The Pause
Start From Within
This month, I started working with a new holistic coaching client. We’ll call her Jill. Like many of us, Jill is having some recurring issues and situations that are unpleasant and have plagued her most of her life. She knows she is ready to finally bring them to the surface and then purge them once and for all. Wanting to escape or circumvent the pain is a natural human reaction, so you can imagine her annoyance when I said that this would be our starting point. If we don’t look at our pain, we have no idea where we are wounded, and if we can’t identify our wounds, how can we ever know where to start the process of healing them?
Many of us have been trained or told that the answers we are seeking are external. In Jill’s case, she has been working with traditional therapists, medical professionals, and other modality workers over the years. She has never been able entirely to identify her wound. Jill is an intelligent, can-do, accomplished woman who has spent a lifetime successfully solving problems in the business world. When there is an issue to be resolved, she naturally brings in a cadre of experts to find a solution. While that particular strategy may work in the corporate world, it is ineffective when figuring out what we need in our internal, spiritual worlds. Those answers can only be found by a committee of one - ourselves.
They are internal and require us to pause from the external and go inward until we can hear our voice again. That pause allows us to swim below the surface and explore our own depths. This is where the water can get dark and murky, and many clammer to swim back up to the surface for air. But if we have the courage to hold our breath and explore what has sunk to the bottom of our proverbial seas, we will find our shipwrecks, the ones that haunt the waves that break on the surface.
Pause to Reflect
Pauses are necessary bouts of solitude. They give the authentic self a place to be heard over the loud roar of the ego mind, which is man-made and would like to keep us trapped in pain, self-doubt, limiting beliefs, and the Mac Daddy of them all - fear! A pause can give us the opportunity to challenge what the ego mind is telling us and to stop hiding from our naturally intelligent, naturally wise, naturally perfect, authentic selves. It is where the ego death happens, and our awakening begins. That awakening is where the wounds are felt and identified, and healing begins. It is from this point that the ego self is shed, and we see why certain events and people have come into our lives. We see the divine lessons they are there to teach us, and that understanding is where we begin living in alignment with the authentic self. This is how we begin the process of ascension, which I have always believed is just the path that leads us back home to our spiritual, energetic origins - to our wholeness.
Why are so many of us afraid of these pauses? Why are we fearful of solitude? Why are we afraid to be alone with our own selves without distraction? Why is quiet so frightening? For many of us, the answer is that we need to become more familiar with spending time with ourselves. I have known people who can’t have quiet time because it’s labeled boring or non-productive. I know for me, I was programmed from a very young age that if I was awake, I was to be productive, and how busy and successful I was was a measure of my value. My body and mind would be so exhausted, but the thought of taking a nap was akin to being a lazy sod. I overrode my body's needs and peace of mind to get things done - and for what? To impress whom? I realized I needed to pause from work to concentrate on other areas of my life that I had neglected, so I took the big step of taking the summers off. In that pause, I fed my friendships and other interests, which fed my soul. Wanting to explore where else these pauses could show me, I took an apartment in Spain for a month, and it was there that my desire for a total life makeover was decided. Had I not taken that pause, I could still be going through the motions of a life I could no longer relate to.
Pausing takes a giant leap of faith because it requires us to believe that we actually have the answers we seek inside of us instead of surrendering that to the external world. It takes a leap of faith to trust that the universe has its own divine timing and that what is meant for us will not pass us by. A pause can be a breath before speaking or a years-long sabbatical off the hamster wheel. Pauses are precious chances to reflect, re-group, re-evaluate, re-charge, re-set, and perhaps, re-direct where we are headed. After our pauses (whether pleasant or painful), we emerge with the ability to see, feel, and know ourselves again, or even for the first time.
When the world seems to be running at warp speed, remember - we don’t have to kill ourselves to keep up. If we want life to be more peaceful, more love-filled, more fun, or more authentic to our soul's journey, all we have to do is pause.
Get Aligned in Your Space and Life
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