The Pause That Empowers

What if I told you that it only takes 5 seconds to totally re-orient your life? That you can go from living reactively to living proactively and that there is no barrier to you starting today?

Recently I was watching archival footage of Bruce Lee’s appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Each episode had a similar format. The first guest would be some action star or martial arts expert who was promoting a movie. Johnny would ask them questions of a personal nature as opposed to asking about their project. This would throw them a little off balance as it was clearly not what they were there to do. Then right in the middle of their “time on the couch” he would pivot and announce a surprise guest visit by Bruce Lee. This was usually very annoying to the original guest as they couldn’t help but feel their time in the spotlight had just been usurped by Bruce. The tension was palpable. As the audience roared with applause, the adversarial environment was set.

Johnny knew exactly what he was doing. He had long admired Bruce and had supreme confidence in his ability to handle the hostile situation that had been created on the set. Years of studying philosophy and martial arts training had given him a supremely calm and focused frame of mind. As the guests often attacked Bruce with insults and derisive comments, he remained composed and soft spoken. I noticed he often paused before speaking to evaluate what the offended guest was really saying. When he would answer his tone showed he was the one in control. He would address the underlying reason the person had gone on the offensive and offer bits of wisdom that were designed to steer the conversation to a deeper level. He wasn’t reactive, he was proactive.

There were often challenges that were made to test whether he had actual skills or whether his moves were simply “stage craft” and/or camera tricks. He calmly demonstrated his abilities and won the guest over. What started off as confrontation he moved into education then demonstration which quickly became admiration. Not only did he show he could shift the energy of a room, but he showed us how a pause can be empowering.

Silhouetted martial artist performing a high kick during a lightning storm

The reality we live in can often be provocative. If we dwell on these provocations and the negative emotions they can generate, they lead us to assumptions that then become beliefs. These beliefs then mold us into the person we are. This then affects the vibration we’re emanating. This vibration is what the Universe responds to. Quantum Mechanics has a whole complex set of postulations and observations as to how this all works, but for the sake of keeping this article brief, suffice it to say, science has confirmed that the Universe responds to belief and vibration. In the near future, I will write specifically about this and “The Observer Effect”.

One of these observations is known as creating a Feedback Loop. This is where we make an assumption and this generates a manifestation. We see the manifestation as proof of a truth. We adopt the assumption as a belief and this causes us to continue to manifest in accordance with the belief over and over again. Thereby causing our reality to conform to our assumption in a never ending loop. The original assumption can be positive or negative, it makes no difference. For instance, a person raised in a wealthy home will most likely assume that money is easy to come by and that they are worthy of prosperity. A person raised in poverty may make the assumption that money is hard to come by and that they are unworthy of abundance. If they persist in the beliefs generated by the original assumptions, their experiences will conform.

Now to bring all this together. Earlier we mentioned that the reality we experience can be provocative. But what if I told you it’s what you assume about the provocation and how you react to it that determines whether it has a negative or positive effect on your reality? What if we were to assume that the Universe, Source, God, Life, was not conspiring against us, but rather had an eager and even a passionate desire to see all our dreams come true? This is a state of mind referred to as Pronoia. It is the opposite of Paranoia. If this becomes our base or fundamental assumption, it logically follows that every situation we encounter in life is something meant to benefit us. This is where The Pause That Empowers enters the picture.

Woman kneeling in rain beside a glowing seedling amid urban ruins

Just as Bruce Lee was able to ignore the provocations, take control, shift the energy and turn the situation into an educational experience, we can do the same. When provocations come our way, we need to shift our fundamental assumption from “this is an annoyance or hindrance” to “this is an opportunity to learn something”. The key thing we need to teach ourselves is to pause when situations that provoke come our way. Deep breathing can help. Sometimes something is so provocative, the emotions come up instantly. That’s okay. Give yourself a moment to feel the emotions and then set them aside and ask yourself “Why did that provoke me so much? What fundamental assumption do I have that brought that experience into my reality?”

Okay, confession time. For years I held the assumption that when it came to driving “people were idiots”. I felt this was observation based and true. The more I assumed this, the more I witnessed people doing idiotic things that endangered my life. Then one day I changed my assumption to “when I’m traveling, no matter what vehicle I’m in, I’m always protected”. This was based on a new Pronoiad assumption that the Universe was on my side and looked out for me. I changed my fundamental assumption and my travel experiences totally changed.

Another confession. For years I held the assumption that “the matrix” had the ability to interfere with my life, my happiness and my finances. I think you know where this is going. During this period of assuming, I experience exactly that. It was only when I adopted the assumption that I’m “untouchable” by the matrix that the situations and circumstances I experienced reflected that. Combine this with the fundamental assumption that Source is actively inspiring my creativity and imagination. The belief that logically flows out of this is that if what I create and what I desire to accomplish with those creations flows from Source, then Source has already provided the funding to make the vision happen. Why? Because Source wants to. Simple as that.

The lesson here is that in order for us to turn provocations into beneficial gifts, we have to see them as opportunities for growth. We do this by changing our core assumptions from being paranoid to being pronoiad. This causes a fundamental shift in how we react to every single thing that happens to us. By changing our modus operandi from a negative reaction to positive proactive behavior, we are able to revise our reality. The definition of the word revise is “to change something in accordance with an altered vision or perception”. It all begins with the pause that empowers.