Drop your shoulders,
Take a moment here,
Relax if you've been really busy today.
Maybe you've been busy solving other people's problems or busy putting out fires.
Perhaps you've been busy thinking about doing things but not doing any.
Who knows what you've been busy with.
But you can put any of that busyness down.
I was teaching a retreat this past week in Montana.
My parents are Russian so I'm making all these jokes.
You're only allowed to smile,
Half smile,
Mild smile.
Don't be too happy.
The government will come take you.
So turn that frown into a light smile.
There we go.
That's how we're going to start meditating,
Using accents.
Just draw your awareness behind your eyes into the center of your head.
If you take your meditation too seriously,
Just maybe loosen up a little bit with it.
All is well.
You're here to find a very natural state of being that feels most like you.
So in meditation,
We're not running away from ourselves or reinventing ourselves.
It's much more about discovering our energy,
Accepting it and then settling into it.
And you could put your swimmies on because we're going to dive right into the deep end here.
Right into the deep end of stuckness.
I want you to just get a sense of one area of your life you've been feeling that,
Like it hasn't been moving,
You haven't been able to find a clear answer or to shift something.
Maybe you keep experiencing the same thing over and over.
It could be with different people,
Different scenarios,
But it's the same kind of energy over and over.
Or perhaps you feel like something's just been the way it is for too long and it's not shifting.
So allow just one thing like that to arise in your awareness.
And as you do,
I want you to notice how your body responds,
How you react.
Do you contract?
Do you get serious?
Do you immediately start to overthink or try to figure out?
Just notice your initial response reaction.
Maybe you get a bit depressed or annoyed,
Frustrated.
Maybe you just get like this,
Oh,
If you want,
You can even do it out loud.
I know you're all muted,
But just,
Oh.
You might notice your kind of default reaction.
Maybe you recognize what you do when you hit this energy.
Do you distract?
Do you walk away?
Do you blame?
Do you fight?
Do you try to figure out?
Do you spin?
Is there an all of the above box,
David?
I wake up in the morning on the couch with chocolate all over my face.
I watch infomercials on the TV.
So the best way to move forward with any energy is to be radically honest,
Which can be harder than it seems.
Be radically honest with what you're stuck about and what your reaction usually is.
Notice just what is the reaction?
How do you react to the energy?
How do you engage the energy?
Do you get serious and heavy?
Do you start blaming?
What's your relationship to this energy?
Perhaps you surprise yourself as you realize how intense your reaction actually is.
Maybe it's avoidant.
I'd also like you to notice how you treat yourself when you become aware of that reaction.
Do you put yourself down,
Judge yourself,
Blame yourself?
Notice how you treat yourself when you become aware of your response to stuckness.
Because obviously your response should be better,
Right?
It's supposed to be perfect or better,
Some strange idea like that.
See if you can start to have some compassion for your response.
And how you treat this stuckness is probably a reflection of how you treat yourself,
If I had to guess.
So let that energy start to shift.
And I want you to notice from zero to 100 how stuck you've been around this topic.
100 being a heck of a lot and zero being not at all.
Just notice.
You might be surprised,
You might not be.
There's no right answer.
You might kind of see a gauge that shows you or like a speedometer.
Once you get a sense of what that number is,
Once you start to notice it,
You might start to correlate how you've been reacting to this energy,
To how stuck you've been.
So perhaps you've been 80% stuck and you've been 80% serious.
Or you've been 60% stuck and you've been 60% overthinking.
You might start to see some correlations to how you approach this energy and how stuck you've been.
And so what is the antidote to this?
How do we get unstuck?
How do we shift this energy?
Shake it off,
Start to find our answers.
One of the first steps is usually to stop taking it so intensely and so seriously.
I want you to notice how serious you've been around this.
I need to solve it.
I need to figure it out.
I need to heal it yesterday.
Just notice.
And as you notice that heavy seriousness,
If it's there,
Maybe give it just a little like meow,
Just a nice little kitten meow.
If you're a dog person,
You give it a rough,
Rough,
It's fine.
And if you're not into dogs or cats,
You just find whatever sound works for you.
Just let out a silly sound.
Let it break up some of the energy.
Let it start to shift some of this energy.
As you recognize how intensely you've been focusing on this,
It's almost like by loosening up,
You can relieve some pressure.
Like you release the pressure valve.
You open it up.
You may have been putting too much pressure on yourself or too much pressure on finding an answer.
I'm a very successful person.
I'm very productive.
How come I can't get over this?
That might lead to self-judgment.
I need to figure this out so other people think I have it together.
I might care about how people see us.
I'm afraid of being a failure.
You might start to notice what some of the deeper motivations are here,
What some of the deeper layers are.
Just be honest with that.
You might even get a sense of perhaps what stuckness looks like.
Maybe it's texture.
Perhaps it has a color or a shape,
A form.
Maybe it's hardened around you like clay or paper mache or something like that.
You might be surprised when you look directly at stuckness.
You don't have to be afraid.
You can look directly at it.
And then maybe you get some underlying awareness.
Just like,
Ah,
That's what I've been afraid of.
That's what's been holding me back.
And there might be a few layers under that.
Maybe you're feeling some shame or some guilt,
Some anger or some sadness.
Let that energy start to melt off of you.
Just as you say hello to it,
As you have some compassion for how you feel,
As you look at it directly with honesty and love.
You can actually love guilt.
You can love the shame.
You can love the stuckness.
Just show it some love.
It might just need your love.
And then perhaps it starts to shift.
You may start to recognize where this pattern,
This energy has not been serving you.
You might feel it's been long enough.
And you can let the energy shift in real time.
Notice it inside your being.
Whenever you're ready,
Whenever you're present and still and honest.
If you really just sit with it,
The energy will just kind of rotate or shift.
And if the energy doesn't rotate or shift and you're like,
Nope,
Just stuck,
Stuck and stuck.
Then sit with that.
Use more patience.
You are stuckness.
You may have been feeding it with your angst or anxiety to shift.
And all it wanted was to sit still with you.
And perhaps it hasn't wanted to go away because it's been trying to tell you something.
It's not fighting or avoiding.
Show this stuckness your deepest level of patience.
Let any of the energy that's ready to go start melting off of you.
I'm sure you've been holding on to this long enough.
And perhaps today's the day you get to shift it.
And the secret to this is that your answer is actually inside the stuckness.
It's not around it or somewhere else.
It's inside the stuckness.
It's been cocooned in there.
The stuckness has been holding it for you.
Let it open almost like a flower or like an oyster kind of shell opens.
And let it show you the answer that's been hiding inside.
Just another minute here.
Let this stuckness show you and teach you whatever it wants to,
Whatever you're ready to see.
Recognize that you can have more out of life.
That this is not the end of the road.
This was just perhaps a moment you needed to slow down and learn something about yourself.
And the moment may have lasted a long time because you didn't really look at the lesson.
So it kept playing out over and over.
But the funny thing is when you realize that,
You realize how long you've been stuck kind of has been up to you.
And getting unstuck is also up to you.
And that life was never trying to punish you.
I'll repeat that last one.
Life was never trying to punish you.
Great work.
When you're ready,
You can take a big,
Deep breath in.
Easy sigh out.
And whatever you've been looking at for now,
You can let it go.
You get to keep your answers and the energy you've shifted.
And when you're ready,
You can slowly open your eyes and stretch.
We've been meditating for about four straight days.
You may not have realized that you're having so much fun.
It's Thursday.
