"Stopping" to Touch the Ocean

Stopping is an exercise presented in TOUCH THE OCEAN: THE POWER OF OUR COLLECTIVE EMOTIONS. Here is a brief excerpt from the chapter entitled, The Simple Feeling of Being in Gratitude:

"The hardest part about stopping, or taking pause, or making an aside, whatever you would like to call it, is in the remembering to do it.

Anyone can do it. Anyone can at least, stop. When clients have asked me how they can slow down and reconnect in the midst of their busy lives, I might suggest they just "stop." I would tend to call it “stopping”. I’ll be entering a Starbucks in a Mall, for example, or walking through a parking garage, or entering a party filled with people I don't know, and I’ll just stop. I try to stand casually as possible so as not to attract attention. Now, I’ve gotten good enough at this tendency to notice the impulse when it arises. I may experience a feeling of discomfort with the jostling people at a Mall, or the Quaaludes' they seem to pump through the air conditioner vents of most Malls so you trance-out and just buy and buy and buy! And so I just let my body stop. When my body stops, when I literally stop in my tracks, or take pause, something happens. There is a silence. It arises unbidden. It is a very safe space. It is a silence that is always here and that is not forced.

This is a very different experience than when we sit in "the moment before."

We can do it while swimming in a pool, lake, or the ocean. I'll try to practice stopping, or just taking a breather, when I go into the Mall, or even into the bank, or grocery store. Let's say there are people around who seem totally unaware of the miracle of just being alive on a planet in the Universe. Rather than react, or put down the people at the Mall, the Bank, the Party, I take a pause, stop, and in stopping, stop the emotional reaction.

Stopping can be useful in personal and interpersonal relationships. For example, one of my older sisters had said something hurtful to me, something about my not being a good son to my Dad. I could feel the emotions churn within me like a storm. There was emotional lightening in that storm, and it was about to lash out. I knew that I could hurt her. I knew that I could turn around her hurtful words and say exactly the same thing about her. I had been a good son, screamed my emotions. I had been the best son that I knew how to be. I could see the pain in her eyes. She instantly regretted what she said because she knew she had hurt me. Then I told her that I loved her and meant it. It shocked both of us!

It's the awareness of what we are doing that makes the shift. When I'm caught in reacting, there is little I can actually do.

When aware, something happens. This is far beyond any insistence on positive or even negative thinking. This is to shine a light.

It’s human nature to react with emotion, and lots of it, often violent emotions, when our small feelings are hurt, it’s not human nature to stop. It takes some practice, some conscious-awareness. When I do this, I may have the opportunity of observing the thoughts, the odd logic, the raw unfiltered emotions going through me. And because I have stopped, just for a moment or two, then, and only then, response. And a response that is totally spontaneous, creative, life giving and alive. I may even discover that I was really the one being ungrateful in that moment of entering the Mall, not them, not the nameless faces. Not that there are any "rules" about being grateful, or even cheerful, it's more an attitude toward living.

I could write a book or pamphlet on just this. It was something my body would do, like a horse when faced with a freeway. There’s that moment when things get confused, that moment of reaction, why not take a pause? Breathe? The reader may find examples in her or his own life. It’s best to start with public places, for example, just when walking down a sidewalk. Simply stop."

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And so imagine this author's surprise to see this You Tube Video show up in the mail today: "Best Prank Ever: Stopping Time at Grand Central Station."