https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR_WhDepN2w
A Perfect Circle - Eat the Elephant
Personally, I know the feeling. I've been listening to this song for a while, thinking about the words "Just take the step, just take the swing, just take the bite, just go all-in" And thinking, "Yeah, I want to, BUT..." and letting the BUTs win.
Why do we get stuck? Any thoughts?
Does anyone have an example? Are you stuck right now? Or recall a worst time of being stuck?
Currently I am at a plateau in my personal growth. I want to be the best me, and something is in the way. Perhaps it is just me, being in my own way. Perhaps not.
In my Vision Quest Tarot deck, the Native American Wisdom Tarot by Gayan Silvie Winter and Jo Dosé, the Eight of Water card is called Stagnation.
The companion booklet describes this as energy blocked by false ideas of self, as going against inner flow to satisfy the ego temporarily, and as ignoring the inner tension that manifests outward intensity.
How do you get moving? Physically, mentally, emotionally, or in other aspects - what stirs you, what motivates you when you are at a place of stillness, or have reached a plateau?
There are a few ways we can overcome stagnation. I started a few years ago by going for walks. This has the double power of increasing your likelihood of having something new arise around or within you, while getting you physically moving and experiencing your surrounding environment. Movement of the body can be through breathwork, through feeling the heart beating, through exercises like yoga and dance, and through physical labour, just to name a few. Stagnation is also about being dissociated from real connection, (to self, to nature, to others) either by shields that are too strong or by anxieties that act as barriers, or even by boundaries that must be pushed. Mindful awareness of my senses has also helped to ground me, and when I'm not as stuck in my head, life becomes easier to navigate.
What influences do you feel on yourself when you are static? and when you are dynamic? When things around you are dull? When the environment is busy or during a time of transition? In conversation about this topic, someone suggested that forgiveness and faith or trust could be factors. What else do we feel pulling us down or launching us out?
Another way I've been able to move forward is reaching out to allies and asking them to hold me accountable. To others, this usually just means checking-in with me or meeting up with me to discuss my progress, or creating space for me to work on a goal outside of my usual home or routine.
I realize that this is a big step. It's hard to connect to others if you can't even connect to yourself. If you aren't in touch with yourself, you may be looking for someone to fill that role for you. Usually I've looked to romantic connections for this support, but the support that works best has never been romantic. So, like me, you might even go through several disappointments in your yearning.
Connection: meaningful connection, and belonging are essential to growth.
I yearn for a spiritual companion to do spiritual work with. I want to have a coven or circle or book club or something, but even just one eager spiritual partner is enough, to do energy work and ritual with. However, if I don't actually do the solitary work myself, on my own time, in my own way, then am I really benefiting at all from waiting for the right crowd or person to show up and learn together? Sure I read, but if I don't practice my knowledge, it will be lost again. So connecting to myself is necessary and is also about cultivating a practice that I can then bring to the table to share with others.
For me, it is often tarot card readings... but taking it to the next level of awareness is always on the horizon. I can always get past my best work into improved readings. Recently a friend mentioned bringing in an awareness of sensation, for an embodied reading. Others may take cues from the way people dress, or otherwise present themselves. To me, it's just intuitive, the pictures remind me of wisdom I've come by on my path. But it can be so much more. We can transcend whatever level we are stuck at, even if it is not rock bottom. I have a friend who says, "after you fall a few times, you get to decide how far you fall when you stumble". Sometimes it's "two steps forward, one back", but any progress is good progress. Similarly, with any practice in shifting focus or redirecting energy, be it related to spirituality, business matters, healing, teaching, relationships, personal growth, or any area of your life; Getting back up and moving forward will help you soar to new heights.
In my experience, stagnation is like a sink of dirty dishes and yucky water. It isn't going to clean itself up. It is seething with life, of course, the mold and fruit flies can attest to that. However, there is a stuckness to stagnating, it isn't in full flow, there is little clarity and little movement. Procrastination, the things we have shelved for later, the people we have warehoused, the ideas and experiences we have compartmentalized, all stagnate in our own minds, hearts, and core. What is left is a growth of unwanted "gunk" that we peel layers back from and shoo away, to get back to the work at hand. If you aren't capitalizing on your opportunity, your competition will. Even if that's fungi or bacteria or other critters.
When have you been too slow moving to catch the opportunity in front of you? What caused that slowness? Have you ever been the one to pounce ahead of someone else on an open door? What motivated you to take the prize, and how did it feel to be competitive or proactive?
Simply put, when I call back a business after my interview, if I am the first one of the applicants to call them, I generally get the job. I don't wait for them to call me first. I pounce.
A new friend of mine likes to say "Do the thing" meaning, don't just sit on ideas, manifest them. Chase your callings. Follow your bliss. Move toward your desire.
For me, stagnation comes with a restlessness. I either dye my hair, move furniture around, or think about what needs to change and how to do it. Recently I was thinking about this idea of selecting from a menu of available options, as most of my life choices go, and the difference between that, which we are kind of trained to be like, and something more like, strategically aligning yourself with what you seek so that it becomes more possible and you are closer to it until it becomes an option on your menu. There are ways of changing what's possible. I think following desire is like that. You have to be a predator, in a sense, instead of always seeking pleasure solely by avoiding pain like a prey animal.
It's been said that "What we resist, persists" and this is true of traumatic reactions I've had. I was treated for PTSD for a while. In my experience, thought loops are very tricky. Especially when we are so unmotivated and flattened out by life that we have a small, very limited routine and not much else going on. Often we let ourselves become reduced to input/output machines when we have no hope for anything better, or no purpose in view.
How can we know that there are options for us, when our lenses are so bleak? Some folks don't have any idea where to turn - how can we expand our worldview? How have you opened your mind or eyes in the past? How do we expand our senses to include things that we might want?
For me, the ultimate rock bottom of stuckness was surviving a Near Death Experience. I realized that I am a very durable person. Very resilient, like it or not. I had to turn from what I didn't want, in it's intolerable, foulness, to face another direction, a direction where I embraced my personal power, my agency. But how? The lightbulb moment is one thing, but acting on it is another. I made a plan. I started writing goals, plans and instructions about my express wishes. Even listing "What I am like when I am ok" vs "What I am like at my best" and "What I am like at my worst" and aiming to be ok. It helped.
Those things I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, hope and purpose, go hand in hand. When we follow desire, it feels good because we move closer to making purpose possible, thus making hope more realistic. Sometimes other people have to hold hope for us because we can't do it ourselves at that moment. Often being a beacon of hope for someone else is purpose enough to keep someone going. Interestingly enough, an "external referent" is a good thing to have to get you through rough times, because when you can't find that connection to self, you have to look outside a little. The issue for some of us arises when we've put all our energy into an external referent and suddenly it isn't there anymore. Maybe it's a person who has passed on from our life, or a pet or a job or project or ability, whatever, poof. Then what? How do we go on? How do we persist? The key for me was realizing that something in me wasn't satisfied. "I don't want to live like this" suddenly stopped meaning "I want to die" and started to mean "Something needs to change so that the part of me that likes life can live." My mantra became "Just for today, I choose to live." And it really was a daily decision that I actually made. I was on the cliff's edge for a long time. When we are stuck, sometimes we give up. That can be various levels of checking out... dying by suicide being one of the heavier ways to go. But even just going through the motions of a meaningless existence is pretty heavy.
How do we bring meaning into our lives to get us back in our flow? Can it come from others? Can it come from within? Or some combination? Can we create meaning or do we have to find it?
Meaning is something I still grasp at, like a carrot on a stick, leading me forward to figure out this cosmic puzzle. Some days I really get disgusted by it, and other days I am in awe and wonder of it all. Taking care of yourself and making good choices can help you feel better, in the simplest way possible. If you put in more good food, good emotions, good ideas, etc., you can output more good. Then you translate the meaning in a more positive light. If the best I can do is be well enough to help others on their paths, I'm happy to find meaning in that. If I can transcend that plateau and work on my own dreams, sharing that vision with those who are similarly aligned, even better.
♥ Jacki