Break for Clarity and Peace
Still flooding us is constant and continual noise - digital noise, emotional noise, spiritual noise. Silence is a rarity and now more than ever has become a sacred resource. Despite knowing that, people fear silence because they often associate quietness with emptiness or loneliness and unfortunately, for some reason, discomfort. Don’t be deceived. Silence is not empty and it is not emptiness. Silence is full. Silence is full of life. Silence is full of truth. Silence is full of wisdom. Silence is full of rebirth and restoration. It can only be heard when the world around you shuts down the loudness just long enough for your soul to communicate.
Breaking is a mindful moment when you intentionally stop. You stop reacting, stop rushing, stop pushing, and stop performing. Find that space between the breath you are about to take and the breath you about to take next. Clarity lives in stillness. Learn to recalibrate in order to find the center of your being.
Walking through life on autopilot is also an automatic trigger. As things happen or begin to unfold, we feel an instant urge to respond, to fix it, to move it, to make it better. We do this from habit. We do this from routine. We do this as a “fight or flight” response. But when we learn to hesitate or prolong our movements and reactions, it gives us time to breathe again. It gives us time to feel the moment and call upon wisdom, whether it’s from our spiritual belief or religious faith or if it’s from just taking the time to use mindfulness to see a situation from all angles before responding. Whatever it is, use that time to align wisdom than to leap into action.
Remember mindfulness reminds us that the mind is a spectacularly vivid storyteller. It has made a fortune narrating, judging, predicting, and replaying incidents in our heads that have not yet come true and in many cases they do not. It’s the deeper self by way of your soul that helps separate the imaginary tales of wonder with the actual factual presence of activity in the moment. Taking time to reset the balance and quieting the mind helps distinguish differences between the two events, but it’s up to you to decide what you choose to believe. Choosing pressure instead of presence leads to an undetermined destination. I can rattle off numerous times demonstrating how choosing to sleep on something that has angered me has served me in a thousand more positive ways. I have seen the other side of responding off of anger and emotion without taking the requisite time to find my breath and regain my mental equilibrium.
Taking a mindful break is not a retreat and moreover, it is not a surrender. It’s a reset and a rebirth. Stress is too often a result that carries unnecessary and avoidable emotional physical impairments – shortening of breath (causing chest restriction), your muscles contract, your thoughts become short-sighted, and then that emotional noise reappears. This noise is deafening and clouds that clarity. Conversely, the opposite, taking that much needed restful break to reflect, releases muscle tension, lessens the stress on your mind and on your heart and confusion subsides.
Moment of truth – I wish taking a pause or break or mindful walk could be a complete problem-solver, but it is not. Anxiety will still exist. Worry will still persist. And fear of a new or of the next moment will cause uncertainty. But, when we begin to take a kind rebirth approach, knowing that every moment is new and unforeseen, a new uncertainty emerges. However, we can feel comfort and peace knowing that the way that we have decided to move forward has that foundation of compassion and positive intention. And that compassion is built on a foundation that seeks to protect both sender and receiver. In other words, I mean to respond in a way that seeks the peace and divinity alignment in both of us because hopefully we are both seeking to better understand our interconnected nature.
Consider the rebirth of breaking and hesitation to deepen your relationship with one of life’s even more precious gifts – time. Let urgency respond to emergency (and even here unless you are an ER doctor or first-responder, be cautious). Responses led by urgency in normal life lead to suffering in that we can’t always fix the things that are broken around us fast enough. On the other hand however, presence is a spiritual response. Conscious decision using wisdom is a transformative result of experience.
This type of pausing action, a mindful break from urgency and auto-response, is a tool of a Kind Rebirth. Each moment is a tiny version of a resurrection where we choose centered clarity over personal pandemonium.
Remember the peace and patience of presence can hold you, guide you, and restore you.
Stay mindful…
Rebirth
