A pause before reacting is a valuable habit. It gives me time to think and respond rather than react. And pausing before reacting demonstrates both maturity and good character.
An AA friend showed me the connection between a pause and spiritual growth.
While discussing the benefits of spiritual growth, he said, “With every year of spiritual growth, I earn another second of reaction time.”
I paused to ponder this. The insight was a double-edged sword.
On the first edge of the sword, I agreed with my friend. There is a causal correlation between spiritual maturity and reaction time. With spiritual growth, I have gained reaction time. At least occasionally.
The other edge of the blade, this truth was a measurement tool—a ruler for life. I can measure spiritual growth by observing my pauses.
The length of my pauses displays my spiritual progress, plateaus and retreats. If I am reacting immediately to life’s stuff, I have proof of my lack of spiritual growth. If my reaction time increases by a second, I can count one year of spiritual growth. If my response time has shortened from 5 seconds to 3 seconds, I have evidence of a two-year backslide in spiritual growth.
Of course, these are averages over a long period, a week, month or year. This tool can be used by the hour or minute as well.
I can measure my spiritual connectivity throughout the day with the reaction time yardstick. Moment by moment, my reaction times may go up and down as I cycle through degrees of awareness of my Higher Power. Hopefully, this saw-tooth graph is trending up. But there is no guarantee. A mindful reset is sometimes required.
I saw much with that short pause to react to my friend’s insight.
Related posts
Spiritual Maturity
Measuring Progress: Focusing on Actions Over Feelings
as someone has said “God is in the pause”
I’m so grateful that I can understand this now!
thanks for the comment Gisele and great that you knocked it out of the park at your speech event.