Stopping is a simple, straightforward technique for "doing nothing, as much as possible, for a definite period of time, with the purpose of becoming more awake and remembering who you are," so that you can live more purposefully and peacefully.

ContentsForeword I Stopping at the Speed of Light 1. Facing the Mountain of Too Much 2. Why Cramming and Cutting Don't Work 3. Doing Nothing 4. A Fast Train on the Fast Track 5. Stopping at the Speed of Light 6. Intentional Living: From Routine to Choice 7. Stopping Before Everything 8. Contemporary Contemplation 9. Finding the Spaces Between the Notes 10. Stopped: Awake and Remembering 11. Stop and Go for It! II The Three Ways of Stopping 12. Stillpoints, Stopovers, and Grinding Halts 13. Stillpoints: The Heart and Soul of Stopping 14. Breathing Is Inspiring 15. Stillpoints in a Turning World 16. Stopovers: More of a Good Thing 17. Stopovers on the Way 18. This Is Your Body Talking 19. Excuses! Excuses! 20. The Watersheds and Sea Changes of Life 21. Grinding Halts Are Good for You 22. Growing “Like Corn in the Night,” 23. Freeing and Finding Your Truth 24. Everyday Spirituality III The Gifts of Stopping 25. Stopping's Benefits 26. The Gift of Attention 27. The Gift of Relaxation 28. The Gift of Solitude 29. The Gift of Openness 30. The Gift of Boundaries 31. The Gift of Embracing Your Shadow 32. The Gift of Purpose IV Exploring the Challenges of Stopping 33. Moving Down to the Roots 34. When Society Says “Don't,” 35. “I'm Afraid!,” 36. Seeing the Enemy 37. Owning Your Fear 38. A Telling Relief 39. The Doctor's Unthinkable Thought 40. Saying It to God 41. Some Help in Getting Help 42. “Yes, but . . .,” V Discovering Your Way to Stopping 43. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” 44. Permission Granted Just to Be 45. The Pathway to Your Stopping Woods 46. Stopping while Going from Here to There 47. Moving while Stopping 48. The Young, the Old, and the Violent 49. Stopping Is Caring 50. Trust Yourself Bibliography Acknowledgments Permissions

“An elegant, powerful, and simple tool for finding serenity. Just what the world needs right now.” ―Richard Carlson, author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff “A guide to sanity...can help us navigate through the white-water rapids we call our lives when all else fails to slow us down.” —Lauren Artress, author of Walking a Sacred Path “In a world where people's lives seem to be caught up in a whirlwind of activity, David Kundtz's book is an oasis, a stopping-off place, to heal one's life and rediscover one's true purpose for being here. I highly recommend it.” —Ron Roth, author of The Healing Path of Prayer

A Fast Train on the Fast TrackStopping is not slowing down. There are many books on slowing down the frantic pace of life. This is not one of them, even though an important aspect of Stopping—even one of the reasons for Stopping—is, in fact, to slow down. The process of Stopping is very different from the process of slowing down. Trying to slow down does not slow you down. We have been trying to do that for many years now; it generally doesn't work. It's like trying to cut down on smoking: in a short time you end up where you started, except more frustrated. Slowing down doesn't work because everything around us is going so fast. We get revved-up even if we don't want to be. In his book Timeshifting, Stephan Rechtschaffen, MD, writes about entrainment, which he describes as an unconscious “process that governs how various rhythms fall into sync with one another.” For example, if you were to place two out-of-sync pendulum clocks next to one another, in a short time they would be exactly in sync. “The same principle works,” says Rechtschaffen, “with atomic particles, the tides and human beings.” With human beings? That's quite a remarkable idea. We pick up each other's rhythms and the accumulated rhythms of the world around us. If most of the rhythms around us are fast, so are ours, automatically. That's entrainment. The word can also mean “getting on a train.” We have all boarded the train, the fast train on the fast track, and the process of entrainment is not under our conscious control. That's why trying to slow down doesn't slow us down. It's not because we're weak willed or quitters; it's because we're on a fast train where we're the passengers and not the engineers. We are all riding on a very fast train that is traveling down a predetermined track, gathering speed as it goes, and we have been on it for a long time. We can't get to the engineer because the engineer is protected by loyal guards. Or perhaps there really is no engineer; the train is run by a computer. Many of us want to slow down; some want to get off the train. Others are so used to the speed that they don't notice it. A few love the speed and want to increase it. The few who love the speed are the only ones who get their way. Most of us stare blankly out the window, barely seeing the world flying by and feeling helpless. Fortunately, there is something we can do about it. Stopping can get us off the train, can separate us from the speededup rhythms of those around us, and can bring us into rhythms of our own choosing, which, it's important to note, may well include some time on the fast train. Stopping can roll us into the roundhouse for refreshment and cooling off so we can make sure that, when we take off again, we're on the right track, going in the right direction, and have a very intimate working relationship with the engineer. Entrainment helps to explain the amazingly short attention span of most of us these days. We get our information in sound bites: many brief, skeletal bones of facts. We just don't have time to read in depth or to linger over the newspaper. It seems also to have something to say about our fad-driven society. As soon as one idea, trend, fashion, or person becomes popular, it is quickly dropped for whatever next demands our attention. Whether it is valuable or vulgar seems to make no difference; it's just the next view out the window of the fast train. Faddriven culture engenders frenetic citizens who find themselves, unwittingly, screaming through the night on the fast train and trying to figure out, “How did I get here?” Stopping can bring us both an answer and a solution.