Reaction and Response
Edited from a transcript of a talk at the end of a ten-day seminar in Australia in March 2001
I have two words that I use to demonstrate the human condition. The first word is ‘reaction’. Reactions always have an emotional force or content to them. Something happens in front of me and I react immediately from my habitual mind and emotions. Because it is emotional, reaction has no pause in it. It’s jerky, staccato. It hits out. It’s forceful. Usually reaction hurts others - and myself as well.
The other word I use is 'response’. This has pause in it. Response is what makes the body rhythmic, supple. It doesn’t have force in it. Responsibility is having a pause in any situation.
If there’s a danger to life, your instinctual intelligence will react faster than ever you can. It will make your body do something - run or lash out in the moment - without a thought. The job of our instinctual intelligence is to ensure the survival of the physical body, as much as possible, and to prevent injury. But men and women have made instinctual reaction theirs, with their emotions and thoughts, cruelty and violence. In the mystical life - when we realise there’s something greater than habitual dependence on external stimulation - we awaken response in us.
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