Do you suffer from Analysis Paralysis?
- Over-thinking, over-analyzing, and engaging obsessive thoughts in a vicious cycle that keeps you from taking action?
- Do you experience logical override — your Thinking Mind unravels and undermines your Intuitive Mind?
- Do you weigh your options to a point that seems to take you further away from making a decision and following through?
- Do you choose a course of action only to find that its opposite calls you back to think again, think some more, think too much?
It’s like a CD or a record skipping — a mental stutter — or maybe it feels like you’re spinning…
OCD — obsessive-compulsive disorder — is an extreme, constant, chronic, crippling manifestation of this behavior pattern that should be explored as a clinical therapeutic issue. If you are experiencing this to the degree that it interferes with your ability to function or complete simple, common, everyday tasks then please seek diagnosis and treatment with a clinical professional.
But everyone experiences a milder form of analysis paralysis from time to time and there are spiritual, meditative techniques to address it.
An Abundance of Air
Those with charts that are dominated by multiple Air signs seem to suffer from analysis paralysis more than any other.
Air and Information Technology
The Air element is now more prevalent in the Collective Human Mind than at any time in our history. The spiritual element of Air manifests as information, intellect, data, and communication. The virtual dimension is a bridge between inspiration consciousness and the physical. Our inter- (hyper-) connectivity is the most powerful technological component of the modern world.
Your Analyzer
The Analyzer is a spiritual energy center (like a chakra) located at the front of the forehead (in front of and slightly below the Third Eye). Imagine that when you frown you hold a grape or a marble between your eyebrows. That’s the Analyzer.
When you are suffering from over-thinking and over-analyzing (always a component of anxiety and worry) you are leading with the Analyzer.
Leading with the Analyzer
The Analyzer is like the “hood ornament” of the Mind — out in front as you drive the body through everyday experience. Your body posture is often the most obvious physical clue that you are leading with the Analyzer:
- you hunch forward when you drive in stressful traffic conditions
- you study with your nose in a book
- you lean in toward your computer monitor when you concentrate
This logical processor can be beneficial in many circumstances and certain activities, but like everything, there should be a balance — with the Emotional Mind, the Intuitive Mind, the Physical Senses…
Grounding the Analyzer
You are familiar with my guided meditations and the universal concept of grounding yourself with a silver cord that extends into the earth from the base of your spine, your first chakra…
But did you know that you don’t have to ground everything through the root chakra?
You can ground any energy center in the body directly — the shortest external path out of your energy and into the earth.
Rather than grounding the energy down through the chakras — where it may get “stuck” along the way in other energy centers or leave residual energy in other parts of the body — simply ground the Analyzer directly from its physical position.
Meditation | Visualization Exercise
I credit intuitive teacher Angie Arkin with teaching me this technique.
- Picture yourself with a horn like a Unicorn, extending out in a spiraling line from between your eyebrows. Point this cord at the ground out in front of you. See it extending out several feet and drilling into the ground toward the center of the earth at a slight declining slope.
- Assess the size of your Analyzer — how big or swollen is it? Is it the size of a pea, a raisin, a grape, or larger like an egg or a plum?
- As you breathe deeply and fully, inhaling and exhaling with a steady rhythm, visualize the energy draining out and down this direct cord away from you and into the earth.
- See the Analyzer shrinking… Set the intention that it return to a more manageable size… How small can you make it?
*Try this direct external grounding technique with the other chakras — you can establish a cord from any point in the body.
Bet you never thought you’d see a unicorn around here, huh? Me neither.
Image credit Gabe Gross via Creative Commons on Flickr
Hello,
Slade, does the Analyzer have a colour?
regards
Eileen
Hey Slade, following u on Twitter (Spunky Ones) thanks for the Unicorn guide…nicely timed eh? mmmm…..
Excellent question, Eileen!
Yes, indeed, all your grounding cords have physical characteristics that are very telling.
You can “diagnose” or interpret the energy of your cords much as you would your aura:
size — whether fat or thin
color — different colors “mean” different things
condition — think hair strands, split ends, ragged or frayed edges, holes, etc
behavior — how the cord move? swirl, pulse, blink, wink, fade in and out…
I advise you check a reference for the various colors of each chakra or energy center for clues. Also, any reference key for aura color interpretations would be very telling…
Wendy,
Thanks for connecting with me on Twitter!
Great article as always, Slade!
When I performed the visualization, all I seem to receive is that my Analyzer is the shape of a navel orange and I get a little bit of a headache when I concentrate on it. I also notice that it’s the color of the sun and I can’t get a good feel of where the cord is to drain it.
That aside, is is possible to have an energy center be so large that it starts blocking or crowding out other energy centers like the third eye? It doesn’t surprise me that my Analyzer is that large as I’m deeply involved in the field of software.
Mike,
You bring up a few excellent points that I probably should clarify:
Unlike the “permanent” cords in the energy body — the Grounding cord that connects your root chakra to the earth and the Silver Cord that connects your life force to Source — the cord we are talking about here (directly from the Analyzer) doesn’t exist until/unless you will it into being for the purpose of draining that energy. This is no doubt the reason why you can’t locate it. It’s a bit like taking a shortcut through the brush at any given moment, rather than being a pre-existing paved pathway for you to locate and follow.
You may also wish to visualize the cord forming or spinning FROM the material of the Analyzer, so that as that “unicorn horn” extends out of the energy body, the size and substance of the Analyzer is shrinking or draining out, like a water spout that’s forming off the surface of a lake.
Considering that your Analyzer is so large, yes, absolutely it can block or crowd out the Third Eye (especially the Third Eye, given the proximity and the position of one in front of the other).
The relatively ginormous size of your Analyzer, given all the code editing or logic analysis that goes along with working in the field of software, combined with the fact that you may never have cleared that energy before (at least not often enough to keep up with how often you’re in that energy) also makes sense to me. To stay within an analogy of software/computers, imagine what the temporary files folder would look like for someone who has never rebooted, deleted temporarily browser files, or defragmented his hard drive…
Once you’re aware that you can and should get rid of that build up, you can maintain it more regularly, and even choose to “program” yourself to do it automatically. (This is the kind of thing I might ask my guides to do for me automatically, even when I forget to, and associate it with a “real world” action. “Hey, guides, whenever you see me logging off, shutting down, or closing the laptop lid, drain the Analyzer.”)
MIght be a good meditation for you to do at the end of the day in conjunction with shutting down your computer, or at night before you go to sleep. Whenever you’re “done” with the Analyzer for the day, take a moment to dump that energy.
I’m in the same boat as Mike… I’ll have to try putting analyzer maintenance on autopilot. The analogy makes me chuckle… I definitely need to defrag.
Vitor (and Mike),
Definitely work the visualization as a meditation a few times (several days maybe?) until you start to feel some relief or note that there is progress. At that point, set it up to with your guides to “run in the background.”
Slade, I was forever grateful for the much dreaded unicorn reference! It reminds me of something my therapist taught me. When stating a problem, working on it, getting clearer, the last step is, “Now, where is the good”? My tool to take with me for future reference. I shall never malign a unicorn again, for no other animal had a horn as straight to bore as well. (Yes, I tried to imagine a few alternates!!!)