“Focusing is a force for peace because it frees people from being manipulated by external authority, cultural roles, ideologies and the internal oppression of self attacking and shame. This freeing has to do with an ability to pause the on-going situation and create a space in which a felt sense can form.” – Mary Hendricks-Gendlin, Ph.D., Focusing as a Force for Peace: The Revolutionary Pause, Keynote Address to the Fifteenth Focusing International Conference 2003, in Germany
There are many ways in which the ‘pause’ can be invited in. And, the practice of A Year to Live introduces ‘the pause’ into my life. For instance, when I arise first thing in the morning, and recommit myself to treating this particular day as possibly my last. It brings a pause in my egocentricity, a gap in which the body-environment interaction can be felt as the on-going process.
The empowering pause has developed in many ways in the last two decades, in various methods of inquiry and dialogical communication. It’s a word that I see regularly in the secular mindfulness literature; e.g in the magazine Mindful. This is a primary effect of mindulness, to introduce the living gap into our mindstream.
Think of something you learnt, sometime, which at that time helped you go deeper, helped you find some space for difficult situations. No doubt the pause was there. To name just three approaches: Gendlin’s Focusing, as Mary Hendricks-Gendlin says; Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication is empowered by the pause; or, in the mindfulness sphere, there’s Gregory Kramer’s Insight Dialogue. (All these can be seen as part of a wider movement which is developing what Gene Gendlin refers to as the ‘product’ of this age: “inter-human communication.”)
The reason that my life-long inspiration Socrates valued the unhurried life was that it is a life in touch with our deepest reaches; from whence we can examine life. Socrates valued the examined life, a result of which can be that we step out of the flow of time, and touch the timeless. (Theaetetus 172c– 173b). Now, that is a pause.
The mindful pause is a space which transforms our understanding of ourselves, our relationships, and life itself. Then, we can enter the market place freely; or, like Socrates, enter death freely.
My joy, these days is to dwell on-goingly in the completeness of Being. Being, for me, always brings the pause. Being is all pause. From here, my words, actions, and my thinking, can form more appropriately. Relating to my situation then feels – even when difficult – like it is, after all, only a human situation.
And, when there’s no question to be answered, decision to be made, or whatever, then I can rest in the great (…..) which is the basis of peace.
In Theaetetus Socrates comments: “Well, look at the man who has been knocking about in law courts and such places ever since he was a boy; and compare him with the man brought up in philosophy, in the life of a student. It is surely like comparing the upbringing of a slave with that of a free man. Because the one man always has what you mentioned just now—plenty of time. When he talks, he talks in peace and quiet, and his time is his own. It is so with us now: here we are beginning on our third new discussion; and he can do the same, if he is like us, and prefers the newcomer to the question in hand. It does not matter to such men whether they talk for a day or a year, if only they may hit upon that which is. But the other—the man of the law courts—is always in a hurry when he is talking; he has to speak with one eye on the clock” (Trans. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away).
The choices are not so easily made now. (Although, Socrates did pay for it with his life.) So, I admire greatly those people who are trying to transform the marketplace; who attempt to bring the pause into their workplaces – even into the courts themselves. May their activities bear immeasurable fruit.