Getting Yourself Unstuck – Initial steps

Certainly all of us at various points deal with issues and circumstances that cause us to be locked onto certain distressing thoughts. It is as if some souring event or person crawled into the mind, then explosively ignited our emotions.

When this occurs the mind keeps churning the same obsessive thoughts, and subsequently more thoughts are linked to the original ones, and neither the original nor the accumulating subsequent thoughts seem to leave. The result is we feel stuck. The host situation and the aggregate collection of thoughts and feelings associated with it linger on and on. This causes us to feel stuck both emotionally and physically. And consequently, we outwardly portray that which is distressing us because the toxic residues from these obsessive thoughts are manifested in both our bodies and minds.

I can remember situations in romantic relationships, my career, financial matters, in my ongoing relationship with friends and numerous other circumstances and encounters where my mind became stuck and did not know how to move on. Someone would be quick to give advice on how to move forward, but the advice usually was processed then ignored. Usually sound advice was sidestepped because it could not dissolve the emotional glue that held my mind to the problem. Not so easy to understand, but never the less true, the thoughts that perpetuated the problem won out over the advice that others would offer.

I found a way to rationalize that advice from a third party was overly objective and insensitive to all matters that projected an influence on the problem. The concerns that I was holding in my mind became emotionally charged, which strengthened their sticking power. Then because of this magnetic intensification of emotions, the attraction of more thoughts escalated and intensified.

I have learned that we need not allow ourselves to become stuck on concerns and situations that cause us grief, sadness, depression, or loneliness. We need not get to the point where we are tormented, frustrated, or anguished. Rage, anger and distain can be sidestepped. We can learn how to transcend the resentment and bitterness that is being silently or overtly directed toward others. We can also learn how to stop blaming ourselves. We can learn to be unstuck.

Here are a few initial and vital baby-steps to becoming unstuck.
Quiet your mind and body with meditative concentration on an innocuous object. This could be the thought of a cloud, flower or the awareness of each breath that enters your body.

Observe the mind. Just like you would watch a movie, just watch the thoughts that enter your mind and realize how these thoughts attract certain emotions and feelings.

Avoid a react to the thoughts or feelings that arise. Just let them do what they do one their own, without either your involvement or reaction.

These initial three steps will give you an idea of how the mind operates on its own without any intervention. It is a control agent, and thusly will automatically take control of what and how you think; which in-turn controls how you feel physically and what you experience emotionally. Also, the mind is not unlike a sponge.

It will automatically absorb what ever it is that it is applied to. Apply the mind to a certain thought and it will begin to absorb related thoughts and feeling. So the bottom line is that the mind is a control agent, and the way it controls you is by your choice of whatever it is that you overtly or passively will it to absorb. Observing and understanding this fundamental realization is the basis for beginning a shift in the thoughts that move through your mind, and in that single realization is also the potential to change your life. This initial step in Self-realization opens the first door to getting yourself unstuck. ~DB