One of my teachers said to me once, “We need to pause, just long enough to be  informed.” When our life is deconstructing, when our familiar points of  reference are shifting or falling away completely, when our minds are the most  confused and our hearts the most broken-open, that is the time to pause. Pause,  just long enough to be informed.

Then we begin again. One thought at a time, one choice at a time, one day and  one night at a time we begin the long walk out of whatever version of the valley  of the shadow we find ourselves in, and begin to create something new, something  different, something that is in alignment with our deeper longing, our deeper  sense of purpose, of being. We start to pay attention in a very different way,  to become mindful of the small things, the beautiful things, the kindnesses. We  begin to remember what’s really important, and to file those realizations away.  Those are the ingredients that we will rebuild with; the things that are really  important.

We don’t necessarily have to wait until the bottom falls out to ask ourselves  what’s really important to us. We can pay attention now, pause now, ask now.  While sometimes it seems that we have to hit a wall, or hit a bottom in order  for the Universe to get our attention, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that  way.

If you have read this far, there is already a knowing in you that something  needs or wants to shift, to realign, or to be released. We know. Somewhere,  something inside of us knows that the life that we are living is out of whack  somehow. We can deny that we know it, but we do. Something in us does.

Before the bottom falls out, or before you become so depleted from keeping  something in place that has been trying to move for a long time, pause. Make a  space for that still, small voice. We need to pause, daily, just long enough to  be informed.

– Jeff Anderson, M.A. ~ http://spiritasjeff.com/