Pause - A Spiritual Power: Discovering the Entrance to Our Spirituality

Introduction

Thirty-eight years on from my first encounter with spirituality and religion, a friend asked if I really believed all that stuff. By that stuff, he was referring to a traditional paint-by-numbers religion, the kind that talks of spirituality in material terms. Being challenged to articulate what I believed in caused me to separate my personal spirituality from my tribe’s portrayal of what is spiritual. What I had begun to understand about spirituality was quite different from anything I’d heard in my church.

It is a strange and exposing thing to unfold our inner thoughts in public, yet here I will. For many years I have read books on spirituality and made attempts to practice spiritual exercises. Much of my own personal spiritual journey has been in contrast to those around me. I was brought up in a home where God and spirituality had no place, and so when I first encountered religious life it was all new to me. I was like a sponge drawing in everything I saw and heard.

Spirituality, so I was led to believe, is expressed in actions. Being good and kind and not smoking or getting drunk seemed to be the marks of a spiritual person. So I tried to clean up my act, as it were, which made me a little judgmental of others. Then I found that knowing what we stood for in our religion and being able to articulate these things accurately to others was a sign of my spiritual progress. I became quite convinced the world was a black-and-white place, a world of those in and those outside the club. I honestly thought being spiritual was about believing and doing right things.

For too many years spirituality for me was intellectual and physical. It’s not.

Spirituality is distinct from rational thought. Spirituality is not an activity of the mind, an act of thinking. I have come to recognize that to grasp this is hard but not impossible.

Likewise, spirituality is not about what we do. We tend to see religion as our spiritual life, and often we go to temples, mosques, or churches thinking we are being spiritual by being present or performing rituals. Yet religion tends to make the pursuit of spirituality into actions and ministries and programs.

But spirituality is not a doing thing or speaking thing. It is not meditating or contemplating. It’s not prayer or preaching. These may bring us close to the doorway of spirituality, but in and of themselves they are not spirituality.

You may not, but I happen to believe God exists, and I identify as a practicing Christian. That doesn’t mean I accept all Christian teaching or reject all other wisdom, religious or not. In this book I will express how spirituality is fundamentally about the spirit that is within us, how when we acknowledge the role of our spirit within we enter what I describe as a pause. I ask just one thing of you: whatever religious affiliation or philosophical perspective you hold, that you recognize you have a spirit. My hope is that as we journey through these chapters you will come to a place not of greater intellectual understanding, though that will be good, but to a place of communion and participation with the spirit within you.

For many years my friend Paul and I met once a week for what we called Silent Prayers.

Before spirituality came to the fore of our friendship, Paul and I shared some mutual interest, along with others in our circle, in moaning about politics, prices, and people. But our friendship drove us deeper, and Paul and I decided to set off on a shared spiritual journey. We decided to share in this designated time of Silent Prayer.

Sitting in silence for prayers was for us a different way to meet and influence each other. Each Thursday at four in the afternoon we sat together behind the closed door to my office for thirty minutes. We didn’t talk but remained in silence.

At first it was hard to block out the background sounds that pierced the walls. My office was on the first floor of the busy community charity building where at the time I was the CEO. Directly underneath us was a cycle repair workshop – the ringing of hammers on metal and the noisy banter of the volunteers sounded loud and clear. To add to the cacophony were the furniture reuse teams shouting instructions as they loaded waiting delivery vehicles. A partition wall separated us from the finance office where our normally quiet and amazing administrator, Caroline, would occasionally burst out with a word in her native German – always entertaining.

I first met Paul after he retired from a career in marketing and sales. He joined the charity as a volunteer. In fact he joined a very specific group of enthusiasts bent on rescuing and restoring anything with two wheels. They were passionate about helping people lay hold of a cheap cycle.

Paul had long practiced meditation, much in the way you might think a Buddhist would. His education and the formation of his early encounter with spirituality had been delivered by monks. He has what I refer to as a rounded appreciation of reflective spirituality. Perhaps this came from his early years of experience in lighting a candle and watching the light flicker or hearing the nightly sound of compline being chanted. It was on my own spiritual journey that Paul helped me to see the value of making room in your day for intentionally holding a mirror to your soul. He would always say that we ask too many questions and that the questions we ask are invariably answered in silence.

You might question why we chose that particularly loud corner of a public building to attempt silent prayers. It may seem that it would have been easier had we found a quieter place to develop a new spiritual exercise. Yet learning spiritual reflection and meditation in a place filled with distractions seemed more realistic to me. I liked to know what’s going on in my organization, so the noise was stimulating. In a strange way it comforted me. And in seeking silence I learnt quickly that the internal noise started to drown out the external, and that this is where a more refined and reflective spirituality began to emerge.

And so we sat in silence and in prayer. Eventually my body would become relaxed, not restless, and my mind would stop whirring or working things out.

Before my work took me elsewhere, Paul and I managed almost ten years of Thursdays sitting in silence. It was a starting place for a deeper understanding of what I will share with you as a call to moments of pause.

Along my journey, one I continue to travel, I have learned that we can move beyond concern for our body and our thoughts. I discovered that, occasionally, a place of access to the spirit within us opens up. Right there is where pause is found.

There are many ways in which we can find moments of pause. Pause is a familiar word we use without thinking. Pause the TV whilst I’m on the phone, we shout to the kids. We pause for a comfort break after a meeting. In a crime novel we read, He pauses before taking the shot. But in the context of this book, I use this word to describe a space between our normal rational approach to life and the spiritual world at the very edge of all we can imagine, a world just at the fingertips of our mortal grasp. The need for, access to, and gain from a mental or physical rest is obvious to many of us. What’s more elusive is the realm of the spirit within us. Could there be access points or triggers we can encounter or use to deepen our moments of pause? This book seeks to open up that question and offer some reflection as we inch forward in our quest for a richer spirituality.

Along our journey, with all its talk and travel, its hustle and bustle, we can encounter moments when words cannot be found, when the walking is complete and where our will is for nothing beyond that moment. That moment is where the power of a pause opens our eyes to see what is always present, the spirit within us.

Many of the insights and experiences I share are personal, and my hope is that from them you may draw fuel for your own spiritual quest. Just such a quest has led me to what might be described as deep and rich encounters with my own being. From those with a belief in God we might hear a pause described as a place so personally intimate that it is where the kiss of God is most warmly felt. You will find your own way of experiencing this inner place.

I’ve never been comfortable with suggesting that my own pathway to spirituality is one of certainty for others. The very nature of our spiritual journey is that of individuality – it is just that – our journey. I have discovered over decades what I now describe as a pause, and this creates for me a sense of familiarity and confidence in how I express it. But to describe the pathway to a pause in the way, say, you would for making a cake would be to oversimplify how it is reached. I cannot give a cause-and-effect guarantee. Many of us have grown beyond the instructional, even fashionable, directives of what constitutes spirituality. This is because spirituality is in large part a mystery. I cannot say, If you breathe this way and sit that way you will experience a moment of pause, because spirituality is much more subtle and personal than that.

What I place before you is not certainty, but simply the road which I travel, a road which I have found to bear signs of wisdom and hints of possibility. It is a road I invite you to walk with me now.

My friend Paul – like many who seek spirituality, God, or a deeper understanding – never aligned himself with any particular religious affiliation. He was not tribal, and this enhanced our conversation and prayer time. Our only rule was observe silence.

You may come to realize that I have beliefs in a number of areas, but please know I don’t ask or need you to come to them in the same way. To bend an ancient Jewish text, "We are individually and wonderfully made." We are not all the same, and in that is the most wonderful bit. Like an exotic fruit, the spirit within is not hanging from one specific tree that we all harvest from in the same way.

I don’t need you to believe what I believe. But I have tasted something with my spiritual taste buds – pause – and my desire is that you too will taste and see that it is beyond the conventions of belief and religion.

Over the years I have identified a moment of pause as having a central definition: the moment our body, mind, and spirit coalesce in an unmeasurable, unrestricted moment. At just such points of experience our being has no conscious awareness of the need to be anyone or anywhere else in that given moment. Our intellectual capacity is vital, our body is an amazing structure, yet I want to show how much richer life is when we see we are more than our thoughts and more than our physical bodies.

I ask that you might walk with me to seek out moments of pause in the ordinary and chaotic, and in the general run of life both planned and impromptu, where we discover the precious reality of our whole being at rest and in concert.

Pause

Part One

What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why We Need It

"Some reduce themselves to a life lived within the limits of their five senses."¹

But it doesn’t have to be so.

Chapter 1

The Problem and Promise of Pause

Imagine spending three hours hiking to the brow of a hill which gives way to a breathtaking view. From such views we instinctively sense something – our spirit draws life from creation. Still and sitting, we begin to take it all in as we pour hot coffee from the thermos flask. These are brief but wonderful moments.

A small grey patch of cloud bleeds into the clear sky, stealing the moment. It threatens to rain on us, an unwelcome soaking. Now, all we can think of is the long precarious walk downhill to the car. At first we consider sticking it out, so we dismiss the idea of turning back. But that thought is short-lived as we remember that we hadn’t packed for bad weather. The moment has gone! The cloud is now filling our hearts, not just the sky. We eat with haste and drink the coffee before it has cooled, and set off downhill.

Two damp and drizzly hours later, feeling hot and sticky, we are sitting steaming up the windows in the car. Holding the key in the ignition, I try to retain the brief but extraordinary sense of being alive that I had at the hilltop where momentarily our journey had been rewarded with a spiritual connection to the beauty before me.

The moment is gone. But while the rain may have dampened my mood, the breathtaking view would have delighted my spirit. It was a moment of spiritual pause, well worth the climb and the journey.

During my first ten years of growing and developing a small local charity helping people with practical support, we had many consecutive hilltop moments, successes if you will. It was a time when we bounced from one new project to the next without catching breath. We were always so propelled towards the next exciting thing, it was a challenge to stop and enjoy the achievements along the way. At the launch event of a cycle repair shop for young people, we resented having to stop our work for a dignitary visit and a photo opportunity. Our feeling was this was time we could have spent more productively. Standing and smiling for the camera in a new workshop was time we could have spent fixing bikes or teaching skills. It was never natural or comfortable for me to pause the operational activity to savor or celebrate a milestone.

There are clearly times when we arrive at a place that feels naturally ripe for a break, an opportunity to enjoy what has been gained or reached. Yet many of us are wired to press on. In doing so we miss the promise of a memorable moment.

In Scotland, mountains over 3,000 feet are called a Munro. To climb and reach the top means you have bagged a Munro. I once met a Munro-bagger who was on target to ascend all 282. He described reaching the top, ticking that particular Munro off his list and then continuing on. Sometimes he didn’t even stop. It seemed such a waste to me that he rarely stopped to enjoy the moments at the top.

This is how some of us do life. We barely break our stride even when standing before us there is a wonderful invitation to stop and allow our spirit to draw life in. In our thirst for the next summit in life we can, at times, pass over the encounter with the spiritual.

Every next task or project seems exciting, and pausing to simply be in a moment seems like wasted time. We skip over what may seem an empty space. A space which is in fact a break in the line of doings which make up only a part of our whole being. The space between these words I write matters, and you will agree it helps to make sense of the words on either side. At times in life we see those in-between spaces as empty or unproductive because there are other things on our list to be doing. I want to suggest that those moments sitting on the hilltop, stopping the operational activity, or switching off the engine, are indeed productive. They are moments fertile for spirituality, beauty, and mystery.

Have you ever noticed the almost imperceptible still moment when we breathe out? Having exhaled, we don’t immediately draw breath but delay the return pull. There is a moment that we never quite take note of; a moment when we are neither breathing nor not breathing. Right there in that space our need for air is suspended – we pause from the very thing we presume to bring us life, yet we continue to live. So we can let go, albeit briefly. and maybe in that space find life that is more than the air we breathe.

There are times when we place an urgency or importance, maybe unaware and without intention, on the next thing to do. We can find living in the future easier than the present because it has the feel of forward movement. This can seem a natural pull in life – we are as it were leaning forward as though reaching into the future. The lights turn green and before we clear the junction we have shifted to second gear and without thought proceeded up through the gears, seamlessly and without identifiable pause. Doing life this way we can so often forget, even fail to savor and enjoy, the spaces or passing moments of stillness which are stolen by our living in the next thing to do. Like good food, the second you swallow, the tasting is over, and the temptation is to load up with the next fork-full.