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https://www.marsvenus.com/john-gray-
articles here as well http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-
mars-venus.htm
Power-of-Your-Intuition
THE SACRED delighted or saddened, allowing the feelings to play through
our heart. In a pause we simply discontinue whatever we are
doing—thinking, talking, walking, writing, planning, worrying,
eating—and become wholeheartedly present, attentive and,
PAUSE often, physically still.

A pause is, by nature, time limited. We resume our activi-
Founder of the Insight Meditation ties, but we do so with increased presence and more ability
Community of Washington. Author of to make choices. In the pause before sinking our teeth into a
"Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your chocolate bar, for instance, we might recognize the excited
Life With the Heart of a Buddha" and tingle of anticipation, and perhaps a background cloud of guilt
"True Refuge- Finding Peace and Free- and self-judgment. We may then choose to eat the chocolate,
dom in Your Own Awakened Heart", fully savoring the taste sensations, or we might decide to skip
for more than 35 years Tara Brach has the chocolate and instead go out for a run.
been practicing and teaching Buddhist
meditation, emotional healing and
spiritual awakening, with a focus on When we pause, we don’t know what will happen next. But by
vipassana (mindfulness) meditation. disrupting our habitual behaviors, we open to the possibility of
Visit https://www.tarabrach.com/ new and creative ways of responding to our wants and fears.
Of course there are times when it is not appropriate to pause.
IN OUR LIVES WE OFTEN FIND OURSELVES IN If our child is running towards a busy street, we don’t pause.
SITUATIONS WE CAN’T CONTROL, CIRCUM- If someone is about to strike us, we don’t just stand there,
STANCES IN WHICH NONE OF OUR STRATEGIES resting in the moment—rather, we quickly find a way to defend
WORK. Helpless and distraught, we frantically try to man- ourselves. If we are about to miss a flight, we race toward the
age what is happening. Our child takes a downward turn in gate.
academics and we issue one threat after another to get him
in line. Someone says something hurtful to us and we strike But much of our driven pace and habitual controlling in daily
back quickly or retreat. We make a mistake at work and we life does not serve surviving, and certainly not thriving. It
scramble to cover it up or go out of our way to make up for arises from a free-floating anxiety about something being
it. We head into emotionally charged confrontations nervously wrong or not enough. Even when our fear arises in the face of
rehearsing and strategizing. actual failure, loss or even death, our instinctive tensing and
striving are often ineffectual and unwise.
The more we fear failure the more frenetically our bodies and
minds work. We fill our days with continual movement: mental Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity
planning and worrying, habitual talking, fixing, scratching, to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us. During
adjusting, phoning, snacking, discarding, buying, looking in the the moments of a pause, we become conscious of how the
mirror. feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning
into the future, on our way somewhere else. This gives us a
What would it be like if, right in the midst of this busyness, fundamental choice in how we respond: We can continue our
we were to consciously take our hands off the controls? What futile attempts at managing our experience, or we can meet
if we were to intentionally stop our mental computations and our vulnerability with the wisdom of Radical Acceptance.
our rushing around and, for a minute or two, simply pause and
notice our inner experience? Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly
when it feels most intolerable to do so. Pausing in a fit of an-
Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radi- ger, or when overwhelmed by sorrow or filled with desire, may
cal Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time be the last thing we want to do.
of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving
towards any goal. The pause can occur in the midst of almost Pausing can feel like falling helplessly through space—we have
any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons no idea of what will happen. We fear we might be engulfed by
of our life. the rawness of our rage or grief or desire. Yet without opening
to the actual experience of the moment, Radical Acceptance is
We may take a pause from our ongoing responsibilities by sit- not possible.
ting down to meditate. We may pause in the midst of medita-
tion to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity
breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience.
retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally
wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like
We may pause in a conversation, letting go of what we’re awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance
about to say, in order to genuinely listen and be with the recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible.
other person. We may pause when we feel suddenly moved or

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