by Pat O'Malley
Samuel has been talking a lot lately about ruts. Apparently he’s been concerned enough about the rut thing to mention it several times over the past few months. Right before the 2015 Summer Solstice Ritual at Serpent Mound I started thinking about ruts. True confession #1: I had enough time to think about ruts after cutting back on my electronic device usage as Samuel has been suggesting we do. It’s amazing what the brain is capable of doing when there are no distractions in the way! It’s also amazing how much time I was spending on my computer almost every evening. As it turned out, all the whining I’d engaged in about never having time to do things was simply not true. I had plenty of time. All that precious time was spent playing games and surfing the internet. Talk about ruts.
When I was a kid I liked reading about pioneer families traveling across the great American plains on the Oregon Trail. So many wagons used this trail that after a while the soft sandstone began to wear away where the wagon wheels rolled across the surface, eventually creating deep ruts in the stone. Once wagons entered some of the deeper rut zones, they were stuck in the rut until they came across a harder stone surface that hadn’t worn down too far to get out of. Reviewing my personal ruts took on new meaning as I realized not only how deep some of them had gotten but how I had created the very situation I felt trapped by.
As it turned out, one of my biggest ruts has been not being able to recognize the ruts I created for myself. Ruts are insidious. Here is where the quiet time Samuel has been encouraging us to create in our life comes in. Being able to sit down with no distractions and work my way backward from a current rut to its inception has been a gift. Being able to see where it started makes it easier for me to change course. And sometimes it requires reaching a hard place within the rut to finally be able to steer the wagon out of it.
The thing about ruts is that they seem to multiply. By themselves. While I’m not looking. True confession #2: the “I am not enough” thing I learned from my parents created quite a deep emotional rut for me in my early adulthood. Even though I knew better after hanging out with Samuel for over 20 years, it was still possible to fall into the rut that particular belief had created over the years. In turn, that rut spawned a mental and physical rut of inertia. Why try something new if I was afraid it wasn’t going to work out? That in turn created a rut in which I struggled with a sense of powerlessness and anger with my situation.
There is no magic in a rut. For me being in a rut is somewhat like reliving the past over and over again, much like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Is it possible to experience the present in a rut? My guess would be probably not.
My greatest creative expressions have always occurred in present time and space. There is magic, hope, and possibility in the present. I have never felt magic or hope while reclining in a rut. Samuel has been telling us for eons that we need to embrace our Power and our Magic. Power and Magic occur in present time and space. I would really like to live, see, and be Magic again, and that means becoming aware of the ruts in my life and leaving them behind in the dust. With the Power this Summer Solstice has brought to us and to the world, it is vital that we remain conscious and deal with old behaviors and beliefs that bog us down in a rut. We are changed. The world is changing. Let’s show the world how easy it can be to not only climb out of a rut, but to keep from creating them in the first place.