In theory the WAIT Technique is pretty simple. You just… wait. But what do you wait for? And for how long? How do you know when you have waited long enough? The answer is that you wait for clarity. The trick is really getting what that means. What normally controls our decision making process? Typically we are motivated by our thoughts and our emotions. We aren’t even making our own decisions. Our conditioned responses are deciding for us. We are programmed to react, not to decide.
In Human Software Engineering we distinguish between two kinds of thoughts (most people have no idea that there is such a distinction). These two kinds of thoughts are called natural intentions and conditioned responses.
By the term natural intentions I’m not talking about the “I’m intending this into reality” ego-based kind of meaning for intention. I mean the kind of intention like the desire you had that got effortlessly manifested without you having to lift a finger. Sometimes you are called upon to be involved but your involvement has the same quality of effortlessness as the kind of effortlessness that makes the grass grow or the clouds blow by. It’s that “being totally in the zone kind of feeling”, a sense of frictionless flow.
On the other hand, conditioned responses are learned behaviors. They are not effortless although we may have become quite competent at many of them. This may give them the appearance of being effortless, even though they are far from it. They tend to be more like trying to force things to be the way that we expect them to be, or trying to get other people to do things our way, or chasing after something because we are longing to get a sense of fulfillment from attaining it. All of the decisions and the ensuing actions are coming from thoughts that are generated out of stories about what we “think” should happen.
Everyone has the ability to KNOW what is right and correct for them but this is typically covered up by layers of conditioning and emotionally reactive habits. Think of impulsive purchases that you have made that you later regretted making. Getting into relationships that your intuition told you not to touch with a ten foot pole typically result in suffering. Making impulsive decisions about career or money or health issues can be disastrous.
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The answer is very simple, but like all of the Pure Awareness Techniques it involves doing something that is the opposite of what we have been conditioned to do. That is to wait for clarity. Waiting for clarity means to not make decisions impulsively or emotionally. The basic guideline is: if your decision feels emotionally charged, don’t make it, instead wait for clarity.
Waiting for clarity is not a passive process. Not at all. Waiting is a time to gather more information, let circumstances develop a little bit more, and especially it is a time to practice the other Pure Awareness Techniques. Use the CORE Technique for fully feeling any feelings that the potential decision is bringing up. And perhaps use the GPS version of the GAP Technique to check in with your Knowing and see what kind of guidance you get, even if all it says is, “not ready to give you an answer yet”, which basically means… wait some more.
Like all of the Pure Awareness Techniques you have to actually do it, you have to experience it in order to start to get the hang of it. This one is a little different though as there isn’t any audio file to listen to except one that you can choose to install inside of yourself that is a looped recording that says – Wait for clarity, Wait for clarity.
What does clarity look like? What does it feel like? It’s not emotional. It’s not pressured for time. It’s not concerned about missing out on some opportunity. It is a calm inner quiet knowing that something is either right for you or its not. It doesn’t have anything to do with what anyone else thinks or feels about it. This is called being true to yourself. What is it that you are really being true to? You are being true to your unique purpose in being here in this life. Waiting for clarity allows you the time to get to a place within yourself where you aren’t reacting to outer demands. You are taking action based on a calm inner quiet knowing of what is right for you.
Many people have such a deep seated habit of acting on their impulses that they don’t really know what waiting for clarity means. When you are clear about something the experience is definitely different than while you are still caught up in non-clarity. Non-clarity has a feeling of pressure about it, or a feeling of confusion or frustration or fear or a vague discomfort. These feelings may in fact be the vary barriers to having clarity in the first place. You can use the CORE Technique to feel
into these feelings. Certainly completing the process of feeling into to core of the energy of a feeling brings you to a state of being in which you are no longer in the grip of the feeling. There’s a quietness, a sense of expansion, a sense of wholeness. It is from this place that clarity comes.
So when you experience clarity it will have a quality of calmness, peacefulness, settledness and a deep certainty that doesn’t even need intellectual understanding. You simply know. This is the only real basis for making any kind of important decision about your life. The experience of what your KNOWING feels like may be different than the way someone else will experience it. What will be valuable for you is to cultivate your personal familiarity with what KNOWING feels like within you. There is no doubt there. There is no uncertainty or questioning things there. You simply know. This is what clarity is. This is what you wait for.
Each of us is here for a purpose. We all have our own rhythm and our own contributions to make according to how our individuality is designed (that’s another interesting story for a different book6). If you are always impulsively
responding to what you think you should do, or what will please someone else, or not doing things because you are afraid of some potential consequences that you don’t think you can handle, you are going to be continuously experiencing frustration, anger, bitterness and disappointment.
So why not start to learn how to wait for clarity. It’s so much better to align yourself with nature’s principle of least action than it is to struggle to make things happen while living in a story that is disconnected with what is real. Allow yourself the pleasure of trying this out. The next time you are about to make an impulsive decision, wait before you make it instead and see what happens. You will be very, very glad that you did. And just a few times of seeing the magic that comes from waiting and you’ll be a convert. You’re gonna love it.