Unstuck

We all get stuck sometimes. Here's something practical you can try to get unstuck.

Sometimes, it doesn’t come easy.

You stare at a blank screen. You try to make words come out of the keys and they just won’t.

You sit in front of your altar, and you breathe and you make sounds and even words. And your spirit stays stubbornly rooted in mundanity.

Even the most experienced practitioners get stuck. The most ethereal and spiritual people you know, the ones who seem to float through life they’re so spirit driven and filled with energy that you imagine that they pretty much live in the liminal space between worlds, even these people sometimes feel stuck.

Realizing that you’re stuck can cause a kind of panic. What used to come just isnt there. It’s like turning on the faucet and not having the water come out, or flipping the switch and the light not going on. The questions come in torrents. What is happening? Why is this happening? What caused it? Was it something I did? Something I failed to do? How do I get unstuck? How do I make it go back to the way it used to be?

You start to cast around furiously looking for answers. You sign up for a workshop. You buy books. You read articles. You attend an open circle or a Pagan Pride event or a meetup. Nothing seems to connect. Where you used to be able to easily slip into a state of consciousness that made spellcasting or divination or anything magical a cinch, now there’s nothing but a brick wall.

So what do you do now?

This isn’t working out the way the kitty had planned. Photo by Tomas Tuma on Unsplash

First, release your judgements. The most toxic words that you can allow to slip into your practice are “supposed to.” They come packed full of unrealistic expectations, preconceived notions and judgement. Lots and lots of judgement. If you are obsessed with how things are supposed to be, or how you are supposed to experience things, or what results you are supposed to get, you will nearly always be disappointed. When you’re stuck, however, it’s hard not to focus on how things were before you got stuck, and to cast that as how things are “supposed to be” now.

There is no witch police who is going to monitor your practice and make sure it’s “correct.” There is no Witch Olympics handing out medals for “best spell” or “worthiest meditation.” There are no winners or losers in the Craft, and no judges handing out scores or prizes. No one is going to “take away your Witch card” because you’re struggling right now with knowing what to do or whether what you’re doing is working. The only person who needs to be satisfied with your practice and your Craft is you.

“But I have high standards!” you’re crying out. “I’m used to feeling like I’m a badass. Hell, I’m used to feeling at the very least competent. And right now I struggle to feel anything at all! I’m not worried about what others think of me. I’m not meeting MY goals and standards.”

Excuse me, but where does it say in the laws that govern the Universe that you get to be perfect or a badass or even competent all the time? None of us is perfect. All of us have our moments when we are not all that we hoped we’d be or even all that we usually expect to be. Shit happens. You lose your grip occasionally. There is not a human being alive who hasn’t had those moments. Anyone who claims they haven’t is lying to you. You are having a moment. Congratulations, you are a human being having a vey human experience. Embrace it and stop trying to punish yourself for it.

Next, embrace that things are changing. What you’ve been doing is no longer working for you. That much is obvious. And so that means that probably you need to do something different. As human beings we often fear change, particularly when it comes unbidden. Unwanted change is scary. it’s inconvenient. We don’t like it.

And that’s where you might be making a mistake. Because the fact is the Universe is powered by change. It is unrealistic to expect that things will always stay the way they are now. The seasons change, the weather changes, circumstances are changing, you’re changing. Almost nothing stays the same forever. Resisting change is not only futile, it means you miss opportunities.

The fact that you’re stuck means that what you’ve been doing is no longer working. Which means you need to do something else. This is not a moment to groan and bemoan your terrible misfortune. It is a moment to embrace a sense of adventure. You get to try something new. How cool is that?

The cold, hard truth is that you’re not going to be able to control the fact things are changing. The only thing you can do is control your approach to that fact. You can either dig your heels in and try to defy reality by resisting the change or trying to ignore it, or you can treat this as an opportunity, as a moment that you can leverage to your benefit. You don’t have to change. You get to change.

Become an explorer and a scientist.

So something’s changed, and you’re not sure what it is. Now comes the adventure where you get to figure it out. Get curious, start noticing things. What things have changed in your life? What’s changing in the larger world? Do not underestimate the impacts of the stress of world events on our psyche or our energy levels. What new things have started appearing that weren’t there before?

Start trying things, but be careful.

I grew up racing sailboats. Big ones, in highly competitive regional and national races. And the best way to maximize your boatspeed in a race is to do what we used to call “tweaking.” You would modify something -- drop a few degrees off the helm, tighten the sheet on a sail a few cranks, adjust the spinnaker pole a few inches. And then you would wait and see what happened to the boatspeed. Up or down? If boatspeed decreased, or stayed the same, you reversed the adjustment. If it increased, you waited a bit and tried something else. And again, watched the boatspeed. Up or down? This was how you squeezed every ounce of speed out of boat during a race.

You did this because if you made a lot of changes willy-nilly, you would have no idea which of the changes you were making was having what effect on the boat speed. Some things would help, others would hinder. You made each change individually and monitored the result before you made another.

When you begin exploring and testing different things, it’s easy to get excited and allow yourself to succumb to a sense of urgency. You want to get the answers, and you want them now. And that desire sweeps away your patience, and you try all manner of things, all at once. looking for the thing that breaks open your sense of being stuck. Slow down. Have the eagerness for new places and things of an explorer. But also maintain the diligence of a scientist. Consider making a record of how each thing you try affects you. Notice patterns.

Most of all, be okay with the idea that you might have to go on like this for a bit. It’s perfectly okay to “fake it until you make it” for a little while. Keep exploring. Keep recording. Stay curious and disciplined.

Give up the need for a dramatic resolution. It’s also easy to get caught up in the preconceived ideas about what “unstuck” will feel like. Remember, things have changed. That means you’re not supposed to end up back where you were before. You should expect to end up someplace you’ve never been. That means you won’t necessarily know how it’s supposed to feel. There’s that pesky phrase again -- “supposed to.” Whatever you think that getting unstuck is “supposed to” feel like, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s not going to actually feel like that when it happens.

Don’t cheat yourself out of progress by insisting it look like what you expect it to. Allow yourself to be surprised by the fact that it feels nothing like you expected. You should even be prepared for it to sneak up on you, and for it to have arrived without fanfare, and for you to not realize it until well after it has actually happened.

In fact, the most likely thing that will happen is that as you are putting yourself through your paces, exploring and noticing and recording, you might find that a new practice emerges. And it’s asserted itself into your magical life without fanfare, without some kind of “eureka” moment. You’re so busy with what has emerged from your exploration that you might not even realize that you’re already on your way to the next thing. You’re not stuck at all. Not anymore.

It’s the best and realest kind of magic -- the ordinary kind.

Blessed be, witches!