Yesterday morning the first thing that entered my consciousness was a blast of mixed emotions. The next thing that entered my consciousness was the fact that I was still in dream state. As pure awareness, I was traveling the world and experiencing the thoughts and feelings of the collective. Here were those mourning their dead, those who were stressed over work and finances, those sitting with that empty feeling of having accomplished nothing this year, those sitting with that empty feeling of having nothing to look forward to. Here, too, were those sitting with rage and fear. And here, people frantically trying to keep a sense of normalcy and progress; there, people with shattered faith.
As I was flying over the planet, surveying the variety of human experience, there was a sense of holding my center steady as I took everything in, learning what I could, and building an unflinching capacity for compassionate witnessing. And as I focused on my center, I entered wakefulness and found myself in the safety of my bed.
As the day progressed I remembered times when I wasn’t able to find or hold my center. My own mood changed quickly and considerably depending on the emotions of those around me. I recalled how in the wake of 9/11 I cast about aimlessly in a sea of trauma, unable to find any solid ground for weeks on end.
I spent a lot of time trying to get to the heart of this. Pop psychology calls it being an “empath” or a “psychic sponge.” My therapist explained how it developed as a defensive strategy in my childhood, when being able to read the mood of another would have felt like a matter of survival. “What’s mine? What isn’t mine?” was supposed to hold the key to my confusion. Who freaking knows when the boundaries of the self felt so permeable? “What even is a boundary?” I asked my therapist.
It wasn’t until I got serious about meditation and developed a personal discernment process through my Akashic Records practice that I was able to find and hold my center in the face of strong emotion. When a client asks a question bound up in so much confusion and desire and sadness and anger, the breath takes us to that expansive place where we can begin finding clarity.
This capacity gets tested outside the sacred container of private or group sessions, especially when it involves the collective. I was raised in an environment where it was virtuous to have a heart that bled for others, lest you be considered cold and calloused. This is a false choice, however. The third way is being a compassionate, non-judgmental witness, standing on equal ground yet holding a higher perspective. That is only possible from the place of centeredness.
We are in a process of destruction and rebuilding. Do we want to do this as the walking wounded, or do we want to take action from a place of wholeness and expansiveness? Return to the breath. Find your sacred center. Find the greater share of your being there. Tap into your Brilliant System and from here let every thought, feeling, word, and gesture emerge.
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