a guide for this layer: Barbara (Julia Roberts).
She tries to hold the family together. She tries to be reasonable. She tries to do the “good daughter” thing. And you can feel the cost. The closer she stays to the family story, the more she disappears inside it.
By the end, there is a kind of clarity that arrives too late to make everything pretty. She can see what the system is. She can see what it does to people. She can see that love and dysfunction are sometimes braided together so tightly that the braid feels sacred.
And then she is left with the most human question of all:
Who am I when I stop performing my role in the system?
This is why grievances matter. In the film, they do not simply cause arguments. They shape identity. They define who is “right,” who is “broken,” who is “loyal,” who is “the problem.” Grievances become a family religion.
And that is exactly what we are trying to unwind.
A line from the session that I keep returning to is this:
“I can bear the pain, so I don’t spray it on others.”
That is forgiveness as activism. That is Heart Alignment in a sentence.
The second session: Let It Be as a replacement song
The second piece is an AMP music session built around “Let It Be.”
Because once you loosen a grievance, something needs to fill the space.
A grievance is a song that plays on repeat. It narrates your life. It gives you a familiar identity: the harmed one, the abandoned one, the overlooked one, the one who had to be strong too early.
The point is not to erase what happened.
The point is to stop living inside the old soundtrack.
For this “Let It Be” session alone, I created over 300 belief statements designed to help the body and mind soften their grip on what cannot be changed, and return you to what can be chosen now. You can listen to it here - just do The Intention Session (below) first.
Over time, subscribers will be able to access the full library of statements across sessions. For now, I include a few “Let Go” and “Allow” statements in each post as a small representation of the resonance work.
A peaceful form of activism that does not announce itself
I want to say something that may sound strange until you try it.
This work is a kind of activism.
Not the kind that argues with strangers.
Not the kind that tries to win the internet.
A quieter kind. A deeper kind.
When you reduce reactivity in your own nervous system, you change what you transmit to the people around you. Humans are contagious. We co regulate. We escalate each other. We soothe each other. We mirror each other.
So yes, this is personal.
And it also affects the collective.
You become a kind of under the radar prayer. A caring, steady presence. Not performative. Not naive. Just real.
Step one: The Intention Session
If you would like to experience the resonance of these two AMP sessions, begin with this simple Intention Session. It helps align your body, mind, and emotions so you receive the full benefit of the work.
You only need to do this once before you watch the film or listen to the music session. If you have already completed an Intention Session, it carries over for all of the AMP movies I talk about, so you do not need to repeat it.
Speak these aloud:
I allow the changes in my timing and only integrate what I am ready to.
I have faith that I will receive the benefits I desire.
I am patient with myself as I make my changes.
I let go of feeling I am too busy to take the time for this.
I let go of needing to understand how AMP works and allow myself to receive the full benefits in my own timing.
Engage three simple modalities:
Nod your head yes.
Drink some water.
Take several slow, rhythmic breaths through your nose.
Then watch August: Osage County all the way through, and listen to the Let It Be music session.
Do not force insights. Just notice what stirs. Notice where you tighten. Notice who feels like “us” and who still feels like “them.” Notice what your body keeps replaying.
If you are skeptical, that’s fine. You do not have to “believe” in anything metaphysical. You can lean on something we already understand: the placebo effect. Expectation, attention, and meaning shape physiology. The body responds to what the mind rehearses. You can simply try the process and allow your system to take what serves you, in your timing, with grace and ease.
Five Let Go statements for the Grievance Layer
I let go of replaying the same harm as if it is still happening now.
I let go of carrying the evidence file that proves why I’m right.
I let go of the identity I built around being hurt.
I let go of punishing myself by punishing the past.
I let go of needing the people who wounded me to understand before I can be free.
Five Allow statements for Heart Alignment
I allow my body to unclench what it has been holding for years.
I allow grief to move, instead of turning into bitterness.
I allow the truth of what happened, without making it my permanent home.
I allow forgiveness to be a practice, not a performance.
I allow a new song to replace the old one.
Five simple actions to unwind the program
Name one grievance you have been carrying, and write it down in one sentence.
Notice the cost. Where does it live in your body? What does it steal from your present life?
Watch the film and let Barbara’s arc show you what family systems do when pain goes unmanaged.
Listen to the Let It Be session and let your system experience an alternative soundtrack.
Choose one small release: a conversation you do not have to rehash, a thought loop you interrupt, a boundary you set without hatred, a moment of compassion you offer yourself.
This is how the work works. Not instant healing. Repeated choosing. You lose balance sometimes. You fall back into the old song. Then you return faster.
A new song
I included the lyrics to John Lennon’s iconic song “Imagine” inside the Let It Be session as a quiet reminder of what becomes possible when the old identity loosens and a new song can form. Lennon said Imagine was inspired by Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, an invitation to “imagine” beyond the given world, and later he acknowledged how much of the concept came from her. A new song became possible when the old identity loosened.
That’s the quiet promise of this work. Grievances are a song that keeps replaying: what happened, what it cost, what it proves. Let It Be is practice for loosening the grip. And when the grip loosens, something else can move in, not denial, not amnesia, but freedom. A fresh breath in the body. A wider “us.”
If you’ve been living inside the old song for years, start gently. Let it be. Then, when you’re ready, imagine what your life feels like when it’s no longer organized around what hurt you.