Poetic PEACE Pilgrimage – Year 7 – Day 71 – 2/25/2020
let each breath you take bring you deeper into that center, into the quiet place, the timeless place, the spaceless space…
welcome, welcome to day 27 of a season of peace on this twenty-fifth day of the flowering field of february; it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence, the energy of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness, and i’m feeling the tenderness and feeling tender, perfect for dwelling in the silence of the heart… join with me now in a journeying to the stillpoint meditation of Ram Dass…
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There is this moment. The sounds, the sensations, feelings. Just this moment.
CS 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.
Riding 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. And yet right in the center of that is the quiet point.
The bus, the sounds in the room, the feelings in the body, they’re all part of the circles that go around the center. But in the center there’s no coming, no going.
If you still feel caught in thought or agitation, just sigh your way into the center. Just, ahhhhhh. And let each sigh take you closer to that quiet center.
Now move one of your hands in 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 as the movement of the hand. And see that the movement of the hand is led by the intention of the mind, but all of that is in the circle around the center, and the center just is. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Sighing your way into the center, to the 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 goings, as emotions and thoughts, from the eye of the center, the eye of the circle, where thine eye be single.
Now pick one moment in your memory of today. Project yourself into some other moment. It might be at the subway, or the office, or at home. Any one, it 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, bathroom, eating, traveling, meetings, all of the moment-to-moment experiences. And then imagine the thread wove through that entire string of experiences, just the flow of conscious presence in the center of the universe, where everything is still.
Thoughts think themselves. Sensations occur. Movement occurs. Relationships happen. And in the middle of it, always, just this.
Let each breath you take 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 the center point in the middle of the heart that we talk about as the center of the circle is everywhere. So in the middle of that siren you hear, that is the silent center.
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 the silent spaceless space, timeless time, it is with that eye that you are truth. 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 that 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’s 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 unspoken. Om. Om.
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