There is a space within every one of us where feelings emerge from the dark kitchen of pre-consciousness carrying the most basic messages of attraction or repulsion. In a few milliseconds these feelings gather words to mark their presence in the whole cloth of our conscious experience. As we consider the options and the decision that must be made we can feel our body being drawn to the attractive and resisting the repulsive . Our first efforts to manage these feelings and their first associated words is to label them for conscious management through our own language. The attractive becomes ‘good’ and repulsive, ‘bad’. These provisional tags of good or bad are the first most transparent expressions coming from our mind/brain/body regarding the possibilities before us. It will be rare that this first rush of feeling-come-language will generate the last word in what we are calling The Good Decision. Our first Sense of Good is composed for us non-consciously based on our individual current and past information and experience. The critical discipline of The Good Decision is to Pause following the initial tagging of words to feelings flowing through our brain’s threshold into our consciousness. The mind/body/ brain actually needs time to process what we are experiencing as our ‘initial gut feeling’. The gut feeling can be a brilliant inspiration leading to great outcomes, or the opposite, the beginning of a disaster. The process of The Good Decision is designed to front load your initial conscious considerations toward the good outcome.

Your Sense of Good

Whenever you apply the adjective ‘good’ to a person, place or object, you have accessed your last rendition of your own Sense of Good and applied it to a future potential outcome. Your Sense of Good resides for the most part in your non-conscious because it is dynamic and constantly evolving as you grow into yourself over time. With every decision you make you start your considerations based on your last version of your Sense of Good. If the feeling and language that comprise your Sense of Good become separated rather than integrated, the language or words you use for ‘good’ will become hollow mind based adjectives as opposed to powerful language that is in line with your feelings and instincts; powerful language that leaves you with a solid sense of groundedness in your Sense of Good.

Caution and Recommendation

Your Sense of Good in Pause I is also what we often call ‘the first impression’. Complex decisions should not be based purely on one’s first impression or ‘gut feeling’. The human brain and body can deliver to the mind a clear first impression, but in most circumstances they should not deliver the yes/no based solely on your Sense of Good. As I have said, at Pause I the body/brain/mind trinity can be the source of your most inspired good decisions, as well as your most catastrophic decisions. This is why we pause.

Recommendation: Click on the next level of The Sense of Good in the menu and I will include some guidance on the Pause and ways in which you can more effectively practice pausing including how you can integrate your religious practice.

Knowing Good. Whose good and what good are we talking about? The ‘whose good’, we are talking about is your good. None of us can directly consciously control our Sense of Good and yet we can manage and grow that Sense through our daily practices. Good is actually a positive charge in our brains that tunes that wonderful antenna called our body to see and find our sense of good in our day-to-day environment.

A Caution Regarding your Sense of Good. ‘Good’ is so embedded in our speech patterns that one would think we know what we mean when we say good. That is not and cannot be the case. Unless we pause and reflect we cannot know what we mean when we say good. Your body/brain/mind is constantly in an interior conversation below your consciousness regarding your present moment Sense of Good. The nature of your good grows and matures with you. For the more complex decisions you make in life, you probably need to stop and call to mind to experience as well as put to words what in this moment feels like good to you.