Stuck in a Rut: Is It a Curse or Is It a Gift?
ARE YOU CURSED?
Are you feeling stuck in a rut? Are you trying to get out and you just keep finding yourself in the same exact situation, sinking deeper and deeper into the mud? Are you tired of it, but have no idea what to do? At some point in life most people go through challenging periods, periods where nothing seems to change, nothing seems to be moving forward, and it begins to take its toll. It’s one thing if these are temporary blips on the radar, however, for those who find themselves in what feels like a permanent amount of quicksand, it can be daunting, depressing, and incredibly unmotivating. You feel like no matter what you try, no matter what you do, no matter who you talk to, you just keep sinking deeper into a hole. It may get so bad that now you feel like nothing will ever change, that this is just the way you are, and there is absolutely no hope for something different. You now feel like you are in literal hell! Let’s not sugar coat it, it’s awful, horrible actually, and you now have zero desire to even try. The life has literally been sucked right out of you.
At this point you might feel like you’re cursed, right? Someone or something has casted a debilitating spell on your life, so you never realize your true potential, or your true nature. It’s as if there is a powerful force just beating you down. It doesn’t matter where you turn, what new strategy you try, the spell makes sure you don’t succeed. Now, there is most likely not a literal spell cast upon you directly, but it certainly feels like it, doesn’t it? It’s like, what am I not seeing here? What did I do to deserve this? I am not a bad person, and yet this is so bad! Why, me? If some or all of these questions are streaming through your head, you are not alone. Lots of people find themselves in similar situations, swimming out at sea without a life jacket. It can become so daunting it feels like you are drowning and no one is there to save you. Even if you have a support system around you, there is nothing they can do to change what you are experiencing. You are the only one that gets a front row seat to that production.
When you get so deep, and feel utterly lost, it’s easy to want to throw in the towel and never try anything again. You may feel that there is nothing you can do to change this. You may find yourself in hiding, staying within your own comfort zone of despair. Even though deep down you don’t want to feel despair, subconsciously there is almost a comfort in staying in a small, confined box, like it’s your safety zone from ever doing the work to discover the larger you. Unbeknownst to you, the mind has convinced you that life has dealt you a bad hand, and it’s better just to give up. Well, maybe there is some truth to giving up, maybe there is an aspect of yourself that is actually leaving you. But the question is, is there something new within you that is trying to emerge? Is there a clearer version of you that is just waiting to be seen? The mind is incredibly powerful. It is not always working for your best interest. It can be your best friend when things are going well, and your worst enemy when things are in the toilet. It’s very predictable that way. It’s just a matter of time before you realize that your thinker is trying to convince you of your fate, and you are believing it. Do you have to believe your thoughts? Do you have to fall into the mind’s game playing? If you want to that’s always an option, but you certainly don’t have to. When you recognize that your mind is playing tricks on you, then you can begin to shift how you see the rut you are in. All it takes is a willingness and new decision to make, then the curse will slowly be seen differently.
GETTING REAL WITH WHERE YOU ARE
When you see that you have been believing the sales pitch of your mind, this recognition is the key to seeing your entire situation differently. Allowing this internal space to rise within you, this space that shows you that your thinking mind is distracting you from who you really are, and who you can really be in this world, can create an immediate shift within you. You begin to feel that maybe this experience is not a curse, but rather it might have more to show you. The willingness to look within and see what you’ve doing allows an internal confession of sorts. You are more than ready to get real with it. You are ready to see clearly and identify where you were contributing to the curse.
Before this moment in time, you were thinking of all the impossibilities, the dead ends, the yellow caution tape you installed around you, and the ways in which life would NEVER change. And, you had every reason to believe this because no matter what you did, the same result occurred, so you had a very justifiable reason for this deep-rooted belief. You completely bought it. And why wouldn’t you, it was happening, right? Well, the fact that this space within has emerged and you are seeing your mind as a possible foe, you no longer feel hood-winked, but rather you feel like an investigator getting to the bottom of your days in hell. You are slowly rising out of the mentality that something is doing this to me and seeing that you were simply drinking the Kool-Aid of your mind.
Maybe that aspect of yourself needed to give up. Maybe that small illusory self-needed to surrender so that you could see what was really happening, so that you can discover the larger essence residing within. Giving up the old approach is what is needed because it doesn’t work. Maybe the egos favorite phrases such as, you are worthless, you will never amount to anything, don’t even try because it won’t work, you get the drill, these phrases are common for most people. But they are the phrases of an identity that wants you to believe it. The ego wants you to grab a hold of this, so you don’t see what is truly alive within, that greater awareness and spiritual essence that you are. Reaching a place where you are comfortable admitting what you were doing, and you have shifted from dread to a subtle inner excitement, you are beginning to carve a path out of your rut, and out of the heavy armor you had unknowingly built around yourself. It’s amazing how the ego can secretly convince you to remain in your castle surrounded by an alligator filled moat, isn’t it?
ACCEPTANCE
Allowing yourself the space to investigate your plight, now opens up the opportunity for acceptance. It’s never easy to accept where you are, especially if where you are doesn’t look so hot. There’s almost an automatic rejection button within us that reacts without any conscious thought at all. But, now that you have seen what is going on, it becomes much easier. As much as the ego and society will convince us that living in darkness and fear is not allowed, it is where the transformation is possible. Without it, there is no need to transform. Do people feel a need to change when things are working in their favor? Do people getting everything they want sense a real need for transformation? Maybe there are some who attain a lot of material things or accomplishments in the world yet never feel fulfilled, so they look for something deeper. However, most people rise from the ashes when they are in hell. There is no rising from something that’s not burning to the ground.
Getting stuck in a rut is a normal part of life. Without it there is little possibility for substantial transformation. This is where your previous notion of bad luck changes into a chance to see life differently, to really learn and be the student of life, rather than the controller. Accepting your role as a student in the classroom of life will facilitate wonder and curiosity about how life could be, instead of life is over and there is no way out. No matter how bad life has become, no matter how dark, how horrific, how fully stuck you have felt, you now know that wrapping your arms around it is your ticket to freedom. It is your ticket to another way of life, another way to see, and another way to feel. Admitting and accepting that your reality has been designed to teach you something rather than eliminate you from the equation, is a helpful tool to create a pathway into a new life.
True acceptance isn’t just practice in your mind or a simple checked box off of your to do list. Acceptance is more than just saying, “Oh, yea, I totally accept my reality,” but not really feeling it. It must be embodied. You genuinely feel it to your core. You own it in every way possible. You are no longer worried what others think of your hundred-year storm because you are now comfortable with what it has to offer you. You no longer see your experience as a worldwide blockade against you. You now see it as the gateway into transformation. Even if you have no idea what that transformation looks like, you know it’s there, patiently waiting for you. You are no longer afraid, but you feel an inner joy and excitement that has been missing for a very long time.
SEEING IT AS A GIFT
It may take some time to really see this experience as a gift in disguise. If you have shifted your perception from living at the hands of a casted spell and curse, and you have accepted this process as a teacher in need of showing you something, you can confidently say it has been a gift in your life. Your new perspective and learning hat have changed everything. Instead of dreading getting up in the morning only to find yourself hitting the same wall over and over again, you are eager to see what this day is going to show you. You see life as a guide into a greater awareness and consciousness of who you really are. You know that your previous stubborn rut has now been altered. Even if you aren’t physically thriving, your mindset is so dedicated to seeing clearly, to remaining open to what each encounter teaches you, that everything in your world shifts. Your entire energy field is lifting out of the heaviness you had become so accustomed to.
You will notice that your feelings of dread and never getting out of this mess have completely shifted. You are like a small child intrigued by your surroundings and what they mean in your life. You trust this deep essence within that has so graciously shown itself to you. You have no idea how you missed it before. How did you not see that which has been with you forever? It seems impossible now that the skies are clear in your mind. When your mind was filled with the ego’s excessive fog, repeated rain, and torrential downpours, it’s tough to see the sunny sky behind it. However, once the gift of light comes shining through and all the haze burns away, is when it all makes sense.
Take the gift that has been offered you and be open to where it leads. See it as the treasure that has finally been seen, but is with you at all times. Keep that door within yourself propped open in order to see all the possibilities that exist. There still may be roadblocks ahead, however now you will be much better at discerning which way to go. Before you didn’t believe you could do anything right. You believed it would fail at all costs and nothing would ever change. Now, you know that there are many ways to look at the current predicament, and there is a 360-degree view with a multitude of options, not just retreating to the castle. When you take this gift in your life and live it in any way that you can, your entire experience will be the best thing that ever happened to you. When you see the ego’s manipulations and self-doubt creeping in, see it for what it is, simply a trick to pull you back to the helpless world of quicksand.
TOTAL REBIRTH
Why is it we need to become so utterly lost before we are found? Why do we put ourselves through such torture? Who really knows the correct answer to this. You might as well ask why we come here in the first place! However, it seems that in order for us to know there is a larger presence within us, we must shed the falsehoods, the misconceptions, the illusions that the ego would have us believe. The only way for that to happen is to experience enough discomfort, enough suffering, and enough hardship, that we are done with this aspect of ourselves.
In a much deeper sense, the old ways of doing things, where nothing was moving anywhere must simply fade away. The ego in us wants to grab ahold of anything because we are afraid of who we might be without it. It’s a very predictable process, even though it is not an easy one to endure. If only we could see we were in the throes of being reborn, then we might be willing to let go a little sooner. There are many levels of rebirth. We go through stages where certain parts of us leave, and to be honest it seems it’s all we can handle. One fell swoop of death and re-birth might just be too much for anyone.
Notice the ways in which your “stuck-ness” has paved the way for an honest re-birth of a self you didn’t even know was there. In order to feel reborn in some way, there must be a death of another part of you. It’s this part we were attached to, that we thought to be true, but in hindsight, after the gift has been accepted, we realize it never served us. It was merely a distraction from our truest self, and the inner guidance that is always showing us the lesson that life is designed to offer. It is only up to us whether we accept the lesson or not, whether we enroll in the class or not, or whether we choose to see that all things we experience have meanings we may not be ready to understand. It is our choice whether we see our offerings as curses or as gifts here to show us the way.