Living at the Center

My I "can go anywhere, and wherever it is will be…the momentary center of my being. The aim I must set before myself is that 'I' should be permanently established in the center of my soul so that I can fulfill the first purpose of my existence, to be a link between spirit and matter." [1]

We tend to go wherever our attention goes. In such cases we are not the source of our attention, we are not paying attention from ourselves, we are simply lost, rudderless, in the object of our attention. That object that ensnares us can be a thought train, an emotion, a body sensation, a sight, a sound, and so on. We are not at home, not in ourselves. We are taken by everything. Although we may not be clear about what Bennett means by soul, it is clear that in our usual unmoored state we are not in our soul.

As long as we live, our body is going to breathe, our mind is going to produce thoughts and images, and our emotional faculty is going to emote. When we have thoughts or emotions about some situation or about the future or the past, the thoughts and emotions per se are not an issue. They do not keep us from being centered, from being present. But what so often happens is that we go into those thoughts or emotions and get lost in them. In that case we are not centered, we are not present. We need to train ourselves to be present, to stay present, to be in our bodies, to be in our center. From that center, we can think, we can feel, we can plan, we can reminisce, we can even ruminate on things that happened in the past. If all the while we stay rooted in our body, in this moment, we maintain our presence.

It is not obvious why presence makes us happier, but it does. A primary reason is that when we are present, we are in a higher state than when we are not present. And in that higher state, we are much less prone to becoming identified. Thoughts and emotions, even negative or difficult emotions, do not absorb us, do not so easily overcome us or take us. We stay ourselves, fully living this experience of thoughts or emotions, while abiding in the larger context of who we are, abiding in the core of peace and connectedness that presence opens to us. Staying rooted, present, puts that emotional pain or that thought train into its proper perspective. This enables us to see our situation with more clarity and allow it to resolve or do what we need to do about it, if anything.

To establish ourselves in the center of our soul, we begin by working toward establishing ourselves within our body, or more specifically within the sensation of our body. When we practice sensing to the point of being able to sense our whole body, we can then occupy, inhabit our whole body intentionally. We can experience "here I am in this sensation body."

Our sensation body, contiguous with our physical body, is part of our soul. If we can be in that, then we are in our soul. If we can establish ourselves in that, then we are established in our soul. It is not quite enough to be in contact with our sensation body, to be aware of it. We need to inhabit it, live in it. This has a twofold impact. First, it develops and strengthens our sensation body. Second, it helps unify our I, our will, our direct sense of being ourselves.

A major step toward that is learning to notice where we are. Are we in ourselves, centered in our soul, present? Or are we lost in automatic living, with no foundation, absent? Are we at home in ourselves, or not? There is a stark difference between these two states. If we intentionally work at noticing when we are in one versus the other, we develop that perception, and that can call us back to ourselves when we are lost.

Next, we learn to respond immediately whenever we notice that we are lost, not at home. We learn to respond by coming back into our sensation body and into being ourselves, our I. We leave behind any arising frustration, self-reproach, or reluctance, and just come back, then and there, and sustain that presence. By repeating this process again and again and again, we create ourselves, we establish our I in the center of our soul. And having our I in the center of our soul puts us in the stream of will that connects back to the Source of all. We then serve as a link between spirit and matter.

The paradox in moving forward from that position is that in evolving from I, from the existential unity of our will, toward the Personal Individuality, we step from occupying a clear center, which is not just within our body but also within our soul, to a centerless center that we share with everyone and everything. This reflects the scientific fact that the center of the universe, the point of origin of the Big Bang, is everywhere. In that place, rather than being here and now, we just are. We awaken into the eternal.

For this week, please practice living in your center.

[1] J.G. Bennett: A Spiritual Psychology; 1999, page 161.

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