A ‘Denkpause’ (daynk’pauseh; or ‘Gedankenpause’ gehdahn’kenpauseh) is a marvelous German word for suspending mental activity to allow the brain to work! If we stop thinking with the self-assuring speed we usually enjoy, some deeper part of our brain gets an opportunity to study, analyze, and evaluate. In the ‘thought pause’ moment, we get ourselves out of the way for other faculties to rush in! We learn more than we know.

On the printed page, the ‘Denkpause’ can take place as well: a few empty lines, a series of dots perhaps, something that gives our awareness special pause. We have to do something in that pause; we have to ‘get it together’. In conversation, we react strongly to the pause that follows a pithy statement, the pause that reliably invites special attention and thought, lightening fast or extended for a long time. Communication gains substance.

In our astrology work, our minds often run too fast, working on a routined knee-jerk reaction-principle that assures us we really know what we’re doing! –If I can say ALL this quickly, it shows I really know what I’m doing!

Let’s be aware of the passionate listers of measurements, the list utterers, who boggle the mind with tangled jungles of stuff that simply can’t be comprehended significantly by anyone except those other listers who pretend to absorb it all.

For example: “Can you imagine: Wow! This Aries man with Pisces rising has a Libra Moon that’s square Pluto, with seven or eight strong aspects to the Midheaven; Saturn’s a singleton in the 9th, and Venus, the final dispositor, is squared by Neptune, with Uranus and Mars each at an Aries Point; Mars is squaring Mercury; and, to boot, Neptune is in Leo in the 6th. And the Pleiades are grouped right on his Venus!” –Now, this paragraph would be delivered in 21 seconds of speech, even less comprehensible than the 69 written words.

A Denkpause is not going to rescue the list utterer, except within a teacher’s frame of mind, dissecting what is being presented in terms of what should besaid, and teaching how it should be done.

But the Denkpause does serve its high function within the process of synthesis: that moment when we appreciate the wholeness of the portrait geared around an illuminated center; when our brains get a chance to assimilate more than we know in the moment.

In this example, the brain reveals to us that this Aries man with Pisces rising and a Libra Moon in the 7th shows Jupiter rising peregrine, ruling the 9th and the 10th. Saturn is peregrine as well in the 9th, in Sagittarius. –Seeing this in simplified clarity, pausing for significance –before being strangled by spaghetti coils of measurements– begins to mark the artist analyst in astrology. Our brain illuminates the situation this way: “a most sensitive man not without personal power and public projection, with a deep sense of purpose, nobly framed academically, even religiously.”

–You understand THIS, for sure.

… …

….

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Indeed, this statement does not say everything. But what it says is enough. This is what’s important. It is the surmise then permeates all other measurements to come. We make ourselves clear. The parts come together to establish the whole. We’re not showing off; we’re getting down to business with Pope Benedict XVI’s horoscope [April 16, 1927 at 4:15 AM in Marktl GER (12E51; 48N15)]

I consciously employed the Denkpause yesterday after I had prepared the horoscope for a client, i.e., all the measurements I needed were compiled and organized. But, with this case, I did not yet feel that cohesion within the astrological portrait, that feeling I’m used to; it was slow in coming in this case. While I could summarize it easily, I couldn’t get into it articulately: Northern Hemisphere emphasis, high mental orientation (Gemini Moon square Mercury; Mercury square Ascendant) … this would suggest intense preoccupation, especially with Uranus, the ruler of the 3rd, the mind-set, being peregrine. And dominating all was a Midheaven Neptune permeating the Mercury through a quindecile (further bewildering mental state … about what?) and there was a powerfully charged Nodal axis. –Sure, there was more, but I knew these points would dominate and lead to everything else. –Denkpause.

I put the horoscope aside for an hour, and just before the phone rang for the consultation to begin, looking again at the horoscope and my preparation notes, my brain gifted me with what to say; it was all there: “There’s the suggestion of unfinished business in the early home [client corroborates], focused on the mother [‘There was none,’ the lady said, curiously], and a resulting all-pervasive spiritual, paranormal awareness of your life and your world. Let’s talk about that.”

The lady replied, “I’m in touch with other beings who have passed on … I hear voices; my mother and my father both died when I was 4; my grandmother raised us…” –Everything became clear: the abandonment issue assuaged by projection to the departed, a dimension of being that made her special … and so much more.

**I like to feel that the Denkpause reminds us to get away from the old-time ring-around-the-rosy analytical techniques that were taught some 50-60 years and earlier ago, and still influence the teaching programs of older institutions; the old-fashioned way of analysis that presumes to touch a miracle with unyielding formulae.
The Denkpause reminds us to move aside, to assess how many measurements we really need to see in order to say something important, to relate the horoscope to the reality being lived by the client.

–And in this process, we should flatter ourselves that the astrologer, in the end, is more important than those measurements! [The astrologer with nothing to say will often use measurements/jargon to compensate, to hide behind.]

Consciously try the Denkpause. –Say: “OK, I’ve got this horoscope all in mind, but it just isn’t really clear yet. I’ll put it on the backburner and trust that it will come together when I look at it again tomorrow morning.” That backburner is where the Denkpause lives!

It works. You are activated in your deepest most knowing levels … even while doing other things, even sleeping! At the right time, things/themes will come together. –And that’s much better than extending a list of measurements to lose the human being … and bore the Universe. .