by David Kundtz
In both of my fields of work, priesthood and counseling, I have had many occasions to be with people as they are dying. At those moments, the saddest words to hear, and not the least common, are “If only I had known!” or “If only someone had told me!” The implication is that they would have lived their lives very differently and more in line with the truth they now see at the time of their death. And now, of course, they know it's too late. The realization brings a deep sadness.
This has led me to ask myself: Would they really have changed if they knew then what they know now? What if someone had revealed the truth to them? Would that have made a difference? My questions remain answerless until I direct them at myself: What do I need to know now so that I will not be in that situation? Since, as an adult, it is no one's responsibility to tell me what I need to know, what is it that must I tell myself? These are questions that will be answered only in the stillness that allows the hearing of difficult truths and in the slowness that allows me to notice them.
This brings us to another point. It is so obvious that it often escapes our attention. It is this: slowness fosters remembering and speed engenders forgetting. Czech novelist Milan Kundera makes this point eloquently in his novel, Slowness. It is a point not only fundamental to the understanding of Stopping, but essential to living successfully in today's world: “There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and for-getting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.”
Does that ring a bell with you like it did with me? Think of the times when you are trying to remember; you'll notice that you become very still and possibly stare into space. And when we want to forget something? Run, and keep running! Kundera states this truth in the form of equations: “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”
The faster we go, the more we forget. Then what often happens next is that we forget that we have forgotten. What a state to be in! But when we Stop, we remember again and, therefore, find ourselves.
If you can't meditate, vegetate.
MEN'S HEALTH MAGAZINE
8
Contemporary Contemplation
Stopping is not meditation as it is generally understood. It is a practice intended for citizens of the changing of the centuries who have no time to stop and smell the roses or the time or inclination to practice a whole system of daily meditation. It's for people who don't have time to fit in everything they are already obliged to do, never mind trying to fit in extras like meditating twice a day. Stopping is what I call contemporary contemplation. It is a variety of meditation for those too busy (or maybe moving too fast?) to meditate; it's a way to care for the soul for those who wouldn't otherwise have time.
Stopping is specifically designed for people who are looking for a simple, uncomplicated, non-dogmatic yet effective way to cope with a too-busy life. While respecting and teaching many of the concepts and practices of Eastern (for example Buddhist) systems, Stopping embodies the cultural outlook and customs of the western mind: it's brief, simple to learn, and effective.
From the time I first learned about meditation in my youth to well into the overbusy days of my adult life, meditation has been a challenge for me. It's not that I don't like it; I do. It's not that I have not done it; I have, for some periods of time, with success. I've also read many books on it. Certainly I know that when I do it, I benefit. It's just that I so often find my resistance to meditation stronger than my motivation. It's still hard to get it done. No doubt a simple case of the spirit is willing (but maybe not naturally inclined?) but the flesh is weak (or otherwise ill-adapted?).
Stopping, because it is less structured, works better for me and for many of my clients, although the end results and some of the processes are almost the same as those of meditation. While I still occasionally meditate in a formal, somewhat structured way, I am always Stopping—many times a day, many more times a month, many, many more times a year. I don't find myself resisting Stopping as I do meditation. In fact, I look forward to it.
Perhaps it is a matter of personal preference. The words of Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a pioneer in training doctors in relationship-centered care, apply so well here: “I am not much of a meditator,” she says in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom. “No matter. I have come to suspect that life itself may be a spiritual practice. The process of daily living seems able to refine the quality of our humanity over time.” Yes. The intention of Stopping is to help us notice, enrich, and augment “the process of daily living.”
One of the purposes of any kind of contemplation is to awaken us, to help us to be in the present moment, so that in the moments ahead we will be on the right track. The word contemplation has Latin roots in words that indicate an intensive time spent in the temple to be aware of the signs and omens of the times. Contemplation prepares us for the present moment (and thus for whatever is next) and for what we need to notice now to enjoy success in whatever we are beginning.
I learned the hard way that if I undertook a self-improvement or spiritual project—anything from trying to lose a few pounds or quitting cigarettes to trying to be more patient with a difficult co-worker or less angry and aggressive while driving in traffic—it was doomed to failure if I did not begin the project from a Stopped position. In this way, Stopping is a preparation for the challenges that face us at every turn and even the challenges that we propose and welcome.
The reason why so many of our well-intentioned projects fail is not from a lack of goodwill, not from a failure of willpower or determination, and not from a moral or character weakness. It's that we start these projects from a too-busy, distracted, and unfocused position. It's no wonder they often fail. So Stopping is a first step, a beginning, a prelude. It's the condition we need to be in so that our projects succeed. Beginners are welcome here.
A too-busy, distracted, and unfocused life also kills the power of imagination, an essential part of any healthy life. If we cannot imagine what we dream or passionately desire, we will never be able to realize it. Stopping is a friend of imagination. During a time of Stopping, our imaginations are given space and encouragement to soar.
Stopping is also a primer for some of the more challenging spiritual books and systems that are offered today in such large numbers and various forms. Stopping allows you to be more receptive and positively critical, more frankly understanding or confused, and, ultimately, more successful in whatever you are attracted to adopt and practice.
Stopping can help bring you to the right teacher, can help you recognize your teacher when he or she appears, and can help you to understand that all good teachers should respect your wisdom and shouldn't take themselves too seriously. In that vein, it seems appropriate for to me to say that if Stopping does not do for you what I am saying it can, if it does not bring you into contact with your important questions, and it does not help you to become more awake and remember who you are and what you want, then, of course, you must reject it out of hand.
I am the rest between two notes. . . .
RAINER MARIA RILKE
9
Finding the Spaces Between the Notes
You'll notice that I quote poets quite a bit. I believe they are the ones of us who see most clearly. That's because they are always looking at life. So even though it may seem that they are difficult to understand (just what does Walt Whitman mean when he says “I loafe and invite my soul”?), their vision, once felt, is the clearest we have. So you will find me quoting people like Frost and Rilke, Neruda and Angelou, and the ancients, Horace and Cicero, because they are always looking at life, and looking leads to se
eing what's there. Teilhard De Chardin, priest, paleontologist, and visionary, teaches that “the whole of life lies in the verb seeing.” So my goal with the poets is to help us see what they see.
Poets are the visionaries I turn to when I need to find my way, when I need to see a true and unadorned reflection of myself, or when I need to learn useful skills for my journey. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke was a passionate and intensely personal poet. In the following poem he gives beautiful expression to the meaning of Stopping. It is from his Book of Hours, (10) (translated by Robert Bly):
My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
for Death's note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.
What can we learn from this? In the first stanza, the poet tells us not to mistake his “hurrying,” fast-moving life (“steeply sloping hour”) for the authentic and deep life that is really his. No. His life is more, so much more, than that.
“Much stands behind me” represents all that he has to keep in his mind, to be aware of, and to remember, and “like a tree,” he stands there and embraces it all. In the wonderful line “I am only one of my many mouths,” the poet seems to ask us not to be fooled. Of all the things that he has said, only a few are really his. Of all the mouths from which he speaks, only one is authentic, and that one will be the first to be stilled. By death? By intimidation? By wisdom?
He is, he says, “the rest between two notes” of a song. Think of it. Think not of the beautiful, rich tones of the notes. Notes are what we hear, they are the wonderful things of our lives: the events and people. But “Death's note wants to climb over” or dominate, and thus the notes are “somehow always in discord.” Without the rest between, without the “dark interval” where values and meanings have their origins, the Death note would win. But it doesn't have to win. During the rest, life happens, value and meaning are given form, the soul deepens its reach, and the song is saved once again. And it goes on being saved again and again and again in all the pauses, long and short, of the song each of us is singing.
The poet asks that we do not define him as the rushing around that we see him doing, but that we should define him as the pause between the events to which and from which we see him rushing; because it is precisely during the pause that the quality of the notes, and his true life, is born.
The poet asks us to be, like him, the rest between the notes: that brief, measured moment between the time when one note of the music stops and another begins. Without that rest, all would be chaotic racket. “Death”—that is, distraction and forgetting— would dominate when all you fill your life with are the notes. All notes and no rests would be Babel. The sound would not be music; it would be more like a siren. But in the “reconciliation” of that “dark interval,” the song “goes on, beautiful” because it's there that all the notes become organized and melodic. It is there that they take on meaning and give value.
Here's a practical example for noticing the rests between the notes: You've jumped into your car after dropping off a package at the post office and are on your way to an appointment. You're thinking of what you just did or what you will soon have to do. Dropping off the package and your appointment are your “notes.” You do those well. You are busy getting the notes right. But what you likely miss is the right-now, the in-between, the time between the notes, the time in the car when you are going from one thing to another. That's the time I want you to notice. That's the time the poet calls valuable.
Pianist Artur Schnabel, in speaking of his music, makes this point exactly: “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where art resides!” It is also where the art of living resides and where we transform discordant noise into the music of our lives.
Stopping is taking notice of the space between the notes. Stopping is making the space between the notes important. Stopping is transforming the space between the notes into life-giving waking up and remembering.
Beyond living and dreamingthere is something more important:waking up.
ANTONIO MACHADO Times Alone (Translated by Robert Bly)
10
Stopped: Awake and Remembering
Picture a lone traveler on a journey, paused at a fork in the road, considering the moment, fully awake, poised, not rushed, aware of his or her power, and, only when the time is right, choosing the road and continuing the journey. A decision thus made cannot be wrong. The journey will be successful, whatever its outcome. The pilgrim is awake and recalls the answers to the important questions of life.
Now imagine another traveler stumbling down the road, frantic with anxiety, unfocused, dropping things along the way, unable to distinguish accurate directions from false ones, tattered, exhausted and, without thought, taking the fork in the road that's the closest. Not an appealing model nor one we would choose to imitate. Yet most of us do. Racing from thing to thing or from note to note, in a frantic attempt to keep up or to catch up, we lose our keys, our plane ticket, our date book, ourselves.
Here is an example from my college years: It was at Georgetown University, 1955. So taken up was I with the shouts of “revolt!” that I walked boldly out of class one day with hundreds of freshmen, practically our entire class. I have now forgotten what the intended revolt was about, some perceived inequality no doubt, but we were clearly serious. We had organized the revolt, kept it secret, and then screamed it to the world as we marched onto the football field, daring university officialdom to oppose us.
Then Joe Rock appeared out of nowhere. He was a 250-pound Jesuit priest—most of it belly—with a snarl calculated to induce terror and immediate submission into the heart of any faint-hearted freshman. He lectured us for fifteen minutes with studied gesticulations and barely controlled roars. I can still hear his voice: “There will be no revolt! I'll give you three reasons why there will be no revolt!” Joe Rock always had three reasons for everything even though we were convinced he was thinking up the second and third as he was expounding the first. It was during his “three-reason” lecture that I remembered something: I am not a revolutionary, don't really want to be a revolutionary, and would make a lousy revolutionary.
I had hit the ground running, I had begun this revolt without being awake or mindful. In no way was I Stopped. Neither, it seemed, were my cohorts. We were simply caught up in the heat of the moment. So Joe Rock's posturing easily worked. In fact, I was thinking during his lecture, “He's right, this is silly, this makes no sense at all. . . .” Some revolutionary.
Being awake—knowing who you are—and paying attention to what is going on both inside and outside of you, is close to what the Eastern spiritual traditions call mindfulness. It involves being very present to this moment, to what you are now doing, to this feeling, and to this person in front of you. It is what newspaper columnist Adair Lara means when she relays the story of what her mother wanted on her birthday, “presence not presents.” It is noticing the tone of someone's voice and their body language, as well as noticing those things in yourself. It is seeing the many things that occur in your day and quickly establishing whether they are important or trivial. It is tuning in to other people and yourself. Being awake is a very in-the-moment act; an act of right now. It is the opposite of being distracted and unfocused.
Stopping brings you awake and aware of the present moment. But it also helps you bring together the threads of your history, of your stories. It helps you to remember who you are, where you come from, where you are going, and where you want to go; to remember your original goals, ideals, and dreams; and to remember
why you started doing what you do so that you can see if that's still what you want to do. Even if you have no clear answers for many of the big questions of life, it is vital to continue to remember what your questions are. Losing your questions is truly losing your way.
Stopping is also remembering in a more literal sense: remembering. That is, to collect again all the parts of you that have been left behind or scattered about in your hurry and to get all your “members” back again into a cohesive whole. The poet Robert Bly speaks of the “bag we drag behind us” as full of those parts that we have lost the use of—our innocence, our spontaneity, or our playfulness. Stopping is reclaiming those parts we did not want to lose, the parts that were stuffed in the bag, maybe years ago, and are hidden and forgotten.
These two gems, awake and remembering, are the essential elements of Stopping.
Carpe diem!
HORACE, Odes
11
Stop and Go for It!
Stopping is simple to understand. It's a period of time spent doing nothing in order to gain everything. It's taking enough time and creating enough quietude so that you can remember the important questions of your life as well as the current answers that you are bringing to them.
Stopping is a girl sitting in a sun-filled windowseat gently stroking her purring cat, a woman with an open book in her lap gazing out the window and into a distant world, a man walking barefoot along an isolated beach feeling the wind in his face, a driver poised at a stoplight taking a deep breath and relaxing with a soothing thought rather than just wishing for the light to change, a busy nurse taking a one-minute breather and then smiling at her nasty patient, and a salesman mindfully eating his lunch while sitting on a park bench and looking at the sky.