The Center of Life

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Below are some of the core insights which I have come to appreciate in this journey. On the day of homecoming, this was all raw and direct, and so vast that a million books could not contain it. I was not capable of speaking about it at the time. This attempt at description is an abridged and refined version of the direct insight, which a person must always see for themselves, directly, in order to comprehend and make their own. I offer it here in a spirit of love, and in a lighthearted, poetic and playful way, though I have tried to do justice to the sense of awe that it brings.

Please understand that words are always limited and incomplete, and so is my ability to express that splendorous, loving, all-wise simplicity. These words only point towards a reality that cannot be explained in words, but a reality that you may come to sense within your own center. Please do not take these words as dogma, or worse, philosophy – but instead, think of them as a poetic description of what I am here calling “The Center of Life.” This metaphor makes sense in so many ways, and it is unlike the common, overused terms that point towards this same, universal and ancient reality.

Think of everything you could include in the word “Life” as a giant, living sphere.

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The center of life is my true home, and my authentic nature.

To find the center of life is to find permanent contentment. It is a unification of self.

To remain in the center of life is to remain free from anxiety, division, trouble and lingering sadness. It is to muzzle the neurotic voice in the head.

To think from the center of life is to overcome all doubts.

Apparent contradictions are resolved in the center; paradox springs from the center.

The center of life is like a gateway between the infinite and the finite. It is found by looking back into the empty doorway of perception. 

 It is simple and singular, like the aperture of an eye. 

The eye of living awareness is an opening in the universe through which unlimited being can experience itself from a fresh, though limited perspective. That opening is at the heart of me, and it is my center, the center of life. 

It is the only real thing there is, the only permanent thing, and paradoxically, therefore, the most mysterious. 

The center of life is known to the wise and to those who have total love in their hearts. It is home to the happy, and it is familiar to the compassionate. 

It is simple, understated and earthy, like grass and soil stains on my bare feet. It is rare and refined, like an exotic fragrance, or like a delicate, ascending harmony. Its sound is the rhythm of poetry, and of rippling streams in summer. It carries the fragrance of eternity. 

It is the marriage of heaven and earth in the brain and nervous system, balanced so delicately on the trajectory of art that is the spine, cascading down in gorgeous energies, dripping like honey from the crown, and rising like a living tree from the root. 

This living center of life is received by the creative, and created by the receptive in the love dance of yin and yang. It is the wellspring from which artists, poets, mystics and musicians receive their inspiration. It is experienced as a state of grace and flow. A receptive heart creates its glowing, smiling atmosphere around it. A natural body receives it, and glows with health, producing abundant energy with which to thrive in creation. 

At the center, form becomes formless, and the formless takes form. It is the seat of paradox.  Energy and mind becomes matter, and matter becomes energy and mind. (Almost as if observation implies the waveform collapse, and the waveform collapse implies the observation). It goes beyond thought, yet blind belief is not enough. To find it is to become it.  To know it is to live its paradox. 

This same center is unknown to the foolish, the careless, the insincere, the forgetful, and the restless. Those who are angry and self-righteous claim the center as their own, but they remain far from its peace. The doubting and the believing alike go on missing it, for the center is beyond belief, and the center is beyond doubt.

This center of life cannot be found on the outside of oneself, for that is the periphery and the circumference of the sphere. The senses and the mind are turned outwards. To find the center, one has to turn upside down, and make the outside inside. One must go within. 

The outside of the sphere of life is the world of forms and moving energies. It is the world of weather, crowds, eating, doing, relationships, books and ideas. It is the world of ceremonies, worship, sacrifice and law tables. The center is not there – yet all of these outward things are manifestations from within, from the center. To find the center of life, one has to go inwards – yet when one turns one’s attention inward, this center seems to disappear. One cannot take hold of it as a thing, or as a concept.

Many have approached the center, and many have had a glimpse of its simple, loving glory. Some have approached it through lives of dedication and service, in mystery schools, with Shaman teachers, or gurus, through prayer, meditation, or contemplation. Some have approached it through hallucinogens, acid trips, sacred mushrooms, ayahuasca, through Dreamtime, through initiation, through rebellion against the norms, and through courageous exploration of altered states. Some have approached it through a brush with death, or a Near Death Experience. Some find it in a Spiritual Awakening, or through self-enquiry. Some have found it through complete surrender. All people must suspect its nature, somewhere deep down, for it is common, yet none can say exactly what it is. Only those who surrender totally to its reality can remain in its glow, the others only get a glimpse, then it slips away once more. 

All beings fall towards this center, as matter in a star falls towards the center of gravity. All beings issue forth from this center, moving away from it and forgetting, as matter and light shoot forth from the sun, in great, living eruptions of joy. All light in the cosmos circles this simple center, awesome and terrible in its power, yet gentle as an open, empty hand. It is all that can be seen, and simultaneously, that which sees.

People have called this center of life by many names. They have described it in their books, their philosophies, their religions, their theories and their mystic visions. They have used many different titles, and some of them are exotic and mysterious. They have called it Atman, they call it Samadhi, and they call it Nirvana. It was called The Way. They have called it Jehovah, they have called it Ein Sof, they have called it the Great Eye, and they have called it Allah, yet few have approached the reality within those names. They pray to it as a thing outside of themselves. They ask it for favors and for mercy. They call on its blessings. They become angry and disillusioned when it does not answer. They believe, and yet, in that belief is the seed of doubt, for they have not felt the reality directly. They disbelieve, yet in their hearts, they long for it. They have forgotten. They have used simpler names too. Some people call it the Divine, or the Absolute. Some call it the Universe. The simplest name of all is “I.” 

Who am I? What is this mysterious being, looking out from behind my eyes, and thinking my thoughts, believing my beliefs?

Find the center of this disappearing “I,” and you will find the center of life. For it is you. It is me. It is none other than “I.”

When I look for this center with a restless mind, with a restless heart, hoping to catch it in a cage, where I can observe it and study it, where I can explain it to  my satisfaction, where I can show it off to my friends – no, if I look for it in this way, it will go on eluding me.

If I look for it in quietness, in peace, and in surrender, I will naturally gravitate towards its centerpoint, which is my own heart.

This is my invitation, in love: Fall into it, as if into the arms of the beloved – and you are here. Surrender totally to it, for it is none other than you. 

Do not try to shroud it in concepts and fantasies, for then it remains obscured. Instead, allow it to shine plainly from within, as itself – for it is the heart of you. The heart of you is joined at the root with the heart of everything. In that place, there is an unexpected brilliance of understanding, and a love that knows no bounds.

All the experiences in your brief-long life have arisen from this center. Bring those wanderings to completion, there in your heart of hearts. Surrender them to completion, even as they arise, and the bright, loving flame of awareness transforms them into the joy of simply being. Fall asleep again, and you will wander in dark forgetfulness.

All the experiences of this new-ancient life must pass through one doorway, one gate.

Every thought you have ever thought was observed from one and the same place. The thought entered through that singular gate, then the thought disappeared through that gate. The memories you have stored only appear when they enter the light shining from within that same gate of perception. Every feeling you have ever felt is the same. It only became real once you perceived it, once it entered the light of awareness. The feeling arose through that gate, and then departed. You named that feeling, and gave it meaning in your mind, but the feeling was a wave of energy, without a name.  It may have left a subtle trace in the body, as a knot of tension, or a scar, but that subtle trace in the body only becomes real when it is experienced, and the experience happens in the light of consciousness – that self same gate. All the sense experiences you have had – everything you have seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted – or sensed beyond these five senses – all of them came through that same gate, and disappeared again.

Live from that gate, and be happy. Live in your judgment, and you live in a painful world. Remain aware of that gate, and know your true Self. The method to find this gate is the method of self-enquiry. It is to turn inwards, and remember.

Where is that gate? It is wherever you are. Simply turn your beam inwards, and hold it there unflinchingly.

What is that gate? It is none other than you. It is your real self. 

What is the nature of this gate? It is your disappearing, living center, from which your entire life has sprung, and into which your entire life disappears, moment by moment. It has the nature of the living now, without a true beginning, and without a true end. It has the nature of love. It has the nature of pure, untainted awareness, all-accepting, all-nurturing, and all-forgiving. It has the nature of being. It has the flowing, cleansing and nourishing taste of pure water, the balm of life. It has the feeling of vastness of a clear night sky.

Into this mysterious gate at the center of life the seed from your father and the egg from your mother swam, and in it they were lost. In their place, from that same gate, appeared an eight-celled flower of life, a single cell that had divided three times, but it did not remain. That too disappeared, and it grew into a baby. Slowly that form emerged, moment by moment, following an ancient, instinctive intelligence. Where is that baby now?

It has disappeared into the center, and a growing, changing, learning child took its place, day after day, year after year. At some point, language and mind began to grow over your experience. Remember the heart of that child. Remember your original, unspoiled nature.

All the air that you breathed, all the water you drank, all the food you have eaten – where is it all now? All the countless thoughts, feelings and experiences you have had – where did they go?  From where is your next thought and your next experience going to come ?

Each living moment unfolds from the center, and then disappears again. The watcher, the experiencer, the one who feels real – that one remained at the center. Who is it that is watching this unfolding and disappearing? It is me.

Who am I?

This unchanging center of life is all that we have ever truly known – and yet – so few of us recognize it as ourselves. People go on missing it, mistaking the moving stream of experience as reality, ignoring the self that is watching. They miss the center, because it is empty. They miss it because it is not a thought, it is not an experience; it has no shape, no texture, no color, and no weight. When they look for it, it disappears, so they cannot believe in its reality.

This sense of unreality creeps into life, covering the center with strangling vines of forgetfulness. 

This is what Blake was talking about when he wrote: 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

“His cavern” is the obscuring and stifling conditioning of mind. It is the division of reality into dualistic concepts. It is the thought “I am a separate, lost and lonely individual, a hapless accident of birth, fighting for survival.”  It is the thought: “I am not what I am supposed to be.” It is the feeling of “I am unworthy, a sinner, and a failure.” It is the thought “I must become something. I must achieve something, or I am nothing.”

Through learning and conditioning, the contents of mind are equated with reality – and suffering arises. Self is divided from self, and the individual is cut off from the totality. The result is a feeling of longing, a deep yearning for home, somewhere at the root of the psyche. We feel something is wrong, but we have forgotten what that is.

We project a future, where we might find happiness, and lose the living sense of the present. We cling to the past, believing that it has imprisoned us in the present. The being becomes disconnected from the present moment, separated  from the center, living in a dream matrix of unreality.

Life is only real when I Am. Reality is at the center. 

Find this center of reality, and live from there, and feel real.

Come home from the dream, and remember your real nature. You are infinite.

The closing up happens when we misplace our center. When we make the contents of our minds, the judging voices in our heads, more important than our essential nature, we lose our connection with this infinite feeling. We become enclosed, as if in a prison, and all we can see is a narrow, filtered reality, as though peeping through chinks in a cavern, as though peeping through iron bars, from a tiny window, high up on a wall. 

The mind takes ideas and concepts as reality. These are like the shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave. The mind struggles to distinguish between the real and the unreal, because the senses report the outside world in a dreamlike way. People see what they expect to see, and what they want to see, and they hear what they want to hear and expect to hear, rather than what is really there. The mind operates as a kind of filter through which we interpret reality. It is a screen, and a veil. It grows over our eyes, and we forget who we are.

Our inner state of being colors each new experience, and we ascribe meaning to things based on what we are carrying around in our hearts. 

When we are expecting trouble, then trouble is what we find. When we are expecting disappointment, then that is what we find. When we carry hatred, fear, insecurity, guilt and shame with us, these things find their projections on all the circumstances of our lives. We are the ones that create our own hells, we are the ones who create our own heavens. 

I am the only one who can truly hurt me. When the self is divided, the center is lost, and things fall apart. Self criticizes self, and self argues with self, defending itself from imaginary specters. 

Sit and look at reality without naming things, or explaining anything. There it is. There is your center. Observe yourself without judging yourself, and there it is – inside you, in your center. Become quiet, and remember your true center.

Blake describes another way to apprehend reality, free from filters in his Auguries of Innocence:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.”

This is far closer to the reality known to the mystics and the spiritual awakeners. It is the reality glimpsed by acid heads, by those in altered states, and by Near Death experiencers. But those glimpses fade, unless one develops the skill to make it permanent. This is not what people experience in “normal” everyday life – but it is available to all beings. It is far more real and natural than the world you are creating in your head.

“Heaven in a wildflower” is closer to what it’s like to live from the center of life. These lines speak of the integration and unity of a self, no longer self-divided, but free from the prison of ego identity, free from neurotic, compulsive thinking, and free from filters. 

Each new thought is a movement away from the silent center of life. That thought leads on to another thought, and yet another, and the mind does not find its way back to the center until it becomes quiet once more. Over time, we create intricate nets of thought and belief, called our worldview, or our belief system – and this is what veils the simple, direct truth. This is what makes us feel lonely, and lost, and confused, and guilty, and all wrong inside.

Rest in the center, and be always happy.

From the center, there is nothing but abundance and love. You are that abundance and love already.

In the center, there are no more questions, there is only exploration and creative adoration.

In the center, there is no struggle for life and death – for they are one.

From the center, there is no desperate seeking, and there is no disappointing finding.

From the center, there is no longer the pain of birth and the looming doom of death, for there is only constant becoming and dissolving, moment by moment. Each moment is a birth, and each moment is a death.

Go into reality, go into your center, go deeply into this feeling “I am” and feel its living truth directly, bone deep.

Go into the peace of it, the silence of it, into the fullness of it, and remain there, resting in your own center, and be always happy. 

Each new thought and feeling, each new experience will arise from there, and move outwards. Complete each one by going back, time and time again, returning to the center of life. Come home, and relax. Come home, and remember love. Come back into your center, for it is the real, infinite you.