“Pause before judging, pause before assuming, pause before accusing, pause whenever you’re about to react harshly and you’ll avoid doing and saying things you’ll later regret -Lori Deschene.”
We always live in a rush, and always find something to keep our minds busy. Our mind keeps buzzing with different songs on equally different volumes.
When you don’t practice pause you too often jump to the conclusion without really sitting down and thinking about the whole scenario.
Your mind works like a skyrocket. You don’t even think about where your mind is going. You start with one thought and soon it turns into a giant chain of thoughts. It’s like a monkey jumping from one thought to another. It happens unconsciously. Once it loads, it keeps on flying, And if you forget to land it down, it empties its fuel and collapses your mental state. It happens to almost every person. You know how to think but do not know how to stop it.
What is pausing?
When you speak something in your head, you call it a thought. You talk to yourself too much more than you talk to others. There is a constant conversation in your head that does not let you relax or sleep. Your mind thinks in images, every word you speak creates a thought and every thought creates an image. Thought is nothing but a collective accumulation of words. And every word is concerned with feeling or emotion or the memories stored in your mind.
When you become aware that your mind is constantly producing too many thoughts you have a chance to stop it. Pausing is a state of awareness. When you pause you become aware. You know what is happening inside your brain.
Mind the gap:
You must have heard this phrase when a train arrives at a station or have read its banners around the corners of the street. It means you are told to avoid the significant gap between the train door and the station platform.
The same gap is required between two consecutive thoughts. It is the space where your mind stays still. When you just see things without embracing a single thought. This is absolute awareness, being in the present moment.
“Discover inner space by creating gaps in the stream of thinking. Without those gaps, your thinking becomes repetitive, uninspired, devoid of any creative spark, which is how it still for most people on the planet – A new earth by Eckhart Tolle.”
Spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle, twisted this concept of the gap, he says that the space between thoughts probably arises sporadically. Why we are not been aware of these spaces is, because our consciousness had been mesmerized by the experiences and conditioned to identify with a form that does not become aware of the inner space.
I won’t tell you to meditate or focus on your breathing to experience that gap rather I would suggest you distance yourself from your own thoughts. When you’re stumped by something, albeit an emotional problem or encounter a puzzling situation, or your thoughts keep on going like an express, simply stop, see inside your head, and watch your thoughts.
When you realize your mind is going out of control, try to see what you’re thinking, be a live witness, the moment you step inside your mind, it calms down. You find there is no thought. This is the pause.
This way, you and your thoughts will become separate, it will come but it will go away naturally. Soon, appearance and witness will merge.
This is not tough. I find it helpful to blank stare out of the closed window, and gaze at the sky. Look at anything neutral, a white wall or ceiling. You can practice this anywhere, you don’t need to make a separate time for it.
Your mind is open, clear, and free. Anything can appear in your awareness. The problem is that you identify thoughts and get attached to their appearance.
You’re sitting in a field. Looking up at the sky. Thoughts are the clouds passing by. Just watch them. Allow them to leave your brain, don’t hold them. They appear in your head out of nothing. They come and they go. Just watch them.
Most people practice this when they are in a problem or finding a solution to a problem. But you should do it every time you find yourself drifting away in your thoughts and losing your awareness.
“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy –Guillaume Apollinaire.”
When you find, your mind radio constantly playing different music, press the pause button.
A quick revision for a silent and calm mind:
- Pause is nothing but a break from your thinking process. You better take this break frequently in a day.
- Any time you find yourself drowning in an endless stream of consciousness: stop. Take a step back. Focus on breathing and simply indulge in your work. Let the oxygen flow and let your over-analysis go.
- As soon as you notice your thinking, the thinking stops. Don’t suppress your thoughts, don’t avoid them, let them come and they will go away when you refuse to embrace them.
- Practice 10 minutes of silence in the morning. It can create miracles in your life.
- You can only experience silence if you know the art of witnessing. Where thoughts come and simply pass through your mind.
- The more you practice the witnessing the more easily you will move into the role of witnessing.
- When you mix your thoughts with emotions they become bitter or better. Rather than fighting with the thoughts find that uncomfortable emotion.
