The “Sacred Pause”
Trust my gut? No, thank you.
Do you want to know what I think is a dangerous and overused cliche? Well, I don’t care if you do, I’m going to tell you anyway.
Trust your gut.
Sorry, friends, I hate to be the bearer of unwelcome news, but your gut is often very, very wrong. Don’t believe me? You should believe Daniel Kahneman.
Kahneman is the genius behind such groundbreaking decision-making theories as Prospect Theory and System 1/System 2 Thinking. What we call the “gut” is the output of what he calls System 1. System 1 is a fast, automatic, and intuitive mode of thinking that operates below our conscious awareness. It’s remarkably efficient, generating immediate impressions, feelings, and judgments that feel coherent and certain. But that certainty might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
It turns out our intuition is pretty unreliable, at least most of the time. It’s formed by heuristics, which are mental shortcuts that allow us to make quick decisions. But these shortcuts also bring in predictable biases. So when we “trust our gut,” we might as well be saying “trust our biases.”
Some examples?
We overestimate risks that are vivid or recent.
We rely on stereotypes instead of reason.
We anchor our judgments to irrelevant starting points.
These biases operate automatically, so our intuitive judgments feel right even when they’re wrong, or at least unhelpful.
Kahneman does admit that gut instincts can be accurate, but only under very specific and relatively rare conditions. Our intuition is reliable in environments that are stable and predictable, and when we have extensive experience with immediate and accurate feedback. A good example would be a firefighter sensing danger or a chess master recognizing a pattern. In these cases the gut isn’t so much guessing as recognizing.
The “Sacred Pause”
Ok, so I’m admittedly a little out of my depth to this point, but I’m heading towards something closer to my general purview of mindfulness, human formation, and civic life. Specifically, I’d like to look at System 1/System 2 Thinking vis-à-vis samatha-vipassanā meditation. Samatha-vipassanā is a practice in the earliest Buddhist tradition, the Theravāda. As its hyphen suggests, it is a two-tiered practice meant to combat exactly what Kahneman warns against.
Samatha is calming practice. It trains the mind to stay with a singular object, most commonly the breath. Over time, this develops sustained attention, emotional steadiness, and reduced impulse reactivity.
Vipassanā is insight practice. It trains awareness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as they arise. But, instead of being controlled by them, you simply observe them. In my practice, I name them: “thinking, thinking,” “itch, itch,” “anxiety, anxiety.” I notice how they feel in my body. Importantly, I notice how those feelings change over time. The itch starts as a persistent nuisance, but then I realize it isn’t solid. It’s actually an interplay of lots of smaller sensations that are moving, changing, rising, and falling. More often than not, it recedes or completely disappears.
So how does this show up in daily life? With training, when you’re faced with an important choice, you can notice your gut instinct and, importantly, recognize it as exactly that. You don’t have to follow it.
This is known as the “sacred pause.”
It’s so simple that it’s downright incredible. That said, like so many things in our lives, it’s simple, but far from easy.
How Do You Do It?
Samatha-vipassanā is a well-documented practice, so I can hardly add anything new here. But, for the sake of those who have not heard about, read about, or practiced it, I’ll give a brief description of my practice in hopes it will be useful.
Stillness. Reminder: all of the benefits from meditation come when we quiet our mind and listen to our truest intention. Find a comfortable position to sit. You don’t need a fancy cushion or to sit in full lotus - goodness knows I couldn’t do that if I tried. If those things help you, by all means, you do you. But a chair will suffice. Sit with your back straight. Don’t slump. This practice is not primarily about comfort, it’s about concentration and awareness.
Concentration. Bring a relaxed concentration to the sensation of the breath on your nostrils. Feel how it is cool on the inhalation and warmer on the exhalation. Notice the gap between the inhalations and the exhalation, and vice versa.
Awareness. Once you’ve established concentration on the breath for a few minutes, you become aware of thoughts, emotions, sensations, or sounds. Name them silently to yourself: “planning, planning,” “soreness, soreness.” If something beckons your attention - like a bodily pain or itch - examine it mindfully. Notice how it feels in your body… how it changes, ebbs, and recedes.
If something, like a thought or sensation, calls you away from the breath, that’s okay! It’s not a failure. Quite the opposite - that’s the practice. Simply bring your concentration back gently to the sensation of the breath on your nostrils.
It’s important to start with a relatively short period of samatha-vipassanā, maybe 5 or 10 minutes in a sitting. When you first start, even that will be challenging. I’ve worked my way up to a 20-30 minute daily practice, occasionally going as long as 40 minutes. In my experience, and in some meditation research, hitting the 20-minute mark regularly seems to be about when the real fruit of samatha-vipassanā seems to kick in. But, like physical exercise, it requires regular, intentional repetition to build the necessary muscles.
Trust me, it’s worth the effort. Or you could just trust your gut and see where that gets you.