The ability to “Pause” :::::

All of us encounter numerous situations during our living day. It is how we behave in these situations, that makes our day a good day or a bad day!!

More often than not we always REACT to a situation. This REACTION comes from our own individual biases / prejudices / mindsets all of which are nothing but an assimilation from situations in the past that one has been a witness to. So each of us would REACT differently because each of us has an unique bias / prejudice / mindset as each of us have traversed a different and unique journey in our respective lives!! This predetermined “unique program” determines our behaviour.

So all our REACTIONS are based on our PAST and therefore our PAST continues to dictate our present and thereby our future too!! We tend to live a life driven by our compulsion. The REACTIONS are therefore part of our compulsive behaviour. It is not based on our CONSCIOUS and AWARE behaviour. Would we not like to break free from our past and thereby craft our present and our future on an entirely new format? Is there a way to do this?

I guess yes, we could craft and engineer our own present and thereby, also our futures. If we could handle every situation with a Response and not a Reaction. We should RESPOND and not REACT. But how? By not allowing our compulsive behaviour to come to the fore. Inserting a deliberate PAUSE between the situation and our response to it. If we were to cultivate the PAUSE, we could develop the ability to RESPOND and not REACT.

Our breathing itself is a big metaphorical example. A simple act of breathing, which in itself is a sign of our being alive, is not well understood. If we cease to breathe, we are considered dead!  More often than not if you ask people to explain what is breathing you may get a response like “ a process with alternate inhalations and exhalations”. But is that really so? If we carefully observe this most precious of life processes, it is in four steps and not two. An Inhalation, a pause, an exhalation, another pause..... and then the whole sequence is repeated... till our last moment in life when we breath our last breath.  In Sanskrit it is explained as [1] Inhalation (Puraka), [2] Pause with fullness of breath (Kumbhaka),  [3] Exhalation (Rechaka), [4] Pause with emptiness of breath ( Shoonyaka). The pause with fullness of breath and emptiness of breath are vital for we cannot always keep inhaling OR always keep exhaling. It is by virtue of the pause that we are able to exhale and inhale alternately, thereby keeping us alive!!

So the pause is almost always ignored and not recognised. But if we were to do it with the fullest of awareness, maybe we would be able to cultivate the ability to PAUSE in our response to the many situations that we find ourselves in, during our daily life. 

Without the pause our tendency is to react. With a pause, we can respond instead of react. The pause helps us consciously free ourselves from our compulsions. During the pause, we should exercise our pure intellect untouched by our biases and try and look at things as they truly are. And then respond with the awareness that what we give out in terms of thoughts, words and actions will surely come back to us in like measure. This way, we would free ourselves of our karmic baggage slowly. At least we would not pile up even more karmic baggage!!