Dear friends,
When did you last slow down?
When did you last stop?
I don't mean involuntary stopping,
For example in the way that we all have to stop for a red light.
Neither do I mean stopping where we fall ill,
Where our bodies take charge and we are forced to come to a halt.
What I'm talking about in this meditation is simple stopping.
A stop for its own sake.
I'm sure we can all think of advantages that come about from the act of stopping.
The benefits that are freely available if only we allow ourselves space to receive them.
Yes,
If only.
But if we are caught up in a treadmill of constant activity,
These gifts will pass us by and we will be much the poorer.
It's clear that stopping must help us to avoid stress and burnout.
And coming back to life,
Even after a brief pause,
We will be better able to focus,
More capable of living calmly and more mindfully.
We'll be better able to weigh up the pros and the cons of the decisions to be made in life.
This will help us bring about more satisfactory outcomes.
And another point,
Some of our most creative moments come to us while we are stopped.
Think of the ideas that cross your mind if you allow yourself to lie in that half-awake,
Dreamlike state before jumping out of bed in the morning.
And as an aside,
And while we're on the subject of thoughts that come to us in those times of reverie,
Think of how useful it will be to keep pen and paper near your bed to capture those fleeting inspirations.
And on the physical side,
Making time to stop gives us an opportunity to recharge our ever-draining batteries as we travel on the journey of life.
Just as important,
Stopping brings us back into the present moment.
And when we become aware of our existence in the here and now,
We are filled with a sense of gratitude,
Wonder and awe.
A pause allows us to give thanks for the many benefits of our lives,
Some of them unnoticed in the busy days.
And we get an opportunity to think with gratitude of all the people in our lives who make a difference to us.
And refreshed with that sense of thankfulness,
We can improve our relationships by remembering to look on other people with compassion.
We are encouraged to spread love and kindness far and wide.
The ripples of goodness arising from the simple act of stopping radiate out from us.
They shine out and out,
And they travel on and on.
When we consider all the benefits that flow from stopping,
Isn't it surprising that we find it so difficult to pause and stop?
In this wonderful but fast-changing and ever more hectic world,
We are faced with opportunities for distraction on all sides.
When did you last see,
When did you ever see,
An advertisement encouraging you to do nothing?
And when we finally decide to stop,
It's usually so that we can immediately start working on something else.
And what do we do when we come across a moment of silence?
We reach for our phones,
Our tablets,
Our remote controls,
And we open the window of distraction once again.
Why?
Sometimes we are hesitant to accept the gift of silence,
Afraid to receive the benefits offered to us by solitude.
Max Ehrman of Desiderata fame lived out his life in a much quieter period of history.
Born in 1872,
He died in 1945.
You will have come across his well-known poem in which he encourages us to go placidly amid the noise and haste.
Max described our position perfectly when he said,
A Saint Vitus dance has seized us.
This observation was made in his poem The Moon.
I would,
If I could,
Bring back into fashion the moon and the stars,
The dawn and the sunset.
I rarely hear anyone speak of them.
One would think these perpetual wonders had passed from sight.
There is peace and rest in the contemplation of these miracles that nature paints on the canvas of the sky.
But we do not want peace and rest.
We are enamoured of noise and motion.
A Saint Vitus dance has seized us.
Things must change.
The nerves have a limit of endurance.
Tonight I looked at the moon for a while.
There was a faint circle around it.
A friend came by and asked what was I looking at.
I pointed to the moon.
I don't see anything.
The moon,
I said.
He chuckled and went on.
He will report me as growing queer.
The mystery of the night and our own mystery.
Who knows what we are?
No science has yet grasped us.
The moon,
The beautiful mystical moon,
Playing nightly to empty seats.
Words for our time by Max Ehrman.
So following the advice of Max Ehrman to find peace and rest,
I invite you to take part in a stopping experiment right now.
I'm sure you have often noticed that even when we stop,
We feel that the stopping has to have a purpose.
We might stop one activity only to fill the time gained with something else.
An example would be this.
We stop to meditate and that's not a bad thing.
On the contrary,
Meditation is a very good thing,
But it is not stopping in the sense of stopping to do nothing.
Stopping to meditate is stopping with an agenda.
So what I invite you to do now for just two minutes is to stop and do nothing.
The invitation is to stop for its own sake.
So no instructions as to what is to be done except the act of stopping.
No suggestion as to something on which we have to reflect or meditate.
Neither is there a direction to keep your mind clear.
Nothing at all like that.
We are all simply going to stop and do absolutely nothing.
Let's see how we do.
Two minutes for this.
Welcome back.
Tell me how did that feel?
How long has it since you stopped without an agenda?
I'd love to hear from you in the comments afterwards.
Now I hope you don't think that I'm preaching to you.
I need this message just as much as you do and I suspect even more.
I find it hard to stop,
Although we are recommended to stop and pause briefly between activities.
And as for simply stopping for a number of minutes with absolutely no agenda,
I need that practice as well.
Something that might help us to take and enjoy the very brief pauses that we are recommended to take during the day would be to place a tiny red sticker in various places,
So that we'll be reminded to stop each time we see one of them.
I have one on the back of my phone.
It reminds me to stop briefly before answering or making a call.
There is one on the side of my computer screen,
One to the left of my mirror to bring me back to mindfulness when I stop to wash my face or brush my teeth.
I can think of other places where promptings are needed as well.
On the dashboard of my car for instance.
I must put one there.
Little aids like this are designed to give us a reminder.
A reminder to offer ourselves and the world the gift of stopping.
The pause might be just for a second or two between activities.
It could be a reflective second before answering the phone or the door.
We can benefit also by allowing ourselves a longer pause or two in the course of the day.
A period of some minutes where we can come back to ourselves and check if we are moving in the intended direction.
We carry out this check from time to time when driving,
So why not on the journey of life itself?
I'd like to leave you now with a poem from Pablo Neruda.
Its title,
Keeping Quiet.
Now we will count to 12 and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth.
Let's not speak in any language.
Let's stop for a second and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush,
Without engines.
We would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales,
And the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
Wars with gas,
Wars with fire,
Victories with no survivors,
Would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity.
Life is what it's about.
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing,
Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to 12 and you keep quiet and I will go.
Words from Pablo Neruda.
Namaste.
