The Center That Is Everywhere
El Centro Que Está en Todas Partes
A student describes a powerful moment of recognition, a sense of the heart's center, sparked by an earlier teaching. The teacher explores how these initial tastes of reality evolve from extraordinary experiences into the quiet, ordinary nature of things.
The Center That Is Everywhere
A student describes a powerful moment of recognition, a sense of the heart's center, sparked by an earlier teaching. The teacher explores how these initial tastes of reality evolve from extraordinary experiences into the quiet, ordinary nature of things.
I have a way of saying something that seems out of the blue but really hits something in me, in a good way. You said something yesterday about feeling I should do more on the waking-up work. I don't know what it hit, but today was very strange. When you spoke about exploring the limits, about feeling like I'm a body and I'm limited, and going more into that, something opened. It's so mysterious because it was just a sentence or something, and today it was as if I needed to hear it. I went to swim, and I was simply sitting with the question: what if my body is in me? What if I'm everywhere? At one moment I just sat watching the water, amazed by the beauty, almost in tears.
Then in the meditation today, I think it had something to do with noticing that which perceives. There was a lot of intensity and uncertainty around it. But it's not a paying attention. It's like realizing the center of a heart, to put it in words. I felt it. I think it's something I first felt in a quite big realization at your retreat last year. I won't try to explain it much, but I just wanted to express thanks.
You're very welcome. That's really beautiful.
Recognizing the taste
Those are tastes that you can start recognizing. It's the tasting of, you could call it, yourself, or that which is real. At first it becomes something that feels really foreign and almost magical, something that comes and goes. Over time you can start to realize it's just the nature of reality, now, always now.
Usually at first, because of the contrast, it appears to be either very special or a very big deal. As you taste it more and more, it becomes the extraordinary in the ordinary. It grows more subtle, softer, more all-pervasive.
Fear howls, the heart whispers
There was a talk given just for the group in which it was said: fear howls, and the heart whispers. What you're calling the center of the heart is that whisper, that taste of yourself or of reality. It's very heart-like. It is the center of the heart. It feels like an actual place that is not really a place, but that is more real, as if it were a place that for some reason becomes more apparent. It's like a center, but a center that is everywhere.
The center of infinite space
I'm reminded of a beautiful exchange. Someone once asked the question: is there a center? The answer that came back wasn't the typical response of "there's no center," because that would be defining reality in a certain way. Instead, the answer was mathematical: the center of an infinite space is everywhere. It was a kind of paradox, both accurate and beautiful. It feels like a center, and at the same time it is everywhere.
Reconfirming what is always here
This is the kind of thing you can recognize and then reconfirm. It becomes familiar, and so you can ask, "Is that still here?" You check, and you find: yes, still here. Then a doubt arises again, or another sense of confusion, and you taste it once more and find: yes, still here. Is that center of the heart the empty looking, the silence, the knowing, the I-am-ness?
It's easy at first to confuse it with the feelings the recognition produces, the elation. When we are so far from it and we taste it, the experience can be very explosive, a very big deal. Then over time it becomes a lot more subtle and has less of a shocking effect. Eventually it becomes so obvious that you no longer have to reconfirm. It's just the nature of reality.