I Choose… The Pause (Part Two)

I Choose… The Pause (Part Two)

June 5, 2016

Hello all!

Well, one week down and three to go.

This week I’ve really taken two of the ideas from last week’s letter and done my best to remember to APPLY them in this experience.

The first: “I did not try to control ANY aspect of that experience, except for the choices I was making in each and every moment.”

As with any “tool for transformation,” the stronger my intention to make it a “default setting” in my patterns of behavior 1) the more likely I am to remember to do it and 2) the more numerous and intense are the opportunities to practice. Because, as you’ve all heard me say before, it’s not possible to create a new habit if we never have to choose it deliberately. And, for myself, the strength and the level of sincerity of an intention such as this is always apparent to me in the number and the intensity of the opportunities to practice it that I recognize in my experience.

Please note: I did not say “opportunities to practice that I RECEIVE.” I said “opportunities that I RECOGNIZE” (as opportunities). It’s a Divine Truth that we are continually, in every moment of every day, receiving opportunities to make our choices deliberately. For myself, when I set an intention to really change something within myself, it’s as if I have decided to “turn my awareness dial” just a bit for the purpose of being able to see the choices that are always available to me but that my previous habits of perception and behavior have not allowed me to recognize. This makes those opportunities “light up” for me AS opportunities, and from there I can choose more consciously than I do when I’m operating out of habit.

The second idea that I’ve been getting into is regarding the “pause,” itself: “I stood in that “pause,” in the “turning of the page” moment, which contains no content, and I paid attention to the choices that my habits of thinking would try to make. In that pause, I discovered that I could leave what was past, in the past. I could write a different story [if I chose to].”

Last January I sent out an article titled, “I Choose My Desired Content,” and it was about the “Book of My Life” idea (if you’ve joined this list since then and you’d like to read it, you can find it in the archives), and that’s where I’ve been going with the above idea about a “turning of the page” moment, which contains no content. In this metaphor, I’m taking the “days” out of the idea and making it about the pause, instead. As I do so, I know that I can take as long as I choose to turn that page, and in that pause I get to decide who I want to be, as the author of my own story, when that page has been turned all the way over and waits in readiness for the next bit of content to be entered.

In that “My Desired Content” article I said this: “I get to choose what is written on this page. …And whatever it says will be the truth of who I BE'd [as I lived the life that became that page’s content], because the choices that I make are always—NO EXCEPTIONS—an infallibly accurate representation of WHO I AM BEING in the moment that I make them.”

In other words, who I am being as I make my choices in each and every moment—in the midst of each and every circumstance—is what creates the story of my life as I’m living it.

In this “pause” that I am currently giving to myself, as I am just breathing in between the moments of recognition that I’m behaving by default, rather than by design, there is an amazing freedom to witness how I’m choosing to live each moment without judging or criticizing, but WITH the ability to see my behavior for what it is and to change it if I decide to.

This last week has been one of observing myself and my choices for the purpose of seeing where my habits of behavior are not behaviors that contribute to the quality of the person that I know I am capable of being. Simple. And yet, difficult at the same time, I must admit.

And well worth the effort.

I Choose… the Pause (Part Two)

This week as I stand in the Observer position, witnessing my own attitudes, choices, and behaviors, I recognize in all of it – in each and every moment and experience – the opportunity to stand more firmly in the NEW “default” position that I’ve set for myself. Each time I choose FOR the new pattern, I help it to become the default program that I WANT to live my life from, and the story in the Book of My Life reflects the quality of my new choices.

I am grateful for every single opportunity to practice that I am able to recognize, because I know that it’s not anything that’s happening TO me, but it is something wonderful that is happening FOR me, for the purpose of showing me where a new and different choice can be made on my own behalf. In this “turning of the page” moment, I breathe, and I consciously decide who the author of the next page in the Book of My Life is going to be.

What about YOU? Do you find anything helpful in this? I hope so. I’d love to hear about it.

Love,

Sandi