Stopping - David Kundtz

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because it calls a time-out and gives you the freedom to reorganize the game of life according to your own rules; to recognize your true priorities. It creates an oasis where the turbulent waters caused by the demands of daily life can quiet and where, in the stillness, you can again see your own reflection. It gives you time to be, not just to do.

      Stopping is born of personal experience and, like many useful ideas, came to me because I needed it so badly. In most cases, we don't stop until we feel overwhelmed and don't know where to turn. For some reason, when I got to the end of my rope, I just did nothing and waited, not out of any virtuous inclination, not because I thought the waiting would solve anything, but because I didn't know what else to do.

      Now I can look back and see the value in that time of waiting: There were moments, short and long (but mostly short), in which I remembered some important information about myself, became more awake to my life, and became aware of all the aspects involved in the issue I was dealing with. Stopping helped me get going again, but going in a focused and determined way, rather than a scattered and chaotic one.

      So this book is about Stopping, and specifically about Stopping when you feel you have to keep going. This kind of quieting and self-remembering is designed specifically to fit the needs of people who must live their lives at an ever-increasing speed and with an overwhelming number of demands upon them. And because that description fits many of us, chances are you are feeling overwhelmed and overloaded in your life and are looking for something—anything—to relieve the strain. If so, you've come to the right place. Stopping will help. And it's easy. You can do it anywhere at anytime.

      The fast-paced rhythm of modern life conditionsus to skim the surface of experience,then quickly move on to something new.

      STEPHAN RECHTSCHAFFEN

      4

      A Fast Train on the Fast Track

      Stopping is not slowing down. There are many books on slowing down the frantic pace of life. This is not one of them, even though an important aspect of Stopping—even one of the reasons for Stopping—is, in fact, to slow down. The process of Stopping is very different from the process of slowing down. Trying to slow down does not slow you down. We have been trying to do that for many years now; it generally doesn't work. It's like trying to cut down on smoking: in a short time you end up where you started, except more frustrated.

      Slowing down doesn't work because everything around us is going so fast. We get revved-up even if we don't want to be. In his book Timeshifting, Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D., writes about entrainment, which he describes as an unconscious “process that governs how various rhythms fall into sync with one another.” For example, if you were to place two out-of-sync pendulum clocks next to one another, in a short time they would be exactly in sync. “The same principle works,” says Rechtschaffen, “with atomic particles, the tides and human beings.” With human beings? That's quite a remarkable idea. We pick up each other's rhythms and the accumulated rhythms of the world around us. If most of the rhythms around us are fast, so are ours, automatically. That's entrainment. The word can also mean “getting on a train.”

      We have all boarded the train, the fast train on the fast track, and the process of entrainment is not under our conscious control. That's why trying to slow down doesn't slow us down. It's not because we're weak willed or quitters; it's because we're on a fast train where we're the passengers and not the engineers.

      We are all riding on a very fast train that is traveling down a predetermined track, gathering speed as it goes, and we have been on it for a long time. We can't get to the engineer because the engineer is protected by loyal guards. Or perhaps there really is no engineer; the train is run by a computer. Many of us want to slow down; some want to get off the train. Others are so used to the speed that they don't notice it. A few love the speed and want to increase it. The few who love the speed are the only ones who get their way. Most of us stare blankly out the window, barely seeing the world flying by and feeling helpless.

      Fortunately, there is something we can do about it. Stopping can get us off the train, can separate us from the speededup rhythms of those around us, and can bring us into rhythms of our own choosing, which, it's important to note, may well include some time on the fast train. Stopping can roll us into the roundhouse for refreshment and cooling off so we can make sure that, when we take off again, we're on the right track, going in the right direction, and have a very intimate working relationship with the engineer.

      Entrainment helps to explain the amazingly short attention span of most of us these days. We get our information in sound bites: many brief, skeletal bones of facts. We just don't have time to read in depth or to linger over the newspaper. It seems also to have something to say about our fad-driven society. As soon as one idea, trend, fashion, or person becomes popular, it is quickly dropped for whatever next demands our attention. Whether it is valuable or vulgar seems to make no difference; it's just the next view out the window of the fast train. Faddriven culture engenders frenetic citizens who find themselves, unwittingly, screaming through the night on the fast train and trying to figure out, “How did I get here?”

      Stopping can bring us both an answer and a solution.

      It's good to have an end to journey toward;but it's the journey that matters, in the end.

      URSULA K. LEGUIN

      5

      Stopping at the Speed of Light

      Stopping is paradoxical. It would at first seem, would it not, that if one just stops, that is, does nothing, that it would be a waste of time? Indeed, a way to describe doing nothing is “wasting time.” And when you feel stressed and have too much to do, doing nothing may feel like the worst approach. But paradoxically, doing nothing turns out to be not only not a waste of time, but some of the most significant time you can spend, even if it is only for one minute.

      This idea flies in the face of current belief and practice; “Do more and do it more quickly” is what we hear. But it is exactly this attitude that has made us overwhelmed. What we've been doing isn't working.

      The kind of Stopping that I am suggesting is done while moving at the speed of light. Stopping while moving at the speed of light is a paradox: To stop on the one hand and to go at the speed of light on the other are contradictory statements that create so radical a paradox that they appear to be an oxymoron. In other words, it doesn't make sense—unless you see it paradoxically! Then it is transformed into an exquisite, inviting, alluring, and richly textured truth: Time spent doing nothing allows us to awaken what is most meaningful and valuable to us.

      This soulful truth is actually based on a scientific paradox. The amazing fact is that objects moving at the speed of light no longer experience time. In other words, at the speed of light, time stands still. Scientists assure me that these are true and accurate statements. I don't pretend to understand them scientifically, but I like them. And I like to apply them to Stopping: Stopping is time standing still or standing still in time.

      Stopping at the speed of light acknowledges that the Stopping takes place within the context of a very fast world that waits for no one and, if you can't keep up, will leave you behind. It also acknowledges something that many people who teach spirituality are resistant to accept: going fast is not necessarily bad. Many of the “technologies that promote speed are essentially good. The historical record is that human beings have never, ever opted for slowness,” says Jay Walljasper, an editor at The Utne Reader. “When I hear friends complain that their lives move too fast, they're not talking about a wholesale rejection of speed so much as a wish that they could spend more of their time involved in slow, contemplative activities.” The problem, of course, is that there is way too much of one and not enough of the other. Stopping can restore the balance.

      Many of us love the “revved-up beat of dance music, the fast-breaking action of basketball, or the speedy thrill of a roller coaster, but we don't want to live all our lives at that pace,” says Walljasper. “A balanced life with intervals of creative

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