If your car is stuck it might be well to call upon AAA. If your dharma practice is stuck, it also might be well to call upon AAA—but not the same AAA! This second AAA stands for Awareness, Acceptance, and Allowance.
First bring awareness to the experience of “stuckness.” Notice the related physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, and desires.
After you bring awareness to your experience. see if you can bring a gentle acceptance to it as well. Acceptance does not necessarily mean that you like what you feel, it simply means that you can make it okay in this moment. Acceptance means nonresistance; it means letting go of the belief that “this should not be happening.”
Allowance means letting the experience stay, leave, change, or not change as it wishes—not necessarily as I would like it. It means to let it be and to let it become what it will. Allowance means having no agenda as to what arises in the next moment.
When you feel stuck explore that experience using the process of awareness, acceptance, and allowance. Don't stop at the labels but explore the experience itself.
Another option: when you feel stuck is to question the way you see it. Try to see it with new eyes. Question your assumptions and your beliefs about this experience.
For example, you can become stuck only if you believe you are trying to somewhere. What if you weren’t going anywhere but here!
When we see children at play, we notice that whatever they are doing is an end itself. The purpose of playing is to play.
Another reframing: what if getting stuck is not a problem to be solved but the possibility of something greater? Try seeing it differently to see it this way. Perhaps it's time for a change of direction.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.[1] Wendell Berry
Perhaps “getting stuck” is the beginning of something new!
Dr Carl Jung reported that he analyzed over 60,000 dreams in his career as a psychoanalyst. There is a story about a certain patient who had worked with Dr Jung for many years. She reported to Jung that in the past year she was feeling like she was making no progress---she felt stuck. She struggled with this for months.
Then one night she had a very vivid dream. She dreamed that she stepped into quicksand and was sinking quickly. In the dream, she called for help, over and over, to no avail. Then she looked up and saw Dr Jung standing before her. She cried out desperately, “Dr Jung, save me.”
In the dream, Dr Jung placed his hand on the crown of her head…and pushed her down into the quicksand!
After that dream she had a crucial realization: Jung was not there to save her from fear but to help her experience it more deeply.
It can be helpful to explore our deepest assumptions and to look at the beliefs underneath our beliefs. “How am I understanding this,” is a helpful question to ask yourself.
Usually, we perceive “stuck” as a problem to be solved: “How do I become unstuck? How do I return to the path I was on?” Explore your assumptions. The woman’s dream allowed her to see that her assumption that Jung would save her was the very thing that was keeping her stuck!
You feel you are hedged in; you dream of escape; but beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free: rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything. God does not float on your horizon; he sleeps in your substance. Vanity runs, love digs.[2]
Gustave Thibon
Explorer the experience. Question your assumptions. Perhaps getting stuck could be the opportunity for something much greater than you expected.
[1] Standing by Words.1982.
[2]AZQuotes.com, Wind and Fly LTD, 2024. https://www.azquotes.com/author/49212-Gustave_Thibon, accessed April 25, 2024