Feeling stuck.

Disbelief is a refusal or unwillingness to accept something as true. 

Disbelief is categorized as one of the fifty-one negative mental states in the Abhidharmakosa. It is a negative mental state because disbelief supports torpor.  It engenders laziness or lethargy.  It supports feeling stagnant or stuck, not knowing what to do.

Many of us are faced with times of uncertainty.  Part of that uncertainty is an unwillingness to accept our current situation, a refusal to look at what is actually going on.  That unwillingness to accept our reality makes us feel stuck and powerless, but it is not actually the situation that makes us powerless but our orientation to it.

Our mental state- one of unwillingness or refusal to acknowledge what is going on- prevents us from actually acting.  It prevents us from moving forward, from taking a step.  It holds us back because in order to dance we need to have a partner, and I refuse to dance with this one.

So getting unstuck is an act of faith.  Not because we need to believe the reality of our situation, but because we can still seek out what is authentic and true despite the gravity of the current circumstances.  

Our biggest challenge is determining which holds more weight in our lives, faith or disbelief. Without faith we are sure to be stuck in troubled waters indeed.

When information is not enough.

We live in an age of information.  It is right at the tip of our fingers, but what do we do with it?

How do we apply it to our situation?  When do we know if it is working?

There is a certain comfort that comes with knowing where to go to get the right answer, but how do you apply that knowledge in a new context?  How does it apply to your context?  How do the facts actually benefit you? 

Information was once held by the powerful to establish hierarchy and maintain the status quo.  Now information is freely available and yet we often still feel powerless.  Why?

Knowledge and experience are two different things.  It is like reading and planning for a trip to a distant city versus actually going there.  You need to make the journey to make the knowledge real, to make it your own.  Having never stepped a foot in the direction of that which you read about, how can you proclaim to know the subtlety of its experience.

You must walk the path.