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.

My Private Pilot

I wanted to watch. I wanted to be there when she returned with her best friend. Taking him up in the plane for the first time as a young, 17 year old, female pilot. Knowing the level of trust that came from her friend's parents, was constantly on my mind.
To fly around St. Paul in the Cessna, in the stillness of the experience. you see things from a different perspective. Awake, finally, to your surroundings. No final destination today. Just an experience.
I watched them take off. I watched them come back, land and take off again. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, sun shining, a few white clouds, blue sky, the river lying there luring a spectator to see. On their final landing, I knew she had given him the ride of his life... his life, so far. I was so thankful for their deep friendship.
They came and found me in the lobby of the Holman Field airport and his face could not have been brighter. Laughing that big full laugh, showing all of his straight, white teeth! He couldn't sit still as he described the flight and what it was like to leave his house that morning - his mom burning the memory of his face onto her mind forever.... "I love you."
I later asked my daughter, 'what did you like best about flying this morning?' Pause, more pause. She replied, "Giving someone else this incredible experience." Her deep generosity shining through. Her encouragement to those around her to live a Big Life. See something differently. Explore the edges. Welcome mystery through the miracle of flying.
I invite you to watch this slide show, listen to the music, see what happens in your body as you do. Be curious about your own mystery, your own generosity of experience making.

Gentle Persistence

One morning I found a photocopied text that a former colleague had given me back when we worked together at Luther Seminary. I'm guessing it was sometime in early 2008 when I was so incredibly broken and in pain, knowing that I needed to attend to my dear Self, dear Soul. I remember hardly being able to read these words at the time. It was as if the reading of it would somehow threaten to destroy me. And yet, this friend, colleague persisted day after day to share truth, to share scary words, to open doorways for me to breathe life. I cannot thank her enough. The short writings she shared were entitled, "The Discerning Voice" and "The Inner Voice of the Soul"by John O'Donohue.

"The quest for the truth of things is never ending. To be human is to be ambivalent. We never see a thing completely. In sure anticipation, our eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze. The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable. Because the mystery is too much for us, we opt to settle for the surface of things. Comfort becomes more important than true presence. Yet, somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice. This voice distrusts the status quo. It sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images things tend to assume. This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person's qualities. This faithful voice can illuminate the dark lands of despair. It can also reveal a different voice lurking about in our psyche as well; the harsh and unrelenting voice that finds fault with everything. Even when unexpected acknowledgement or recognition comes your way, this voice will claw at you and make you feel you are unworthy.

Having just returned from co-leading a retreat called "Sacred Earth: Body and Soul Connection", I reaffirm the necessity of community when one is walking through the greater unknown. The Soul was never meant to travel by itself. I have had friends, therapists, spiritual directors, and my spouse and daughter traveling with me for some time now. Each of them, in their own unique way, gently persisting that I stay on this larger, more expansive path than the narrow one I had been on. I'll never go back to what was inauthentic to my Soul, no matter what the cost. For the pain of abandoning myself earlier in my life was unbearable. I would much rather live in the presence of my deepest Self, my deepest desires, even if faced with the unknown. There, in the middle of the unknown, is where life is truly lived for me.

Soul as a River

Elizabeth Lesser writes in her book, Broken Open, “…often we resist the pull of the river. Perhaps if we quieted down and asked the soul for direction, we would be moved to make a change. Maybe that wild river of energy with its longing for joy and freedom, would capsize our more prudent plans, our ambitions, our very survival. I have shut down to my soul enough times to know what it feels like when the river is dammed. I know the feeling of deadness; I know how the river diverts itself and breaks through in other ways – as desire to blame, as physical illness, as restlessness, or weariness, or self-destruction. The soul always speaks, and sometimes it speaks the loudest when we block its flow, when we live only half of a life, when we stay on the surface. If we don’t go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.”

At first, we don't recognize the uncomfortable rub from the Soul as something helpful. We try to cover it up, deny it, implement a righteous rejection of our deepest experience, calling it selfish. We think its time to "get away." But the Soul will continue to flow, sometimes so rapidly and forcefully that we feel like we are being carried over the waterfall. Other times, the Soul is just a trickle of water passing over boulders in the stream. Staying with our experiences without judgment and finding compassion instead, honors the Soul. Let the river flow. Be curious about its movements and the path it is taking. Be present, fully present to the journey.

Contour Drawing and the Soul

Contour drawing is a style used by the artist who studies, with her eyes, the edges of the object. Never looking away to cheat by looking down at her paper. She slowly makes marks on the page as she truly follows the lines, the curves, the angles, and the details of the object. 

Starting in the middle of the paper, I drew one flower from the center of the dried arrangement, then another and another. “Let your eyes go slowly around the outside lines. Don’t lift your pencil and don’t look down at your progress. Watch each flower deeply with the intention to truly see what is there not what you think should be there. Let go of your need to make sure it looks right or even looks recognizable.”

There is a trusting of the senses that is necessary for this kind of art. I trust what I see. I trust what I sense in the movements of my hand. I trust not to look down and that if I loose that trust momentarily, I actually start creating what isn’t there. I catch that tendency to not trust myself and start again.

The inner workings of my Soul are much the same. When I look away at something outside of myself for acceptance, reassurance, or the right answer, then I momentarily loose the trust I have in the movements of my Soul. The moment I stop noticing and watching, truly seeing the lines, the contour, the depth of who I am, I get lost in what isn’t there, what isn’t truly me. Sometimes I have to risk that what others see might not be recognizable to them. Ultimately, it is necessary to trust what I sense in me, my Soul, or I become unrecognizable to myself.