Stuck on a Well Worn Path

"Observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more or less guarantees its co-operation. The unconscious as we know can never be “done with” once and for all. It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys." Carl Jung

This is why we do so much work companioning our deepest experience and using the observing self in spiritual and therapeutic work. Our well-worn paths that now don't fit will cause symptoms that we need to befriend, listen to, and hear their stories. If we think we can muscle these symptoms to the ground, we are re-wounding ourselves over and over. The symptom serves a purpose. Our friend Alfred Adler, as well as Jung, reminds us to dig deeper for the purpose it serves.

Let us not get stuck in a well-worn path, unable to move. Body, mind, and spirit are encouraging movement all the time. What well-worn path might you be stuck in? Is it a pattern of shaming self and your children, believing that somehow that will motivate? Is it old belief systems about the Divine, counting on an if/then response from outside of yourself? "If I believe and do "X", God will show up and take care of me."

Well-worn paths come from years of practice, ignoring symptoms of incongruence, being afraid to re-evaluate old belief systems, and conformity. Tracking our own symptoms, letting them speak to us, staying curious without harsh judgement, this is using the observing self. This is true compassion for self and others.

Cattle create a well-worn path following each other out to pasture or water and back again. Sounds like a good idea, they know where to go without thinking, blindly following the one in front. But when the water has dried up or the grass is gone, how do they get redirected? How do you get assistance listening to the Soul/psyche that is redirecting you?

Re-membering Your Desires

Pictures remind me of what I enjoy doing and that which touches my Soul. The expansiveness of mountains, looking out over canyons, fields and art stir places deep within that show me more of who I am. Energy moves where it is easiest for it to go. Water in a river flows along the path of least resistance. Your underlying structure allows your path of least resistance. This structure includes your desires, your beliefs, your assumptions, and your aspirations and can be discovered when you notice what touches you deeply. Your path is created by you. Uncover your creative self, and you will come closer to home where your energy moves. Find something that yearns for you to take a picture of it. Then see what the picture says to you.

Below: crossing the Royal Gorge with Trooper, the expanse of the Royal Gorge, and sunset on the Atlantic Ocean.

Movement

We are born to move, to sense our bodies interacting with everything around us. Think of a baby wanting to grasp, touch, hold things in its mouth, look, gaze at a face, lights, colors. Movement is natural. There is innate curiosity about what will happen if my person moves and comes in contact with you, with nature, with animals, with everything. We are born to move, be curious, experience life, engage in our deepest findings. If you find you are stuck somewhere in your life, my first guess will be to discover what it is you are not allowing to be validated in your life. Resistance is stuck-ness. Resistance is not moving. Risk movement and see what happens.

As I have journeyed and am still moving through graduate school in spirituality, depth psychology, somatic experiencing, learning about the nervous system and trauma, I am discovering my truth as a practitioner. I share it with you this morning.

I have a truth and a methodology of allowing one’s deepest experience to be honored, noticed, and validated in order for it to naturally move through. The experience only gets stuck in the body and the mind when it is rejected and invalidated. Then the response takes on a life of its own, calling the shots unconsciously of course, but nonetheless, controlling. We give the experience too much power when we are afraid of our reactions or needs. Where it takes over our thinking is in the resistance to it, wanting it to go away, and shaming self for having the experience or the response. Our humanness is not being allowed. 

By disallowing our experience ourselves, we then think others are rejecting our reactions too and rehearse over and over in our heads how and why they are now not supportive of us, turning the other into the enemy. This is our projection we have placed onto the other. If we can pull back our projection and realize it is actually indeed ourselves who are rejecting our experience, we can free the other person and ultimately ourselves; freedom to allow the natural flow of activation and rest within the nervous system and our emotional lives. Once the activation is tended, understood, and allowed, it will naturally flow out and move through us. 

Movement. Keep all responses moving so as not to create the freeze or shut down in the system. It is in the freeze that toxins form, adrenals get either stuck on or off and the natural flow from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous systems gets thwarted. The sympathetic nervous system alerts us to something not being quite right. We need this activation. But we became afraid of it through a culture and upbringing that says to us that our activation is not wanted nor is it “right.” The parasympathetic nervous system, when allowed to naturally flow, will bring our activation into a rest mode when we tend to that which activated us in the first place. If we disallow our reactions and responses, the system gets stuck.

As a spiritual director, graduate student at Adler in psychotherapy, and working with somatic awareness, this is what I implement with all of my clients and have been amazed at the empowerment and healing that happens just by following one’s deepest experience and being curious about what it has to teach them.