The Center

There is this moment, the sounds, the sensations, feelings.

Just this moment.

C.S. Lewis said, You don't see the center because it's all center.

So experience the center, starting from your heart and in concentric circles, including the entire city, all coming out from your heart, all coming into your heart.

Feel the energy of the city at the circumference of the circle and feel the quietness of the middle of your heart, at the center.

Right in close to the center feel all of the qualities of your personality, your history and your timeline of coming to this moment.

All of it as the little circle around the center, and that all has movement and activity and identity. Ane yet, right in the center of that is a quiet point.

The bus, the sounds of the room, feelings, the body.

They're all part of the circles that go around the center.

But in the center, there's no coming or going.

If you still feel caught in thought or agitation, just sigh your way into the center.

Just, ahh.

Let each sign take you closer to a quiet center.

Now move one of your hands any way you want.

But notice the relationship of the moving hand to the quiet center.

Feel the stillness of the center at the same time as the movement of the hand.

And see that the movement of the hand is led by the intention of the mind.

That all of that is in the circle around the center, and the center just is.

Ahh, sighing your way into the center.

To that still quiet space within.

The universe looked at from the center, from the quietness, is seen as flow as movement, as energy, as patterns, as comings and going, as emotions and thoughts, from the eye of the center, the eye of the circle.

With thine eye be single.

Now pick one moment in your memory of today, project yourself into some other moment, it might be on the subway or at the office or at home.

Any one, doesn't matter which one.

And ask yourself, go look there and see whether or not that person at that moment recognized the center.

Imagine all the moments of today, one after another, the getting up, bathroom, eating, traveling, feedings.

Ahh, all of the moment to moment experiences that emerge and the thread wove through that entire string of experiences.

Just the thread of conscious presence in the center of the universe, where everything is still.

Thoughts think themselves, sensations occur, movement occurrence, relationships happen.

And in the middle it, always, just this.

But each breath you take will bring you deeper into that center, just into the quiet place, the timeless place, the spaceless space.

And then if you want to make the leap, appreciate that that center point in the middle of the heart that we talk about is the center of the circle - is everywhere.

Everywhere you look in the universe, everything's happening and nothing's happening.

It's all changing and it's all still.

When they say quietness is master of the deed, it is the relationship of that quiet center to the forms around it. It is when you stand at the center of the universe, in a silent space, spaceless space, timeless time.

It is with that eye that you are true.

For in the center there is no longing, no hopes, no desires, no fears, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Right in that center.

We listen from that center, to hear what part is played.

We see from the center, seeing the design and the play and the dance.

And every time we get lost in the periphery of the circle, the minute we remember, we are on our way back to the center.

The center of the flower, the center of the mandala.

The center, where past and future fold in on themselves.

The center where here and there fold in on themselves.

There is a sound, the sound of Om, that represents all of the sounds folded in on themselves.

It is that sound of silence.

It is spoken, yet it is unspoken.