Digging Into Mental Blocks Dislodges Obstacles on Your Path
This is not something to be done lightly.
I’ve been in and out of therapy most of my life. It began after my parents’ divorce when I was 5 or 6. Over the years, I’ve seen a wide variety of psychologists and psychiatrists. Some have been incredibly helpful, some less so. But good therapists have helped me understand myself and the world I live in more clearly mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually.
Mental health is too easily taken for granted. Most focus is on physical care, but human beings are not simply physical. We have rich mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies whose health, wellness, and wellbeing are equally important to the physical.
Modern society loves to shunt things away from personal accountability to blame and distractions. Problem “X” is the fault of Person “Y” or Institution “Z,” and that’s who we should blame and shame. What does that do for the problem? Not a damned thing.
Too many people believe the false narratives about power and empowerment, and how they come from without, not from within. The idea that someone else can give you the “power” to be who, what, where, how, and why you most desire is bullshit. Why? Because you, and only you, know the answers to who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.
Everyone can choose paths in life. To be fair, this is easier for some (i.e., cisgendered male/female and white? Easier for you than someone transgendered, nonbinary, or male/female of color). Yet that doesn’t mean it’s not for all, and that’s what my Pathwalking philosophy is all about.
Pathwalking in a nutshell
Pathwalking is the idea that you can intentionally, consciously create your life as you desire it to be. This is done by practicing active conscious awareness (yes, that’s mindfulness) of your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self.
The thing nobody teaches us is that all of our control and power begins inside of us. It doesn’t come from without; it comes from within. But to access it, you need to get past your subconscious mind, rote, routine, and certain aspects of habit.
How? By asking mindful questions that can only be answered right here and now. These include,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What is my intention here?
- Is my approach (to this, that, or the other thing) positive or negative?
- What am I doing?
When you ask and answer this, you become consciously aware, here and now. From there, you can make new choices and decisions about who, what, where, how, and why you are.
Thus, Pathwalking is choosing paths to walk in life to be the person you desire to be. However, note that what you desire isn’t what I desire, and vice versa, and that there is no One True Way™, no singular path. Paths change because you change. Why? Because change is the only constant in the Universe.
The paths I might have chosen in my twenties are not the paths I chose in my forties or choose, now, in my fifties. I’ve changed, and so have my needs and desires.
But of course, this isn’t without obstacles along the way.
Paths are seldom free of obstacles
The biggest problem I have with The Secret and certain other approaches to the Law of Attraction and consciousness creating reality is this: You cannot pull anything from the pure void. Ask, believe, receive fails to recognize that work, intent, and action are necessary to make anything manifest.
Want something to eat? You can’t just conjure a bag of chips out of thin air. You need to go get them from the pantry or the store. Sure, you can use an app and get it delivered, but that still involves work, intent, and action. This applies to everything, even intangibles. Nothing is conjured out of the void without at least some effort.
When you make choices and decisions to walk a path you desire, you’ll encounter obstacles. Some are innocuous – you need to learn something you don’t know, make a contact you don’t have, get a certification or degree, or something of that sort. They just are. Some, however, are from “well-meaning” sources who only have your “best interests” at heart. Naysayers, normally kindhearted friends and family, people who challenge whether your path is “right” or worthy of you.
Then there are the ugly obstacles. Stupid amounts of money required to make things happen, institutional racism or sexism, gatekeepers pushing back, and overall societal “norms” putting up resistance. Navigating these isn’t fun, but the reward of living life on your terms, to me, is worth the trouble.
Finally, there are the obstacles that YOU put in your own way.
Mental blocks, false limitations, and other obstacles
It’s distressingly easy to find limitations. All sorts of societal things will tell you that your gender, age, sexuality, race, nationality, religion, or other similar construct limits you. Most, if not all of these, are total bullshit founded on false notions of lack, insufficiencies, limitation, and scarcity.
You, however, get to choose to accept and believe in these limitations. To be fair, we all have legitimate limits. I’m 5’6” and can’t reach something on a high shelf without a footstool or ladder. So, while I can overcome this limitation with tools, if there is no footstool or ladder, I’m not reaching that thing up there.
The most challenging obstacles are the ones you make for yourself. These are mental blocks that stop you at a certain point along a given path. Said obstacles can show up in one of many ways, but for me tend to manifest as fear or failure, fear or success, and ultimately fear of abandonment.
If I fail, I’ll be rejected, abandoned, and voted off the island. But if I succeed? I might be rejected, abandoned, and voted off the island. Ultimately, it all comes down to rejection, abandonment, and being utterly alone.
The biggest issue I have with this is that I don’t always see it for what it is. There’s a thing I come across on this path I need to do that doesn’t get done, a step I don’t take, an obstacle I don’t remove or step around. It doesn’t present directly as a fear, but it is. Why is this mental block here? How do I find it, address it, and change it?
Digging into mental blocks
I have several holes in my memory. Years ago, I thought they were things I needed to recover to understand myself better. But I learned they were of my own doing. I intentionally removed certain memories along the way to protect myself from pain, suffering, and various traumas.
Digging into the why of my personal mental blocks is something I’m doing to dislodge the obstacles on my path. Doing so is bringing up old pain, memories of past events that are utterly imperfect, and emotions that I can only partially grok today. (Bear in mind, genuinely feeling the what and how of emotion only truly works in the now. Memory of past emotions is impressionistic and imperfect, but can still offer useful data to what was, then, and how it impacted what is, now.)
Why do this to myself? Because I’m dissatisfied with being unable to address certain obstacles in my path. Having removed the external factors, I’m left with only the internal ones. Ergo, the mental blocks of my own making are the obstacles I need to overcome.
Because I firmly believe in my philosophy, and I only have 1 opportunity to live this life in this time and place, in this body, I desire to make the most of it. Hence, choosing paths that light me up, bring my joy, and let me seek and find potential and possibilities.
Digging into mental blocks to dislodge obstacles in your path opens you to vulnerability. It might trigger you. It’s not for the faint of heart. Why bother? Because you can let life live you – or – make choices and decisions to take the wheel and do the driving. Given all the givens, that beats letting someone/something else decide for me.
Do you have mental blocks presenting obstacles on your path you might consider addressing and removing?
This is the seventh-hundred-fiftieth (750) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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