Sometimes in your day you may reach an impasse. It is a place you cannot go through. You are unable to function with any accustomed ease or smoothness. The order and sequence in your daytime schedule, anticipated or improvised, flounders. Panicky feelings of purposelessness begin to circle above you, vulture-like. You may resort to futility, to some superficial task but its meaning is paper-thin. You try a drink, tea or coffee;  you invent some pressing task but it is not really pressing or worse you find you haven't the materials to do it. You begin to feel like a mouse on a wheel and there is a strange ennui that draws you down into some forgotten darkness.

When this or something like this happens our every impulse is to flee, avoid, or otherwise change the situation. Don't! Stay in it. Allow yourself to feel the edges of your constraint. The limitations of your circumstances. Allow experience, although it may be unpleasant, unnerving, almost intolerable.

The key word here of course is almost. Almost intolerable is not the same as intolerable. If you can find the inner strength to bear the conditions that take you to your edge, you may discover great sources of insight. This is not suffering for suffering's sake! On the contrary it may be the very cutting-edge of breakthrough. By staying in, rather than opting out, you face the limits of yourself.

You may witness with great clarity the power of mind, for example. What is happening as distinct from what are you thinking, interpreting, and criticizing, and therefore bringing into being. You may become aware of your attachment to the outcome of your actions. Rather than performing actions in vibrancy and presence you may see that your mind always throws you ahead to some desired outcome.

It may be more serious. Perhaps the impasse is calling you to look more deeply into your life. How it is structured, the priorities you give it, the purpose and outcomes you have assumed. The impasse then can be a call for you to make deep changes in your life.

So next time you reach an impasse, don't shy away from the discomfort, the challenge, the opportunity. Instead, seize it and be open, ready, and available to receive its gifts of wisdom, encouragement, and blessing in your life.

BLOG entry #20