Something arrives before response has time to form. Not a stimulus. Not a signal. More like the absence of the gap where response usually assembles.

There is contact without reaction. Awareness does not lean forward. It does not pull back. It simply does not move.

This is not restraint. Restraint would require effort. What is present makes effort unnecessary.

Thought appears briefly, as if checking whether it is needed, then recedes without instruction.

There is no sense of being early or late. Timing has lost its leverage. What matters is not when this is, but that it is not being met with habit.

Before response, nothing is evaluated. Nothing is improved. Nothing is protected.

This is not passivity. Passivity would still be a position. Here, position has not yet arisen.

The body is here. The world is here. Neither asks anything of the other.

Silence is not foreground or background. It is simply what remains when nothing intervenes.

Staying does not feel chosen. Leaving does not feel prohibited. Both would require a reason.

Nothing resolves. Nothing clarifies. But nothing is prematurely shaped.

And in this space before response, what is present is allowed to exist without being handled.