Centered

We all have centers.  These are places in ourselves at which we’re in balance, at which we feel comfortable with life and living.  We each have a state of being where we feel peaceful, calm, and in control.  These are our centers, and we would do well to try to find this place, this way of being, in order to bring more peace to our lives.

To a dancer, everything comes from the center.  It’s easy to see a new dancer who hasn’t yet found his or her center, for that dancer looks to be out of control, ungraceful, even clumsy.  When the dancer dances from his or her center, though, the rest of the body follows, showing the control and the form that the dancer has worked hard to gain.

When I’m coming from my center, things rarely get out of hand.  When I take a deep breath to center myself, a hectic situation calms down.  When I take a step back from a tense situation to see the bigger picture, I allow myself to access my center and bring a much more effective approach to what’s going on.  My decision-making improves, my trust in myself grows, and my ability to help others improves, also.  Like the dancer, my actions seem more compact, more together, more in control simply because I’ve chosen to access a part of myself that is always there, but not always used.

Some people will call the center “God.”  Others will call it “spirit” or "self," and still other wouldn’t call it anything at all.  But it’s there in each of us, and one of the keys to doing things well and being effective is to be able to access our centers.  When we can do this, the dance of our lives will be simpler and so much more beautiful. . . .

If we locate the kingdom of heaven within,
we can experience the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Susan Santucci