stopping
Alan Watts said in his film on YouTube, Conversations with Myself Part Three from 1971 :
..’and when we stop, we find a world that is happening rather than being done, being shoved, and that happening as distinct from doing is our fundamental self. And our fundamental self is not something just inside the skin, it’s everywhere around us with which we connect. When you look out of your eyes at nature happening out there you’re looking at you.’
W.H.Davies said:
What is this life if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows
No time to see, when woods we pass
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass
No time to see in broad daylight
Streams full of stars, like skies as night
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance
And watch her feet, how they can dance
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began
A poor life this if full of care
we have no time to stand and stare
FM Alexander said to change our habits we need to stop, to create a gap between stimulus and response. Frank Pierce Jones (Alexander teacher) wrote in ‘Freedom to Change’ of ‘an expansion of the field of consciousness in space and time so you are taking in yourself and your environment……..in my experience the field cannot be maintained for any great span of time – it fades in and out. When it has faded out for any length time, its absence manifests itself by a nagging discomfort… ‘