Did you ever stop to wonder about the meaning of pausing?

What is the power of pausing?

What does it mean when you need to take a pause in your life, in your day, in your routine?

Pauses have a very powerful spiritual meaning.

They create some sense of peace and centeredness, and most importantly, self-determination.

Pauses create moments of stillness that nurture our souls.

There is a philosopher called Hannah Arendt that said something along the lines of

"we find freedom when we pause".

To her, freedom expresses itself in pauses, and only when we pause do we feel truly free.

This doesn't mean that pauses create "stagnation".

Pauses can be full of vitality and invite you to connect to Higher Consciousness.

When we talk about taking time to observe, pausing and developing Higher Consciousness it allows us to

see the difference between being busy and being productive.

Busy people never stop, and they don't seem to be free.

Productive people contribute to the world, use their time with vitality to create good things in the world, and have free time - meaning, they pause to be free.

They're not moving all the time, because we do need specific types of movement, pauses, and "states of being" to balance our energy.

We're not on the move all the time, and we can't be "not doing anything" all the time either.

It's a balance between these two things.

There are actually  four ways of being in the world that I want to share with you right now.

We can illustrate them with our breath, which is actually a yoga practice called

 the four-second breath technique.

I teach this with my clients and students and we do this a lot in group sessions.

So the first thing you do is breathe in for four seconds. 

Then you pause for four seconds.

Then breathe out for four seconds.

And lastly pause with empty lungs for four seconds.

Breathing in means you're taking life in. Prana. Life force.

Secondly, after you have breathed life in and taken in life, when you pause, that life you have taken in is circling around your body. Bringing that life to the body and activating it. In this second phase, your breath is actually scanning the body and bringing life to it.

Then, in the third phase, when you breathe out whatever's there that doesn't serve you, which is not just physical toxins, but emotional energy and unwanted thoughts as well, you breathe it all out. Whatever does not serve you will leave if you do this consciously.

So breathing in, you take life in.

When you pause, you allow life to circulate in your body.

Breathing out, you let go of whatever doesn't serve you.

And when you pause, that's the magic of being. You pause in stillness, with empty lungs.

It's a sensation of stillness that brings peace.

The experience you have with empty lungs is your connection with the void, the empty space where all creation comes from. It's truly wonderful to enjoy this experience of stillness for four seconds...

And then you breathe life in again.

So it's a cycle of dynamic forces that require two actions and two pauses.

The two actions of breathing in and breathing out, and two pauses - one with full lungs and one with empty lungs.

The pause with empty lungs may feel scary and some people even describe it as scarcity, but it really is

where the wisdom and the perception of everything that's essential resides.

What happens on a spiritual level is that whatever doesn't serve you drops off of your life and you connect to what's essential.

In this state of consciousness, you become more truthful, and more connected to what really matters.

You allow belief systems that don't serve you to leave you, you allow illusions to leave your life.

And to feel this, we have to be in isolation. We do some soul searching. Those of us who choose to go within instead of binging into distractions  when they have the opportunity to pause reach this state more quickly.

Even if it's a forced pause, when the external world is forcing you to pause, on a spiritual level, your Higher Self needs that pause for you to go within.

Pauses are great opportunities to tune in to who you truly are and listen to the guidance of your Higher Self.

And this is one of the most powerful things that I believe to be useful when we have moments to pause.

Another thing is that whenever you pause, you welcome change in your life with less resistance.

So going back to focusing on busy people and the "glorification of busy",

when you keeping busy to distract yourself it is really just a variation of denial, and it shows resistance to go within.

And on theater end of the spectrum,

whenever you pause, you allow yourself to welcome change a lot more.

You become a more flexible person.

This doesn't mean you'll become a doormat. When I say flexible, some people get reactive and say, "You're telling me that I don't have to stand up for myself", but that's not what this means at all.

It only means that you are going to allow change and still remain the same you.

What is essential and stable, and the truth of your being remains, but whatever needs to change for the sake of your expansion will, and

the whole purpose of change is consciousness expansion, right?

It's about personal growth, whether you want it or not, and in some phases of life you can't really choose. Life will literally kind of run you over and force change in your life.

But if you pause frequently, you observe what doesn't serve you, and you allow change more easily because you've become a flexible person, know that

a flexible person as more chances of expansion.

So it has to do with letting go of any kind of rigidity, even when we believe that we are spiritual, or that we do our part and do our inner work.

People who do this tend to be different and a lot more flexible, but the interesting thing is, even that can kind of become a habit and put us into autopilot mode.

And regarding this specific role of pauses, one of the most beautiful things I've ever learned about Eastern spirituality, Buddhism, Hinduism and yoga practices, is one of  the meanings of the Tibetan bowl (or the singing bowl).

What do you think ringing a bowl means at the end of meditation, for example?

Sound healing really purifies the environment, but

after meditation, when you ring a singing bowl, it gets you out of inertia because even meditation can become autopilot, and can become addictive. So when you rang the singing bowl, you pause that flow of consciousness and come back to present moment awareness.

So it's the pause in the pause, right?

This is because, if you're a very spiritual person, you can get addicted to spirituality.

So this is meant to get into another state of consciousness so that you don't get into "spiritual inertia".

Just like busy can be inertia, contemplation can be inertia. You need a balance between the two, and pauses have the role of creating change and transition.

Pauses allow you to keep connecting to different states of consciousness, therefore expanding into new experiences and becoming a more expand a person in general.

And this is very powerful. That's one of the most beautiful and powerful meanings of pauses to me.

To give you a concrete example, we have been holding Cardinal Method constellations at Ranova Healing Center, my physical space for energy healing sessions, for almost five years now (Ranova will be 5 years old on April 15th this year). But because of the Corona Virus situation, we had to cancel the March 14th Cardinal Method Constellation.

Whatever a soul healing session, and especially a group constellation is cancelled, it is because the family soul of all people involved was not ready for the healing experience and we need to pause and respect the timing of the soul.

Because people were booked, it means those family systems are attempting to create the healing experience. Those souls want to receive the healing, but they're not yet ready for it.

And we need to respect it - it's very organic. The intention is there, but divine timing, the right, natural, organic time for the soul healing to happen needs to be respected.

So we pause, and we wait for the perfect time to come.

I really paid close attention to this specific need to pause our Ranova routine back in 2017 when hurricane Irma hit. It was the first of only two times we had to cancel a Cardinal Method Constellation, and clearly those family souls were not ready for the healing.

And what happened after the hurricane was gone was that the group of people kind of dissipated. When we had to reorganize the dates, and the people who were going to be together on September 9th were not, and came to constellations in different months.

It all became a very different configuration, and the same is happening now with the March 14th group. Those people who were individually, consciously ready for this work belong to family souls that were not ready unconsciously. There was not enough permission.

So we wait. We respect the timing of the soul and we know that in the best time possible will come, when those souls are ready for this process.

So pausing means we respect the timing of the soul as well.

And it's very powerful and important to understand that the timing of the soul is not the timing of the rational mind. and it is for sure not the timing of industry. And we just

respect whatever spiritual reason there is behind a pause, be that voluntary or forced, so that we can allow ourselves to observe so we can heal whatever aspect of the soul needs healing.

That's another very powerful role of pauses.

Pauses allow you to heal.

We need to sleep a few hours daily, at least eight hours a night, because our bodies need to recap, reboot, and to just replenish itself with health, and all the cells need to heal themselves if needed, right?

So we need pauses whenever we need healing.

And when the world needs a pause, it means the world needs to heal.

When a human being needs to pause, a human being needs to heal.

When the whole world is pausing, it means the whole world needs to heal something.  Symptoms of physical illness, yes, but also something in the collective soul.

Because we all know by now that nothing is just physical. Everything has an emotional root cause, right?

There's emotional healing that needs to be done when the world has to pause, and I would love to know what your impressions are - what do you think needs to be healed the world?

Please share what you think is the much needed healing that the world requires right now.

What do we need to heal?

Is it the culture of busy? Is it the culture of selfishness? Is it the culture of greed? When the economy received such a great impact from this pause, what do we have to rethink?

What do we have to reconfigure? What aspects of the soul of humanity do you believe needs healing?

I would love to hear your opinion and I can't wait to see what you have to say about all of this.

Please share your experience in the comments area below and please share this content if you feel it's useful for someone you know and love.

Thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you soon!

Much love,

Paola.