Feeling Stuck on Your Spiritual Path? Break Free With Radical Zen Insights

From Excitement to Doubt

It’s all too common. You start your spiritual journey, and at first, it seems very exciting. It’s as if you’re stepping into a new world where the limitations of the material world don’t apply, you view the world through a lens of childlike wonder, and you’re committed to reaching enlightenment as quickly as possible.

You join a meditation group, read lots of spiritual books, become less interested in the things that once excited you because you can now see through them, and you try to implement all the spiritual concepts you're learning about in your life. Maybe you’re even having wonderful experiences or insights early in your spiritual journey, which can make you even more excited and dedicated to your path.

Then, after you have spent time doing your spiritual practices, whatever they may be, maybe you are practicing Zen meditation, following another non-dual path of wisdom like Advaita Vedanta, following Christian mystic teachings, or something completely different, you feel as if everything has flatlined.

The initial excitement is gone, and although you have been doing everything correctly, dedicating hours and hours to your spiritual practice, you feel stuck and full of doubt.

When Effort Feels Like It’s Not Enough

Although you have been putting in the effort and are genuinely trying to adhere to the advice of the spiritual teachings you are following, it seems that progress has come to an end.

You look at the past few months, years, or even decades, and you wonder if you’ve made any progress at all. And when you do that, when you confront yourself with your perceived lack of spiritual advancement, all kinds of doubts arise. You lose trust in yourself, you lose trust in the spiritual teachings you are following, you lose hope that you will finally make it, and you end up feeling frustrated and helpless. Maybe you’re even considering stopping your effort; you’re fed up, and wondering why you should continue if it’s no longer bearing any results.

Faith in Your True Self

Before I try to give some advice on how to handle these doubts and you feeling stuck on your path, let me give you some context.

Firstly, if you are on a spiritual path, you have to consider yourself to be very lucky. I mean, I believe that everybody and everything is on a spiritual path anyway, but most people are not conscious about it. So, if you are one of the few people who are conscious of it, you are already better off than a lottery winner. I mean, you are aware that wasting your life on material things or worldly achievements is completely empty and won’t satisfy you or bring you true fulfillment. 

This doesn’t mean that you abandon your worldly duties or anything of that sort. Go do your job, earn money, maybe even become successful—whatever. But at least you set the expectations right. You know that attachment to impermanent things won’t ultimately satisfy you.

So, for whatever reason, you are on a spiritual path. You were lucky enough to hear and believe the sales pitch for enlightenment, for awakening to ultimate truth, and you now know, with every cell in your body, that this possibility exists. This can already change the trajectory of your whole life or soul's journey. Instead of trying to cope with the fact that everything will die, you know, even if it’s only theoretical, that your true Self, your inner Being, can’t die.

In addition to that, you know there is an insight right around the corner that will confirm to you with 100% certainty that you are the Absolute, you are the Universe, you are God, you are Buddha, you are Brahman.

I mean, isn't that cool? You went from believing you are a limited and separate being who has to fight for your life in order to make it in the world, to believing that you are everything, the Absolute. And now you complain that it’s not going fast enough.

Let me give you some short examples of enlightened people and what they went through in order to realize their True Self.

Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, meditated facing a wall in a cave for nine years. Then, the legend says that Bodhidharma's first disciple cut off his arm and presented it to Bodhidharma to show how serious he was about receiving his teaching.

Also, don’t forget Buddha. He left a kingdom, his family, and everything else, and sat under the Bodhi tree for 6 years in order to awaken. Or take a look at the life of Jesus. Did he seem like someone who didn’t struggle for his spiritual insights?

There are many, many other examples of spiritual seekers who faced hardships that we can’t even fathom in order to attain realization. And what are we doing?

Most of us live in a comfortable home, where it’s always nice and warm, we have enough food, and we don’t face the dangers that the ancient seekers did. I mean, we are actually living way better than any king in the Middle Ages. And yet, we complain about our lack of progress. We feel stuck, we doubt that our little efforts may amount to anything.

Maybe considering this will also help you put your life and efforts into context. In addition to that, I think it’s helpful to develop the quality of patience in your life.

Spiritual insights might not come at the speed we would like them to; they almost never will, so we have to have a certain degree of steadfastness and patience while we keep walking on our spiritual path.

Most importantly, you must have faith in the teaching. This means having faith in your True Self, and to not waver. This is like going to the gym. At first, when you start working out, you won’t see any progress at all. You still go to the gym, you still do something that’s hard, and although it will take some time for the results to appear, you keep doing it. You keep doing it because you have faith in your workout; you know that when you continue it for long enough, there will be results.

The same is true for our spiritual path. We may not realize anything at the beginning, maybe even for a long time, but we have faith in our True Self and keep practicing. If we don’t have faith in our True Self 100%, even if we are not realized—especially if we are not realized—we won’t be able to continue and will give up.

There is a Zen saying that goes like this: "Great Doubt, Great Awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening." Your doubt is not a hindrance at all. It only depends on whether you let yourself get discouraged by doubt or if you make good use of it.

Be Fully Stuck, and See What Happens

And what does it mean to make good use of your doubt, or your feeling of being stuck?

First, when you feel stuck, be fully stuck. Don’t hide from it, don’t try to push it away, don’t wish for anything else. Whenever we resist something, it persists. So, when you feel stuck, just look at it, become completely aware of it. Be aware of the feelings that follow it; maybe it touches upon a wound in your self-worth—you feel like a failure, you feel like you're not good enough. Or something else appears. Just keep your awareness on it, don’t deny it, and be fully present with it. It’s not about hiding from anything, or resisting anything, it’s about acknowledging everything that appears in your awareness. Because as long as we fight it, we remain blind to what’s happening. And what’s happening, in this case, is that a feeling arises, that suggests that “you are stuck.”

Once you accept it fully, it will disappear.

In addition to that, I also want to say that whenever we think in terms of progress, we are talking about dualistic matters. Spirituality means transcending the dualistic world and going beyond it. Whenever we try to measure our progress, we are comparing what is with what should be. Our thinking creates a fantasie of what reality is supposed to be, and then we feel disappointed and stuck when reality doesn’t match our idea. I think it’s helpful to be aware of that.

And last but not least, I want to touch shortly upon the idea of doubts. When you look at Zen, doubts play a significant role. Having a big doubt means having a big question:

“What is this?”
“Who am I?”

These questions are meant to be used to go beyond our rational minds, beyond our thinking. The more we practice these questions as a kind of spiritual inquiry, the bigger our doubt gets. What you will find in many Zen stories is that enlightened masters refer to this kind of doubt as an invisible barrier, where you have to break through in order to attain realization. So, this doubt actually helps you. Whenever you practice your spiritual teaching and run into this big doubt, you have to do it again and again, and then you can suddenly break through it.

There are many Zen stories where they refer to becoming completely stuck, unable to move forward or backward with their practice, until they suddenly break through.

So don’t view it as something negative; you also don’t have to view it as something positive either, but take it as it is. Look at it, become totally aware of it, be honest with yourself about how it makes you feel, and let it all dissolve in this big question of who you really are.

Whenever you feel stuck, just stay stuck. Zen means being free enough to accept everything as it is, so why would you wish for anything else than what is present right now?

Wish you all the best!

Your friend of the way, Bye!