Getting Unstuck

Often we have conflicting motives, desires, or beliefs within us. There is a spiritual principle that we create what we believe. If we are unsatisfied with our life circumstances, the possibility for positive change is ALWAYS available, but we may need to look deeply to uncover and resolve the deeper conflicts that sabotage or block our progress. When our desires are clear, when our inner conflicts are resolved, our path to prosperity can be smooth and clear as well.

Transcript

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Welcome to Spiritual Psychology.

My name is Renee LaValley McKenna and I bring my 30-plus years as a recovering addict and ex-crazy person turned therapist and shamanic healer to bring you snackable teachings on spirituality,

Psychology,

And all things personal growth.

And today I want to talk about getting unstuck.

And I think we all have places in our life where we feel stuck,

I know I certainly do,

Stuck in an unfulfilling job or a dead relationship or stuck in some place in my life where I have desire to grow or positive change and I just don't seem to be able to get to the next level.

I couldn't apply to graduate school.

I couldn't write the book.

I couldn't create artwork,

Find fulfilling work,

Or a satisfying life.

And loving relationship.

Many times in my life I felt like I was at the mercy of fate.

But as I have grown in my still limited understanding of what's actually happening here in Middle Earth,

I do believe that there is nothing in our psychic space without our permission on some level.

That we do have free will.

And perhaps beyond that we are actually co-creators of our own reality with the thousand million choices that we make throughout our life.

And the more conscious we become,

The more intentional about what we really want,

The more the ideas of fate,

Particularly where I feel victimized or unfulfilled by it,

Seem to determine what happens in my life.

And the more internal power or agency I'm able to hold to participate in the flow and direction and experience of my life.

Neil Donald Walsh wrote a series of self-help or spiritual books in the 90s,

Conversations with God.

And it was the first place I was introduced to the idea that we co-create our reality consciously and unconsciously.

And that whatever our life circumstances,

If we look deeply,

They're an expression of what we actually believe.

Or perhaps even what we want on some level.

And so when we want something or think we want something,

But we feel stuck in some way or lots of ways and unable to attain it,

It actually points to an inner conflict.

That there's part of us that desires something and another part of us that's resisting it at the same time.

And the purpose of most good spiritual and personal growth work is to allow us to access and heal and transform those inner conflicts,

Which are usually quite unconscious.

And the more unconscious something is,

The more it will seem to happen to us.

And the more we can take responsibility for the experiences and situations in our life,

The more power we have to change or redirect what's happening.

I've started rereading some of the teachings from A Course in Miracles,

Which is pretty deep and amazing work that came through the inner dictation to Helen Shookman in the 1970s.

The underlying premise of A Course in Miracles is that the greatest miracle is the act of simply gaining a full awareness of love's presence in a person's life.

And that that awareness is transformative.

And A Course in Miracles says,

Nothing is difficult that is wholly desired.

That in any situation in which you are uncertain,

The first thing to consider very simply is,

What do I want to come of this?

What is it for?

And the clarification of that goal belongs at the beginning.

For it is this which will determine the outcome.

That doubt is the result of conflicting wishes.

Be sure of what you want and doubt becomes impossible because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired.

As Stephen Covey says in The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People,

Another one of my favorite life-changing books,

Begin with the end in mind,

Singleness of purpose,

What I've come to call integrity.

When my thoughts and my feelings and my behavior are all in alignment,

It absolutely creates positive change in my life.

So how do we work with this?

How do we make the unconscious conscious when we feel stuck and it seems to be some external things in the universe pushing against us,

Or even our own internal resistance that we don't understand?

I think back for myself,

I was always longing for a loving,

Intimate relationship.

And I kept ending up with liars,

Cheats,

Active addicts and married men.

Not a coincidence.

As I began to learn to look within myself through therapy,

Through journaling,

Through inner journey work,

There was an incongruity that was unavoidable.

I wanted people to treat me in a way that I was unwilling to treat them.

I wanted to find a loving,

Committed,

Emotionally available partner.

And I was selfish,

Terrified of commitment and completely emotionally unavailable myself.

And as I began the long process of becoming emotionally available,

Of actually becoming the kind of partner that I wanted to have,

The nature of my intimate relationships grew and changed and continues to do so to this day.

I think about my friend,

Aiden,

Who longs to be an artist.

Always coming up with ideas for creative projects and has a pretty vast storehouse of creative materials for all these projects that he hopes to create someday.

But he's unable to complete anything,

Starts a lot of projects,

But never seems to have the time.

And we've had a lot of talks about this because I've worked through a lot of my own perfectionism around my art.

I was stuck for a very long time with some ridiculous number of half-finished projects.

And in a recent conversation,

We actually got pretty clear that he's stuck in this fear of success,

Fear of failure dynamic,

That he has some ego idea that he could be a great artist.

And there's another part of him that's equally afraid that he's not that good and maybe mediocre.

And he's so afraid of being mediocre that he's unwilling to produce and find out what is actually there.

It's a very common dilemma and one that I was stuck in myself for decades.

And what unstuck me was actually doing art with children,

Particularly little children under the age of five who had no ego idea of good or bad,

No judgment.

They just loved the process.

They were joyful in playing with the paint,

The other materials.

They were unattached to the outcome.

They were in the presence of creation.

And I had an opportunity to create some big murals at that preschool.

And it was my first experience with public art.

And I loved it because there was an anonymity to it that took my ego out of the equation.

And my intention for doing the art was for the children to make the space more beautiful and colorful for them.

And that combination of selfless service and anonymity allowed me to be truly creative for the first time in a free way.

I didn't tell anybody that that was my artwork.

I didn't really hide it,

But it's actually made me fall in love with public art.

And I've been a guerrilla public artist ever since.

There's a freedom and unattachment to outcome,

Which may seem like it conflicts with having a goal,

But it depends what the goal is.

And from my experience,

The best goals are more spiritual or soul-centered rather than in service of my ego or my little Renee LaValley McKenna self.

My intention these days is to bring this work to all who need it for the benefit of them and myself.

Before I wrote my book,

I used to think,

I want to write a book so it'll be a bestseller.

And my fear that that wouldn't happen stopped me from being able to write the book.

Well,

There was a lot of things that stopped me from writing the book,

But that was one of them.

And the goal became,

I'm going to write a book just for the experience of writing a book and having that accomplishment,

Whether 10 people read it or 10,

000.

And that shift more to my own feeling of accomplishment within myself rather than how other people might see or perceive me really set me free to just be able to write a book.

Of course,

I do have to say writing that book was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done.

So there was a lot more to it than just that shift in intention.

But aligning that clarity of purpose within myself that I became willing and even eager to follow this desire to write a book and became willing to do whatever it took to make that happen and let go of the outcome.

That was kind of the magic formula for me.

In fact,

It still is in most areas of my life.

But our inner conflict can be deep.

It can be karmic.

It can be ancestral.

Our internal resistance is often rooted in unresolved trauma,

Unhealed emotional wounds.

So there can be a lot more involved in resolving internal conflict than just making a decision.

And if you feel stuck in some area of your life,

You probably already know that on some level.

And so how do we do that inner work?

How do we resolve those inner conflicts,

That doubt of two conflicting wishes that keeps us stuck?

I want this,

But I don't want that at the same time.

So the first step is to realize there is a conflict and to be willing to look deeply at what's actually there.

For example,

My mentee,

Bella,

Very gifted healer,

Incredibly intuitive,

Grew up in a tradition that believes that the work of Reiki,

Tarot,

Spiritual psychology,

Shamanism,

And animism is more or less the work of Satan.

And she's in a time of tremendous change,

Empowerment,

And transformation as she really owns her gifts in the world.

She's doing profound work to extricate herself from the larger entity of the church,

Which may be beneficial to some people,

But it is definitely harmful to her.

And there's a lot of fear that she can just feel in her body,

A lot of doubt that she'll be supported as she moves into this next place in her life,

And anxiety that she'll lose everything.

That's been my experience too.

Every time I have kind of leveled up,

There's a fear that I'm going to lose everything that I know.

And unfortunately,

It may be true,

But it doesn't mean there's emptiness.

In fact,

There's more fulfillment in the next place.

Willingness to go into the unknown,

Which is frequently uncomfortable.

I think that's one of the biggest tripping places for most of us as we try to grow and evolve and expand ourself is the expectation that it will be comfortable.

And it is really outside of our comfort zone that new life experience exists.

And so we need to be willing to be uncomfortable.

We're a comfort-obsessed culture.

And if we wait until we're comfortable before we do something,

We'll never do it.

And to be with the fact that doing new things,

That growth is uncomfortable,

And that that's healthy and to be expected.

And the more we can tolerate that discomfort of the unknown,

To be with it,

Move through it,

Gather whatever we need to be able to keep going,

That's how we go to the next place.

To expect discomfort and be okay with it.

We'll live through it and it'll pass.

And over time,

Things that were uncomfortable become normal.

And we get a new normal until we move to the next place of being willing to grow outside of our comfort zone.

And desire pulls us forward and the universe will often create circumstances to really push us along.

I know for me,

More than once I've fallen deeply in love with someone who dragged me out of a pit and allowed me to get to the next place I couldn't see because I needed that supercharge of love energy or sexual desire to pull me forward.

We are not in this alone.

The universe wants to support us in our growth and evolution.

And so we recently did some work on this fear that Bella has that's in conflict with her desire to really be of service as a healer in the world.

And so I suggested that she journey to that part of herself that's afraid and it would probably be a child part of herself.

And it was.

But it was a child part of herself in a past life at the time of the witch trials when natural healers were persecuted and publicly tortured and executed.

And the child in that lifetime carried these same gifts and knew that it was worth her life to express them in the world.

And so she suppressed them out of terror and survival.

I've seen this more than once.

The residue of the suppression of the feminine healing arts that have been demonized by the patriarchy,

Particularly of the Christian church and women too afraid to stand in that feminine power.

Understandably so,

But it has kept them spiritually small,

Emotionally frightened,

Immature on a soul level.

I just did a podcast on inner masculine and feminine.

And this is a perfect example of where the deep and vulnerable gifted feminine needs the support of a strong internal masculine to protect,

To be a warrior for her,

To stand in the face of those who would harm or persecute her.

And we need that inside of ourselves for that inner girl to become a queen instead of a princess.

And that podcast is number 124 inner masculine and feminine.

And so where do you feel stuck in your life physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Sexually,

Professionally,

Financially,

Relationally,

Creatively?

What is the part of you that wants something?

And what is the part of you that resists it at the same time?

And can we bring them into dialogue?

Are there fears that need to be dissolved?

Wounds that need to be healed?

Karmic or ancestral lines that need to be cleared.

Blessings on your path until we meet again.

This is Renee LaValley McKenna for spiritual psychology.

Reviews

Thank you for this talk, 🙏🏼
I’m just like your artist friend.. fear a failure, fear of success with such strong Inner conflict that I’ve been stuck for years. I have had wonderful successes and experienced th excitement that comes with it, but the doubt comes creeping in almost immediatel and I am stuck again.
I just had a past life regression, and that she shed a good light on some of the issues that I have had, though not all. It’s all work in progress albeit be it at a snails pace….🐌

Will be going through your catalog now that I have found you 💜

Mentioned a lot of great books. Seems like it often just comes back to the self. This living stuff is a lot of work! Thanks!