Stopping Read online

  Copyright © 1998 by David J. Kundtz, S.T.D.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Conari Press, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710-2551.

  All acknowledgments of permission to reprint previously published material can be found on pp. 269–70, which constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  Conari Press books are distributed by Publishers Group West.

  Cover Design: Ame Beanland

  Cover Illustration: Marnie Johnson Grenier

  Book Design and Composition: Jennifer Brontsema

  Chart on page 135: John Lomibao Design

  ISBN: 1-57324-109-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kundtz, David, 1937–

  Stopping : how to be still when you have to keep going / David Kundtz; foreword by Richard Carlson.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 1-57324-109-1 (trade paper)

  1. Quietude. I. Title.

  BJ1533.Q5K85 1998

  158—dc21

  97-31202

  Printed in the United States of America on recycled paper.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  www.redwheelweiser.com

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  To the memory of my father whose example taught me about Stopping. To the memory of my mother who always encouraged me to write.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  I

  Stopping at the Speed of Light

  1. Facing the Mountain of Too Much

  2. Why Cramming and Cutting Don't Work

  3. Doing Nothing

  4. A Fast Train on the Fast Track

  5. Stopping at the Speed of Light

  6. Intentional Living: From Routine to Choice

  7. Stopping Before Everything

  8. Contemporary Contemplation

  9. Finding the Spaces Between the Notes

  10. Stopped: Awake and Remembering

  11. Stop and Go for It!

  II

  The Three Ways of Stopping

  12. Stillpoints, Stopovers, and Grinding Halts

  13. Stillpoints: The Heart and Soul of Stopping

  14. Breathing Is Inspiring

  15. Stillpoints in a Turning World

  16. Stopovers: More of a Good Thing

  17. Stopovers on the Way

  18. This Is Your Body Talking

  19. Excuses! Excuses!

  20. The Watersheds and Sea Changes of Life

  21. Grinding Halts Are Good for You

  22. Growing “Like Corn in the Night,”

  23. Freeing and Finding Your Truth

  24. Everyday Spirituality

  III

  The Gifts of Stopping

  25. Stopping's Benefits

  26. The Gift of Attention

  27. The Gift of Relaxation

  28. The Gift of Solitude

  29. The Gift of Openness

  30. The Gift of Boundaries

  31. The Gift of Embracing Your Shadow

  32. The Gift of Purpose

  IV

  Exploring the Challenges of Stopping

  33. Moving Down to the Roots

  34. When Society Says “Don't,”

  35. “I'm Afraid!,”

  36. Seeing the Enemy

  37. Owning Your Fear

  38. A Telling Relief

  39. The Doctor's Unthinkable Thought

  40. Saying It to God

  41. Some Help in Getting Help

  42. “Yes, but . . .,”

  V

  Discovering Your Way to Stopping

  43. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,”

  44. Permission Granted Just to Be

  45. The Pathway to Your Stopping Woods

  46. Stopping while Going from Here to There

  47. Moving while Stopping

  48. The Young, the Old, and the Violent

  49. Stopping Is Caring

  50. Trust Yourself

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  When I first looked at Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going, I realized immediately that I was in familiar territory. In fact, it didn't take me long to locate in my own work a very specific expression of what Stopping is all about: “Virtually every day, I stop whatever I'm doing to enjoy the sunrise . . .” (Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and it's all small stuff). And this is just one of many examples. Yes, Stopping as defined by Dr. Kundtz—doing nothing in order to wake up and remember who you are—is something that has been part of my life for a long time.

  What we owe David Kundtz is credit for conceptualizing a simple yet profound reality and offering to us an elegant and powerful tool for finding the serenity and stillness that so easily escapes us as we cope with too-busy lives.

  Stopping is a happy marriage of the riches of many of the world's contemplative and mystical traditions, with the insight and awareness of contemporary psychology. Just what the world needs right now, it seems to me.

  Finally, because it gives us perspective, because it encourages us to put first things first, and because it keeps us awake and aware, Stopping is an ideal way to remember something important about the vast majority of things that bother and upset us: It's all small stuff.

  —Richard Carlson, Ph.D.

  I

  Stopping at the Speed of Light

  The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequateto the stormy present. . . .As our case is new, so we must think anewand act anew.

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  1

  Facing the Mountain of Too Much

  “It's too much,” Mary Helen told me, “way too much. I just can't deal with it all!” Then she gave in to tears. Mary Helen, a successful and intelligent woman of thirty-eight, with a thriving career and a loving family, was close to the end of her rope.

  Any observer in my counseling office that day would clearly have seen that Mary Helen was in trouble: anxious, stressed, unfocused, irritable, unable to sleep, overwhelmed by life, and frustrated with her inability to manage it. She was angry at herself for her inability to cope and angry at me because I was the one to whom she had admitted it.

  Although she was not aware of it, she did know what the problem was. It was the first thing she said: “too much.” Upon further exploration, I found no underlying psychosis, no debilitating personality disorder, no family-of-origin dysfunction making a sudden midlife appearance, nor a marriage about to crash on the rocks of incompatibility. Just that life had become too much.

  Just that life had become too much? Hardly. Although the problem may seem well known, its vastness, depth, and long-term implications are still far from our conscious recognition. As with any hidden enemy, the contemporary problem of too much has its way with all of us. The damage is extremely severe and is sometimes even life threatening.

  Do you sometimes feel like Mary Helen, overwhelmed or emotionally numbed by the pace and sheer quantity of life? Are you reluctantly prevented by your overloaded schedule from keeping your true priorities? Do you feel unable to do all the things you need to do and still have time for yourself? Have you come to realize that it's been too long since you've enjoyed real, satisfying, and regular leisure? If so, you've found the right book.

  Do you have a desire to give more attention to the spiritual aspects of your life—your truly important meanings and values— but have been frustrated in trying to transform that desire into a real practice? You will find nourishment here.

  Or have you been frustrat
ed with complicated, time-consuming, or impractical systems of meditation and slowing down that don't really work for you? You can anticipate success through the suggestions found in this book.

  Most of us in this hurry-up, e-mail world of instant response are feeling the same sense of overload that my client Mary Helen felt. Indeed, the primary challenge to successful human life in the postmodern, millennial world is the challenge of too much: too much to do; too much to cope with; too much distraction; too much noise; too much demanding our attention; or, for many of us, too many opportunities and too many choices. Too much of everything for the time and energy available.

  We all have been feeling, at least on a subliminal level, the choices, demands, and complexities of life increase with every passing year. We have more to be, more to do, more places to go, and more things we want or need to accomplish. But the day remains twenty-four hours; the year, the same twelve months. The amount of activity constantly increases, but both the amount of time into which it must fit and the human energy with which it must be met, at best, remain the same.

  Even though my client Mary Helen named her problem— “It's way too much. I just can't deal with it all”—she didn't recognize it, first, as something very serious and, second, as something new. Rather, she saw it just as one more of life's irritations that she should be able to deal with. This attitude reveals a key characteristic of the problem of too much: It passes itself off as something it is not. It says, “I am the same old problem you have been dealing with all your life, you can handle me.” But the reality is that we can't—and believing we can is part and parcel of the problem.

  Why don't we see it coming? The answer is as simple as it is clear: it is masquerading, and the purpose of a masquerade is to make you think it's something else. We are all like Mary Helen, saying to ourselves, “This should not be a serious problem!” Because it looks and feels like the same old problem of being just too busy and in the past we have been able to handle it with the coping strategies available to us, we miss its seriousness and power.

  It's time to rip off the mask from the problem of too much and reveal the seriously damaging monster that is destroying too many lives and too many families. Modern life has become impossible to cope with in the same old ways we learned as children and young adults.

  That's because the sheer amount of too much also makes it a new and essentially different challenge. Consider this for a moment, because at first it might not seem evident: Precisely because of the very large volume of the same old thing, it has become essentially different. It is not just a larger amount of the same thing, but is something entirely new.

  It's like the evolution of a pile of rocks into a mountain. At some point in its history it stops being a pile of rocks and starts being a mountain. When exactly does that happen? The transition point would be difficult to determine. Does this last eruption finally make it a mountain or must we wait for one more? So it is with the problem of too much: it has become what it is over a long period of time. For most of us, the point at which too much has become a mountain is long past. What used to be a pile of rocks has become the Mountain of Too Much.

  It is vital to recognize this mountain as new because it is the newness that signifies the need for different coping strategies to conquer it. The tools needed to conquer a pile of rocks are very different from those demanded by a mountain. So it is as we face the Mountain of Too Much. A sturdy pair of shoes is sufficient for a pile of rocks, but an imposing peak demands carabiners, belaying systems, and training in specific skills.

  Mary Helen, my bright, normally fun-loving and competent client, was truly puzzled. “Why can't I deal with this? I have always been able to cope, even when things have been difficult. Why not now?” But this was a new and challenging mountain, not just the same old pile of rocks she had walked over many times before. But that was what she needed to see.

  So it is with all of us—we keep dealing with the problem of too much in the same old ways we learned before the pile of rocks became a mountain. As a result, we are overstressed, overloaded, overtired, and unable to solve the serious problems and challenges that are a direct result of our revved-up pace of life. It's time to learn a different way to face our Mountain of Too Much and to trade in our old ways of coping for new ones.

  No matter how fast we go,no matter how many comforts we forgo . . .there never seems to be enough time.

  JAY WALLJASPER

  2

  Why Cramming and Cutting Don't Work

  In the past, we used two ways of coping with the challenge of too much: We crammed things in or we cut things out. These are natural, normal, and effective responses to life at a certain pace.

  Cramming is trying to fit more and more into the same, limited time and space using the same, limited energy and stamina. Until the pile of rocks changed into the Mountain of Too Much, cramming worked just fine: We became more efficient and more productive. We learned to manage our time better, to move faster, and to sprint through our day without pausing for breath. But that was before we reached the critical mass of too much. Now it causes us to be overwhelmed and stuffed to overfull; thus, we are left frustrated and feeling like we have no room left for ourselves. Whenever I feel this stuffed feeling, I often show it through moodiness, irritability, and spiritual malaise.

  Think of packing your suitcase. Have you ever tried to cram things in? You cram and cram and even resort to sitting on it to force it closed, but there is a moment when, with just one more pair of socks, the suitcase will not close. And even if we manage to jam the suitcase shut, we may rip its seams or risk it popping open in midflight. Think of yourself as that suitcase: Your seams are ripping and your emotional insides are bursting out and spilling into the middle of your day. That's the point we're at. Cramming no longer works. There is simply too much to fit in.

  Cutting out is excluding things from our lives to make more room for new demands. We become good at prioritizing: We drop old friends to make room for taking our kids to soccer, we eliminate lunch to get a little more work done, we cut short our days off to catch up on a report, and we wake up an hour early to have time for exercise. But this works only to a certain point. Finally, you can cut out no more. You get down to the essentials: work, personal responsibilities, and a necessary amount of sleep and social time. When demands from work or family crises intervene, leisure time, exercise, social life, and days off go out the window. Finally, there comes a time when there is nothing to cut and still too much to do. Our health—mental and physical—suffers. We voice the complaint that I hear most often in my seminars on stress: We feel as though we are moving through life, but not actually experiencing it. As you probably know from your own life, cutting just no longer works.

  The Mountain of Too Much is new and therefore calls for new skills. It's long past the time to let go of these once-effective responses. They are ineffective habits of behavior. They are also a form of denial, that which is a lack of awareness of a situation too painful or disturbing to acknowledge in this case the problem of too much. Besides being futile, these habits are robbing us of the pleasure of life.

  But there is something new that you can learn to do. I call it Stopping.

  I have a very full and busy lifeand occasionally I am asked,“Scotty, how can you do all that you do?”The most telling reply I can give is,“Because I spend at least two hours a daydoing nothing.”

  M. SCOTT PECK

  3

  Doing Nothing

  The first time I became aware of Stopping, I was hiding. I was on the run and felt lost. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life and didn't really know what was happening to me or how it would all turn out.

  I had been a successful and content Catholic priest for fifteen years, but all of a sudden I was in crisis. Nothing felt right anymore. My enthusiasm for my vocation had abandoned me. For the first time in my life I felt lonely. I avoided responsibilities, denied what was happening, and made some foolish decisions. Finally, not
knowing what to do, I stopped doing everything. I escaped to a small, isolated cabin, perched high on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the northern California coast, for a month to figure it out.

  I just stopped. And in so doing, I found my way again. I didn't stop on purpose, but it was the best thing I could have done for myself. It was not until much later, after many occasions of Stopping, some as short as ten seconds and others as long as a month, that I became conscious of its value and could actually define it:

  Stopping is doing nothing as much as possible, for a definite period of time (one second to one month) for the purpose of becoming more fully awake and remembering who you are.

  This is the simple practice upon which this book is built, a new skill to replace cramming and cutting that can help deal with the Mountain of Too Much. Doing nothing should not be confused with a total lack of activity. Doing nothing is indeed doing something very important. It's allowing life to happen— your life. Doing nothing is something quite profound.

  The ultimate purpose of Stopping is to ensure that when we do go, we go in the direction that we want and that we are not just reacting to the pace of our lives, but choosing, moment by moment, what's best. The ultimate reason for Stopping is going. Going is what we of the industrialized Western world are known for. It's what we do best: get on with business, get things done, accomplish feats, and assume roles of leadership and power. So Stopping at first glance might not seem so desirable, it may even appear to be opposed to our fundamental values. But, not only is it not against these values, Stopping maintains and cultivates them. Without being awake and remembering our values and identity—in other words, without Stopping—our going can get us into deep trouble.