Client Experience – Pausing
May 11, 2022THE PAUSE Thomas Walker
In the midst of this COVID craziness we are being asked to
Pause.
This microbe is changing our planet. It is unseen. War has been declared on this, The Unseen. We can’t defeat it with missiles. It can only be defeated by a change in activity, in doing, and in consciousness. To defeat it, we are asked to …
Pause
The entire is planet is being asked to Pause.
Perhaps something new will emerge.
Many spiritual traditions value pauses and removal from the secular world; vision quests, monasteries, meditation retreats, religious services, etc. These pauses can allow spiritual truths to be revealed. Our busyness often leaves little time to pay attention to the guidance which is available to us when we will listen to our own essential understanding. Quieting our fearful minds and egos and slowing down, as we must to pause, allows doorways to open. If we choose to step through and on to new paths we may discover and explore our essence, gaining a deeper awareness of ourselves and our global relationships.
In learning about Biodynamics our slowing down, putting our habits in the background, and being present reveals the movements of life expressed in the body as flows, breathing fluids, rhythms, and pauses. We may label these pauses as neutrals, still points and STILLNESS. Out of these pauses new patterns, expressing a higher order and health, always emerge. Biodynamics teaches us that by shifting our own consciousness and slowing down, we can synchronize with essential healing forces.
Pauses are often profound. City streets and places of commerce and worship are empty and quiet. We are isolated from our family and friends. This pause is revealing what is important, what really is essential. Individuals, families and communities are realizing what is truly essential. It is defining who the essential workers are and also how poorly they are treated. It is exposing our failing social and political institutions and mind set. This pause is blatantly exposing that which is not working for everyone.
It is easy for me to pause and socially isolate. I have food, some financial resources and live in a rural, small town in northwest Colorado. There are many who can’t pause and socially distance. In this pause, we must hold all of humanity in our hearts. Those who have abused their power, those who are sick, their families, and those who were already struggling to survive.
When we are meditating, praying or doing some other form of settling and pausing, time can seem to slow down. For me and others with whom I have spoken, time also seems to have shifted. I work out of my home, so the only difference is that clients aren’t scheduling appointments. I have no time commitments. Some days I don’t know what day it is. I recently felt disoriented by having 3 time commitments in one day. I now know what it means to have plenty of time.
Moving into another month of separation during this pause, I am becoming aware of a quality of peacefulness, a decrease in activity and busyness in my community and my awareness. A friend recently agreed saying to me that it feels like the earth is exhaling.
We discipline children with a time out intending it to be a time of reflection. Within this global pause, we can pause for ourselves to reflect on essentials, and remind ourselves that we are more than our daily work, or shopping, or the chaos, suffering and pain around us. Our habitual fast talking minds distract us from perceiving other possibilities that can emerge from quiet and a deeper knowing. These possibilities are most often more compassionate, less fearful, and more inclusive. Pausing is the doorway.
One of the lessons from practicing Biodynamics is that in the midst of Stillness my level of presence has an impact on the depth to which the inherent healing mechanism can shift stuck patterns in the body. My Qi Gong teacher often says, where the mind goes, energy flows. In the midst of this pause, our state of consciousness may also affect the degree to which a new balance can emerge from the chaos.
This unseen enemy of humanity can only be defeated with resources that provide for all, and which take care of basic physical and spiritual needs. It may teach us to put resources and dollars toward human needs rather than projecting our fear, in the guise of power, onto our global neighbors. To do this requires a change of thinking, a change of consciousness. Pausing provides a pathway for this to happen.
Our global habitation is way out of balance in many ways. The environmental, social, and political chaos we are now experiencing is evidence of this. This pause is revealing our denial of what it is to be human with compassion, generosity, kindness toward others, and love for all. It is as if “an act of God” is forcing us to do that which many prophets and spiritual texts have taught as being necessary for humanity.
To pause in itself is a change of consciousness. I’m choosing to stop and put my usual ways of doing and thinking on hold, so I may be able to hear/experience a deeper spiritual essence. I’m choosing to listen instead. In the midst of my own pause during the day, I visualize energy from my heart expanding outward to do whatever is needed to establish a more conscious planet.
This pandemic can be explained in many ways. Many words will be written about its cause and our responses to it. I choose to believe that in the midst of this chaos, suffering, and caring for our neighbors, we are being provided with a unique opportunity for a reset, a “new game plan”, in how we treat others and the environment that sustains us.
When behind in a game, most coaches call a time out for reflection
and a new game plan.
Would a coach ever say…
“Ok team. We’re getting killed out there. Let’s keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing. It just might work this time. Now get out there and screw it up!
Let’s go!!”
Perhaps this is a forced spiritual retreat! We can take advantage of it by spending our now available time in pausing, reflecting on our essence, and how we each can bring that essence to our family, friends and neighbors.