by David Kundtz
It is a natural outcome of Stopping to gain a heightened awareness of one's surroundings, both close in and far away. It is an inevitable result; one just begins to notice more and more. This leads, by a natural progression, to an examination of the relationship between Stopping and environmental awareness, both locally and globally. Thus, the most passionate heart of Stopping is a deep forest-green.
Naturalist Bill McKibben understands Stopping. I know this from reading his introduction and annotations to a fine, new edition of Thoreau's Walden. He describes a one-week backpack trip, beginning with the challenge of the noise of internal chatter, through the time when the “chatter in [his] head began to subside,” and to the point, at nightfall, when he was watching a blue heron and “the sky blackened, the stars spread across the sky bright and insistent; we were unimaginably small, this heron and I, and extremely right.” These are the words of someone who notices and especially of someone who cares. Stopping leads to caring.
And caring invariably leads to questions. From McKibben's reading of Walden, Thoreau, whom he wonderfully describes—capturing his peculiarly American spirit—as a “Buddha with a receipt from the hardware store,” poses two essential questions for our times. The first question stands as an “assault on the Information Age,” on computers and all the fast systems of communicating: “How can I hear my own heart?” The second, which I believe flows from the first, is addressed to all of us who make up the consumer society: “How much is enough?” Is constant growth the best for us all? The illness of the Age of Anxiety—cancer—offers us a valuable and provocative symbol for our times: cancer is uncontrolled growth.
These two questions, “How can I hear my own heart?” and “How much is enough?” are wonderful examples of the kinds of questions that we can look at, understand, get a feel for, develop a sense of, and, especially, care about and maybe even begin to answer through our on-going practice of Stopping.
The only thing that keeps us from floatingoff with the wind is our stories.They give us a name and put us in a place,allow us to keep on touching.
TOM SPANBAUER,The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
50
Trust Yourself
More than anything, I hope that Stopping will help you gather into your consciousness all the wonderful stories of your life—and they're all wonderful. These are what will lead you to your truths and, thus, to what is best for the world. Stories are a “connection to our roots, to where we come from. Through stories we can understand our lives,” says Joe Bruchac, storyteller and writer. Storytelling is “almost like calling the gods. A powerful spiritual presence makes itself felt, and one can be quite literally swept away by it.”
But we often miss the stories that are ours and that come to us from our ancestors, because, adds storyteller Laura Simms, “modern life, with all its noise and distractions, makes these stories difficult to hear.” Stopping prepares us to hear them.
Bruno Bettleheim, child psychologist and educator, saw fairy tales as medicine for the soul. The fairy tale is therapeutic “because the patient finds his own solutions, through contemplating what the story seems to imply about him and his inner conflicts.” Clarissa Pinkola Estés also sees the healing power of stories. In a recent radio interview she too compared stories to medicine: “the flow of images in stories is [a] medicine [that] acts like an antibiotic that finds the source of the infection and con- centrates there. The story helps make that part of the psyche clear and strong again.”
Is your child out of sorts? Perhaps you can find her or his medicine in a storybook. Try to pick one out that will speak to her or his heart. And you? When are you out of sorts? What story do you need to remind you? A Stillpoint might bring you just the right one, perhaps one you had not remembered for a long time, from a book or from your life or one you had not thought of as a story.
One way to look at all of life is to see it as one story after another and as stories that we are telling both to ourselves and to everyone else. For example, try The Story of Yesterday—your yesterday. Begin it with something like, “I awoke way too early, I think it was about 5 A.M., and began to think about my project. . . .” continue through, “Then just after a quick lunch I ran into Harvey whom I hadn't seen in months. We spent ten minutes catching up and decided . . .” and end, perhaps, with, “I finally flopped into bed at eleven and dreamed that I was. . . .”
I hope Stopping can help you discover the stories of your life. There's something about pausing that invites the remembering of stories, and there is something about stories that just wants to be told. One way of expressing friendship is to tell each other your stories as well as live some of them together. Isn't that what a family does? And family can include anyone you want it to. Ask your parents and grandparents for their stories. Tell your children yours. Share them with your friends. After all, asks Shed in Tom Spanbauer's novel, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, “what's a human being without a story?”
Another of my hopes is that Stopping will bolster your trust in yourself so that when you are confronted with the question, “Is the story I'm telling crazy, or is it the rest of the world?” you will answer, “It's the rest of the world!” Carl Jung acknowledged it years ago. Craziness today has been institutionalized. Our citizens, individually, are mostly sane and reasonable; it's our institutions that are nuts! And we take on that craziness because we have to work within the framework of these institutions. The popularity of the comic strip “Dilbert” is a perfect example of our recognition of this, it points out the absurdity of his company's rules and procedures as well as their continued existence. Let's hope corporate craziness is a phase and is, perhaps, a necessary step in reaching for flexible systems that put people first. Developing the habit of Stopping will help continue to convince you of your sanity.
This idea has a corollary for people with the responsibility of children. With all the talk of dysfunctional families going on these days, I hope that Stopping leads us to recognize all systems to one degree or another are dysfunctional. And that many families are quite functional and send their children out into very dysfunctional—that is crazy—social systems and worldly institutions. A family, no matter how it is configured, that Stops, is a family more prepared to face that contemporary reality and still thrive.
Lastly, I hope that it is clear by now: Stopping is fundamentally optimistic and hopeful. The process of Stopping is based on the belief that you are perfectly fine just the way you are and that you will continue to discover more and more of your own truth, beauty, and goodness if you just make time for Stopping.
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Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart. New York: Bantam Books, 1993. Kundera, Milan. Slowness. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
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Acknowledgments
I want to express my sincere thanks and appreciation:
To Mary Elyn Bahlert, for the many enjoyable hours of discussion and encouragement at the Imperial Cafe. To Jeff Kunkel, who liked my ideas and who was the right person with the right skills to help me find the right voice. To Tom West, who read the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions and support. To Joe, Michael, and Tom, my three companions in our reading group who, in addition to talking books, shared life. Thanks, you guys. To Chilton Thomson, an extraordinary teacher, who many years ago was the first to call forth from my soul a desire for reading and writing. And to Robert Stenberg, in whom I first recognized and appreciated the use and value of Stillpoints.
Also thanks to my agent, Carol Susan Roth, who helped in the development of the book, who guided me with good humor to the right publisher, and who lives up to her description as “an author's best friend.” To Kevin Davis, whose NSA workshop was a quantum leap in my learning process. And to Mary Jane Ryan—I met her last year but I've known her all my life—of Conari Press. I could not wish for a more skilled, insightful, and caring editor. And to all the great folks at Conari Press, thanks.
Permissions Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowldeges the authors and publishers who gave permission to reprint from the following works:
“Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening,” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1951 by Robert Frost, copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
Quotes from C.G. Jung in Chapter 39 from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung, translated by Richard & Clara Winston. Translation copyright © 1961, 1962, 1963 and renewed 1989, 1990, 1991 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Slowness by Milan Kundera © 1995 by Milan Kundera. Translation copyright © 1996 by Linda Asher. Published by HarperCollins, Inc.
“Beyond living and dreaming....” reprinted from Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, trans. by Robert Bly, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 1983. Copyright © 1983 by Robert Bly. Reprinted with his permission.
“Response to Stress” diagram is based on models in Professional Manual and Desk Reference by Emmett Miller, M.D. Used by permission.
“Fear” from Extravagaria by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid. Translation copyright © 1974 by Alastair Reid. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
“My life is not this steeply sloping hour...” from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Robert Bly. Copyright © 1981 by Robert Bly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
About the Author
David J. Kundtz, author, speaker and counselor, is a psychotherapist in private practice and director of the Berkeley, California– based Inside Track Seminars, which offers workshops in the areas of human resources, stress management, and emotional health. Ordained in 1963, he was a priest for nineteen years, serving in the Catholic Diocese of Boise, Idaho, and in Cali, Colombia, South America.
He has earned graduate degrees in both psychology and theology and his doctoral degree, a doctor of science and theology (S.T.D.), is in the field of pastoral psychology. He is a member of the National Speakers Association, the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the American Seminar Leaders Association and the American Counseling Association. His prvious book was Men and Feelings. He lives in Kensington, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
Dr. Kundtz warmly welcomes your communication, especially your experiences, insights, challenges and successes with Stopping.
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