"I really love exploring old logging roads," I said. "And I don't want to get stuck in the mud, so I'm thinking about getting 4 Wheel Drive."
"Well," Newt said, "Most folks around here have 4 Wheel Drive pickups. They have a saying about them, too: 'Four Wheel Drive allows to get way back into the woods...before you get stuck.'"
I wound up buying a nice used Nissan 2 Wheel Drive pickup that averaged 33 MPG. Never had to get it towed out of the wilderness. I had that little red Nissan for 16 years--it got me to the edge of wild places hundreds and hundreds of times. I always walked the rest of the way.
But I have, nevertheless, found hundreds and hundreds of others ways to get stuck.
Stuck is where you are when you stop moving toward where your deep self hoped to be. The way a lot of us deal with this kind of being stuck is to gradually stop hoping to be in that other, longed-for place. But it's not the deep wise hope we should be letting go of--it's the stuff that keeps us stuck.
Mindfulness practice is the best tool I've found to work with being stuck. Though, to be clear about it, sometimes meditation or contemplation is nearly as depressing as it is exhilarating.
That's because when we slow down and do the work of practice, we see just how very stuck we are. And that is wonderful medicine. And a bitter pill.
Einstein said, 'Problems cannot be solved at the level of conscious that created them.' Mindfulness takes us on a tour of the levels of consciousness that seeded, hatched, and raised the problems that populate our lives. What's the line in Monte Python's Holy Grail? ..."Run away, run away!"
Running away is one of our options. We have others.
The story of the Holy Grail is not a bad metaphor. What seems to be an insoluble problem turns out, almost miraculously, not to be. Over time, what is insoluble sometimes dissolves. What is un-find-able often gets found.
In meditation and contemplation new levels of consciousness are both cultivated and stumbled upon. By doing the grunt work of exploring the lands where we are stuck we are also always stumbling upon doors that open to new worlds.
