Getting Unstuck

Sometimes my old, habitual thought patterns hit me like a ton of bricks and take my breath away.  I intend to let them go; I even believe I have moved past them, only to have them jump out of the shadows when I least expect it.  I'm not talking about the small stuff.  I'm talking about those really huge fears that our intellect tells us can't possibly be true, but in that deeper, unconscious part of us where a seed of doubt has been planted, roots struggle to take hold.  It is that place of "but what if" all that I know in my heart is true about existence really isn't?  My knowing, and spiritual practice, usually keep this voice in perspective, but then some event suddenly triggers old, fearful thinking, and I am lost in it. 

The Berkeley Psychic Institute calls these "core pictures," the ideas we've accepted from outside of us that take us farthest from our truth, and seem the hardest to gain seniority over.  I know that these stuck places are what make us human, and provide moments of immeasurable grace when we re-claim the truth.  But when I'm in the middle of it, I'm just stuck.  And it makes me wonder, what do we do when we're in the middle of a big fat lie, but it really feels like the truth?  In that moment, what can we do to remember?

When I am stuck in a core picture, my first instinct is to fight it.  In an effort to not be uncomfortable, I try to convince myself that I am not stuck, and I end up making excuses, or competing, or trying to control the outcome.  Admitting to myself that I am stuck, in pain or in fear, is the most important part of getting unstuck.  It is a way to see the light in the darkness.  Once I acknowledge that I am lost, healing pours to me from countless sources, an unexpected hug, remembering to use a certain tool, or to slow down and be in tune with that my body needs in the moment. 

It is important in those moments to stop in order to let my answer come to me.  That means acknowledging that I am hurting and afraid, and that is not always easy to do.  But trying to override it doesn't help; what we try to avoid tends to pursue us with greater vigor.  As God said, through Neale Walsh in Conversations With God, "You can't hear my truth until you stop trying to tell me yours."

What I can do now, in my grace-filled moment of remembering, is be grateful that every time I have stopped and faced the monster that was chasing me, I have not been overcome, but held in love, restored to peace, and graced yet again with knowing a truth so sweet that I can't understand how I could ever have doubted it.

I know that I will find myself again in doubt, on my perfect path of forgetting and remembering.   And I give thanks in advance for the gift of getting stuck in darkness, and then finding my way to the light.

May this tool be a blessing. . .