How to Find Your Center of Calm in Difficult Times
Life has drastically changed around the globe due to the coronavirus pandemic but it is always possible to find your center and have peace within. Indeed, many people have been affected, and tension, stress, and anxiety levels have risen.
What it Means to Find Your Center
As we collectively face this pandemic, many people are struggling to deal with uncertainty and are worried about the future.
Furthermore, finding distractions is more difficult while we participate in social distancing.
Right now, catastrophizing, insomnia, agitation, sadness, and fear are a common part of our collective experience. Yet, this does not need to be.
For, you can find your center of love and peace even in the most difficult times.
Above all, this life is meant for your awakening. As a result, the illusions you hold about yourself that engender fear, are now brought to light to be given up.
Trust that everything you are experiencing is here to set you free and steer you to higher levels of awareness and peace.
In fact, your consciousness can perceive on the level of the ego, and from this fear arises. Alternatively, when you know your True Self, you will know life from your center and be at one with all existence.
Your center is a place of balance, and complete peace and freedom.
When you find your center, thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations can come and go, but you will not be moved or consumed by them.
On the surface, what happens on the level of thought, emotion, and the body, appear to be one’s predominated position.
On the deeper level, however, nothing happens to you. Rather, everything happens through you, because you are pure awareness.
In other words, you are beyond your emotional, mental, and physical states and only the tendency to identify with them bounds you.
So, by abiding as the witness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, you become aware of the space between yourself and all phenomena.
So, by abiding as the witness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, you become aware of the space between yourself and all phenomena.
This is how you find your center, it is your true place.
When you know this, you will not be swept away by anger, sadness, pain, or fear.
Instead, you will be firm in your truth, and though the ground may shake, you will not be moved because your heart will be at peace, and your whole being will flourish with love.
How Openness Helps You Find Your Center
We are conditioned to avoid pain, but this avoidance allows it to endure. Avoidance can cause you to dissociate from the body, mind, or an emotional state.
Regardless of whether you have difficultly connecting with feelings, thoughts, or your body, it isn’t because you are void of them.
Rather, your attention withdraws from them due to fear and resistance.
Letting go of Resistance
When you know your true place, there is no reason to be afraid or resist life. Instead, you can remain centered in the present moment no matter what it brings.
To be clear, this does not mean you create more suffering or that you do not act when needed. It only means you are wise enough to allow what is, to be.
For instance, when it rains, it rains, and you would not pretend it was sunny. Nor would you stand outside yelling at the sky to stop. This, you can recognize as insane.
When you acknowledge what is and let go of resistance, you are free to choose from a place of sanity to either stay in or use an umbrella.
Likewise, your physical, emotional, and mental experiences must be allowed to come and go.
So, don’t oppose them. Otherwise, denial and resistance would not be any different from yelling at the sky, and the rain will always bother you.
When you find your center, however, you can let your tears flow and your mind race, without being swept away by it.
Opening to Physical Experiencing:
It is not uncommon to resist uncomfortable physical sensations. For instance, I used to experience panic attacks and became afraid of them because I could not tolerate the experience in my body.
Although panic attacks are not dangerous, many people reject the experience, which perpetuates their fear.
Alternatively, when you have the courage to open to the sensations—no matter how strong your fear is—they will lessen. In fact, I have not experienced a panic attack in years and anxious feelings rarely bother me.
Likewise, the same is true with pain. When you accept pain in your body, the intensity of the pain lessens. So, whatever discomfort you feel, open to it and view it as an opportunity to grow and heal.
Remind yourself that acknowledging these sensations may be uncomfortable, but it isn’t dangerous. Say to yourself, “if this is my experience, then I allow it to be.”
To clarify, this does not mean you fixate on suffering, but instead, release any resistance to what is. Then, you’ll see that nothing can overcome you and you will never again leave your center.
Opening to Emotional Experiencing:
Emotional awareness can be a struggle for some. For instance, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to someone and sensed their sadness, yet, they’re unaware of how they feel.
In fact, it is only when I bring their awareness to their body that they can identify feeling a lump in their throat, alluding them to their emotional state.
Moreover, it is common for people to repress sadness because they are afraid that it makes them vulnerable.
On the other hand, others are aware of their emotional states before they are aware of their thoughts and physical experience. This can be the case with trauma.
For this reason, you must be willing to move past avoidance and openly acknowledge how you feel, even when it is unpleasant.
Otherwise, your emotions cannot be released and will continue to reside within you.
When you are established in your center, however, emotions will move through you but they will not consume you.
Related article: Facing Painful Emotions
Opening to Mental Experiencing:
When people told me; thoughts are powerful, it scared me because my thinking was completely insane.
What they forgot to mention, however, is that your thoughts are not more powerful than you.
You are the awareness of the mind’s thought stream, and if you have insane thoughts you don’t need to listen to them.
Thoughts need your consciousness, your attention, and your belief in them to have any power. You interpret situations, events, people’s intentions, etc.
So, if your mind tends to be very suspicious then everyone around you becomes a suspect.
Likewise, when your mind is anxious and fearful, everyone and everything appears dangerous and threatening.
Related article: 12 Thinking Traps you Need to be Aware Of
To clarify, your thoughts are primary to your emotions and affect how you feel.
As a result, it is your own interpretations that cloud reality and perpetuate your fears. Moreover, the lens of fear is built with past experiences and future projections and completely misses this moment.
In other words, if fear is courting your mind, then the world it projects is illusory. Reality is not based on thoughts; it is here in this moment without the mind’s interpretations and labels.
The good news is you can change your mind and release fear. In fact, you are the one who witnesses and hears the mind’s thoughts, but you are not these thoughts.
Related article: The Perils of the Unobserved Mind
Abiding as the Witness: Practice Using the Mindful Sorting Activity to Find Your Center
This practice will help you become aware of your true position as pure awareness so experiences do not consume you.
In addition, you will gain distance from your suffering as you abide in awareness and separate yourself from what is transient.
As a result, you will not get pulled into emotions. You will have space from emotional and mental turmoil.
To practice the mindful sorting exercise:
Follow the instructions below, or use my free printable Mindful Sorting Activity PDF
- Take a comfortable posture and close your eyes.
- Notice what you are experiencing and allow yourself to open to it, without judgment.
- Whatever comes, don’t push it away
- Next, imagine there are 3 boxes: one for your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. If visualization is difficult for you, however, download my free printable Mindful Sorting Activity PDF, or do this exercise without imagining the boxes.
- Begin observing your body. You may notice a lump in your throat, butterflies in your stomach, chest tightness, warmth, cold, pressure around your head, heaviness in your eyes, or tension. Be specific. Then, whenever you experience a sensation in your body, put it into the box for bodily sensations. Alternatively, just say to yourself this is a physical sensation.
- Next, bring your attention to your emotional state. Place how you feel in the box for emotions or just say this is an emotion.
- Notice what is on your mind. If a thought comes, imagine putting it into the box for thoughts, or say to yourself this is a thought.
- Continue to open to whatever you experience. Sort each experience visually or simply acknowledge what the experience is, without judgment. Do this for as many thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations as you would like.
- Whenever something comes up, don’t push it away. Witness and allow it to be, without involvement.
Let this practice of witnessing help you find your center
Practice this exercise for as long as you would like and whenever you are feeling out of alignment. Also, if you find a deeper silence when you practice this exercise, allow your mind to fall into quietude.
As you continue to abide as the witness of experiencing, you will see the link between mind, body, and emotions and know yourself apart from them.
This does not mean you will become detached, on the contrary, you will be more in touch with life on a deeper level.
In addition, this practice will spill over into your daily life and fill you with love and peace, and you will fall in love with silence and stillness.
Honoring Your True Place and Letting Go of Fear
Have faith in life, put your trust in love. Do not allow the illusion that fear is greater than you to imprison you, because this belief will pull your mind into hatred and despair.
We can only do what is within our control, fear will not solve anything, so surrender it to grace.
In truth, you can never lose your center. Only the tendency to identify with the ego, the false self, creates suffering.
Your essence is peace, love, and freedom. This is our true nature and there is so much love and light in this world.
Your true strength is independent of thoughts, feelings, and the body.
Although the storms of the mind will rain, while the body trembles with fear, these movements are not who you are.
These manifestations of fear are only shadows, so don’t identify with them. Trying to push away shadows is a fool’s errand and will only create more shadows, so don’t resist them either.
Instead, let them pass through you for they cannot move you from your center. In other words, shine the light of your consciousness on these phantoms, and fear will disappear on its own.
Related Article: The Dark Night of the Soul
Conclusion: Allowing Life To Unfold When You Find Your Center
Everything in this life is transient and what you experience will not last. So, don’t identify with what is impermanent.
Allow life to unfold and don’t project an imagined future in your mind, just keep your attention here on the present moment without judgment or interpretation.
Then, you will know life from your center and difficult times will not consume you.
You are a conscious being and your presence bears witness to all manifestations that appear and dissolve, but you never dissolve.
Any movements such as sadness and fear that come into your awareness, are all okay.
Allow them to be and give them space to pass and you will see that your true nature is effortless joy, peace, and love.
In fact, now you are truly discovering who you are, and self-realization is liberation.
So, use this time of social distancing as an opportunity to seek salvation within and to be on retreat with yourself.
Abide as the witness and you will find your center, and you will know how to “be in the world, but not of the world.”
Anything that comes up now, is your teacher and an opportunity to stand firm in your truth. You are light, and you are love, and this will flow through you.
May you all be safe and well,
With full love,
Ravelle
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Download the Mindful Sorting Activity for free here.
Thank you for sharing such beautiful truth and awareness of our true nature and methods of dealing with emotional and physical challenges that we all experience at some point in this life. So well put.
✌ 💫💞👁💞💫✌
Thank you, Tim. I appreciate your kind words. And yes, these are definitely things we all experience at some point in our lives. Sending you lots of love 🙏❤️
Thankyou for these blessings ravelle sending you love❤️❤️
Thank you Varun, may you be safe and well. Sending you endless love 🙏❤️
This was a very helpful and beautiful reading during this time. Thank you for posting!
Thank you, Chloe 🙏❤️ I’m so happy to hear it was helpful. Sending you lots of love!